Dorothy Day: Practitioner of the Incarnation

I met Dorothy Day several times. Two lasting impressions I have of Dorothy are being with her at a Eucharist at Maryhouse in 1978, and observing her serving a woman in need.

The greatest gift I received from Dorothy is the importance of LIVING the Eucharist. Dorothy practiced an incarnational theology which was deeply rooted in prayer and the Eucharist. She recognized that to receive the Eucharist implied a risk: to give of herself completely in suffering love as Jesus did. She knew that to receive the Eucharist meant to serve and to stand with the victims and marginalized, and to risk the cross.

Dorothy showed us how to embrace St. Therese’s “little way,” and how to DO the Word by practicing personalism. Dorothy radically proclaimed Jesus’ beatitudes by living with and serving the poor, opposing all war and killing, and by being a tireless advocate for social justice, peace and total disarmament. Her commitment to Gospel nonviolence was unwavering. She believed that not only can we not kill, but that we must actively resist killing. She was arrested and jailed numerous times for different nonviolent actions, including at the White House in 1917 during a women’s suffrage protest, during the 1950s for resisting civil defense drills and nuclear war preparations, and in the early 1970s in support of the United Farm Workers.

November 8 is Dorothy Day’s birthday and November 29 marks her crossing into eternal life with God. My wife, Colleen, and I were married on the anniversary of Dorothy’s home-going to God. As parents, and in our ministry of hospitality, service and peacemaking, we take great inspiration from Dorothy, who said: “Love is the only solution to every problem that comes up.” Mindful of our weaknesses and shortcomings, we constantly aspire to live the way of love that Dorothy exemplified. She powerfully writes about this way of love in the Postscript of her autobiography, The Long Loneliness:

The most significant thing about The Catholic Worker is poverty, some say. The most significant thing is community, others say. We are not alone any more. But the final word is love. At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, “a harsh and dreadful thing,” and our very faith in love has been tried through fire. We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship. We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes in community.

We live in an empire which is arguably the most violent in human history. We live in a time where all of life and creation are endangered as never before. In response to the litany of crises we face, Dorothy summons us always to follow the Gospel mandate of love. The reign of God is at hand, right here, right now! Let us pray for each other that we can truly incarnate the Word and be the change that can transform our world into the beloved community.

Art Laffin
Art is a member of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker in Washington, D.C.

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