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.
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 cone in contact with.
It is not a duty to help Christ, it is a privilege.
Dorothy Day
“Room for Christ” (edited)
Dorothy Day: Selected Writings; By Little and by Little

Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes,
And the heart consumes itself, if it would live,
Where little children age before their time,
And life wears down the edges of the mind,
Where the old man sits with mind grown cold,
While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,
Where fear companions each day’s life,
And Perfect Love seems long delayed.
CHRISTMAS IS WAITING TO BE BORN:
In you, in me, in all mankind.
Howard Thurman
“Christmas is Waiting to Be Born”
The Mood of Christmas & Other Celebrations

Life is Advent; life is recognizing the coming of the Lord.
In Bolivia the Advent symbols are different from those I am accustomed to. In the past, Advent always meant to me the shortening of days, the approach of winter, and the time in which nature became darker and colder until the day of light. But now I have to learn to wait for the coming of the lord while spring becomes summer and the light increases day by day. Now Advent means the coming of hot days with their fertile showers. Now Advent is the time during which schools are closed and children play of the streets. Now Advent means a time of blossoming trees and first fruits. And so the symbols of Easter become symbols of Christmas. Maybe my first Advent in the southern part of our planet will reveal to me new things about the mystery of God’s becoming flesh among us. Until now, nature has only told me half of the story of God’s incarnation; now the other half can be told.
But I have to listen, quietly, patiently, and with inner expectation. Nature can only tell me its other half of the story when I am ready to hear it, when my heart is not so full of false images and unnecessary preoccupations that there is no place left to receive the good news I have not yet heard.
Henri Nouwen
¡Gracias! A Latin American Journal (p. 57)