Cultivate a Spirit of Joy: Lenten Conversations

Take time for a Lenten Pause on March 21, 28, April 4 and 11
Four Mondays of Lent on Zoom.

“How necessary it is to cultivate a spirit of joy…To act lovingly is to begin to feel loving, and certainly to act joyfully brings joy to others which in turn makes one feel joyful.” (14 days of Prayer with Dorothy Day, “judged by love” diary entry (143).)

During four Monday evenings in Lent, we will take time for a Lenten Pause. Together we will read Scripture and reflect on the words of Dorothy Day, Servant of God. Our time together will include contemplative prayer and conversation. We will use the “Lent with Dorothy Day” booklet published by Franciscan Media. And perhaps, together, we can work for the “little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.” (From “Love Is The Measure,” Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, June 1946, 2)

Dorothy Day has been honored with the title Servant of God. Her cause for sainthood progresses, but regardless of her status in the institutional church, she is recognized as a modern “saint” for our times, exemplifying the action of God’s grace in any person’s life while also questioning the societal norms and political controversies of the times in which she lived. She is one of the archetypes of contemporary Catholic activism: a lay woman who called for justice, a leader who confronted society with a call back to the Gospels and to a lived faith.

Undeniably, Day is controversial because she lived in the world, inside of history and not at the margins. She rallied for the masses, went to jail, married on the rebound, wrote a novel, fell in love, and bore a child, all before she abruptly became a Catholic at age 30 in 1927. Scorned by her friends, in 1932 she returned home to find Peter Maurin, a French ”troubadour of God,” waiting for her and thus began the Catholic Worker Movement. Day was a Catholic and she was a rebel. She condemned poverty and she advocated against it. She founded the Catholic Worker (communities) and called her memoir ”The Long Loneliness.”

Day once wrote. ”I could see the nobility of giving one’s life for the sick, the maimed, the leper.”* But, she recalled, even as a child, she asked: ”Why was so much done in remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place?… Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but to do away with slavery?”* Day was blessed with the ability to reconcile opposed ideas and make the result seem the soul of fidelity. Robert Ellsberg has called her a Saint of Common Ground, around whom very different people can come together and try to be holy.

VIRTUAL information: As a virtual program on Zoom, participants need to be able to access this course through the Zoom application. Once registered, participants receive a registration receipt from the Franciscan Renewal Center. Closer to the start of the class, the Zoom access information will be provided to you through an email from alw@thecasa.org.

Participants will also pick up the booklet used in the course in the Narthex or at the Guest Services desk.