Beautiful Visions of Shared Poverty

Today on the second Sunday of Easter, we read those idyllic descriptions in the Acts of the Apostles of the loving communal life of the disciples of Jesus in the time after his death and resurrection. "All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need." (Acts 2:14-17).

Dorothy called for, and showed by example, taking up a life that emulates those early Apostles.

The love of the humanity of our Lord is the love of our brother. The only way we have to show our love for God is by the love we have for our brother. "Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, you have done it unto Me." "You love God as much as the one you love the least."

Love of brother means voluntary poverty, stripping one’s self, putting off the old man, denying one’s self, etc. It also means non-participation in those comforts and luxuries which have been manufactured by the exploitation of others. While our brothers suffer, we must compassionate them, suffer with them. While our brothers suffer from lack of necessities, we will refuse to enjoy comforts. These resolutions, no matter how hard they are to live up to, no matter how often we fall and have to begin over again, are part of the vision and the long-range view which Peter Maurin has been trying to give us these past ten years. These ideas are expressed in the writings of Eric Gill, in the Dominican monthly, Blackfriars. And we must keep this vision in mind, recognize the truth of it, the necessity for it, even though we do not, can not, live up to it. Like perfection. We are ordered to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, and we aim at it, in our intention, though in our execution we may fall short of the mark over and over. St. Paul says, it is by little and by little that we proceed.

- Originally published as "Poverty and Pacifism" by Dorothy Day,
The Catholic Worker, December 1944, 1, 7. Available in full (DOC #223) at the Dorothy Day Library on the Web at http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/