Recognizing Christ in everybody, by Dorothy Day

When you love people, you see all the good in them, all the Christ in them. God sees Christ, his Son, in us, and loves us. And so we should see Christ in others, and nothing else, and love them. There can never be enough of it. There can never be enough thinking about it. Saint John of the Cross said that where there was no love, put love and you would take out love. The principle certainly works ...

And this is not easy. Everyone will try to kill that love in you, even your nearest and dearest; at least they will try to prune it. "Don't you know this, that, and the other thing about this person? He or she did this. If you do not want to hear it, you must hear. It is for your good to hear it. It is my duty to tell you, and it is your duty to take recognition of it. You must stop loving, modify your loving, show your disapproval. You cannot possibly love -- if you pretend you do, you are a hypocrite, and the truth is not in you. You are contributing to the delinquency of that person by your sentimental blindness. It is such people as you who would add to the sum of confusion, and wickedness, and soft appeasement, and compromise, and the policy of expediency in this world. You are to blame for communism, for industrial capitalism, and finally for hell on earth."

The antagonism often rises to a crescendo of vituperation, an intensification of the opposition on all sides. You are quite borne down by it. And the only Christian answer is love, to the very end, to the laying down of your life.
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