your daily dig

i get a lot of inspired emails on a daily basis, some of which i share here, most of which i may delete because they don't hit me...

the link above i found through a new blog i've been visiting, musings of a discerning woman. two things struck me: (1) this gal susan is discerning her vocation in the religious life and while i've known a priest from his seminarian days, i've never followed a potential sister, so i thought she was a neat *find* in the blogdom (sorry, i hope i am not embarrassing you!) and (2), what caught my eye in her thread from yesterday was the fact that she mentioned dorothy day (my personal friend, at this point) and i went on to discover how cool this daily email might just be, so i thought i'd share both with you, my bloggie friends.

to end this on a very dorothy note, from yesterday - in full: mystery of the poor by dorothy day, and in part:

In that last glorious chapter of St. Luke, Jesus told His followers, "Why are you so perturbed? Why do questions arise in your minds? Look at My hands and My feet. It is I Myself. Touch Me and see. No ghost has flesh and bones as you can see I have." They were still unconvinced, for it seemed too good to be true. "So He asked them, 'Have you anything to eat?' They offered Him a piece of fish they had cooked which He took and ate before their eyes."

How can I help but think of these things every time I sit down at Chrystie Street or Peter Maurin Farm and look around at the tables filled with the unutterably poor who are going through their long-continuing crucifixion. It is most surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow and the joy of our vocation assures us we are on the right path.

Most certainly, it is easier to believe now that the sun warms us, and we know that buds will appear on the sycamore trees in the wasteland across from the Catholic Worker office, that life will spring out of the dull clods of that littered park across the way. There are wars and rumors of war, poverty and plague, hunger and pain. Still, the sap is rising, again there is the resurrection of spring, God's continuing promise to us that He is with us always, with His comfort and joy, if we will only ask.

The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.