Recent Guild Happenings:

Last month members of the Dorothy Day Guild were privileged to travel to Louisville, KY to present the first-ever Dorothy Day Peacemaker Award to Pax Christi USA at the summer meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. As journalist Kimberly Heatherington noted for the National Catholic Reporter, in a year which has seen such a dramatic spike in armed conflicts around the world (2023 saw the highest number of conflicts globally since the second World War), Dorothy’s witness of Gospel nonviolence is more necessary than ever. As our co-chair, Deirdre Cornell stated, Dorothy "is very well known for her service to the poor; she is very well known for living a life of voluntary simplicity, or poverty, herself. But the peace aspect is one that we do not want to see forgotten." 

We were so pleased to be able to host twelve of the bishops, including Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, who graciously accepted the award on behalf of Pax Christi USA, as well as the incredible and hard-working staff of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, and many members of Pax Christi at the breakfast where we presented the award– it was great to pray and share a meal with all of you! Congratulations to all members of Pax Christi USA, and our enormous thanks also to the staff of the USCCB who helped us organize this wonderful event. You can read additional coverage of the award at National Catholic Reporter and Crux and can see more photos of the event on Pax Christi USA’s Flickr album and on the Guild’s Facebook page.

Join Us in Indianapolis!

We are so excited to announce that we are heading to the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis in just ten short days! Will we see you there? Some of you may be already planning to attend the Congress, and if so, we hope you will attend Martha Hennessy’s breakout session on Friday, July 19th in the main stadium. Our friend Nate Tinner-Williams of the Black Catholic Messenger spoke with Martha for his recent article, “Martha Hennessy, Granddaughter to Servant of God Dorothy Day, Will Speak at National Eucharistic Congress” and discussed what she learned about the Eucharist from Dorothy and the need to implement those teachings in the life and workings of the institutional Church. Reflecting on Eucharistic theology, Martha asks, “What's the definition of the Eucharist? What’s the definition of ‘We are one another’? It’s the houses of hospitality. It's the personalism. It's the nonviolent practice of the Gospel. Condemnation of war in all of its forms.”

This is a FREE EVENT-- you do not need tickets to the Congress to participate! Find out more details on our Guild events page and invite all your friends. We’ll be under the tent wearing yellow tee shirts!

For those in the New York metro area, we also wanted to pass along another event invitation for next month. The Friends of the Olmsted-Beil House in Staten Island are hosting a free historical program and reception entitled “Powerful Women of Staten Island’s Past,” featuring Dorothy alongside Audre Lorde, Alice Austen, and other incredible female figures who made Staten Island their home. This event will take place at the Alice Austen House Museum, at 2 Hylan Blvd, Staten Island, NY 10305 on August 24th from 2:00-3:30 pm. Register here.

This Month's Reading, Watching, and Listening Recommendations:

As we get ready for the National Eucharistic Congress, we wanted to share a short reflection from Bishop Robert Barron which addresses a theme that was very close to Dorothy’s heart: the connection between the liturgy and the works of mercy. Bishop Barron writes, “what happens at the Mass in its splendor must spill out onto the streets as a devotion to the suffering members of the Mystical Body of Christ. As older Chicago priests told me when I was newly ordained, Msgr. Hillenbrand invited Dorothy Day to Mundelein Seminary to stress precisely this relationship.” The inseparability of Christ present on the altar and Christ present in the poor was something Dorothy returned to again and again in her writing and speaking and was in fact the subject of her own address to the International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia forty-eight years ago this summer. 

In his reflection, Bishop Barron touches on the liturgical movement of the twentieth century, something that Dorothy and other Catholic Workers, including the artist Ade Bethune, were deeply invested in living out and promoting. Earlier this year we hosted a panel of Catholic Worker artists who are carrying the creative dimension of this movement forward into the twenty-first century, and we are delighted to share that the recording of this webinar, “Art, Hospitality, and Activism,” is now available on our Youtube channel. Thanks again to Sarah Fuller, Becky McIntyre, and Rachel Mills for showing us how the pursuit of beauty joins the work of caring for the poor and advocating for justice to build a new society in the shell of the old!

Finally, our co-chair, Dr. Kevin Ahern, gave a recent interview for the “Catholicism and Culture” podcast out of St. John’s Seminary in Los Angeles. His conversation with Dr. Stuart Squires is a fantastic introduction to the history of Dorothy’s sainthood process from her death to the present day, the relationship of our work at the Guild to the broader Catholic Worker context, the significance of a saint for nonviolence, and more. You can listen to “The Cause for Canonization of Dorothy Day with Dr. Kevin Ahern” and be sure to pass this episode along to any of your friends who have questions about the ins and outs of the sometimes-complex process of recognizing saints.

Prayer Requests:

This month, we would like to request your prayers through Dorothy’s intercession on behalf of two older relatives of our Guild staff who are both dealing with ongoing health concerns. Our Ignatian Volunteer and office manager, Jodee, has asked for prayer for her aunt Ann in New Jersey, and of your charity, I would like to request your prayers for my grandmother, Lucy, in New York. Dorothy in many ways is unique among the holy figures of the twentieth century, many of whom were martyrs like St. Óscar Romero, St. Edith Stein, and Blessed Franz Jägerstätter or who died at a very young age following an illness, like Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and Blessed Chiara Badano. So few of the contemporary saints we venerate lived into their advanced years as Dorothy did, but there is a particular strength and grace that comes from accepting in faith the challenges of age-related disability and the slowing down of life’s activity. Here again, Dorothy can be our exemplar, and we are confident that she brings the needs of our beloved elders before God with great tenderness.

Another friend, Lorraine, wrote to us from NY with the joyful news that a friend’s cancer was completely cured, an incredible gift which she credits to Dorothy’s intercession. Wow! We join her in thanking God for this healing and ask for continuing prayer for several other friends and relatives of Guild members who are still struggling with cancer and other illnesses. If you or a loved one would like to be added to our prayer intentions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

A few words from Dorothy:

The upcoming National Eucharistic Congress holds a special resonance for the Dorothy Day Guild.

Dorothy’s last public speaking appearance took place at the 1976 International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia, and she took this opportunity to reflect on the centrality of the Eucharist in her own conversion and to preach on the Mystical Body of Christ, the doctrine which was the foundation of her Christian pacifist convictions. The following text is excerpted from “Bread for the Hungry,” the short speech Dorothy gave at the Congress on August 6th, 1976 on the anniversary of the US bombing of Hiroshima. You can read the full text, which was reprinted in The Catholic Worker the following month here. 

“It was also the physical aspect of the Church which attracted me. Bread and wine, water (all water is made holy since Christ was baptized in the Jordan), incense, the sound of waves and wind, all nature cried out to me. My love and gratitude to the Church have grown through the years. She was my mother and nourished me, and taught me. She taught me the crowning love of the life of the Spirit. But she also taught me that “before we bring our gifts of service, of gratitude, to the altar, — if our brother have anything against us, we must hesitate to approach the altar to receive the Eucharist.” 

“Unless you do penance, you shall all perish.” Penance comes before the Eucharist. Otherwise we partake of the Sacrament unworthily. 

And here we are on August 6th, the day the first atomic bomb was dropped, which ended the Second World War. There had been holocausts before — massacres, after the First World War, of the Armenians, all but forgotten now, and the holocaust of the Jews, God’s chosen people. When He came to earth as Man, He chose them. And He told us “All men are brothers,” and that it was His will that all men be saved. Japanese, Jew, Armenian. 

It is a fearful thought, that unless we do penance, we will perish. Our Creator gave us life, and the Eucharist to sustain our life. But we have given the world instruments of death of inconceivable magnitude…

Women, who were born to nourish, to bring forth life, not to destroy it, must do more than thank God we survived it. I plead, in this short paper, that we will regard that military Mass, and all our Masses today, as an act of penance, begging God to forgive us. I am gratified for the opportunity given me at this Congress to express myself in this way. I thank God for the freedom of Holy Mother Church…Today, some of the young pacifists giving out leaflets here are fasting, as a personal act of penance for the sin of our country, which we love.”

Dorothy’s own experience of motherhood brought her into the arms of her Mother the Church, a home in which she was nurtured and fed daily by the precious body and blood of Jesus and came to a renewed and deepened appreciation for the sanctity of life. She understood that the senseless destruction of entire families in wartime was a grave sin which tore the Mystical Body of Christ and which required penance and reparation. Dorothy’s unique contribution to contemporary Eucharistic theology was in her rediscovery and re-presentation of the inseparable relationship between the Body of Christ present as the Blessed Sacrament and in the Body of Christ present in the human family. We are all brothers and sisters, and it is God’s will that all of us are saved. 

As we in the United States gather for this National Eucharistic Congress, please join us in praying that this Eucharistic revival will in turn spark a revival of love for the poor and for peace. We hope that like Dorothy, we can remember that the Eucharist unites us as one Body and that the integrity of that Body requires an end to war, to the trade in weapons, and to the exclusion of the hungry poor in our own towns and cities. We are so excited to see some of you in Indianapolis next week! Whether or not you are able to be with us in person, we are so grateful to be united to you in prayer, through the Eucharist, and through the works of mercy to which so many of you have dedicated your lives. 

Yours,

Dr. Casey Mullaney, on behalf of the Dorothy Day Guild