On Pilgrimage (Ressourcement: Retrieval & Renewal in Catholic Thought) [Paperback]

Mrs. Dorothy Day (Author)

Book Description

Series: Ressourcement: Retrieval & Renewal in Catholic Thought | Publication Date: March 19, 1999

These diary entries written by Dorothy Day in 1948 provide an intimate look into Day's personal life as well as essential background for understanding the Catholic Worker movement, which she founded. In this book, Day writes about all facets of her life. Yet whether describing her visits to her daughter's farm or the writings of the saints, a common theme emerges, namely, the gifts of God's love and our need to respond to them with personal and social transformation. The concerns of the Catholic Worker movement are no less vital in our day: the disenfranchised poor, the benefits of the meaningful work, the significance of family, the dangers of increasing commercialism and secularism, the decline of moral standards, and the importance of faith. Available for the first time since it was originally published, this edition includes a foreword by Michael O. Garvey and an introduction by Mark and Louise Zwick that gives an overview of Day's early life and her commitment to the Catholic worker movement.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Peter Day was born in Australia and educated at Sydney and Queensland universities before moving to England. A member of the Russian Orthodox Church, he has been engaged in education and has taught at a major Roman Catholic diocesan seminary. > --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (March 19, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802846297
• ISBN-13: 978-0802846297
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,151,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #28 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( D ) > Day, Dorothy

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bread for the journey, April 3, 2000

By 

Maggie Hall - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Pilgrimage (Ressourcement: Retrieval & Renewal in Catholic Thought) (Paperback)

Many of Dorothy Day's sabbaticals from the Catholic Worker houses are chronicled in "On Pilgrimage," which was also the title of her long-running column in her monthly newspaper, The Catholic Worker. Ever the journalist, Day would record the most minute aspects of her trips--usually by bus and with a jar of instant coffee and prayer books in her small bag--and give her newspaper readers insight into the social struggle in the South, in Okie migrant camps or Indian reservations. Her compassion and observer's eye didn't conflict; she wrote about injustice with passion, but felt compelled to temper her anger at issues such as the mistreatment of black tenant farmers. Her distinctly Catholic perspective on poverty (indeed voluntary poverty was her lasting contribution to 20th century Christianity) and suffering as well as her feisty personality are evident in these essays detailing her trips. Even though efforts have begun toward Dorothy Day's canonization, she will never be a plaster saint...not as long as these warm and utterly realistic accounts are read. She comes across as a committed Christian who believes in the essential dignity of every human being, oppressed and oppressor alike. The only fault with her pilgrimage essays is their essentially hurried nature. Dorothy Day could be careless with punctuation and transitions in her efforts to get her thoughts on paper. The essays when she's visiting her daughter and attempting to help with the growing number of children are my favorites. Dorothy Day continues to be one of my prime spiritual mentors, precisely because of homey, faith-filled essays like those, where the grandchildren are climbing on her lap and preventing her from writing. The real woman--warts, moments of exhaustion and all--is in these pages.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The introduction justifies the price of the book, February 6, 2001

By 

"georgedbassethound" (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Pilgrimage (Ressourcement: Retrieval & Renewal in Catholic Thought) (Paperback)

I would suggest this as the third book by Dorothy Day that you read-- after "loaves and fishes" and "long lonliness", however, the introduction to this book justifies the purchase for anyone. The introduction is lengthy (over 25 pages), and is written by two people that know the movement (they run Casa Juan is Houston). The book by Day is very touching.... but not an introduction to someone unfamiliar with her work. Often I suggest that someone new to Dorothy Day read the introduction, and then "Loaves and Fishes", and then returns to this book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars DOROTHY DAY REMAINS OUR GREATEST CONTINUOUS CONDUIT OF GOD'S COMPASSIONATE CONSOLING STRENGTHENING LOVE THROUGH JESUS CHRIST, May 31, 2007

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C. Scanlon "least helpful reviewer" (among us humans) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: On Pilgrimage (Ressourcement: Retrieval & Renewal in Catholic Thought) (Paperback)

This remarkable volume draws from Dorothy Day's 1948 diaries, first published that year by the Catholic Worker, and thus presents her many concerns, joys and reflections in that immediate post war era. Fortunately we also have here in this fresh reprinting some sixty years later an excellent and comprehensive and lengthy introduction which places in context these personal reflections. As mentioned elsewhere, these saintly, scholarly and comprehensive introductions are well worth the slight price of the whole book, while Dorothy's thoughts and prayers fill us with priceless and eternal peace, compassionate consolation and strength for these long, lonely times.

Dorothy writes beautifully, and well, with great insight and merciful compassion for the oppressed and the poor to whom we are unquestionably sent by the Gospel to share the very real good news of our liberation. We read her words as if from a different time and place, a different culture, and yet we see our own time, now sixty years later, and the present bitter enormous fruit whose coming she astutely and prophetically cautioned us would ocme should we not repent and convert and practice compassion as God commands.

Please read this book, with the excellent introductions, and discover why many believe her canonization process must inexorably advance, not to bury her words but to give them the authoritive power which may finally have them listened and enacted. Discover as well here her comfort for your soul, a strong straight path to peace and to prayer opened by the words and witness of Dorothy Day, companion on our long journey back to God, with her serving us and our Church as prophet, storyteller, guide and very good friend.

Another amazing aspect of this reprint is its place of honor now in the Eerdman's Catholic Publishing House Ressourcement series of Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought. The theological strategy of Ressourcement holds that in order to discover where we are and how best to proceed we do well to investigate deeply our earliest ecclesial writing, to return to the Sources. Thus in this series we encounter mainly authors who are specialists in Patristics, as well as the great American saint Dorothy Day.

Indeed, the only woman and the only American currrently represented in this series is Dorothy Day, in this present volume. This alone should convince you of the serious and great value of this book. Read these very real Dorothy Day Diaries, once more, in peace and prayer for compassion and conversion as a nation and as a person.

I find it as impossible to offer you a representative sampling from this multi-faceted work, as impossible as offering you one typical wave from the changing sea in all her ineluctable modality, yet we might discern an underlying theme from this passage written in her diary in April:

"Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife, which may at any moment become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself, 'What else is the world interested in?' What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships? God is Love. Love casts out fear. ( . . . page 123)"