On Conversion, Part II: The Driving Power of Joy

Dorothy Day is one of the most famous converts to the Catholic faith, and so it is no surprise, as I wander through her account in the autobiography The Long Lonliness, that I find much that resonates with my own journey into the faith. Her circumstances took her from the itinerant, bohemian life of a communist community in the Northeast, writing articles for various periodicals and newspapers that circulated her revolutionary proletariat landscape. Through the birth of her daugher, Tamar Theresa, she found a joy beyond words, and saw the hand of God melting the paradigms and destroying the boundaries that mankind had erected in the unjust schemes of capitalism that her community was revolting against.

When she writes of her imprisonment for participating in a protest in Washington, she recalls the experience of reading the Bible to pass the time and seek encouragement, yet still clinging to the stubborn pride of her agnosticism: "I tried to persuade myself that I was reading for literary enjoyment. But the words kept echoing in my heart. I prayed and did not know that I prayed." You can see the drastic shift that comes as her body and soul unite in the presence of her new child, now a tangible expression of the faith that grows and flowers into something new:

What a driving power joy is! When I was unhappy and repentant in the past I turned to God, but it was my joy at having given birth to a child that made me do something definite. I wanted Tamar to have a way of life and instruction. We all crave order, and in the Book of Job, hell is described as a place where no order is. I felt that "belonging" to a Church would bring order into her life which I felt my own had lacked. If I could have felt that communism was the answer to my desire for a cause, a motive, a way to walk in, I would have remained as I was. But I felt only faith in Christ could give the answer. The Sermon on the Mount answered all the questions as to how to love God and one's brother. I knew little of the Sacraments, and yet here I was believing... (p.141)

What a wonderful heritage to belong to! What wonderful footsteps to follow! Like Dorothy, I felt drawn along a path by faith not my own, even by those who were long dead and gone, separated by centuries and oceans. Yet mysteriously, somehow we were linked. Dorothy gave her child the name Theresa to honor the great Doctor of the Church Theresa of Jesus, better known as Theresa of Avila, that great mystic that inspires countless even today with her clairvoyant vision of the soul's intimacy with the Great Love. Still, the power of her words come in second place to a tremendous legacy of work on behalf of the marginalized and oppressed, a wonderful witness to the truth of the Gospel as expressed through a tireless quest for justice and a willingness to stand in the gap.

We all owe our journeys to the great friends of faith. I am glad to know and feel something of a connection to this "saint" of our times, even risking the title that she spuriously brushed off and would shrink from. I think that proves all the more that saintliness is profoundly ordinary. In the same sense, such is this journey of conversion, for it is an honest journey.