In the series, Chosen, when Jesus calls Matthew, the tax collector, to follow him, Peter protests: "I don't get it." Jesus reminds him: "You did not get it when I called you either." Peter says: "But this is different." Then Jesus responds: "Get used to different."

That line does not actually appear in the Gospels — Chosen tries to fill in the gaps in the spirit of the Gospel — but we are called to be different. St. Paul says, "Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect" (Romans 12:2).

The Gospels do record that the disciples were not always in agreement: "An argument arose among the disciples about which of them was the greatest. (Luke 9:46)" But, I often think of other discussions that must have taken place among the Apostles when I consider that the Lord put together fishermen, a tax collector, and a zealot — I am sure that they were not always on the same page, but their closeness to Jesus ultimately brought them together in mind and heart.

The Church is the same way. Although many seem to see the Church as a monolithic institution, there is actually room for tremendous diversity in the Church. Of course, that means that we have to "get used to different," and not simply tolerate one another, but actually come to love one another, and help one another draw closer to the Lord. We have to come to believe that we really need one another in order to come to know the whole Christ.

In the late 1960s, under different circumstances, I came to know Bishop Timothy Harrington and Father Bernard Gilgun, both of the Diocese of Worcester, MA. Bishop Harrington was an auxiliary bishop; Father Gilgun ministered to people on the margins — I remember his telling me once: "I can see the Lord in prostitutes and drug addicts, but have difficulty seeing him in bishops." Once, when I was visiting Bishop Harrington, I asked how Father Gilgun was doing. He told me that he know Father Gilgun was in good health because he had spent the entire day the previous Tuesday picketing the Bishop's Office, outside in the rain. Then he added something I never forgot: "The Church in Worcester needs Father Gilgun; he can reach people I can't reach." The Church needs all of us!

In is with that introduction that I introduce Dorothy Day as the subject of this reflection. She was different. Her life style was not always in accord with Catholic teaching, and to this day, different bishops see her differently. Fortunately, the Lord judges us on what we have become, and not on what we were. [I have often thought that many holy men and women would not clear Senate confirmation hearings . . . think Moses and King David, both of whom were murderers.] Read on . . . and perhaps, get used to different.

Dorothy Day was born November 8, 1897 in Brooklyn Heights, NY; she was the third of five children born to Grace Satteerlee Day and John Day. Her father was a sportswriter devoted to horse racing. When Dorothy was 6 years old, John Day took a position with a San Francisco newspaper, and the family moved to Oakland, CA. Two years later, the San Francisco earthquake destroyed the newspapers facilities. The Day family and their home in Oakland were safe, but John Day lost his job. The family relocated to Chicago, but not before Dorothy became aware of and impressed by the self-sacrifice of their neighbors in responding to the needs of the earthquake victims, even welcoming them into their homes.

John and Grace Day were nominal Christians who rarely attended Church. However, Dorothy showed an interest in religion at an early age. After their arrival in Chicago, John Day was unemployed and they lived in poverty, in a tenement. There, Dorothy experienced the following.

"Mrs. Barrett gave me my first impulse toward Catholicism. It was around ten o'clock in the morning that I went up to Kathryn's to call for her to come out and play. There was no one on the porch or in the kitchen. The breakfast dishes had all been washed. They were long railroad apartments, those flats, and thinking the children must be in the front room, I burst in and ran through the bedrooms.

"In the front room, Mrs. Barrett was on her knees, saying her prayers. She turned to tell me that Kathryn and the children had all gone to the store and went on with her praying. And I felt a warm burst of love toward Mrs. Barrett that I have never forgotten, a feeling of gratitude and happiness that still warms my heart when I remember her. She had God, and there was beauty and joy in her life.

"All through my life what she was doing remained with me. And though I became oppressed with the problem of poverty and injustice, though I groaned at the hideous sordidness of man's lot, though there were years when I clung to the philosophy of economic determination as an explanation of man's fate, still there were moments when in the midst of misery and class strife, life was shot through with glory. Mrs. Barrett in her sordid little tenement flat finished her breakfast dishes at ten o'clock in the morning and got down on her knees and prayed to God"

When she was ten, Dorothy, started to attend the Church of Our Saviour, an Episcopal church in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. The liturgy and music attracted her at first, but then she studied the catechism and was baptized and confirmed in that church in 1911.

Dorothy graduated from Robert Waller High School in Chicago, and was awarded a scholarship to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Although she had become an avid reader — Upton Sinclair, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Aldous Huxley, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy — she was an eclectic scholar. She had embraced socialism at the university, and read a number of socially conscious works. She left the university after two years, and moved to New York.

She settled on the Lower East Side, and began to work on the staff of The Call New York's only daily socialist newspaper, while doing some writing for several other socialist publications. In this environment, she felt herself pulled in different directions.

"I was only eighteen, so I wavered between my allegiance to Socialism, Syndicalism (of the Industrial Workers of the World — I.W.W.) and Anarchism. When I read Tolstoy I was an Anarchist. My allegiance to The Call kept me a Socialist, although a left-wing one, and my Americanism inclined me to the I.W.W. movement."

In November 1917, she was arrested for picketing at the White House on behalf of women's suffrage. She was sentenced to 30 days in jail; she served 15 days, ten of them on a hunger strike, before being released.

In 1920, Dorothy had a passionate and abusive affair with a charismatic newsman, Lionel Moise, which ended with a pregnancy and an abortion, "a decision she regretted all of her life that was followed by two suicide attempts." Then she married Berkeley Tobey in a civil ceremony and spent the better part of a year with him in Europe, removed from politics, focusing on art and literature. She ended her marriage to Tobey upon their return to the United States.

Then, Dorothy entered into a relationship with Forster Batterham. an anarchist and biologist. She characterized their relationship as a "common law marriage." However, Forster never masked his scorn for the "institution of the family," and, for him, their relationship was simply a "comradeship." Still, she loved him deeply.

At the same time, during her walks Dorothy began to pray, and she started attending Mass. Her relationship with Forster led to a pregnancy, and her pregnancy deepened her spirituality, which led to her decision that she would have her child baptized, "come what may." She gave birth to a daughter, Tamar Theresa, on March 4,1926.

Forster refused to be married, either in the Church or civilly. And Dorothy concluded that to become a Catholic would mean separating from the man she loved. "It got to the point where it was the simple questions of whether I chose God or man." Ultimately, and with great pain, she chose God, forcing Forster to leave the house in December 1927. That month she was received into the Catholic Church.

During her relationship with Forster, Dorothy had lived in a house she bought in Staten Island. At the conclusion of that relationship she moved back to Manhattan. Shortly thereafter, she was in Washington, DC to cover the Communist Party's hunger march there. Before leaving Washington, she went to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to pray to find a way to alleviate the suffering of the hungry. The country was three years into the Great Depression, and she worried that her writing was not doing enough to help. The answer to her prayer was waiting on her doorstep when she returned home.

Peter Maurin had heard about Dorothy, and was waiting for her in the lobby of her apartment building when she arrived home.

Aristode Pierre Maurin was born into a peasant family in Oultet, a village in southern France, on May 9, 1877. At sixteen, he entered the Christian Brothers. His community life was interrupted in 1898-1899 by obligatory military service, in the course of which he perceived a tension between his religious and political duties. In 1902 the French government closed many religious schools, and Peter left the Christian Brothers. He became involved with a French Catholic lay movement which advocated Christian democracy and supported cooperatives and unions, but he became disenchanted with the movement, leaving it in 1908.

In 1909, Peter emigrated to Canada, and began homesteading in Saskatchewan; that effort failed after two years. Then he took whatever work he could find, first in Canada, later in the United States: digging ditches, quarrying stone, harvesting wheat, cutting lumber, and laying track. He worked in brickyards, steel mills and coal mines. He was jailed for vagrancy and for riding the rails. He never married. In 1932, he was a handyman at a Catholic boys' camp in upstate New York, receiving meals, use of the chaplain's library, and living space in the barn.

As often as his work allowed, he went to New York City, spending his days either at the Public Library, or expounding his ideas to anyone who showed interest. After all, he reasoned, "the way to reach the man in the street is to meet the man on the street." He was a born teacher, lively, insightful and good humored, and he always found willing listeners, among them George Shuster, editor of Commonweal magazine, who gave him Dorothy Day's address . . . resulting in his appearing at her apartment.

In a heavy French accent, Peter told Dorothy he had come to see her on the recommendation of George Shuster, editor of Commonweal, and presented her with a grand plan: to create a program of "round-table discussions, houses of hospitality and agronomic universities." Another part of the plan — one that immediately caught her attention — involved creating "a paper for the man in the street."

"But where do we get the money?" Dorothy asked.

"God sends you what you need when you need it," Peter answered. "You will be able to pay the printer. Just read the lives of the saints."

That was December 8, 1932, and together Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin began a movement, the first fruit of which was the inaugural issue of The Catholic Worker, published on May 1, 1933 and sold for one cent at the annual May Day rally in New York City's Union Square. The initial printing was 2,500 copies.

The newspaper was well received, and subscriptions and donations soon began rolling in; by May 1935, circulation had grown to 110,000. Readers bought the paper for hard-hitting stories about trials and strikes, social issues such as racism and child labor, and protests against the inequities of the economic system. There were also Dorothy's lyrical meditations on life in the city and the countryside and Peter's Easy Essays — short verses on economic justice, Catholic social teachings and the values of personalism, the idea that each of us must take responsibility for the betterment of the world.

In late 1933, a desperate woman came to The Catholic Worker office to inquire about the houses of hospitality that Dorothy and Peter had been writing about. Dorothy confessed that as yet no such houses existed. So she took action, renting an apartment and furnishing it with beds.

At the end of 1938, as The Catholic Worker circulation reached 180,000, the houses of hospitality were also proliferating. In New York, they had served over a million breakfasts and hosted nearly 60,000 overnights in the previous three years. In addition, more than 30 houses had opened in other cities, including Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and San Francisco, offering food, shelter and a place for discussion of Catholic ideas of social justice and the personalist vision of our role in our communities and the world. Driving the growth of movement was the success of the paper as well as Dorothy's travels around the country to give talks and engage in discussions, inspiring others to live the gospel.

One of Peter Maurin's greatest intellectual and spiritual influences on Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker movement is the philosophy of personalism. The September 1936 edition of The Catholic Worker newspaper described their program in terms of a "personalist revolution."

"We are working for the personalist revolution because we believe in the dignity of (each person), the temple of the Holy Ghost, so beloved by God that He sent his only Son to take upon himself our sins . . . We are Personalists because we believe that . . . a person, a creature of body and soul, is greater than the State."

A personalist, at his or her core, takes responsibility for the care and well-being of all neighbors. A personalist is the Good Samaritan who chooses to take care of the victim on the side of the road, rather than continue walking.

A key part of Peter Maurin's vision for The Catholic Worker movement was what he called "agronomic universities," where scholars could become workers, and workers scholars; where a philosophy of work would be restored to people; where they would regain a sacramental attitude toward life, property, and people in relation to them — he foresaw a revolution marked by a synthesis of cult (religion), culture (learning and arts), and cultivation (agriculture), and pictured it as an ongoing learning experience, a "university."

He gave, as illustrations, the Fathers of the Desert, who lived in community and raised so much food that they could not find enough poor to feed their wheat to. He talked of the ideals of St. Benedict, whose schools were for the work of God, and where the worker-scholar idea was fully developed. He loved to dwell on "when the Irish were Irish" and crowds from Europe flocked to their universities and then returned to evangelize Europe during the Dark Ages.

It sounds idealistic, doesn't? It turned out that it was idealistic, and, although, the farming communities that he pictured began being established, the first one in Easton, PA, many within a few years evolved into retreat houses or farms to support the urban hospitality houses, and not living communities of ongoing learning and voluntary poverty, as he had hoped. However, there has been a resurgence of Catholic Worker farms in recent years, communities involved in farming or agriculture in some way: 19 in the United States, and one each in Australia, Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

From its beginning, The Catholic Worker was pacifist. Following her conversion and the deeper spirituality Dorothy learned from Peter Maurin, she embraced the Church and its teachings completely — sometimes, perhaps, more completely than the Church itself — . . . and radically in the true sense of the Latin word radix, which means "root." She saw pacificism as rooted in the Gospel, specifically:

1. the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount,
2. the contrast between the works of mercy and the works of war,
3. the idea of war as a violation of the Mystical Body of Christ.

This may not have been clear for many of those involved in The Catholic Worker movement, but in the face of events such as violence in the labor movement, the Spanish civil war, and finally, World War II, The Catholic Worker emerged as a clear and powerful voice for Catholic pacifism.

During the Spanish civil war, Dorothy was aware of the persecution of religion in Spain, aware that churches were being destroyed and desecrated, that priests and nuns were being tortured and murdered. She was aware that it seemed madness in that context to be opposed to the use of force as a means of settling personal, national or international disputes, but believed that The Catholic Worker had to speak in terms of the counsels of perfection, "the folly of the cross." When using force, only a superior, more savage and brutal force overcomes the enemy; we are neglecting the one means — prayer and the sacraments — by which whole armies can be overcome. But, she concluded, "while we take this stand, we are not condemning those who have seized arms and engaged in war.

The Catholic Church does not mandate pacificism. The position of the Church on a "just war" is presented in The Catechism of the Catholic Church as follows:

In brief, the Church teaches:

Thus, Dorothy went beyond Church teaching . . . and a number were not able to follow her. The Catholic Worker's circulation dropped due to the pacifist stance of Dorothy Day and the other editors during World War II: from 190,000 in May 1938 to 50,500 at the end of World War II. And during that time some of the Hospitality Houses were closed as well.

In 1938 Dorothy published From Union Square to Rome , describing her collaborators in the radical movement, and how she came to embrace Christ and the Catholic Church. The following year, she published House of Hospitality, a loose collection of experiences during the early days of The Catholic Worker movement, living in voluntary poverty.

As part of her pacifist position, in 1940 she testified before Congress against a proposal for the nation's first peacetime draft. In 1941 The Catholic Worker supported strikers at Ford Motor Company's River Rouge plant. Dorothy did not travel there, but she was there in support of the strikers at the Bethlehem Steel Plant in Bethlehem, PA; The Catholic Worker had a station wagon serving the picketers coffee, soup and sandwiches.

For a period in 1943, Dorothy wrestled with leaving her work. She took a leave of absence for six months, living near her daughter, Tamar's, boarding school. Then she returned to her work.

In 1944, Peter Maurin began to lose his memory. His condition deteriorated until he died at The Catholic Worker's Maryfarm near Newburgh, NY on May 15, 1949. He was laid out in a hand-me-down suit, and, after a Mass at Transfiguration Church in New York City, was buried in a donated grave in St. John's Cemetery, Queens. His death left Dorothy with a heavy heart.

In 1948, Dorothy took a long break from The Catholic Worker, staying with Tamar and her husband, David, in their home in Berkeley, WV. She returned for Peter's funeral, and resumed her work at The Catholic Worker, supporting a small union of grave-diggers who were striking against the Archdiocese of New York — Cardinal Francis Spellman told the press that the grave-diggers were under Communist influence.

In 1950, Dorothy traveled to Washington, DC for a week-long fast for peace. The next year, Monsignor Edward Gaffney, Chancellor of the Archdiocese of New York, told Dorothy that The Catholic Worker should no longer use the term "Catholic" in the title of their paper. In 1952, she published her autobiography, The Long Loneliness. In 1955, she was arrested, along with other members of the movement, for refusing to participate in civil defense drills that were being required by the city of New York.

In 1957, Dorothy visited Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia. This is a community founded in 1942 sharing their lives and resources, following the example of the first Christian communities; they farmed the land, prayed and ate in common, and included all, regardless of race. In the 1950s, the KKK and others attempted to force them out with bullets, bombs, and a boycott. While visiting there, Dorothy took a turn keeping watch at the entrance of the farm and experienced the violence first hand when bullets flew over her head in a drive-by shooting.

In the 1960s and 70s, Dorothy worked in support of the Civil Rights Movement and against the Vietnam War. She wrote the story of the Catholic Worker movement, Loaves and Fishes, in 1963. She traveled the country, and went to Rome to attend a Vatican II session in 1965. She picketed with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers during the 1970s; in 1973 she was arrested and imprisoned for this work.

In 1970 Dorothy traveled to Australia, Hong Kong, India, Tanzania, Rome, and England. While in India, she met Mother Teresa in Calcutta. Mother Teresa recognized her as an honorary member of her religious order, and invited her to speak to her novices. In 1979, during a visit to the United States, Mother Teresa reciprocated, visiting Dorothy at The Catholic Worker's Maryhouse mission home. Some have characterized the photograph of the two of them together as "a Communion of Saints."

After Dorothy's death, a note from Mother Teresa to Dorothy was found in the pages of one of Dorothy's Bibles. The handwritten note says simply:

Dear Dorothy,
My love, prayer, and sacrifice is close to you.
If you go to Jesus first, tell him I love him.
If I go, I will tell him you love him.
God bless you,
M Teresa

Awards that Dorothy received include: the University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal for outstanding service to the Roman Catholic Church and society in 1972, the year of her 75^th birthday; the Paulists' Isaac Hecker Award in 1974; the Promoting Enduring Peace initiative's Gandhi Peace Award in 1975. The Nobel Committee rejected Dorothy for the Nobel Peace Prize as "too radical." In 1977, Dorothy received birthday greetings from Pope Paul VI on the occasion of her 80^th birthday.

On November 29, 1980, Dorothy Day died in her room in The Catholic Worker's Maryhouse. Her funeral Mass was held in Nativity Catholic Church, a half-block away. The only prelate to appear was Terence Cardinal Cook; he met the body at the doors of the Church, said a brief prayer, and then left for another engagement. The Cardinal's secretary had called The Catholic Worker staff the day before to request that the Mass be held at 10:00 A.M. so that it would fit into his schedule. But Dorothy's daughter has already decided on 11:00 A.M. because that was when the soup kitchen was closed for the morning break between cleaning up after breakfast and getting ready for lunch. The Cardinal's secretary was told that, although the Cardinal would be missed, with all due respect, feeding the poor came first.

To this day, The Catholic Worker movement is very much alive. There are more than 220 Catholic Worker communities across the United States and in 10 foreign countries, continuing their mission to feed, clothe and shelter those in need, and champion causes of peace and social justice.

Dorothy Day's influence has grown since her death, especially since Pope Francis named her one of four "great Americans," along with Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thomas Merton.

In 1998, 18 years after Dorothy's death, a few of those who knew her well gathered at the request of John Cardinal O'Connor, then the Archbishop of New York, to discuss whether they thought the archdiocese should put forward Dorothy's cause for canonization. The consensus was that the archdiocese should move forward; however, there were reservations. The first reservation was the cost: the Vatican requires transcriptions, following very strict formatting requirements, of nearly everything the candidate for canonization has written, along with interviews with those who knew the candidate, all synthesized into a 100-page biography of the candidate laying out arguments for and against his or her canonization. Assembling these materials requires hours of labor and official canonical reviews by experts who are paid for their work. It is estimated that the costs involved will reach one million dollars, and you have to ask yourself, what would Dorothy want done with that money?

Then we have Dorothy herself who said: "Don't call me a saint, I don't want to be dismissed that easily." She feared that the pedestal of sainthood can make us, mere mortals, forget the many tasks at hand — the daily struggle of building a better world.

Despite these reservations, Cardinal O'Connor decided to move forward. He had the Claretian Fathers begin collecting materials for the eventual canonization effort and requested permission of the Vatican to begin the archdiocesan phase of a cause for canonization. In 2000 the Vatican provided its nihil obstat ("nothing stands in the way") and named Dorothy Day "Servant of God." In 2012 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops provided its formal endorsement, and in 2016 Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Cardinal O'Connor's successor, opened the canonical Inquiry on her life.

That phase of the canonization effort was completed in December, 2021. At a solemn rite in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Cardinal Dolan stamped a wax seal affixed to a red ribbon atop a plain brown box, sealing the last of 17 such boxes and commemorating the conclusion of the Archdiocesan Phase of the Canonization Cause for Dorothy Day.

The archdiocesan phase was spearheaded by the Dorothy Day Guild, which amassed more than 50,000 pages of documents attesting to her holiness. The documents include interviews, writings and publications by and about Dorothy. More than 100 volunteers assisted the effort

The canonization cause for Servant of God Dorothy Day has now advanced to the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

During Pope Francis' address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on September 24, 2015, he highlighted four "great Americans," one of whom was Dorothy Day. These are the relevant texts from his address:

"My visit takes place at a time when men and women of good will are marking the anniversaries of several great Americans. . . ."

"I would like to mention four of these Americans: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. . . ."

"In these times when social concerns are so important, I cannot fail to mention the Servant of God Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement. Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints. . . .

"Three sons and a daughter of this land, four individuals and four dreams: Lincoln, liberty; Martin Luther King, liberty in plurality and non-exclusion; Dorothy Day, social justice and the rights of persons; and Thomas Merton, the capacity for dialogue and openness to God. . . .

"A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to "dream" of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton."

Pope Francis wrote the preface to the Italian edition of Dorothy Day's autobiography, entitled, "I found God through His poor. From atheism to faith: my inner journey" (Libreria Editrice Vaticana). Dorothy Day (1897-1980), founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, journalist, writer, pacifist and activist, is remembered for her commitment to the poor and social justice.

By Vatican News — 20 August 2023

In his preface to the Italian translation of Dorothy Day's autobiography, Pope Francis recalls how she arrived at Christian faith from "the grace that flows from charity, the beauty that flows from witness, and love that is expressed concretely" through service, more than any human efforts or strategies. He recalled how Pope Benedict XVI said that the Church grows through attraction, not by proselytism, and we see this in Dorothy Day's conversion, life and witness.

Declared a Servant of God in 2000, American Dorothy Day (1897-1980) dedicated her life to social justice and human rights, especially the poor, exploited workers, marginalized by society. The Pope paid tribute to her life witness writing that we can all learn from her restlessness, her understanding of the Church, and how she served others.

Always Searching

Describing the restlessness of Dorothy Day, the Pope writes about her path from abandoning religious practice to discovering it once again, as she was always searching and open to the spiritual quest that led her to rediscover faith in God, seeing it as the fullness of life and they way to happiness. Dorothy came to see God as not only our consolation, but the fulfillment of our desire for meaning and joy.

The Pope writes how "the Lord longs for restless hearts, not bourgeois souls who are satisfied with what exists." He explains how God gives us "the fire of divine love that brings to fruition what is beautiful, true and right dwelling in the heart of every person." Dorothy Day's path shows us "an adventure that is good for the heart," the Pope writes, in responding to and accepting God's love for us.

The Church, Leading Us to God

The Pope then looked at the beautiful words Dorothy Day had for the Catholic Church, despite the failings and weakness of its members. "As her adherence to the truths of faith grew, so did her consideration of the divine nature of the Catholic Church," the Pope writes. But she recognized the weaknesses of Church members with an "honest and enlightened attitude" that could still see clearly the big picture of "the vocation and identity of the Church: a divine, not human reality which leads us to God and with which God can reach us."

Service Expressing God's Love

Dorothy Day's concrete outreach to assist others as an activist and a journalist "became a sort of 'highway' with which God touched her heart," the Pope writes. And she shows how the struggle for justice offers a way to realize God's dream of a reconciled humanity. The Pope adds that even today believers and non-believers can be "allies in promoting the dignity of every person when they love and serve the most abandoned persons."