Modern Saints: Dorothy Day, Paul, and the Common Call to Sainthood

Scripture Reading for the day — Romans 12

If you’ve ever received an email from me, you may have noticed this quote at the bottom of my signature.

“We have all known the long loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

This quote comes from the autobiography of American journalist, social activist, and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day.

Born in 1897, Dorothy Day spent her early adulthood immersed in the bohemian culture of New York City in the 1920s. Her work in labor rights and socialist movements shows that her concern for the poor and acute sense of social justice long preceded her Christian faith. But over time, she became increasingly attracted to the Catholic Church as the “Church of the poor.” 

It was within Christian community that Dorothy began to feel an even deeper connection to those she had long served—as she wrote, it was this “very sense of solidarity which made me gradually understand the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ whereby we are all members of one another.” 

In this, Dorothy echoes the message of Romans 12, where Paul reminds us that “in Christ, though we are many, we form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

Dorothy converted to Catholicism in 1927, a decision that reshaped her life and ultimately led her to co-found the Catholic Worker Movement with Peter Maurin.

The two would found the Catholic Worker newspaper, which focused on issues of social justice, and the work of Catholic Worker communities springing up worldwide. They also established the hospitality houses, created to feed and care for the growing number of destitute and homeless people during the Great Depression.

I love that quote from Dorothy because it reflects the spiritual path so many of us know—that loving community is the soul’s good medicine. 

But that quote is followed by another in my email signature—this one from digital content creator Aliyah Black:

“You want community? Increase your well of patience.”

I think Dorothy would have approved. In her years of living and working alongside the poor of New York City, she came to understand the tremendous patience, problem-solving, and practicality required to make community life possible. 

The aim of the Catholic Worker movement was simple yet demanding: to live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ. This wasn’t airy-fairy theology; it was the daily, embodied work of love at Maryhouse—the hospitality house for homeless women and children where Dorothy Day lived and served for much of her later life. 

That aim, Dorothy believed, requires us to live differently—so that the poor might be uplifted and society as a whole might confront the root causes of poverty. In the words of her co-founder, Peter Maurin, they sought to build “a society where it is easier for people to be good.”

And this vision isn’t far from the one we hear in today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul echoes many of the same themes: the gift of life in community, the call to shape a shared life patterned after the love and grace of Jesus Christ, and some practical guidance on how to do just that.

In the opening lines of chapter 12, Paul urges the Christian community in Rome to offer their bodies—their whole lives—as an act of worship to God. 

Rather than placing offerings on an altar while ignoring the suffering around them, followers of Jesus were called to become offerings themselves: alive, active, and offered for the good of their neighbors. 

In a city full of religious symbols, temples, and sacrificial rituals—but also marked by staggering wealth inequality, poverty, and social hostility—Paul insisted that God desired something different.

Later in the chapter, Paul turns to the issue of how Christians should orient themselves to the wider community, even in times of conflict and persecution.

This points us to the reality behind the text: religious persecution was a live, daily concern for Christians in Rome. Their movement had been born in the shadow of Jesus’ execution, and now Christians in Rome again faced suspicion and violence. 

Like many minority groups with unfamiliar beliefs or unorthodox cultural practices, they were becoming targets of suspicion and scapegoats for social and economic anxiety. And, as often happens in persecuted communities, external pressure led to internal conflicts.

We see similar dynamics today—not in the supposed “persecution” often claimed by the loudest Christian voices, but in the targeting of migrants and refugees, the hostility toward the unhoused and those receiving public assistance, and the rising attacks on transgender people. 

Unequal societies are unstable. 

Instability breeds fear and anxiety. 

And fearful, anxious people will almost always look for easy scapegoats to blame.

How should Roman Christians respond to their growing persecution? Paul’s response was simple, foolish-sounding, and astonishingly difficult. “Bless those who persecute you… do not repay evil for evil… never avenge yourselves… overcome evil with good.” 

In the Roman world, if you were a persecuted minority, there were no legal avenues to pursue recompense. Retaliation, often violence, was your only form of recourse. Most people joined street associations – a cross between a trade union and a social club – which acted as a brutal enforcer of retributive justice. 

But Paul, echoing Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, rejects that entire logic. Christians were not to mirror the violence done to them, nor to create new cycles of retribution. Instead, they were to interrupt the pattern—refusing vengeance and choosing mercy, forgiveness, and love.

It was a costly teaching then, and it remains costly now. All of us wrestle with how to respond to those who harm or wrong us. The desire to retaliate is deeply human. But Jesus, and Paul after him, invite us into a different way: breaking the chain of harm before it begins, and choosing a love that disarms rather than escalates.

This vision is precisely what Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement sought to embody in their hospitality houses—a daily, imperfect, but earnest attempt to build communities among the most marginalized, where mercy, solidarity, and love interrupt the world’s usual patterns of fear and retribution.

The impact of Dorothy Day’s life and work has recently resulted in her potential canonization as a saint of the Catholic Church. Many progressive and social justice-minded Catholics feel this would be a win for the Church. 

But Dorothy herself had a complicated relationship with sainthood. 

In the last years of her life, she was often irritated by the personality cult that was already growing up around her. A friend said she could be more gracious, responding to the angry abuse of an intoxicated homeless guest at the table than to the pious fawning of good people who read in a magazine that she was a “living saint” and wanted to get a look at her while they still could. 

“Don’t call me a saint,“ Dorothy told a reporter in 1977, “That’s the way people try to dismiss you.” “If you’re a saint, then you must be impractical and utopian, and nobody has to pay any real attention to you.” This is why some feel her canonization is not the best way to honor her legacy. 

Dorothy’s rejection of the saintly label others put on her reveals her great humility, but also her discomfort with the idea that saints are rare, exceptional Christians we admire from afar. 

Instead, Dorothy insisted that sainthood is not for the spiritual elite—rather, it is the common vocation of the Christian life. As she herself wrote, "St. Paul says, we are all called to be saints. We might as well get over our bourgeois fear of the name. We might also get used to recognizing the fact that there is some of the saint in all of us."

Holiness, she believed, is found in ordinary acts of mercy, hospitality, and solidarity, especially alongside the poor and vulnerable. A hot bowl of soup, a soothing shower, a comfortable bed. 

Dorothy’s legacy lives on today in the network of Catholic Worker Hospitality Houses that remain open to this day. My first encounter with a Catholic Worker hospitality house was at Guadalupe House in Tacoma, Washington. It's a warm, simple home filled with handmade art and the smells of a shared meal simmering in the kitchen. It was only after I’d been there several hours that I learned the home’s residents were primarily people who had previously been homeless.

At Guadalupe House, the idea of “serving the homeless” simply doesn't compute. The once homeless residents actively contribute to the home’s mission, working creatively and practically to meet the needs of their neighbors. It isn’t charity; it's community—people living together with dignity, mutuality, and shared purpose.

But it isn’t always pretty. Differences in life experiences and cultural backgrounds, especially between those who have been homeless and those who have not, mean there was always conflict to manage and problems to solve within the house. 

Dorothy Day’s legacy also lives on in other places, like downstairs in our fellowship hall at yesterday's Free Community Thanksgiving. 

Y’all — I am so proud of this community. 

When several of you brought your proposal to expand our annual Thanksgiving meal to the community, I knew this was the Holy Spirit at work. 

But there was suddenly so much to think about. How would we make sure the people who needed an invitation actually received one? How would they get here? Would there be enough food for everyone? Depending on who you are, it was all—just a little, or maybe a lot—overwhelming.

But we went to work. And just like Paul’s description of the Body of Christ, where each member gives according to their unique gifts, each of us contributed in our own ways. Jackie, Cindy, and Ames made sure we were organized. Volunteers helped set up, clean up, and serve. Thomas Dixon brought cakes; Maggie Dixon recruited teen volunteers. Sally Meeker coordinated with Rev. McClellan at Allen Chapel to help transport folks from downtown.  

Nearly every one of you contributed a special dish to the potluck, even some folks who were unable to attend—like Wendy Nimmo, and Mark and Patty Stewart!—and like the boy with the fishes and loaves, the food seemed to multiply until we had more than enough! I loved seeing people take huge heaping plates! And even going back for seconds! 

But perhaps most importantly to me, I saw you treat neighbors whose lives look very different than yours as honored guests, as newfound friends, and as reunited family. 

From the conversations I had with our guests—the looks on their faces, the laughter and hugs, the cheerful farewells of “See you next year!”—there is ample evidence that yesterday’s meal mattered. That is my sober judgment, as Paul would say.

Yesterday mattered. 

It didn’t fix the world’s problems. But it mattered.  

It brought some joy, some hope, and some dignity to our neighbors who often are so overlooked. It showed this community that we can do big, new, slightly scary things, even with only two weeks' notice, and your pastor out of town the entire week prior. 

Yesterday, reflected to me what Dorothy Day wished for all of us—” that we might recognize the fact that there is some of the saint in all of us." I hope you too saw the many, ordinarily, imperfect saints in our midst. 

Sermon preached on 11/23.25 by Rev. Delaney Piper.