A Couple of Things

A follow-up on yesterday--C. S. Lewis on the Hidden Christ:

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations....There are no ordinary people....And our charity must be a real an costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat--the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

 And from Teresa of Avila:

[The soul] must find its consolation in trials, undergone for the sake of Him who lived a life of trials; and these it must endure, remaining calm in times of dryness, though it may grieve at having to suffer them. But they should not cause the disquietude and distress that are felt by some who, if they are not always working with their intellect and stimulating feelings of devotion, think that all is lost, as if their efforts merited some great blessing....we should not worry our selves to death even if we cannot think a single good thought. We are unprofitable servants. So what do we suppose we can do?

But it is Our Lord's will that we shall know this, and be like the little donkeys that work the water-wheel I have mentioned. Though their eyes are blinkered and they have no idea what they are doing, they water more than the gardener can with all his efforts. 

AMDG