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There is nothing to show it, perhaps.
There are no halos glowing around their heads -
at least none that human eyes can see.
It is not likely that I shall be vouchsafed
the vision of Elizabeth of Hungary,
who put the leper in her bed and later,
going to tend him, saw no longer
the leper's stricken face, but
the face of Christ.
The part of a Peter Claver,
who gave a stricken Black man his bed
and slept on the floor at his side,
is more likely ours.
For Peter Claver never saw
anything with his bodily eyes except the
exhausted faces of the Blacks;
he had only faith
in Christ's own words that these people
were Christ.
And when on one occasion the Blacks
he had induced to help him ran from the room,
panic-stricken before the disgusting sight
of some sickness, he was astonished.
"You mustn't go, " he said, and
you can still hear his surprise that
anyone could forget such a truth:
"You mustn't leave him -
it is Christ."
It would be foolish to pretend that it
is always easy to remember this.
If everyone were holy and handsome,
with alter Christus 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, now when he is disguised
under every type of humanity
that treads the earth.
Dorothy Day 1897-1980
Journalist, Social Activist
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