"...trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship to each other."

I have recently been reading the writings of Dorothy Day, a peace activist and one of the founders of the Catholic Worker movement, a vibrant and thriving international community of people committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer and hospitality to the marginalized. Day’s writings are gut-wrenching, terrifying, and humbling, calling us all to lives of saints. The work of the Catholic Worker movement is so broad with irons in so many different fires that it is humbling to examine our own meager effort to achieve social justice, equality, peace, and environmental stewardship. That being said, I’d like to share some passages from the book I am currently reading, “Selected Writings” because Dorothy compels us far more convincingly and gracefully than I ever could. I fear that just by reading it, I’ll never be the same.

“We have repeated so many times that those who have two cloaks should follow the early Fathers who said, “The coat that hangs in your closet belongs to the poor.” And those who have a ten-room house can well share it with those who have none. How many large houses could be made into several apartments to take in others? Much hospitality could be given to relieve the grave suffering of today. But people are afraid. They do not know where it all will end. They have all gone far enough in generosity to know that an ordeal is ahead, that the person taken in will most likely turn into “the friend of the family.” No use starting something that you cannot finish, they say. Once bitten is twice shy. We have all had our experiences of ingratitude, of nursing a viper in our bosom, as the saying goes. So we forget about the necessity of pruning, in the natural order, to attain much fruit. We don’t want to pay the cost of love. We do not want to exercise our capacity to love.”

“To love with understanding, and without understanding. To love blindly, and to folly. To see only what is lovable. To think only of these things. To see the best in everyone around, their virtues, rather than their faults. To see Christ in them!”

“Compassion, it is a word meaning to suffer with. If we all carry a little of the burden, it will be lightened. If we share in the suffering of the world, then some will not have to endure so heavy an affliction. It evens out. What you do here in New York, in Harrisburg, helps those in China, India, South Africa, Europe, Russia, as well as in the oasis where you are. You may think you are alone. But we are members of one another. We are children of God together.”