Analysis Of Dorothy Day's Room For Christ

In Dorothy Day’s article, Room for Christ, she presents making room for Christ as always seeking ways to repay Christ through good deeds committed in the present. These good deeds are deeds that do not necessarily benefit ourselves, but the lives of the people around us. It is the people who suffer in our time that are now Christ. How we act upon these suffering people, is how we act upon Christ. In Room for Christ, Dorothy says, “He made heaven hinge on the way we act towards Him in his disguise of commonplace, frail and ordinary human beings” (3). Dorothy Day does not mean that we need to lavish the poor with riches in order to please God. She is saying that we can give them what we have with as much as we can and that will be enough in

The ideal action we would take as God’s people would be to help those in need, but like the Good Samaritan parable in the Bible, many would not help those in need. It is not always easy to see Christ in the people around us because we are human and we are not perfect. Dorothy explains this statement when she says, “It would be foolish to pretend that it is easy always to remember this” (Room for Christ 2). We need to make room in our hearts for Christ, and also the people that presented to us as Christ. Our readings from Luke’s Gospel portray those in poverty as the people who will inherit the earth and be by Christ’s side in the kingdom of heaven. In the Gospel of Luke, it states, “Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours” (6:20). Our readings from scripture paint a picture that suggests that those who are suffering in the world during their lifetime, will be

In her opinion, we show our love for God by caring for those that are our brothers, or our fellow creatures of God. Our actions toward our brothers can bring us closer to our salvation, but can also have the reverse effect. Taking a “bad” job that undermines the poor and takes advantage of them will bring you further from the kingdom of God. We can also harm our fellow brethren, and become further from God’s kingdom by being passive consumers of products made by people in poverty conditions. Dorothy states in Poverty and Pacifism, “It also means non-participation in those comforts and luxuries which have been manufactured by the exploitation of others. While our brothers suffer, we must compassionate them, suffer with them” (1). Again, we do not always remember the consequences of our everyday actions because we are not perfect beings. If we were, we would be on the same level as