Dorothy
Day was born in New York at the end of the 19th century. She didn’t grow up in a very religious
family, but she baptized in the Episcopal Church as a girl. She went to college in Illinois, where she
developed a keen awareness of the social inequalities around her, especially
the gap between the rich and the poor.
She joined the Socialist party in college and began to look down upon
all organized religion, because she did not see the churches doing enough to
help the poor of the world. After
becoming a journalist, she became interested in Communism and Anarchy, leading
a very wild and sensual lifestyle very far away from God and far away from the
Church. After drifting in life for a
very long time from one thing to another, she had a child with her common law
husband, and decided that she wanted to have her daughter baptized. She developed a friendship with a nun, and
had a profound conversion experience that brought her to the Catholic faith.
Dorothy Day ended up founding the Catholic Worker Movement in New York with
Peter Maurin, a Catholic layperson, in 1933 in the middle of the
Depression. Day and Maurin founded a
newspaper that promoted Catholic social teaching and founded houses of
hospitality to reach out to the poor. Day
died in 1980 at the age of 83, having devoted the rest of her life to the
Catholic Worker and to social justice work. Last year, Cardinal Timothy Dolan
of New York and the USCCB endorsed Dorothy Day for canonization, calling her “a
saint for our times.” Theologian Sister
Peggy McDonald calls Dorothy Day a “unifying figure (in our Church), one whose
life eloquently testifies to the spiritual power of her ‘complete Catholicism.’
Dorothy’s way of holiness combined faith and life, contemplation and action,
prayer and prophetic witness, Eucharistic worship and social justice.”
I thought of Dorothy Day and her conversion
story as I read Paul’s testimony in his letter to Galatians. Paul was writing to a community in Galatia in
present-day Turkey. The community there was
going through internal divisions after Paul’s departure when other Christian
leaders came in with different ideas about Christ’s teachings.
Paul’s conversion story is very
well-known to us. He fervently and
violently persecuted Christians in his early life before his conversion. Paul talks about the authenticity of the
Gospel that he proclaims in today’s reading, saying that it is not a product of
human devising, and not just something taught him by some other person, but rather
the result of divine revelation through his conversion experience on the road
to Damascus and from the time he spent with the apostles and in discernment of
God’s grace in his life.
Navigating our life of faith and
learning what the Church truly teaches has never been easy, particularly not in
our modern era when so much in our secular world seems to be luring us away
from the path of faith. Yet I have heard
some adult Catholics say: I have been through CCD from the time I was a small
child all the way through 12th grade, or I have been through
Catholic schools – so I don’t need any
continuing religious education as an adult.
But, in a lot of ways, in our changing world and in our changing lives,
religious education is for all of us, whether we are children or youth or
adults, and it is important to our own lives and the life of our parish. We may have learned a lot about our faith
growing up, but we change and evolve just as the world changes and evolves, and
we need an on-going formation throughout our lives. The Second Vatican Council challenged all
Christians to engage in the modern world, to dialogue with the world and to
infuse it with our faith. To that end,
we need on-going formation and religious education. As
adults, we need to engage in ways that foster and promote a lifelong
understanding of Catholicism and that orient us toward embracing a full,
vibrant, and active faith. No matter
where we are on our journey, we should never stop seeking God, and thus need
opportunities for us to develop and enrich our intimate union with Christ.
We have always had a lot of
opportunities here at St James to grow in our faith and to participate in
continuing religious formation. Going to
mass isn’t enough; we need to reach out to these other opportunities to grow
and develop. The very vibrant Vacation
Bible School experience we had this past week shows how successful a religious
education experience can be. Many youth
and adults were involved in providing an experience for our children that helped
them grow in their faith and have fun and fellowship at the same time. As your pastor, I would be remiss if I did
not encourage all of you in your busy lives to take advantage of the
opportunities we have in our parish to participate in our religious education
program. After our summer break, we will
have a lot of religious education opportunities to engage in in the fall.
Hearing the witness and testimony of
Paul and the other apostles and of saints like Dorothy Day can help encourage
us on our own journey. Yet, we need to
put this encouragement into action just like Paul, the apostles, and the saints
did, learning and growing and living out our faith.
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