Peter Maurin was born in 1877 in a small village in southern France, the eldest of twenty-two children in a peasant farming family. He was educated by the Christian Brothers, joined a Catholic youth movement called Le Sillon in his early twenties, and spent years wrestling with what it meant to live out the Gospel in the modern world.>He never settled into a comfortable life. He worked as a laborer, a farmer, a teacher, and spent time as a wandering scholar, reading voraciously and thinking deeply about the relationship between the Church, society, and the dignity of the human person. He eventually made his way to the United States, where he continued working manual jobs while developing the ideas that would define the rest of his life.>In 1932 he walked into the life of a young journalist and convert named Dorothy Day and changed everything.

Originally published in Catholic Manhood. Read original article