Dear Members of the Providence College Community:

I would like to wish all of our Jewish brothers and sisters a Happy Hanukkah. May this festival of hope and light be a time of grace for you and your families.

For those of us who celebrate Christmas, I believe that in these trying times we have something to learn from Dorothy Day.  There is a beautiful stained-glass window in St. Dominic Chapel depicting Dorothy Day serving food to the poor. While Dorothy Day is not a canonized saint--indeed, she once said "Don't call me a saint--I do not want to be dismissed that easily"--her witness to Christ was truly extraordinary and eloquent. In December of 1945, when times were likewise difficult, she wrote a Christmas article in The Catholic Worker called "Room for Christ."  I would like to share some thoughts with you inspired by that article.

The nativity story tells us that Christ was born homeless, probably in a cave.  During his period of public ministry, he had no home.  He died homeless and was laid in someone else's tomb.  The all-powerful God came among us in vulnerability and need.  He depended on someone else to give him a room and hospitality.  Many people did not let Christ in.  But some did: most notably, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.

We might wonder what our response would have been and think about it as a counterfactual hypothetical:  If I had been there, what would I have done?  But Dorothy Day reminds us that it is not a counterfactual hypothetical:

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.

Recall Christ's famous words in Matthew's gospel: "anything you did for one of my brothers or sisters, however humble, you did for me."  One of the deepest consequences of the Incarnation of the homeless and vulnerable one is His identification with the neediest.  It is an astonishing and challenging claim.
 
Christ is in our midst during this difficult Christmas season, asking for room in our hearts.   He speaks to us through the poor, the homeless, the sick, and the needy. Dorothy Day reminds us that rather than thinking of this as a burden, we should see it as a privilege:

For a total Christian, the goad of duty is not needed-always prodding one to perform this or that good deed. It is not a duty to help Christ, it is a privilege. . . Not because it might be Christ who stays with us, comes to see us, takes up our time.  Not because these people remind us of Christ . . . but because they are Christ, asking us to find room for Him, exactly as He did at the first Christmas.

My hope and prayer for all of us is that we find room for Christ this Christmas in our generosity to those in need.  We have not been born too late. 

May you and your families have a blessed Christmas.

Rev. Brian J. Shanley, O.P.
President