In Praise of Holy Women

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Collect for Evelyn Underhill, June 15 th . O God, Origin, Sustainer and End of all your creatures; Grant that your Church, taught by your servant Evelyn Underhill, guarded evermore by your power, and guided by your Spirit into the light of truth, may continually offer to you all glory and thanksgiving, and attain with your saints to the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have promised by your Saviour Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen Psalm 37:3-6, 32-33 Lessons; Wisdom 7:24-8;1 1 Corinthians 4;1-5 John 4:19-24 Preface of the Dedication of a Church Dr Philip Gorski is an Associate of CSWG. He is also a Visiting Researcher at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, and has written on Russian and English Literature and Christian History and Spirituality A HARSH AND DREADFUL LOVE: DOROTHY DAY’S WITNESS TO THE GOSPEL JIM FOREST Early in Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, a wealthy woman asks Staretz [Elder] Zosima how she can really know that God exists. The Staretz tells her that no explanation or argument can achieve this, only the practice of ‘active love.’ He assures her that really there is no other way to know God in reality rather than as an idea. The woman confesses that sometimes she dreams about a life of loving service to others – she thinks perhaps she will become a Sister of Mercy, live in holy poverty and serve the poor in the humblest way. It seems to her such a wonderful thought. It makes tears come to her eyes. But then it crosses her mind how ungrateful some of the people she is serving are likely to be. They will probably complain that the soup she is serving isn’t hot enough or that the bread isn’t fresh enough or the bed is too hard and the covers too thin. She confesses to Staretz Zosima that she couldn’t bear such ingratitude – and so her dreams about serving others vanish, and once again she finds herself wondering if there really is a God. To this the Staretz responds with the words, ‘Love in practice is a hard and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.’ 44
I mention this story to you because I doubt any figure in literature had more importance to Dorothy Day than Father Zosima. How often I heard her repeat the words, ‘Love in practice is a hard and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.’ It was partly through Dostoevsky that she, as a young woman, formed her understanding of Christianity, seeing it not simply as an institutional structure but as a way of life in which nothing was more important than seeing Christ in others. I have no doubt she was a saint, that is, someone who in a remarkable way shows us what it means to follow Christ. Thanks to an initiative being taken by the Archdiocese of New York, the possibility of formal canonization is underway. The Vatican have given her the title, ‘servant of God, Dorothy Day.’ Pope Francis, in a speech to the U.S. Congress, described her as one of four Americans he especially admires. I think of her as a modern sister of St. Francis of Assisi. The link with St. Francis is close. They have in common an attraction to the poor, which led them to live among them and to practice what Dorothy called ‘voluntary poverty.’ Like Francis, she formed a commitment to live out the most radical teachings of Jesus, including the renunciation of violence. Like Francis, she started a movement that could involve anyone, not only the unmarried. The Catholic Worker movement she began in 1933 has led to the foundation of houses of hospitality in many parts of the United States. The newspaper she edited until her death in 1980, The Catholic Worker, has tens of thousands of subscribers. Dorothy was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 8, 1897. Her father was a journalist and it was the profession nearly all of his children followed. She was eight years old when her family moved into a six-room tenement flat over a tavern on 37 th Street on the South Side, Chicago. It was a big step-down for the Day family. They had been practically wiped out by the San Francisco earthquake. The family had lost their house and John Day was without a job. The curtains Dorothy’s mother Grace made from remnants were hung from fishing rods. Fruit crates served as bookcases. Nail kegs became kitchen stools. Dorothy was so ashamed of her home that, returning from school, she would enter the door of a better, more impressive building so that her classmates wouldn’t know the kind of circumstances she was living in. Her mother suffered blinding headaches and went through several miscarriages. Dorothy’s understanding of the shame people feel when they aren’t making it, surely dates from this time. 45
Page 1 and 2: In Praise of Holy Women
Page 3 and 4: Journal of the Community of the Ser
Page 5 and 6: the news with great faith and coura
Page 7 and 8: is not an optional extra; it comes
Page 9 and 10: live.... under a succession of desp
Page 11 and 12: this path: 'as Berdyaev has remarke
Page 13 and 14: ‘fool’ is someone who deliberat
Page 15 and 16: and innocence she was granted an im
Page 17 and 18: Rome was our goal, but there were p
Page 19 and 20: Don’t think of me as buoyed up on
Page 21 and 22: 'LIFT UP YOUR HEARTS' - THE SPIRITU
Page 23 and 24: forged a richly innovative, iconogr
Page 25 and 26: God. If we refuse that fellowship a
Page 27 and 28: Sister Joanna’s God thirstiness c
Page 29 and 30: Bowls 5-7 bring to an end the power
Page 31 and 32: Her first responsibility, he tells
Page 33 and 34: - the seed of the Church; the Holy
Page 35 and 36: and love beauty and wish to give it
Page 37 and 38: selfish. Of course … [there is] a
Page 39 and 40: to become altogether brighter, more
Page 41 and 42: EVELYN UNDERHILL ON ST PAUL THE MYS
Page 43 and 44: death like his, we shall grow into
Page 45: world rather than cut its way throu
Page 49 and 50: As would be typical of Dorothy for
Page 51 and 52: Dorothy’s first editorial said Th
Page 53 and 54: though much less tangible, and that
Page 55 and 56: Creatures (Gen 1:3-25); Eve fashion

In Praise of Holy Women

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