When Pope Francis was invited to address the United States Congress seven years ago, he recommended the example of four extraordinary American Catholics. One of them was Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. “Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints,” he told our legislators.

Dorothy Day is widely known as an advocate for social justice, but less appreciated is how that advocacy was inspired by the Eucharist.

Dorothy was once asked what poverty looks like, and she responded with stark realism: “It is toilets that don’t work...dish washers who wipe their noses on dish towels, people who are mental cases.” (Dorothy Day, Diaries, 315, May 24, 1961)

But she was equally blunt about the importance of the Eucharist.

“Without the sacraments of the Church, she wrote, “primarily the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper as it is sometimes called, I certainly do not think that I could go on.” “Food for the body is not enough,” she insisted, “There must be food for the soul. Hence, leaders of the work, as many as we can induce to join us, must go to daily Mass. The Mass begins our day; it is our food and drink, our delight, our refreshment,
our courage, our light.”

Dorothy Day would have been touched by the words we hear from the Book of Leviticus this weekend: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But most of all, she would have nodded knowingly, as our closing prayer asks “that we may experience the effects of salvation which is pledged to us by these mysteries.”