Saints alive

For the month of November, the W2W Ministry celebrated the communion of saints by studying the lives of three modern-day saints: Dorothy Day, Edith Stein and Satako Kitahara. What struck me most about these three women who came from very different circumstances and diverse backgrounds was the way they lived out their faith, the fiat of Mother Mary, in their lives: "Be it done unto me according to Thy will". These women inspire strength and are role models for young women, and men, the world over.

Dorothy Day was a social activist who was born in Brooklyn in 1897 and championed the rights of women and workers in the early 1900s. A successful writer, Day founded the Catholic Worker movement that addressed the social issues of the homeless, the marginalized and the disenfranchised; setting up houses that welcomed those in need of a meal and a place to sleep. She worked tirelessly for civil rights and peace well into her 70s and was last jailed at age 75 for protesting. Day died penniless for everything she made went towards, in her own words, "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable".

Edith Stein was an intellectual, born a Jew, in Breslau in 1891. In her search for the truth, she realized the importance of faith in God which culminated in her conversion to Catholicism, a move influenced by her reflections on the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. A well respected lecturer and author in academic circles, she entered the Carmelite convent in Cologne in her 40s. There she continued to write and translate many great spiritual works. Dr. Stein lived the way of the cross and went to her death in the Auschwitz gas chambers, together with her sister Rose, in 1942. "Whatever happens, I am prepared for everything. Jesus is also here with us."

Satoko Kitahara was born into a wealthy Japanese family in 1929. While visiting a friend in Yokohama in 1948, she entered a church and felt drawn to the love of Christ through the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes she saw there. She became a Catholic and through a Franciscan brother, was introduced to the community of bataya (ragpickers) who lived in Ants Town, a settlement of previously homeless people. Kitahara foreswore her life of comfort and lived among this community, “There was only one way to help those ragpicker children: become a ragpicker like them!" She developed tuberculosis and died at the age of 29 in Ants Town.