A Day in the Life of Faith

We are in the second week of a Year of Faith, and in the Magnificat Year of Faith Companion yesterday was an entry not to be overlooked. It was from the writings of Dorothy Day and in it she cuts to the core of what a Year of Faith, and our lives, ought to be about: remembering the Creed — what is it that we say we profess to believe when we say we are Catholic? — and living as a Eucharistic people, receiving the sacrament of Reconciliation and the Eucharist as often as we can and recalling it in our thoughts and actions.

Day writes:

I am a traditionalist in that I do not like to see Mass offered with a large coffee cup as a chalice. I suppose I am a romantic too, since I loved the Arthur legend as a child and reverenced the Holy Grail and the search for it. I feel with Newman that my faith is founded on a creed, as Reverend Louis Bouyer wrote of Newman in that magnificent biography of his.

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. And of things visible and invisible, and in his Only Son Jesus Christ, our Lord.”

I believe too that when the priest offers Mass at the altar, and says the solemn words, “This is my body, this is my blood,” that the bread and the wine truly become the Body and Blood of Christ, Son of God, one of the Three Divine Persons. I believe in a personal God. I believe in Jesus Christ, true God and true man. And intimate, oh how most closely intimate we may desire to be. I believe we must render most reverent homage to him who created us and stilled the sea and told the winds to be calm, and multiplied the loaves and the fishes. He is transcendent and he is immanent. He is closer than the air we breathe and just as vital to us. I speak impetuously, from my heart, and if I err theologically in my expression, I beg forgiveness.

She may have worried about impetuousness, but she sure steers us in the right direction.