Nov 29th - Dorothy Day

For a time, I think, many people were drawn to Dorothy because of her "radical" message and just as many, if not more, were repelled by it.
When I first heard her speak, I was inspired; not because it was a radical, left-wing message of anarchy and social activism, but that it was the message of Christ, and that just seems radical. Her living of the moral imperative for the poor even more than her poignant life spoke to me at a time when I was trying to make sense of the world around me. That she should find Christ (or perhaps he found her) amidst her almost blind drive to activism and anarchic bohemianism made her conversion very powerful for me.
In the end it was her message of sacrifice, especially sacrifice for the Truth, that I carry in my heart. We must do hard things because we are called to do the hard things, but with all said and done it is not the hard things but only the daily things that we see as hard which blind us. She shows that with a deep immersion in the Sacraments and prayer the things that seem hard become easy.
She was a divisive figure during her life, but now, as with many of the saints in the canon, we can see her life of devotion to the Gospel in the light of fruits it produced and the miracles she accomplishes.
The following quote is attributed to her, but I was unable to find an exact source; but when looking at the other things she said, this is probably a good summation of what she believed and lived.

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The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.

-- Letters