What do you think?
Rate this book
Meditations
Book by Dorothy Day, Rita Corbin
94 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 1970
5 people are currently reading
91 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy Day
71 books254 followersDorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and anarchist who, after a bohemian youth, became a Catholic Christian without in any way abandoning her social and anarchist activism. She was perhaps the best-known political radical in the American Catholic Church. In the 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker movement, a nonviolent, pacifist movement that continues to combine direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf.
A revered figure within the U.S. Catholic community, Day's cause for canonization was recently open by the Catholic Church.
A revered figure within the U.S. Catholic community, Day's cause for canonization was recently open by the Catholic Church.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 24, 2023
We emphasize always the necessity of smallness. The ideal, of course would be that each Christian, conscious of his duty in the lay apostolate, should take in one of the homeless as an honored guest, remembering Christ’s words: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.” The poor are more conscious of this obligation than those who are comfortably off. I know of any number of cases where families already overburdened and crowded, have taken in orphaned children, homeless aged, poor who are not members of their families but who were akin to them because they were fellow sufferers in this disordered world.
In a way of course, taking care of your own, children and grandchildren, is taking care of yourself. On the other hand there is the sacrament of duty as Father McSorley calls it. There is great joy in being on the job, doing good works, performing the works of mercy. But when you get right down to it, a work which is started personally often ends up being paperwork—writing letters, seeing visitors, speaking about the work while others do it. One can become a veritable Mrs. Jellyby, looking after the world and neglecting one’s own who are struggling with poverty and hard work and leading, as such families with small children do these days, aesthetic lives. There are visuals, involuntary ones, fasting, due to nausea of pregnancy for instance, but Saint Angela Foligno said that penances voluntarily undertaken are not half so meritorious as those imposed on us by the circumstances our lives and cheerfully borne.
So much time must be given to the physical details of life—cleaning beds, kitchens, garbage cans, toilets. It is endless, and it seems to take such a large proportion of time.
Peter Maurin likes Leo XIII’s [encyclical] on Saint Francis of Assisi best of all. It calls all the faithful to the practice of voluntary poverty during this materialistic age when Catholics are tainted as well as everyone else.
The Christian life is certainly a paradox. The teaching of Saint John of the Cross (which was for beginners, he said) is of the necessity for detachment from creatures; of the need of traveling light through the dark night. Most of us have not the courage to set out on this path wholeheartedly, so God arranges it for us. It would seem to the unthinking that mothers of children, whether one or a dozen, are intensely preoccupied with creatures: the little ones, food, clothing, shelters, matters that are down to earth and grossly material such as dirty diapers, dishes, cooking, cramming baby mouths with food, etc. Women’s bodies, heavy with children, dragged down by children, are a weight like a cross to be carried about. From morning until night they are preoccupied with cares but it is care for others, for the duties God has given them. It is a road once set out upon from which there is no turning back. Every woman knows that feeling of not being able to escape, of the inevitability of her hour drawing ever nearer. This path of pain is woman’s lot. It is her glory and salvation. She must accept.
The point I want to make is that a woman can achieve the highest spirituality and union with God through her house and children, through doing her work which leaves no time for thought of self, for consolation, for prayer, for reading, for what she might consider development. She is being led along the path of growth inevitably. But she needs to be told these things, instructed in these things, for her help and endurance, so that she may use what prayer she can to cry out in the darkness of the night. Here is her mortification of the senses. Her eyes are affronted by disorder, confusion, the sight of human ailments, and human functions. Her nose also; her ears tormented with discordant cries, her appetite failing often; her sense of touch in agony from fatigue and weakness. Her interior senses are also mortified. She is alone with her little ones, her interest adapted to theirs; she has not even the companionship of books. She has no longer the gay companions of her youth. So she has solitude, and a silence from the sounds she’d like to hear, conversation, music, discussion. Of course there are consolations and joys. Babies and small children are pure beauty, love, joy—the truest in this world. But the thorns are there of night watches, of illnesses, of infant perversities and contrariness. There are glimpses of heaven and hell.
Love of brother means voluntary poverty, stripping one’s self, putting off the old man, denying one’s self, etc. It also means non-participation in those comforts and luxuries which have been manufactured by the exploitation of others. While our brothers suffer, we must be compassionate with them, suffer with them. While our brother suffers from lack of necessities, we will refuse to enjoy comforts. These resolutions, no matter how hard they are to live up to, no matter how often we fail and have to begin over again, are part of the vision in the long range view which Peter Maurin has been trying to give us these past years. You must keep this vision in mind, recognize the truth of it, the necessity for it, even though we do not, can not, live up to it. Like perfection. We are ordered to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, and we aim at it, in our intention, though in our execution we may fall short of the mark over and over. Saint Paul says, it is by little and by little that we proceed.
“The only way to have more time,” says Father Lacouture, “is to sow time.” In other words, to throw it away. Just as one throws wheat into the ground to get more wheat. It must have seemed madness to throw that first wheat away–but more wheat sprang up a hundredfold. So each day, start off by saying, there is plenty of time. And so to discard time, to throw it to the winds, to disregard all the work there is to do, and go sit in the presence of the blessed sacrament for an hour, to divest oneself of these accursed occupations—all in order to reap time, for those things which are necessary.
Bishop O’Hara of Kansas City once said to Maurin, “You lead the way–we will follow.” Meaning that it was up to the laity to plow ahead, to be the vanguard, to be the shock troops, to fight these battles without fear or favor. And to make the mistakes. And that has always been my understanding. This business of “asking Father” what to do about something has never occurred to us. The way I have felt about Los Angeles is that the lay people had to go ahead and form their groups, “Catholics for interracial justice,” form their picket lines, as they are only now doing, and make their complaints directly, to priest and cardinal, demanding the leadership, the moral example they are entitled to. How can any priest be prevented from preaching the gospel of social justice in the labor field and in the interracial field? One can read aloud with loud agreement those messages from the encyclicals, which are so pertinent to the struggles which are being carried on. One can tell the gospel stories in the light of what is happening today. Do the poor have the gospel preached to them today?Do we hear that resounding cry “Woe to the rich!” Do we hear the story of the rich man sitting at his table feasting while the poor sat at the gate with neither food nor Medicare? How many priests have read father Regamey’s Poverty or Shewring’s The Rich and the Poor in Christian Tradition?
Bernanos said, “Hell is not to love anymore.” Righteous wrath and indignation is usually not loving. Jesus said to love our enemies. But to speak of the whole problem on the natural plane, it seems to me an enormous waste of energy to direct our attacks against the hierarchy instead of attacking the problem of poverty, joblessness, homelessness. It is a temptation of the devil, a diversion of our energies. Direct action would be to use one’s energies and imagination. Some actions would be fruitful and some would raise persecution and as much of a hullabaloo as the letter-writing on the West Coast. Direct action, rather than the indirect action of asking why the hierarchy behaves as it does, would be more to the point.
In a way of course, taking care of your own, children and grandchildren, is taking care of yourself. On the other hand there is the sacrament of duty as Father McSorley calls it. There is great joy in being on the job, doing good works, performing the works of mercy. But when you get right down to it, a work which is started personally often ends up being paperwork—writing letters, seeing visitors, speaking about the work while others do it. One can become a veritable Mrs. Jellyby, looking after the world and neglecting one’s own who are struggling with poverty and hard work and leading, as such families with small children do these days, aesthetic lives. There are visuals, involuntary ones, fasting, due to nausea of pregnancy for instance, but Saint Angela Foligno said that penances voluntarily undertaken are not half so meritorious as those imposed on us by the circumstances our lives and cheerfully borne.
So much time must be given to the physical details of life—cleaning beds, kitchens, garbage cans, toilets. It is endless, and it seems to take such a large proportion of time.
Peter Maurin likes Leo XIII’s [encyclical] on Saint Francis of Assisi best of all. It calls all the faithful to the practice of voluntary poverty during this materialistic age when Catholics are tainted as well as everyone else.
The Christian life is certainly a paradox. The teaching of Saint John of the Cross (which was for beginners, he said) is of the necessity for detachment from creatures; of the need of traveling light through the dark night. Most of us have not the courage to set out on this path wholeheartedly, so God arranges it for us. It would seem to the unthinking that mothers of children, whether one or a dozen, are intensely preoccupied with creatures: the little ones, food, clothing, shelters, matters that are down to earth and grossly material such as dirty diapers, dishes, cooking, cramming baby mouths with food, etc. Women’s bodies, heavy with children, dragged down by children, are a weight like a cross to be carried about. From morning until night they are preoccupied with cares but it is care for others, for the duties God has given them. It is a road once set out upon from which there is no turning back. Every woman knows that feeling of not being able to escape, of the inevitability of her hour drawing ever nearer. This path of pain is woman’s lot. It is her glory and salvation. She must accept.
The point I want to make is that a woman can achieve the highest spirituality and union with God through her house and children, through doing her work which leaves no time for thought of self, for consolation, for prayer, for reading, for what she might consider development. She is being led along the path of growth inevitably. But she needs to be told these things, instructed in these things, for her help and endurance, so that she may use what prayer she can to cry out in the darkness of the night. Here is her mortification of the senses. Her eyes are affronted by disorder, confusion, the sight of human ailments, and human functions. Her nose also; her ears tormented with discordant cries, her appetite failing often; her sense of touch in agony from fatigue and weakness. Her interior senses are also mortified. She is alone with her little ones, her interest adapted to theirs; she has not even the companionship of books. She has no longer the gay companions of her youth. So she has solitude, and a silence from the sounds she’d like to hear, conversation, music, discussion. Of course there are consolations and joys. Babies and small children are pure beauty, love, joy—the truest in this world. But the thorns are there of night watches, of illnesses, of infant perversities and contrariness. There are glimpses of heaven and hell.
Love of brother means voluntary poverty, stripping one’s self, putting off the old man, denying one’s self, etc. It also means non-participation in those comforts and luxuries which have been manufactured by the exploitation of others. While our brothers suffer, we must be compassionate with them, suffer with them. While our brother suffers from lack of necessities, we will refuse to enjoy comforts. These resolutions, no matter how hard they are to live up to, no matter how often we fail and have to begin over again, are part of the vision in the long range view which Peter Maurin has been trying to give us these past years. You must keep this vision in mind, recognize the truth of it, the necessity for it, even though we do not, can not, live up to it. Like perfection. We are ordered to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, and we aim at it, in our intention, though in our execution we may fall short of the mark over and over. Saint Paul says, it is by little and by little that we proceed.
“The only way to have more time,” says Father Lacouture, “is to sow time.” In other words, to throw it away. Just as one throws wheat into the ground to get more wheat. It must have seemed madness to throw that first wheat away–but more wheat sprang up a hundredfold. So each day, start off by saying, there is plenty of time. And so to discard time, to throw it to the winds, to disregard all the work there is to do, and go sit in the presence of the blessed sacrament for an hour, to divest oneself of these accursed occupations—all in order to reap time, for those things which are necessary.
Bishop O’Hara of Kansas City once said to Maurin, “You lead the way–we will follow.” Meaning that it was up to the laity to plow ahead, to be the vanguard, to be the shock troops, to fight these battles without fear or favor. And to make the mistakes. And that has always been my understanding. This business of “asking Father” what to do about something has never occurred to us. The way I have felt about Los Angeles is that the lay people had to go ahead and form their groups, “Catholics for interracial justice,” form their picket lines, as they are only now doing, and make their complaints directly, to priest and cardinal, demanding the leadership, the moral example they are entitled to. How can any priest be prevented from preaching the gospel of social justice in the labor field and in the interracial field? One can read aloud with loud agreement those messages from the encyclicals, which are so pertinent to the struggles which are being carried on. One can tell the gospel stories in the light of what is happening today. Do the poor have the gospel preached to them today?Do we hear that resounding cry “Woe to the rich!” Do we hear the story of the rich man sitting at his table feasting while the poor sat at the gate with neither food nor Medicare? How many priests have read father Regamey’s Poverty or Shewring’s The Rich and the Poor in Christian Tradition?
Bernanos said, “Hell is not to love anymore.” Righteous wrath and indignation is usually not loving. Jesus said to love our enemies. But to speak of the whole problem on the natural plane, it seems to me an enormous waste of energy to direct our attacks against the hierarchy instead of attacking the problem of poverty, joblessness, homelessness. It is a temptation of the devil, a diversion of our energies. Direct action would be to use one’s energies and imagination. Some actions would be fruitful and some would raise persecution and as much of a hullabaloo as the letter-writing on the West Coast. Direct action, rather than the indirect action of asking why the hierarchy behaves as it does, would be more to the point.
Read
June 30, 2017If Dorothy Day is in heaven, it's not because her heart was in the right place; it's by the grace of God. She spent too much time with communists. Her entry on sheltering a desperate woman is told without emotion. I know someone who came to her in great need and was treated poorly by her personally. Dorothy Day helped people's situations, but cast shame on at least one person she helped. Maybe this was her way of correcting the strayed ones, saying "go and sin no more" and I have no doubt there's a place in heaven for Dorothy Day who worked tirelessly to help workers.
September 29, 2018
I appreciated the book as a time capsule to the devoted Catholic workers approached their mission around the time of the great depression. At times the descriptions of Peter Maurin edged on cult leader status. I've read a couple of her books now and her writing style strikes me as somewhat cold and uninspiring, although the work of the movement and its founders are themselves inspiring.
March 28, 2008
provocative. wonderful. terse.
March 31, 2025
While I was familiar with the work of Dorothy Day, I had never read any of her writing. This was a horrible way to be introduced to it. All the snippets, ranging from two pages to a sentence long, are mostly devoid of context. It was also extremely repetitive. When you read a collection of sayings, you expect more difference. Even the ones with a good message or an interesting story are cut off, sometimes in the middle of making her point. So many passages come from the same text, so why not direct people to that instead of publishing this 'cash-grab?' I'll need to revisit Day again; this was not a good way to start.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews