Becoming Other Christs--Very Slowly

I originally posted this last February, but somebody looked at this page today, so I looked at it see what it was, and it was so much what I needed to hear, that I thought I'd post it again in case anyone else is in my sorry state.

Because he has made us "other Christs," because his life continues in each one of us, there is nothing that any one of us can suffer which is not the passion he suffered. Our redemption, although it was achieved completely by our Lord, does, by a special loving mercy of his, go on in us. It is one unbroken act which goes on in the mystical body of Christ on earth, which we are.

These things are mysterious, we can't understand them with our brains, but now everyone is going to learn to understand them in sorrow, in courage, and in sacrifice. Now the time has come for each of us to prove our Christhood.

Not one of us is alone. All are one in Christ, and we can be strong in the realization that we are together and that we share in all and every grace of one another. We are one, not only with each other, but with all the Church, the saints in heaven, the faithful on earth and the souls in purgatory, and we have, all of us, the strength of our adored King, Christ, as our sword: his strength and his meekness, his love and his forgiveness.

This War is the Passion, Carryl Houselander

In this passage Caryll Houselander is writing about World War II. The English people to whom she writes are undergoing trials, both physical and spiritual, that are more devastating than most of us have ever had to endure. I don't want to sound like I'm trivializing their experience, but even though our day-to-day lives are peaceful in comparison, every day is a little war, and if we are making the slightest effort every day in Lent is a bigger little war. The enemy of our souls knows that this is a time when grace abounds, and when we can make great spiritual progress, and he is determined to keep that from happening. Sometimes it reminds of the barrage of opposition that C. S. Lewis describes in his fictional journey to Elwin Ransom's house in Perelandra.

So, I wrote this say that the next time you are experiencing little Lenten sufferings or you are tempted--although sometimes it doesn't even seem a temptation, but more like an excuse--to do that which you have committed yourself not to do during Lent, or to stay home when you had planned to go to stations, or when you pass the restaurant that smells so enticingly of barbeque on your way home on Friday, just remember. "Not one of us is alone,"  and that this is the acceptable time to "prove our Christhood."  We're all there together and I am praying for you and, the whole communion of saints is praying for you, and oh please, pray for me because I am having a heck of a time.

AMDG