“Day After Day - Thoughts On Breadlines And On The War”

"This last month of heavy rains means untold misery to our men on the breadlines, and all those who are sleeping on as though on the battlefields of our present industrial system. They are wrecks of men, many of them, gaunt and suffering. And there is so little we can do to share their suffering, their destitution, no matter how we may burrow down into the slums. We have the security which comes with communal living. We have companionship, we have a roof over our heads and meals, of stark simplicity but regular. We have got to look for sacrifices we can make, we have to examine our consciences for self-indulgences each day, we have got to feel more and more the absolute necessity for daily Mass and Communion offered up for our brothers in agony.

And we must keep our own hearts in peace, a hard thing to do. But Pope Pius XII warns against that 'sense of hopelessness which agitates the souls of men.' We can quote with the Psalmist, 'In peace was our bitterness most bitter.' We can say, with St. Paul, describing our Lord, 'Against hope he believed in hope.'"

“Day After Day - Thoughts On Breadlines And On The War." Dorothy Day. The Catholic Worker, June 1940, 1, 4.

The Catholic Worker house, New York, ca. 1937

Men inside the Catholic Worker, ca. 1937

Breadline, ca. 1937

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