The Road to Character

As another individual with a turbulent and passionate past, Day learned through the losses of lovers and family members, as well as through firsthand experience caring for those dying of the 1918 flu epidemic, that suffering makes one better equipped to minister to those who are also suffering: “Recovering from suffering is a lot like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different” (95-96). Day’s lifelong yearning for God functioned as a form of suffering, which only found resolution when she aligned herself with the Catholic faith and eventually converted. Christ was her example, although she displayed a preference for the order and discipline of service environments even before her conversion. In examining her suffering and alleviating the suffering of others, she found peace.

Day’s constant oscillation between extremes—her passion for her love affairs, politics, and writing, as well as her propensity for self-castigation, denial, and reflection—makes her a sterling example of the kinds of human suffering, internal and external, that can shape us if we are open to self-reflection and action. Her tireless work on behalf of those in need rivals, and even equals, that of Perkins.

Day’s life took her from the San Francisco of her youth, to her teenage years and early adulthood years of Anarcho-Communist political action, to Staten Island and the Northeast US for the middle to later years of her life. San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City have long served as centers of political and social activism, and Day was always in the midst of it, participating in the action with fervor. Even once she converted to Catholicism, she blended her political convictions with its precepts to serve and advocate for those in need no matter where she lived.