"One of the heroes of the book [that Brooks was
writing] is Dorothy Day. She led this morally strenuous life all of her life,
self-criticizing and writing and praying over her sins. But at the end of her
life, she had achieved an impressive fullness, a centeredness and an
overwhelming sense of gratitude.
“One day she sat down to write a memoir. She told Robert
Coles what happened next: ‘I wrote down the words, “a life remembered,” and I
was going to try to make a summary for myself, write what mattered most — but I
couldn’t do it. I just sat there and thought of our Lord, and His visit to us
all those centuries ago, and I said to myself that my great luck was to have
had Him on my mind for so long in my life!’”—Dorothy Day quoted in David
Brooks and Gail Collins, “Happy New Year, Politicians. Seriously,” The
New York Times, January 5, 2014
Yesterday would have been the 120th
birthday of Dorothy Day, journalist
and social activist. Her devotion to the
poor and nonviolence, as exemplified in the Catholic Worker movement, sparked a
movement for her canonization following her death in 1980. Anne Stricherz
discusses her conversion story in this blog post.
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