A Testing Time with Dorothy Day
Psalm - Psalm: 32
First Reading - Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7
Second Reading- Romans 5: 12-19
Gospel - Matthew 4: 1-11
What I want to say:
Jesus invites us both into the wilderness, and to know he is with us in our wilderness. Being in the wilderness tested Jesus in his sense of who he was as beloved Son of God, and how he might live that out. Normally Lent is a time for us to reflect on those same questions - who we are as beloved children of God, how we forget that, and how we might live that out.But this year ongoing weather events are leaving many people in a wilderness of loss and grief, for themselves and others. What does this story offer us in the face of this?
Talk about Dorothy Day as someone who grew into what it meant to be a beloved child of God, and who offers us an example of living persistently in the face of overwhelming hopelessness and loss.
What I want to happen:
People to reflect on what their Lenten disciplines might be considering that, and what “our” Lenten discipline might be.The Sermon
1. Introduction:
- Many across the North Island
I was talking to someone yesterday who lives 15 minutes from Piha
- worked with one of the volunteer firefighters killed in Auckland
- Knew people whose houses were under water
At one level he is fine
- At another he is not.
Many of us know people who have lost their homes
- Lost businesses
- Maybe lost family members
Yet for us life goes on
Last week I was on a couple of zoom calls with clergy living in Hawkes Bay and Gisborne
- While OK
- Did loose power
- Had no way communicating with anyone
- They too know people who have lost everything
Last Saturday while they were dealing with the ongoing aftermath of the previous week
- I went out for birthday celebrations and sat at a game of test cricket.
Little surreal really
Hard to know how to react
Was good to gather for Ash Wednesday
Begin the season of lent again
2. Wilderness and Lent
Matthew’s version of the story
In his world of loss and grief
Jesus spends 40 days praying around being the “beloved son”
- What is his place in the empire of heaven?
- How might he live as the beloved son
- Living in the reign of heaven?
The Satan comes to distract him
- Offer alternative ways of seeing himself as the beloved son
- Offering an alternative “reign of heaven”
- And other ways of living that.
Normally Lent is a time for us to reflect on those same questions
- who we are as beloved children of God,
- what distract us or to leads us to forget that,
- what might help us centre our lives in that?
- and how we might live that out.
But this year’s ongoing weather events mean many of us are living in real wildernesses
- wilderness of loss and grief, for themselves and others.
- for some just loss and grief
What does this story offer us in the face of this?
And what practices might sustain us during these times?
3. Persistent living – Dorothy Day
- Being persistent in hope
- Being persistent in offering hope
Last week I finished our few weeks in the Sermon on the Mount
- Which begin with the Beatitudes
By asking “Who inspires us to be persistent in living the beatitudes?”
Thought this Lent that I might offer some people who inspire me to some degree.
Today want to talk about Dorothy Day
D.L. Mayfield begins her book “Unruly Saint: Dorothy Day's Radical Vision and its Challenge for Our Times”
- telling the story of Pope Francis’ historic address to the members of Congress in 2015
- spoke about the spiritual and moral legacy of the United States
o and the need for work to continue in the areas of poverty
o the abolition of the death penalty
o and addressing the global refugee crisis among other issues
- he also highlighted 4 exemplars from U.S. history
o great people of faith moved America's moral and social imagination forward in distinct ways
§ Abraham Lincoln
§ Martin Luther King junior
§ Thomas Merton
· all familiar names in the story of America
- then he mentioned Dorothy Day
o and journalist began frantically typing into search engines on their smartphones and computers “who the heck is Dorothy Day”
4. Dorothy Day
To many other people both Catholic and non Catholic- Dorothy Day is one of the most important figures in the American 20th century
- Devout catholic
- social activist
- pacifist
- anarchist
Best known for working with Peter Maurin to found the Catholic Worker News paper in 1933 – still exists today
Establishment of Catholic worker houses of hospitality
- combines direct aid for the poor and homeless
- engage with nonviolent direct action on their behalf
Which led to the Catholic Worker Movement
In her first 50 years lived through
- San Francisca Earthquake – family living in Oakland at time
- WW1
- Suffragette campaign (ironically she never voted)
- Flu epidemic (during which worked as nurse)
- 1920’s with all opulence and poverty
- Great Depression
- WWII – where her pacifist commitments got her into all kinds of trouble with the church, FBI and government
When young read avidly
- Russian writer
- Social conscious writers including socialists, pacifists and anarchists
1916 – moved New York – where family moved to
- looked for work as journalist
- father didn’t think women should go to college
- certainly not work as journalists
- tried hard protect his girls from harsh world
while she looked for work
- walked streets of poorest parts of Manhattan
- describes the smell of death that came out of the tenements
began working as Muckraking (investigative) journalist, for left wing newspapers
- wrote to raise public awareness and anger at cause and effect of urban poverty, unsafe and degrading working conditions, prostitution, racism, and child labor.
Life revolved around writing
- Late night conversations with her fellow journalists, writers, socialists and communists
1926 – gave birth to daughter Tamar
- reawakened faith
eventually led to her became a Catholic
- ended her relationship with father of Tamar – not get married.
Began writing again - this time for a Catholic newspaper
1932 travelled to Washington DC for upcoming Hunger March
- wondered why her church was not present and had nothing to say to all these people, many of whom were Catholic
- in autobiography she wrote: "I could write, I could protest, to arouse the conscience, but where was the Catholic leadership in the gathering of bands of men and women together, for the actual works of mercy that the comrades had always made part of their technique in reaching the workers?"
Later that year she met Peter Maurin
- French immigrant
- with vision of social justice and its connection with the poor, which was partly inspired by St. Francis of Assisi.
- and vision of social action based on sharing ideas leading to subsequent action by the poor themselves.
- was deeply versed in the writings of the Church Fathers and the papal documents on social matters that had been issued by Pope Leo XIII and his successors.
- provided Day with the grounding in Catholic theology of the need for social action they both felt.
In 1933 they founded the Catholic Worker newspaper
- direct opposition Communist newspaper
- first distributed in Union Square at May Day gatherings in 1933
- vehicle for Peter Marin offer his little essays which described Catholic social teaching in easily read format
- allowed Day return to her muckraking roots
it was aimed at those suffering the most in the depths of the Great Depression, "those who think there is no hope for the future,"
- and announced to them that "the Catholic Church has a social program. ...There are men of God who are working not only for their spiritual but for their material welfare."
Invited catholic parishes around New York and across USA to join in offering material hope.
Quickly her little apartment became a house of hospitality
- offering bread and soup
- coffee always on stove
- sometimes place sleep
- place for long conversations about Catholic social teaching
- also being office of newspaper.
They saw the need
Responded to the need
Wrote about both the need, the causes of the need, and what might be done.
Did what needed to be done.
Through her writing about this in Catholic Worker
- other houses of hospitality started in other parts
- Catholic worker movement began
- Continues today
Her legacy continues today
5. Conclusion
Her obituary described her legacy of engaging Catholics and people of faith in the work of social justice through the newspaper she founded,
- her houses of hospitality,
- and her luminous personality
It noted her communist background
- her love of the poor
- and her desire to see people of faith at the forefront of social justice issues
From the obituary it was clear she was the kind of paradox that intrigues the world
- famously leftist in her ideals
- she also loved the traditions and liturgy of Roman Catholicism
When she publicly clashed with church authority figures throughout her life people near her remained mystified that she wasn't denounced or excommunicated
Perhaps muse the writer of her New York Times obituary it was because the Cardinals themselves suspected they might be dealing with a Saint.
- a stubborn
- smiling
- unruly Saint.
- who never stopped seeing the face of Christ in the faces of the poor around her
Another writer suggests Day’s life challenges readers to imagine what it would be like to live as if the gospels were true.
Finally Dorothy Day loved to quote John Ruskin, who urged us all to the “Duty to Delight.”
It was an admonition, really, to be watchful for the hilarious and the heartwarming, the silly and the sublime.
Despite all she went through, and her won rigorous discipline at times
Day held this at the heart of her life of faith
It allowed her to do all she did.
As we face this Lent with all the last month or more has done to us
What does Day’s story offer us?
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