My guest is Christ (Dorothy Day)

    And the loveliest of all relationships in Christ’s life, after His relationship with his Mother, is His friendship with Martha, Mary and Lazarus and the continual hospitality He found with them – for there was always a bed for Him there, always a welcome, always a meal. It is a staggering thought that there were once two sisters and a brother whom Jesus looked on almost as His family and where He found a second home, where Martha got on with her work, bustling round in her house-proud way, and Mary simply sat in silence with Him. 

    If we hadn’t got Christ’s own words for it, it would seem raving lunacy to believe that if I offer a bed and food and hospitality for Christmas–or any other time, for that matter–to some man, woman or child, I am replaying the part of Lazarus or Martha or Mary and that my guest is Christ. There is nothing to show it, perhaps. There are no haloes already glowing round their heads – at least none that human eyes can see. […] [Yet Christ is] disguised under every type of humanity that treads the earth. 

    To see how far one realizes this, it is a good thing to ask honestly what you would do, or have done, when a beggar asked at your house for food. Would you –or did you– give it on an old cracked plate, thinking that was good enough? Do you think that Martha and Mary thought that the old and chipped dish was good for their guest? 

    In Christ’s human life there were always a few who made up for the neglect of the crowd. […] 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. While almost no one is unable to give some hospitality or help to others, those for whom it is really impossible are not debarred from giving room to Christ, because, to take the simplest of examples, in those they live with or work with is Christ disguised. All our life is bound up with other people; for almost all of us happiness and unhappiness are conditioned by our relationship with other people. What a simplification of life it would be if we forced ourselves to see that everywhere we go is Christ, wearing out socks we have to darn, eating the food we have to cook, laughing with us, silent with us, sleeping with us. 

--Dorothy Day

Image source 1: Jesus, Martha, Mary & Lazarus, icon,   https://twitter.com/e11holy/status/1288418939345809408 
Image source 2:  Georg Friedrich Stettner, Christ in the Home of Martha (17th c.), https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Jesus_at_the_home_of_Martha_and_Mary#/google_vignette (This page also has some interesting insights into the story of Martha and Mary!)
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