News

Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, As Advent draws to a close and we anticipate the Nativity of the Lord, we hope that these are days of joyful waiting for each of you! All of us at the Guild welcome the chance to be in touch with you and to share a few updates, photos, and reflections before the great celebrations of Christmas. Dorothy loved this time of year

Dear friends and members of the Dorothy Day Guild, Greetings to each of you on Dorothy’s 127th birthday! On this day in 1897, Grace Satterlee Day and John Day welcomed their first daughter into the world in Brooklyn, New York. We know that for many of you in the United States the election season has been a time of anxiety and tension, and we hope that remembering Dorothy’s witness to nonviolence and voluntary poverty on the anniversary of her birth reminds you that the Gospel is always ready to be born into our world through our commitments to peace and to the works of mercy.  Here in South Bend this past weekend, our friend Flora Tang invited members of our Catholic Worker community to her home for an All Saints and All Souls prayer service. Flora asked us to bring photographs and mementos of holy men and women, members of our families and our friends, to place on an altar as we gathered to remember our beloved dead who have gone before us in faith. The month of November is dedicated to remembering all the faithful departed, who are members of the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us and encourages us with their prayers and with their love. Dorothy is among that cloud of witnesses, and she is especially close to us when we live as she did, embracing poverty in solidarity with the poorest members of our communities, working for peace and refusing to participate in war, and inviting the unhoused and hungry into our homes and into our lives.