Her Words: Series

admin • April 14, 2014

Her Words: Holy Thursday Published April 4, 2014

 

 "On Holy Thursday, truly a joyful day, I was sitting at the supper table at St. Joseph's House on Chrystie Street and looking around at all the fellow workers and thinking how hopeless it was for us to try to keep up appearances."
-Dorothy Day The Catholic Worker, April 1964

 


 

“The main thing is not to hold on to anything.”
-Dorothy Day The Catholic Worker, May 1952

 


Her Words: Trace Published April 10, 2014

"I will try to trace for you the steps by which I came to accept the faith that I believe was always in my heart..."
-Dorothy Day, From Union Square to Rome

 


Her Words: Could Published April 9, 2014

"I feel that I have done nothing well. But I have done what I could."
-Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness

 


Her Words: Write Published March 22, 2014

"It would be better still to love, rather than to write about it. It would be more convincing."

-Dorothy Day, To Die for Love, The Catholic Worker, September 1948 


Her Words: Seeds Published March 12, 2014

"We are sowing the seeds of love, and we are not living in the harvest time."
-Dorothy Day, Commonweal 1949

 


Her Words: Pruned Published March 9, 2014

"What a paradox it is, this natural life and this supernatural life. We must give up our lives to gain them, we must die to live, be pruned to bear fruit. We want to be free, and we want to be free of responsibility except for our own. Am I my brother's keeper? Or can I be free when other men are enslaved? "
-Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, January 1951

 


Her Words: Love Published March 7, 2014

"Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other enough, we will bear each other's faults and burdens. If we love enough, we are going to light that fire in the hearts of others. And it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much."

-Dorothy Day, House of Hospitality



Her Words: Easier Published March 6, 2014

"God meant things to be much easier than we have made them."
-Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage, 1948

 


Her Words: Hold Published April 14, 2014

Her Words: The Poor Published March 5, 2014


Words Published November 10, 2013


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By Casey Mullaney August 16, 2025
Dear Friends, All of us at the Guild were saddened to learn of the death of Monica Ribar Cornell , founding member of and advisor to the Dorothy Day Guild, on Friday, August 8th.
By Casey Mullaney August 5, 2025
Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, We hope this missive finds you well! The heat has finally broken in South Bend, and all of us at the Worker are grateful for the relief as we’ve passed the mid-point of the summer season. For many of us in the Midwest and the Northeast, this time of year is marked by transitions and heightened activity as we begin to bring in stone fruit and tomatoes from our gardens or look towards the start of a new school year. With that in mind, we have a lot of great things to share with you this month, including new resources, song lyrics, events, and two peace and justice action items! Dorothy on the Small Screen: Friday, August 1st marked the third anniversary of the death of Tom Cornell , former editor of the The Catholic Worker, founding member of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, and close personal friend of Dorothy. Tom met his wife Monica (pictured here at their wedding, where Dorothy was among the guests!) at the Worker in New York in the 1950s; the Cornells passed on their vocation of hospitality and Gospel nonviolence to their children, Tommy and Deirdre, and to the hundreds of others they welcomed into their homes and lives over the course of nearly sixty years of marriage.
By Casey Mullaney July 8, 2025
Dear members and friends of the Dorothy Day Guild, Greetings on what for many of us in North America is already shaping up to be another hot, sticky summer day! We hope that those of you in hot climates are staying cool and are finding creative ways to support those in your towns and cities who are unsheltered from the elements. Emma, a member of our Catholic Worker community in South Bend, washes out empty milk jugs, fills them halfway with clean water, and freezes them overnight. In the morning, she fills them the rest of the way and hands them out to guests at our drop-in center to help them stay cool and hydrated throughout the afternoon. If you regularly walk or drive past homeless community members on your commute, we encourage you to pack an extra sealed bottle of water to give away on days like this. Here in the United States, we just celebrated the Fourth of July, a holiday which admittedly doesn’t mean very much to many of those who admire Dorothy and seek to follow Christ as she did. Dorothy practiced a very different kind of revolution than the kind which is celebrated by military parades and fireworks displays. In 1940, she wrote , “we consider the spiritual and corporal Works of Mercy and the following of Christ to be the best revolutionary technique and a means of changing the social order rather than perpetuating it. Did not the thousands of monasteries, with their hospitality change the entire social pattern of their day?” To all those who undertake the responsibility of sheltering the homeless, giving drink to the thirsty, and all works of mercy in the heat, thank you for these revolutionary acts! Summer events: Our Guild’s online and in-person summer programming is in full swing as of this week! As a reminder, we are running TWO book clubs this summer, one in English and one in Spanish. Our English-language club is reading The Long Loneliness and has already had two meetings, but it’s not too late to sign up!
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