Dorothy Day’s vivid eucharistic love as a source of her strength, mission and lasting impact.
If you say the name Dorothy Day to most people, what comes to mind is likely social justice and care for the poor. That’s certainly a good thing because she founded the Catholic Worker movement, and today, close to 200 Catholic Worker houses and communities across the country continue to feed the hungry and welcome the poor and the marginalized, including the Place of Grace in La Crosse. Dorothy also became a voice for the downtrodden and the oppressed through political advocacy and the Catholic Worker newspaper she established with Peter Maurin in 1933.
It might be tempting then to reduce Dorothy Day to a figure of social and political action. But that would fail to grasp what was at the very center of her life — the Eucharist.
Drawn by Catholicism’s beauty, mystery and grace, Dorothy entered the Catholic Church in 1928 at 31. She would later write in her diaries, “Man’s first duty is to praise God, to adore him, to thank him. And how can we do this adequately except through his son? When we have received Communion, then it is Christ himself who can adequately praise and adore.”
As a Child is Nourished
Dorothy hungered daily for the Eucharist and wrote, “We go eat of this fruit of the tree of life because Jesus told us to.… He took upon himself our humanity that we might share in his divinity. We are nourished by his flesh that we may grow to be other Christs. I believe this literally, just as I believe the child is nourished by the milk from his mother’s breast.”
So central to Dorothy’s life was the Mass and the Eucharist that she laments in one of her diaries, “I awoke too late for Mass, and that spoiled my day.” And again, “The weight of the world is on me when I awake, and until I get to Mass.”
One story in particular shines a light on Dorothy Day’s love and reverence for the Eucharist. She attended a home Mass in the mid-1960s, and the celebrating priest decided to use a plain ceramic coffee cup and saucer as the chalice and paten. An eyewitness who recalled the incident noted that Dorothy grimaced at the sight but did not complain. Indeed, she participated in Communion and only expressed gratitude to the priest for celebrating Mass.
But when nearly everyone had gone, Dorothy took the cup and saucer, broke them and buried them in the yard. When asked why, she responded that the cup and saucer had held the sacred body and blood of Jesus and were no longer suitable for Communion or everyday use. But neither were they appropriate for use in the Mass, so the best resolution was to reverently lay them to rest.
A Eucharistic Fruit
Dorothy Day’s life and mission cannot be explained without considering this vivid awareness of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Like St. Teresa of Calcutta, Dorothy knew that the fruitfulness of every other part of her day and her mission depended on her encounter with the living eucharistic Christ.
Jesus made it very clear when he said, “I am the Vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit because without me, you can do nothing.” And again, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”
Dorothy Day believed and embraced these words with every fiber of her being, and the fruit she bore was great indeed, and it continues to this day. Cardinal John O’Connor of New York opened her cause for canonization in 1997, and it continues to progress.
Dorothy Day, pray for us, that we might yearn to encounter the living Christ in the Eucharist as deeply as you did, and that, like you, we might bear the fruit of that encounter in our lives.
By Chris Ruff, director of the Office for Ministries and Social Concerns