The Long Loneliness

“I could worship, adore, praise and thank [God] in the company of others. It is difficult to do that without a ritual, without a body with which to love and move, love and praise. I found faith. I became a member of the Mystical Body of Christ.”

Here, Day discusses her conversion to Catholicism. Her attraction to the religion extends from the communal aspect of praying, and the ideas of ritual and love. This membership in the group allows one to also receive that love in return. 

“This was one of those occasions when my small heart was enlarged and I could feel it swelling in love and gratitude to such a good God, for a friend like Mary, for conversation such as ours; I was filled with a natural striving, a thrilling recognition of the possibilities of spiritual adventure.”

Day experienced one of her first affinities with religion when her friend, Mary, told her about the saints. Prior, Day hadn’t even known that saints existed. She was struck with a sense of thankfulness and joy for her friend, as well as God and the world, and the possibilities that spirituality presented. She wanted to be like a saint and looked to pray and accomplish as many altruistic acts as she could. 

“‘Only after a hard bitter struggle with sin and only after we have overcome it, do we experience blessed joy and peace.’”

When Day was 15, she wrote a letter to a friend from school about what she felt was the conflict between the desires of the human flesh and the human soul and spirit. The letter goes into her restlessness and her experience of physical sensations that she wants to fade away so that she can solely experience spiritual feelings. She points out that sin is something that humans must battle and surmount in order to find peace, or even some sort of self-actualization that allows one to be more Christlike.