Day 19 : A Contemplative Activist | Dorothy Day

“We repeat, there is nothing that we can do but love, and dear God — please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend.” – Dorothy Day

What is a contemplative activist?

As Christ-followers, mirroring His incarnational work in the world, we have been given a rich legacy in the lives of the saints and other heroes of the faith, those men and women who modeled for us the lives of contemplative activism. When answers are few and far between, we look to them who have drawn near to the poor in their distress, giving us an example to follow.

We define “contemplative activists” as those walking the Jesus rhythm. Jesus went up the mountain to be with His Father and pray and then returned to his life of service, engagement, and action, walking in the places of the world that needed mending. As Anglicans loving “the least of these,” we believe that our lives of prayer form the source of our work among the vulnerable. In turn, our closeness to suffering shapes our prayer lives and understanding of Christ as the Ultimate Healer and Savior.

Icon: “Dorothy Day and The Holy Family of the Streets” by Kelly Latimore

Dorothy Day was born in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, but her family moved to San Francisco, then Chicago, and back to New York by the time she was 18 years old. Her parents highly valued education while also struggling to find financial security and having survived the devastating earthquake of 1906 in California. Dorothy enrolled at the University of Illinois at age 16, and began to work at a newspaper alongside labor organizers and other freethinkers at age 18. By this point, she had rejected organized religion, because of the ways she felt it failed to care for the destitute.

Dorothy Day was a powerhouse of a journalist and contemplative activist whose life was devoted to prayer, and she took her conversations with God to the streets. Her cultivated awareness of God's love, presence, and filling enabled her to walk as a remarkable icon of Christ's light to countless others. Dorothy continues to inspire Christians of all backgrounds to live out Jesus’ exhortation in Matthew 25.

“I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least."

“The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.”

Dorothy Day

A few years later, she converted to Catholicism with profound sincerity as she was drawn to the beauty of the life of Jesus, and began writing for a Catholic magazine. Soon after, Dorothy met Peter Maurin, a French visionary with whom she would go on to co-found the trailblazing Catholic Workers Movement and newspaper to offer a vision of “a society in which it is easier for people to be good.” Because of her own story, and as a single mother, she signed protests against legalizing abortion and famously stated "make room for children; don't do away with them." Motherhood significantly shaped her worldview. Her formal ministry to the poor began a few years into the Great Depression when structures that had previously been dependable fell apart.

"If you are rushed for time, sow time and you will reap time. Go to church and spend a quiet hour in prayer. You will have more time than ever and your work will get done.

Sow time with the poor. Sit and listen to them, give them your time lavishly. You will reap time a hundredfold."

Dorothy Day

Dorothy used her gift of writing to build the Catholic Worker into a wide community of laborers and intellectuals alike who shared her and Peter’s vision for a sacramental, justice-dedicated society. The Catholic Worker Movement opened houses of hospitality to the unhoused people of New York, which offered resources and shelter. The movement served people in a plethora of vulnerable situations, but consistently prioritized hospitality to the chronically and temporarily homeless. Within a few years, there were thirty-two hospitality houses, from Buffalo and Baltimore to St. Louis and Seattle. A central principle of the Catholic Worker movement was the workers’ deliberate, voluntary choice to live simply alongside the poor.

“Those who cannot see Christ in the poor are atheists indeed. ”

“My strength returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the Psalms. ”

Dorothy Day

Dorothy had a deep respect for the Scriptures, especially the Psalms, the Gospels, and Paul’s epistles. She aimed to model her life after Jesus’ in her dedication to peacemaking and full-bodied, on-the-streets witness. She, like many Biblical models of the faith and saints in church history, lived an untidy life, but the fragrance of Jesus was caught by those who encountered her. Dorothy Day focused her desire to see a healed world into Christ-centered action that resulted in long-lasting communities of visionaries like her.

“A custom existed among the first generations of Christians, when faith was a bright fire that warmed more than those who kept it burning. In every house then a room was kept ready for any stranger who might ask for shelter; it was even called “the stranger’s room.”

Not because these people thought they could trace something of someone they loved in the stranger who used it, not because the man or woman to whom they gave shelter reminded them of Christ, but because—plain and simple and stupendous fact—he or she was Christ.”

Dorothy Day

But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.

Luke 10:33-37