For more than half a century, Dorothy made herself poor for the poor, living a life of voluntary poverty and simplicity in solidarity with the poor, the vulnerable, the mentally ill, those whom society regards as "the expendables." She was an active journalist, and later co-founded the Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality which fed and housed the poor in twenty cities, beginning in New York City, as well as communal farms and a monthly newspaper, the Catholic Worker, which gave people information about her houses and about the latest protests.
Not bad for a woman whom, when young, lived a bohemian lifestyle of affairs with several men, had an abortion, and then became a single mother. Yet through this turbulent young adulthood, Day was a deeply spiritual woman, a fighter for the poor and for justice. It was the poor who drew her to the Catholic Church, as well as a decision, even before she was a Catholic herself, to have her baby daughter Tamar baptized a Catholic:
"It never entered her mind to have her daughter Tamar baptized anything but a Catholic. That it might be well to weight the claims of other churches before taking this step did not occur to Dorothy. She only knew that in those years just past, when she had felt so God-forsaken, it was in a Catholic Church that she had felt God's presence. She says 'for me she was the one true Church. She (the Church) had come down through the centuries since the time of Peter, and far from being dead, she claimed and held the allegiance of the masses of people in all the cities where I had lived.' Dorothy saw the Catholic Church as the church of the immigrants, of the laboring class. And if the Church took hard positions on some matters - even on that of going to Mass on Sunday - what of it? The hard way appealed to Dorothy. If the Church offered the hope of eternal life with God, then, however hard the way, it would be glorious at every step." (William A. Miller, "Dorothy Day: A Biography.")
Her daughter's Baptism led to Dorothy's own reception into the Church. A woman who so identified with the masses of people easily understood that if you lived, worked, protested, and celebrated alongside masses of people, it was only right, just, and natural to pray alongside masses of people at the celebration of the Mass. She was aware of and alive to the power invoked in the Mass; she believed in the Power of God and the demands God makes on us. "She lived as though the Truth were true and believed that Christians ought to live as the early Christians did: doing in their daily lives what was done at the altar of God in the fundamental act of worship....she believed life ought to be lived in conformity to the mystery of Christ's kenosis (self-emptying) and love expressed in the Eucharist." (Jessica Keating, "They Knew Him in the Breaking of the Bread: Dorothy Day and the Eucharist.")
She believed that Jesus, though he was in the form of God, and Son of God, emptied himself of his divinity, and became human, like us in all ways except sin. That he accepted frail weak flesh and blood, suffered, and died. But before his final suffering and death, he ate a final meal with his friends to show them a Mystery, a Way in which he would, with passionate, faithful love, remain with humanity forever and empower us to become other Christs.
At that meal Jesus held up bread and said "Take this, all of you, and eat of it. For this is my Body, which will be given up for you." And he held up a chalice of wine and said "Take this, all of you, and drink from it. For this is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me."
Dorothy believed in this Mystery of Faith - that the Eucharist, the bread and wine consecrated by the priest at Mass, becomes truly the Real Presence of Christ at Mass, Christ perpetually offering himself up for us in sacrifice, Christ perpetually offering himself to us to be intimately one with us and to be Food for our journey. Dorothy says "The Mass brings us into the closest of all contacts with our Lord Jesus Christ, enabling us literally to 'put on Christ,' as St. Paul said, and to begin to say with him,'Now, not I live but Jesus Christ in me....It is there (at the table of the Lord) that we receive the tremendous graces of God...nourishing ourselves as we have been bidden to do by Christ, by eating his Body and drinking his Blood."
To become Christ through daily nourishment by the Eucharist meant to take on that daily, sacrificial self-emptying of Christ - for one's brothers and sisters, as Jesus sacrificed himself - to the death. And so, strengthened by the Eucharist, Dorothy daily "put herself to death" for others - literally feeding, clothing, and housing those whom society rejected, and enduring the insults of those who deliberately misunderstood her reasons for caring for those who seemed "unworthy" of care.
She writes that she "was convinced that the Catholic Worker had come about because I was going to daily Mass, daily receiving Holy Communion, and happy though I was, kept sighing out, 'Lord, what would you have me do? Lord, here I am.....I always say, if you start praying, saying 'Lord, what would You have me do?' prayers are answered and you find yourself doing a lot more than you ever thought you were gong to do.'" More and more, she was living the Mystery expressed in the Mass: the Father giving the gift of the Son to us, the Son giving us the gift of his life, death, resurrection, and eternal life in the Eucharist, and our rapturous gifts of ourselves, body, blood, soul, life and death, back to Him - so He can slowly transform us into Himself.
Undoubtedly, physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted from her labors, she whispered to God "This is MY body, blood, heart, and soul, given up for You, given TO You." What other gift can we ever give back in gratitude to the Gift-giver but this: Ourselves! What other gift can He give back to us again and again but transformation? We become what we eat!
In August of 1975, growing more and more weak and frail, Dorothy went to Philadelphia to give a talk at the Catholic Eucharistic Congress. Seventy-nine years old, this would be her last major speaking appearance, and she and the people at the Congress sensed this. Exhausted, she was depressed and in a black pit for days before her speech, filled with anticipatory dread. Yet there she spoke of what was closest to her heart.
She said that "the Church taught her that before we bring our gifts of service or gratitude to the altar, - if your brother have anything against us, we must hesitate to approach the altar to receive the Eucharist. Unless you do penance, you shall all perish." She reminded her audience that August 6 was the anniversary of the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, one of many terrible holocausts, showing a contempt for life. God, she said, "gave us life, and the Eucharist to sustain our life. But we have given the world instruments of death of inconceivable magnitude."
It was Dorothy's final public plea for peace. Her plea came from a heart, soul, mind, and body given over completely to the Lord, a woman who had fed daily on the Eucharist and so was transformed into feeding the masses with herself. Now, like the Lord at the Last Supper, she was pleading for those lost, searching, sinning masses to be reconciled to one another, and become one in peace. She had become what she ate.