Surrender

"There was an old man of eighty-four who used to leave Welfare Island to go on a drunk over on the Bowery every now and then, and we would find him stretched out on the doorsteps in the morning as we went to Mass. And I used to think indignantly, "Why don’t they take better care of him?" meaning his family, or the city, or anybody else but us. After all, we were filled up, packed to the doors. There is always this instinct for anger, that something isn't done by some body. And yet never before has so much been done by State, city, welfare agencies, and they never take into consideration man’s great and terrible and boundless-to-sinfulness-desire for freedom. It is only love that can penetrate to the roots of the problem and lead men to surrender that freedom to God."

"On Pilgrimage - April 1955"
By Dorothy Day
The Catholic Worker, April 1955, 2, 7.