Dorothy Day, Prophetic Witness, 1897-1980
Born in Brooklyn, New York
Dorothy Day worked as a journalist for radical newspapers in the 1920s and had friends that gathered in Greenwich Village to listen to her discussions about society and faith. While living with the man she loved in 1926, she became pregnant and experienced a mysterious conversion to Jesus and Catholicism. As a Roman Catholic, she struggled to write her personal faith with passion for social justice, until she met Peter Maurin in 1933 and founded the Catholic Worker Movement. As a Movement leader she aimed to “create a new society within the shell of the old, offering American Christianity, the witness of a new monasticism that combined piety and practice, charity and justice.”
Prayer
Gracious Father, we pray for your holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen, It, where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ your Son our Savior, who lives and reigns with you, now and forever.
Scripture: Matthew 21: 12-16
Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written, “ he said to them, “My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a “den of robbers.’” The blind, and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” there were indignant. “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him. “Yes, “ replied Jesus, “have you never read,” “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise?”
Reflection From the Proper Preface:
“For you cleanse and renew your Church by the witness of your saints, calling people in every age to holiness of life through the indwelling of your Holy Spirit.”