It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room
to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too
late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts.

But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that He speaks, with the
eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes;
with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that He
gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that He walks, and with the
heart of anyone in need that He longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to
anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ…

It would be foolish to pretend that it is always easy to remember this.  If
everyone were holy and handsome, with “alter Christus” (“another Christ”)
shining in neon lighting from them, it would be easy to see Christ in everyone.
If Mary had appeared in Bethlehem clothed, as St. John says, with the sun,
a crown of twelve stars on her head, and the moon under her feet,
then people would have fought to make room for her.  But that was not God’s way for her,
nor is it Christ’s way for Himself.

In Christ’s human life,  there were always a few who made up for the neglect of
the crowd. The shepherds did it; their hurrying to the crib atoned for the
people who would flee from Christ. The wise men did it; their journey across
the world made up for those who refused to stir one hand’s breadth from the
routine of their lives to go to Christ. Even the gifts the wise men brought have
in themselves an obscure recompense and atonement for what would follow
later in this Child’s life. For they brought gold, the king’s emblem, to make up
for the crown of thorns that He would wear; they offered incense, the symbol
of praise, to make up for the mockery and the spitting; they gave Him myrrh,
to heal and soothe, and He was wounded from head to foot….

We can do it too, exactly as they did. We are not born too late. We do it by
seeing Christ and serving Christ in friends and strangers, in everyone we
come in contact with…. For a total Christian, the goad of duty is not needed …
to perform this or that good deed. It is not a duty to help Christ, it is a privilege.

The words of Dorothy Day