Adelaide de Bethune, Catholic Worker artist, who died 4/1 2002, owed her professional name to a typo. She had sent a selection of her drawings to the CW, signing her name A. de Bethune. When it appeared as Ade she liked the sound and kept it. Dorothy Day embraced her work.
Conversation
Dorothy asked her to draw pictures of the saints. She showed saints engaged in the chores and business of daily life, as well works of mercy. DD: "To Ade the holy man was the whole man, the man of integrity, who not only tried to change the world but to live in it as it was."
Ade: "When I am hungry and eat a good meal for the glory of God, it's a work of mercy...all the more so when I cook a square meal for my family and afterward sweep the kitchen. It is all the more a work of mercy when I do it for a stranger; still more when I do it for my enemy."
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Working until the day she died on the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, Ade was buried in a coffin she had designed for herself and kept always in her bedroom. "The Saints are Christ...Whether in death or in work theirs is the Spirit of Christ. Their fruits are love, peace, joy."
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