The Dorothy Day Guild asks its members and others to “spiritually gather” (in the words of Pope Francis) to pray a novena for solidarity and compassion in this challenging time. At the Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day strived to be faithful to the injunctions of the gospel. Justice was wed to charity; protest was a form of prayer. Often the newspaper quoted G.K. Chesterton’s famous observation that Christianity hadn’t failed — it had never really been tried. Day’s life was spent trying. She was shot at while working for integration, upbraided for her pacifism, and arrested with striking farmworkers. Today, let us pray for an awareness of the inequities laid bare during the pandemic, that we commit to create a “new society within the shell of the old.”

“What we do is so little we may seem to be constantly failing. But so did He fail. He met with apparent failure on the Cross. But unless the seed fall into the earth and die, there is no harvest. And why must we see results? Our work is to sow. Another generation will be reaping the harvest.”
– Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker , February 1940

Let us pray…Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be OR the Holy Rosary

Prayer for the Canonization of Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980)

God our Father,
Your servant Dorothy Day exemplified
the Catholic faith by her life
of prayer, voluntary poverty,
works of mercy, and
witness to the justice and peace
of the Gospel of Jesus.
May her life inspire your people
to turn to Christ as their Savior,
to see His face in the world’s poor, and
to raise their voices for the justice
of God’s kingdom.
I pray that her holiness may be recognized by your Church
And that you grant the following favor that I humbly ask through her intercession:
(here mention your request)
I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

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