Reed of God ~ The Lost Child

The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, stained glass by Mary Lowndes,
after William Holman Hunt

When my youngest daughter was a child, she used to ask me why The Finding in the Temple was a mystery. I never had a very good answer to that question. Then the first page of this chapter made it clear to me. Why was it that Jesus let his mother think that He was lost?

Why did Christ treat Our Lady in this way?

Well, that is a mystery indeed.

We all lose our children in some way. As they grow up we lose those lovely, cuddly babies who teach us things about love and fear that we never understood before. We lose those hysterically funny three year olds, masters of comedy and philosophy both. We lose those wonder-filled early school aged children. We lose them for a time, or maybe for the rest of our lives, when some tragedy, physical or emotional, separates us. And, Miss Houselander explains, Mary suffers the loss of her son so that she can share this with us. She, the perfect model of her Son, undergoes a purification she does not need.

But during her whole life she accepted everything which in our case is a necessary purification but in her case was the proof that she loved us with Christ's love.

And she did not suffer only the loss of a child, she suffered the loss of God, and as Miss Houselander says:

Everyone experiences this loss of the Divine Child. Everyone knows it in different ways, and in different degrees.

Mary experienced this not only when Jesus was lost at the age of twelve, but at times throughout her life when He was traveling and preaching and she did not know where He was. She suffered His loss at the foot of the cross, and yet again when He ascended into Heaven. And so, when He seems so very far away from us, we know that she has been there before us. As she trusted Him completely in this darkness, she can teach us to trust Him likewise.

This is going to be the last post in this series this year. I may finish up the book at some other time, maybe in Lent. I'm sure next week will be too busy for me to write much and probably too busy for anyone else to read.

All of the posts in this series can be found by clicking HERE.
Unfortunately they are in reverse order, so you have to scroll down to get to the beginning.

AMDG

Reed of God ~ Et Verbum Caro Factum Est

Seven Sacraments, Rogier van der Weyden

In this chapter Ms. Houselander begins by talking about one of my favorite subjects, the unity of body and soul. She writes:

It seems very difficult for people to realize that the Word is made flesh. first of all, the flesh is a stumbling block. There are two schools of thought: one thinks (or feels) that the flesh is wholly bad' the other, that it is absolutely good.

After giving examples of the two schools, she writes:

The first reason why there is a flaw in all the several attitudes to "the flesh" which I have mentioned is that so many people think of soul and body as two separate things necessarily in conflict. 

And then after discussing how it is true that in the battle between good and evil, the flesh has a proclivity to side with evil, she says:

That the Word was made flesh does mean, however, that the word became human, and a human being is a unity of soul and body in which the Spirit abides and which He wants to change from the weak thing it is to the glorious thing which he intended it to be from the beginning of creation. 

After this there is a discussion of the culmination of this unity in the body of the Lord and in sacrament and Sacrament: in the Eucharist  and in Marriage in particular. As in the passage about the Fugue in the last chapter, it would be wonderful to listen to this as a meditation, especially the passage about marriage.

As I was thinking about writing this post, I began to realize something about Sacraments. We know from the catechism that a Sacrament is "an outward sign, instituted by Christ to give grace," but it is also, I think the perfect unity between the material and the spiritual--between body and soul. They are in some way a pledge of the day when we will no longer need, but in this way will be sacraments.

Thanks to my friend, Paul, for reminding me of the above picture.

All of the posts in this series can be found by clicking HERE.
Unfortunately they are in reverse order, so you have to scroll down to get to the beginning.

AMDG

Reed of God ~ Fugue

I have been trying to write something for several days, but just have not been able to find the time, and in a little over an hour, I'm going to leave to spend the weekend in a hermitage, so I'm going to keep this brief. I'm also pretty sure that most of y'all don't have much time either.

 This section begins with a lovely meditation on the life of Christ imagined as a musical composition. It's much better just read or heard than talked about though, so I'm not going to talk about it, but just recommend that if you haven't read it, you find a quiet place and sit down and do so. Or better yet, I have been meaning to mention that Reed of God is available as an audio book and it's well worth listening to, especially for meditative sections like this one.

The main passage that I wanted to write about was this one.

Experience has taught us that war simplifies life. Every individual would experience some equivalent of the Passion even if there were no war; but war makes it visible and even simple, and shows us how the Passion of Christ can be each one's individual secret and at the same time something shared by the whole world.

It is a moment in which the world needs great draughts of supernatural life, needs the Christ-life to be poured into it, as truly and as urgently as a wounded soldier drained of his blood needs a blood transfusion.

In many souls, for this very reason, Christ will say: "It was for this hour that I came into this world."

Although we are not living in the middle of the kind of war that Caryll Houselander was enduring in the 1940s in England, we are certainly surrounded by wars and the threat of violence. And, of course, there is a great ideological war being waged against our culture and our faith, and we, just as much as people in during WWII, need those "great draughts of supernatural life."

It is the last sentence that strikes me though. Just as Christ said that he came into the world for this hour, he would say to us that we--each one of us--came into the world for this hour--December of 2015.

Whether you are a young mother, a teacher, an electrician, a retired person--whoever and wherever you are--you are here to give birth to Christ in the world, and as Miss Houselander says, you can only do this by unity with the Holy Spirit. That is why it is so important to find some kind of space in our days to create that emptiness in our souls.

Yesterday's gospel was from Matthew 11, the chapter that says, "...the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force." That is such an enigmatic passage, but it is increasingly clear to me that unless we confront the busyness of our lives with violence, we will never be able to reclaim even a moment's silence. I know that it is much easier for me than for many of you, especially those of you who have small children. I'm pretty sure that if, when my children were young, someone who had just told me they were going to spend the next to last weekend before Christmas in a hermitage had told me I needed to find a quiet space in my day, I would have been either terribly amused or terribly angry, but unexpected quiet moments can open up even in the busiest lives, and even a small victory here can make a huge difference.

All of the posts in this series can be found by clicking HERE.
Unfortunately they are in reverse order, so you have to scroll down to get to the beginning.

AMDG

Reed of God ~ Advent

Advent is the season of the seed; Christ loved this symbol of the seed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

The Advent, the seed of the world's life, was hidden in Our Lady.Like the wheat seed in the earth, the seed of the Bread of Life was in her.Like the golden harvest in the darkness of the earth, the Glory of God was shrined in her darkness.Advent is the season of the secret, the secret of the growth of Christ, of Divine Love growing in silence.It is the season of humility, silence, and growth.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She had nothing to give Him but herself.He asked for nothing else.She gave Him Herself.

And so to Caryll Houselander it is all this simple. We surrender ourselves to Christ and He plants the seed of Himself within us. And our part is likewise simple. We go about doing the duties of our daily life and he grows silently within us.

Sometimes we are so impatient. We try to force His growth, but like that apple pie she mentions, if you take it out of the oven too soon, you don't have an apple pie.

I can remember that when I was in my 20s and 30s, and maybe even my 40s, I tried so hard. I wanted so much to be super-holy, but it wasn't working very well, and I doubt if my motives were very good anyway. People tried to tell me that it took time, that He slowly change me, but I couldn't really understand how this could be so.

And now in my 60s, I can see how all the time while nothing seemed to be happening, so many of the
prayers that I prayed--usually by rote and without much attention--were being answered. While I was working so hard trying to change A, and mostly failing, He was forming B, C, & D in my soul. I really didn't have much to do with it at all. I just realized once day, "Oh, I'm not scared of that any more," or "I've really gotten to love doing this." I think he must give us A to play with so we won't get in the way while He's working on B, C, & D like we give a small child a toy to distract him from the needle that the doctor is about to stick in his leg.

If we are going to make an apple pie, we have to know all the ingredients and perform every step of the preparation in the right way if we want the pie to turn out right. But even the most educated scientist in the world could not tell us all the tiny minutiae that go into forming a baby in the mother's womb. True, we try to eat right, and live healthily so that the baby will be well, but in truth, the process is a mystery. And the growth of Christ within us is an even greater mystery.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There is much more in this section, but if I try to write about it, I won't be able to post tonight. If there's anything else you see there that you would like to mention, please do.

All of the posts in this series can be found by clicking HERE.
Unfortunately they are in reverse order, so you have to scroll down to get to the beginning.

AMDG

Reed of God ~ Fiat

Fra Filippo Lippi, Annunciation

The surrender that is asked of us includes complete and absolute trust; it must be like Our Lady's surrender, without condition and without reservation.

In this section Caryll Houselander refers repeatedly to Mary as a child, and says she could not have been more than 14. I have no idea whether or not that is an accurate statement, or whether or not she would have been thought a child in that time and place, but sinless as she was, she certainly had the mind and heart of a child. She was, indeed, as she was when she had, "...just come from God's hand." The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that only someone very young could have responded to Gabriel as she did. It had to be someone who had never been betrayed or seen real corruption who could be brave enough to offer that total surrender.

"Be it done unto me according to thy word" seems a very bold prayer indeed in view of the words we know God has uttered. It would be easier to sacrifice some big thing to God, to impose some hard rule upon ourselves, than to say, "Do what you like with me."

 At the heart of this surrender is trust, trust in the only One whom we have any reason to trust. And yet, in practice Our Lord is far down on the list of those or those things in which we place our trust. In our everyday lives we trust in a hundred different things: our car, elevators (ugh), our intellect, our friends, too many to enumerate, all of which may fail us without notice. And then, of course, Miss Houselander mentions money. Who of us does that think that just a bit more money could make us more secure?

Money means the safest, swiftest travelling, the speediest spoken or written word (Could she even have imagined how swifly our words travel now?), the warmest clothing, the best medical aid.

Small wonder is it that gradually, without know it, we have come to trust more in money than in God.

From his earliest childhood the modern man is brought up to value money above all else and even to value himself by his capacity for getting it.

It is hardly surprising, when we think of all that money has come to mean to men, that if the breadwinner suddenly changes his mind and sets some other thing higher, he is thought to be a traitor in his own home.

And yet, every day now we see images of people, who were formerly secure in comfortable lives and with enough money, trudging in long, exhausted lines of refugees, leaving behind all the things they trusted in and on their way to who knows where?

What does it take for us to make that great leap of faith into the heart of Him who is the only safe refuge? It's understandable, of course, when we look at the lives of those who have made that leap. From the outside it looks pretty terrifying.

"Be it done unto me according to thy word" surrenders yourself and all that is dear to you to God, and the trust which it implies does not mean trusting God to look after you and yours, to keep you and them in health and prosperity and honor.

It means much more, it means trusting that whatever God does with you and with yours is the act of an infinitely loving Father. 

It seems impossible to choose this kind of vulnerability, and yet, it is only on the other side of that leap that we can be really peaceful, that we can see that every loss is a gift and every pain is the coin of the realm, that we can look into the future without fear.

All of the posts in this series can be found by clicking HERE.
Unfortunately they are in reverse order, so you have to scroll down to get to the beginning.

AMDG

P.S. I know you're out there. I would love to hear from you.

The Reed of God ~ Emptiness

As I was reading this morning in preparation for writing this post, I remembered why it's difficult to write about Caryll Houselander's work. I see a passage that I want to quote, and then I can't figure out where to stop. It's impossible because almost every paragraph is quotable. It's also rather difficult to comment on what she says because she says everything so well, there's not a lot left to say--but we will do our best.

I also figured out that there is no way I can cover all three sections of Part I in one post, so I'm going to write on Emptiness  today, and then on Fiat Tuesday, and Advent Friday. For the most part I'm going to just share a few passages that struck me, comment briefly, and then leave the floor open for any comments on these or other passages.

This first series of quotes is very long, but I think it describes very well what we are about in this discussion.

That virginal quality which, for want of a better word, I call emptiness is the beginning of this contemplation.

It is not a formless emptiness, a void without meaning; on the contrary it has a shape, a form given to it by the purpose for which it is intended

. . . 

Emptiness is a very common complaint in our days, not the purposeful emptiness of the virginal heart and mind but a void, meaningless, unhappy condition.

Strangely enough, those who complain the loudest of the emptiness of their lives are usually people whose lives are overcrowded, filled with trivial details, plans, desires, ambitions, unsatisfied cravings for passing pleasures, doubts, anxieties and fears; and these sometimes further overlaid with exhausting pleasures which are an attempt, and always a futile attempt, to forget how pointless such people's lives are.

. . .

The question most people will ask is: "Can someone whose life is cluttered up with trivial things get back to this virginal emptiness.

Of course he can; if a bird's nest has been filled with broken glass and rubbish, it can be emptied.

...

At the beginning it will be necessary for each individual to discard deliberately all the trifling unnecessary things in  his life, all the hard blocks and congestion; not necessarily to discard all his interests for ever, but at least once to stop still, and having prayed for courage, to visualise (sic) himself without all the extras, escapes, and interests other than Love in his life: to see ourselves as if we had just come from God's hand and had gathered nothing to ourselves yet, to discover just what shape is the virginal emptiness of our own being, and of what material we are made. 

 I think we are all pretty familiar at least in some way with practicing this emptying out process in Lent, but it's only been in the last several years that I've attempted it in Advent. It is so much harder in Advent because we are surrounded by people we love who have expectations in which we play a part. In fact, that is probably the biggest obstacle to reaching this virginal emptiness. I'm at a stage in my life where I have a fair amount of control over this, but I know that some of the people who have told me they were interested in this discussion still have young children, and that finding even a few minutes a day will be difficult, so I suggest we all pray for one another to be able find as much time as we can.

That last paragraph pretty well delineates our task. The word escape really jumps out at me. As much as I crave silence and reflection, I still paradoxically find myself turning to things: movies, the internet, etc., that keep me away from that silence. I'm intrigued by this notion of seeing myself as if I had just come from God's hand. I'm not even sure how you can do this, but I want to try to just sit with that a while.

So, any thoughts or comments?

Just a bit of housekeeping--it is possible to reply to a specific comment instead of just adding your comment to the end of the list; HOWEVER, I would advise that you do not do this. I have found that this becomes very confusing and that people miss comments because they are tucked away under the original comment. If you want to reply specifically to something, just reference it in some way--by addresses the person by name or quoting part of the original.

All of the posts in this series can be found by clicking HERE.
Unfortunately they are in reverse order, so you have to scroll down to get to the beginning.

AMDG

The Reed of God ~ Reading for Week I

As a clear and untilled space thou madest the divine ear of corn to burst forth; hail, thou living table having space for the Bread of Life; hail, perennial Fountain of living water.                                                                           The Akathist Hymn

The picture above shows the flyleaf of my copy of The Reed of God which I bought at a used book sale years ago. I like it because the previous owner's name is so biblical. Maybe his middle name is Hadadrimmon. I like that name because it's in one of my favorite passages from the Old Testament, Zechariah 12:11, "On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo." I keep meaning to look for ways to use that phrase. I don't know if you can see the address on that label at the top of the page, but if you can, don't use it. I haven't lived there in fourteen years.

So now, down to business. This week we will discuss Part One of The Reed of God (Emptiness, Fiat, Advent). I will write some kind of introduction on Sunday, and then we can discuss that section through the week. This is NOT, however, a cut and dried assignment. If that's too much for you to read in a week, don't let that deter you from joining in. Read what you can. Participate when you can. The last thing I want is for anyone to think this is overwhelming. The idea is to create a peaceful space in the havoc, not to increase the havoc. I probably won't even finish that much before I write the introduction, although I'm listening to the book on Audible while I'm working or driving, so maybe I will. You, however, don't need to read it all before Sunday, just 6 or 7 short pages a day (in my edition) beginning Sunday.

If you have looked through the book you will recognize the above quote from the flyleaf before Part I. If you are interested, you can read more about the Akathist Hymn here.

See you Sunday! I'm really looking forward to this.

AMDG

The Reed of God ~ Advent Book Discussion

In December of 2012, the first Advent of this blog, I wrote this post about Caryll Houselander's The Reed of God. While I was not very successful in writing about it that year, I have read some part of the book every Advent since, and this year, I thought I would try something different. As you can tell from the title of the post, I hope to have a discussion of the book during Advent. I'll post something every Sunday, and we can discuss it during the week. I'll divide the book into four sections and write a post about that week's section on Sunday and we can discuss it during the week.

I know this is a bit early, but I wanted to give everyone that was interested time to get the book if they don't already have it. I'm hoping it will provide a quiet little moment of reflection in all the craziness of the month. Some of my friends in my book club have said they would be interested, so I'm hoping it will work. Any amount of participation will be fine.

AMDG

The Fourteenth Station~Jesus is Laid in the Tomb~Waiting

In every life of every Christian there are countless resurrections--just as there are always many times when every Christian is buried with Christ.

In the soul of the sinner Christ dies many deaths and knows the glory of many resurrections.

In the souls that have served Him faithfully, too, there are long periods that seem like death, periods of dryness of spirit when all the spiritual things that once interested them have become insufferably tedious and boring, when it is very difficult, even sometimes impossible, to say a prayer . . . .

One of these things [which the souls who follow Christ in His suffering will imitate] is lying in the tomb, bound and restricted in the burial bands. There come times in every life when the soul seems to be shut down, frostbound in the hard, ironbound winter of the spirit; times when it seems to be impossible to pray, impossible even to want to pray; when there seems to be only cold and darkness numbing the mind.

These indeed are the times when Christ is growing towards His flowering, towards His spring breaking in the soul--towards His ever-recurring resurrection in the world, towards His glorious resurrection in the hearts of men.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There seems to be nothing that we can do in these times to honour God, but by ourselves there is nothing that we can do at any time. In Christ we can do just what He did, remain quietly in the tomb, rest and be at peace, trusting God to awaken us in His own good time to a springtime of Christ, to a sudden quickening and flowering and new realization of Christ-life in us.

Caryll Houselander, The Way of the Cross

"Nothing we can do"--and one of the things that's almost impossible to do is to remember that Christ is, indeed, doing something in you during those times. It takes a long time come to the place where you are able to hold on to that hope. It's a mystery why we have to go through these times, but looking back I always find that they result in much more growth than all the times when things seem to be going well. Maybe when we are happy and content and feel like doing God's Will, we are so busy trying to do it that we get in His way. Maybe when we're desolate, we give Him room to work.

CH writes here of the end of this frozen experience coming quickly like Spring. And Spring does break out so quickly. You step outside and there are daffodils--and, over there, forsythia--and the redbud is blooming. I think that only once have I experienced the end of a period of desolation in that way. For me, it is always more like dawn on a cloudy day. I'm in the dark and there is no perceptible change, but then I realize it's lighter, and even then it takes a good while for the clouds to clear away and the sun come out. But, come out it does.

And am I happy when the sun comes out? Well yes, I'm grateful, and I enjoy it, but I never quite trust it. I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop. In some ways I'm more comfortable, not with the frozen, icebound winter, but with the kind of gray, rainy winter that we have around here. There's so much less scope for disappointment when I'm there. I know this is bad, and it's a lack of trust, but it's something that is very difficult for me to overcome.

However, I have noticed as I have been writing these meditations that joy seems to be sneaking up on me from every direction. When I was on my retreat, I went early to Mass because it said in the bulletin that they prayed the rosary before Mass. They said the Joyful Mysteries. What was that all about? And then there was that quote from St. Augustine, and a tape I listened to in the car on my trip home that said much the same thing. And when I sat down to write the meditation on the 12th Station, I had no idea that I was going to end up writing about joy. And when I sat down this morning, I didn't have any idea that I was going to end this series like this either. And I'm not too sure that if anyone else had been writing about joy during Lent, I might not have been irritated. But, you know, once Jesus was in that tomb, He wasn't just lying around waiting. He was doing this:

AMDG

Thirteenth Station--Jesus is Taken Down From the Cross~Motherhood

Mary remained silent, as so often before she had remained silent, in the crowd; but now Jesus shared her silence. Jesus and Mary alone were silent in the midst of chaos, when the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom and the graves were opened. They alone remained calm when those who a few moments ago had mocked at Christ, and those who had hammered the nails through His hands and feet, shouting and laughing to one another, were seized with dread and confusion of mind.

One of the soldiers came to pierce the heart of Christ with a spear, and as he drove it into His side blood and water flowed from it. Mary knew that that stream of blood was her own blood, emptied at last from his sacred veins, and she knew that that water that sprang like the spray of a fountain from His side was the mysterious breaking of the waters of birth. It was the birth of Christ in man, her son Christ who would indwell men until the end of time.

They took His body down from the cross and laid it in His Mother's arms, and she held it upon her heart; and in it, all those Christs to come to whom she was Mother now.

Caryll Houselander, The Way of the Cross

Who can imagine the grief that Mary must have felt when they placed her Son in her arms for the last time? On the other hand, this was the moment that she had been anticipating since Gabriel's visit, and now the worst was over. Perhaps along with her grief, she felt a certain peace when she heard Him say, "It is finished."

Her task, of course, was far from finished. Now, instead of being the mother of one perfect Son, she had a whole world full of sinful sons and daughters to tend to. How she must have loved John, and all those men that her Son had chosen, and how much they must have loved her. And how patient she must have had to be with all their faults and quirks and disagreements.

Mary was present at the birth of Jesus, and at the birth of the Church, and at the birth of every one of us. She has been our mother for our whole lives. Whenever our own mothers have failed us through tiredness or impatience, sinfulness or death, she has been there to help us even when we were unaware of her presence. Help of Christians, Refuge of Sinners, Seat of Wisdom, Mother of Good Counsel, she is all of this and more.

As in the case of many earthly mothers, sometimes her children run away. Whole denominations of her children have run away; some are even afraid of her. Still, I believe that she continues to work in their lives, quiet, unassuming, waiting for the day that they recognize her for who she is.

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom He loved, He said to His mother, "Woman, behold, your son." Then He said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. John 19:26-27

AMDG

The Twelfth Station--Jesus Dies on the Cross-Joy?

To His enemies this seems to be the hour of their triumph and Christ’s defeat, but in fact it is the supreme hour of His triumph. Now when He seems to be more helpless than He has ever been before, He is in fact more powerful. When He seems to be more limited, more restricted, His love is boundless, His reach across the world to the hearts of men in all ages is infinite.

But to those who look on, how different what appears to be happening seems to what is really happening. How certain it seems that Christ has been overcome, that His plan of love for the world has failed utterly, that He Himself is a failure, His “kingdom” a pitiful delusion.

Caryll Houselander, The Way of the Cross

I have often thought that when Judas kissed Jesus on the cheek all the devils in Hell must have been laughing in triumph. How much more bitter this must have made their hatred when they learned what had really happened. So often, we are like a color-blind person looking at one of those circles full of many different colored circles that you see at the optometrist’s office. If only he had the eyes to see, he would know there was a number in the circle.

There was a time about 25 years ago when I was going through terrible spiritual struggles, and in the midst of it all I noticed that this phrase kept turning up in the Liturgy of the Hours, “The wood of the cross has become the tree of life.” Whenever I read it, the pain in my heart seemed to ease a bit. Then, a friend sent me an Easter card. It was shaped in the form of a cross, white with little vines and flowers growing all over it. A couple of days later, another friend sent me a similar, but not identical card. Eventually, I worked my way through the difficulties, but I never forget that it’s the wood of the cross that becomes the tree of life.

Recently, my spiritual director asked me to classify the major events in my life by listing them under the different mysteries of the Rosary--sorrowful, joyful, glorious, luminous. It seemed like an easy thing to do, but as I wrote I found that it was more difficult than it appeared on the surface. Things that had been devastating at the time have turned out to be glorious and vice versa. My joys and my sorrows seem to be the same things.

I remember that when I was a child, I would hear prayers that talked about “mourning and weeping in this valley of tears” and wonder what the heck that was all about. When I was a teenager and older people would talk about life being hard, I didn’t want to hear it. I would push that knowledge away, and I have seen my own children do that. Now I can see that “the valley of tears” and “the valley of the shadow of death” are the same as the green pastures in which He makes us lie down. We may only be able to get a glimpse of that now, but in the end, I’m convinced that we will find it to have been true. I find myself in this last week of Lent in pretty much the same frame of mind that I was in Advent, waiting in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour.

The this morning’s Office of Readings St. Augustine says, “Brethren, let us then fearlessly acknowledge, and even openly proclaim, that Christ was crucified for us; let us confess it, not in fear but in joy, not in shame but in glory.”

Behold the wood of the cross on which hung the salvation of the world.

Come let us adore.

The Eleventh Station~Jesus is Nailed to the Cross~Forgiveness

To those who stood by it must indeed have seemed now that Christ was separated from other men. . . . That was how things seemed to be. But in reality, as Christ stretched out His beautiful craftsman's hands and composed His blameless feet on the hard wood of the cross to receive the nails, He was reaching out to countless men through all time: as He stretched His body on that great tree that was to flower with His life for ever, He gave Himself to be made one with all those who in every generation to come would willingly bind and fasten themselves irrevocably to the cross, for the love of God and the love of men.

For all through time for those who love Christ and who want to be one with Him, love and the cross would be inseparable; but because Christ willed that He should be nailed to the cross Himself in His human nature, love will always predominate and redeem the suffering of the cross.

Caryll Houselander, The Way of the Cross

I'm not sure whether or not I'm conflating these two events, but if they didn't happen at the same time, the second came fairly soon after the first.

About 35 years ago, I went to a day of renewal in another city. It was shortly after I had recommitted myself to following my Catholic faith, and I think it was the first time I had ever attended anything like this. I'm really not sure what was going on at the time this happened but probably the speaker was leading us in some kind of guided meditation. I had my eyes closed and as I was praying, it hit me very forcibly that Jesus had died, not just for my sins, but for the sins of everyone that had ever sinned against me, and that when I refused to forgive someone, I was holding back the forgiveness that He had died for--that I was trying to undo the work of Christ on the cross. I can't begin to explain the difference that this made in my life because at the time, I was very aware of ways in which other people had sinned against me, and I knew that I was going to have to forgive them. What's really strange is that I know that there were these offenses, or perceived offenses that I had to forgive and that at the time they were huge to me, and now I only have the vaguest notion of what they might have been.

Soon after that, and perhaps directly after that, I was praying and I "saw" Jesus being nailed to the cross. It was very vivid and wasn't something I'd been thinking about, but just came out of nowhere. (Well, somewhere, I'm sure.) It was from a position low to the ground and I was looking up His left arm, and could see his side and the back of His head. His left hand was already nailed to the cross, and they were nailing His right hand. Even now, I can see it fairly clearly. It's always somewhere in that back of may consciousness because after that, I knew He did this for me.

Lord,

wholly surrendered

to the will of Your Father

and wholly identified with us,

Lord nailed to the cross

by Your own choosing,

teach us to obey,

to accept,

to bow to the will of God.

CH

AMDG

The Tenth Station~Jesus is Stripped of His Garments~Nakedness

Not long ago Christ had revealed His glory upon a Mountain. He had gone up with his disciples to Mount Tabor, and there shown them His splendour, clothed in garments of burning snow. Now He has gone up into a mountain again to reveal yet another glory that is His, the glory that He gives to sinful men in the hour that seems to them to be their hour of shame but which, when it is identified with Him stripped naked upon Calvary, is an hour of splendour and redemption.

There in Christ is the sinner who is found out, the lover who is stripped of all pretence, the weak man who is known for what he is, the repentant murderer who pays the price of his sin willingly before the world, the child whose disgrace is known to the mother whom he wanted to make proud of him, the friend who is stripped of all pretence before the friend from whom he longed for respect.

There upon Calvary Christ's love for the world is shown in its nakedness, His love for the sinner in its intensity.

Caryll Houselander, The Way of the Cross

In The Hiding Place Corrie ten Boom writes about the incarceration of her sister, Betsie, and herself in the concentration camp at Ravensbruck. They were Christians, but had been arrested for hiding Jews in their home. Corrie was 51 when this happened and I Betsie was 58. She describes the manner in which they were forced to line up with the other new prisoners for processing. These two middle-aged virgins, not particularly beautiful of body, stripped naked and standing in line, being watched over by callous guards. How humiliating this must have been.

During the time that Corrie spent at Ravensbruck, she underwent a different kind of stripping. Instead of becoming bitter and railing against her circumstances--after all, she had been living a sacrificial life and spending herself for God's chosen, and look where it had gotten her--she allowed the Lord to use this time to strip of her fears and faults. Of course, this didn't happen without some resistance on her part, but in the end, she was able to join her suffering to that of her Lord.

Betsie died in the camp shortly before Corrie was released through a clerical error. Before her death, Betsie used to pray for the guards because she was worried about the damage that their treatment of the prisoners was doing to their souls. She forgave them, and wanted Corrie to do the same. Corrie was horrified. She didn't want to forgive the guards; she wanted to hold on to her hatred. But in the end that was what she did. There is a moving article in Guideposts magazine, telling of Corrie's encounter with a former guard who had been cruel to Betsie and the forgiveness that resulted.

Corrie ten Boom's story is an example of the humiliation of physical stripping, and the pain of that stripping that comes from being stripped of our faults, but CH speaks to something deeper. It is the revelation of our very selves, not evil deeds that we could have avoided, but that which most shames us because it is who we are at the very core of our being. Our only help in the face of this most painful nakedness is that Our Lord has united Himself with us in our weakness, and that He can somehow use it for the redemption of the world.

Jesus,

stripped of Your garments

upon Calvary,

give me the courage

and the humility

to be stripped before the world

of all pretence;

to show myself--

even to that one whom I love

and whose good opinion of me

is vital to my happiness--

just as I am,

naked,

stripped of everything

that could hide

the truth of my soul,

the truth of myself, from them.

Give me

Your own courage,

Your humility,

Your independence,

which compelled You,

for love of me,

to stand on that hill of Calvary,

naked,

covered in wounds,

without comeliness whereby

we could know You.

Give me the courage

and the dignity and splendour

of Your love,

to live openly,

without pretence,

even when there is that in my life

which shames me.

Give me the one glory

of those who are disgraced

and ashamed before the world:

to be stripped with You,

Jesus Christ my redeemer,

upon Calvary.

CH

AMDG

The Ninth Station~Jesus Falls the Third Time~Brokenness

In this meditation, Caryll Houselander writes about the many people who are following Jesus on the way to Calvary: those who hate him, those who love him, those who he has healed, the poor who hope he will establish a new kingdom.

They wait, straining forward, struggling to come near to Him, breathless with suspense, some through fear, some through hope; all tense, expectant, waiting!

And what does He do? For the third and the last time, Jesus falls under the cross!

This is the worst fall of all. It comes at the worst moment of all. It tears open all the wounds in His body; the shock dispels the last ounce of strength that He had mustered to go on. It shatters the last hope, the last remnant of faith, in nearly everyone in the crowd. It is triumph for His enemies, heartbreak for His friends.

* * * * * * * *

The last fall is the worst fall. In it Christ identified Himself with those who fall again and again, and who get up again and again and go on--those who even after the struggle of a lifetime fall when the end is in sight; those who in this last fall lose the respect of many of their fellow men, but who overcome their humiliation and shame; who, ridiculous in the eyes of men, are beautiful in the eyes of God, because in Christ, with Christ's courage, in His heroism, they get up and go on, climbing the hill of Calvary.

Caryll Houselander, The Way of the Cross

This meditation reminds me of Lord Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. We meet this beautiful, charming, younger son of the Marchmain family in Oxford where he is living an elegant and dissolute life, and leave him "a sort of under-porter" at a monastery in Tunis where he is "an odd hanger-on" under the care of the Father Superior, when he isn't off on a drinking spree. In the eyes of the world, he is a hopeless drunkard, but hopeless is exactly what he is not. Although he knows that he will never overcome his alcoholism, he never gives up hope, always stumbling back to the monastery after a fall. "Holy" is the way his sister Cordelia describes him.

Lord,

fallen under the cross

for the last time,

grant to me, and to all those

with whom You identified Yourself

in the third fall,

Your courage,

Your humility,

to rise in Your strength,

and in spite of failure upon failure,

shame upon shame,

to persevere to the end.

CH

AMDG

The Eighth Station~Jesus Speaks to the Women of Jerusalem~Weeping

In her meditation on this station, Caryll Houselander asks why Jesus, Who has from the beginning of His life accepted whatever help men have been willing to give Him, seems to reject the compassion of these women. She says:

Is this a refusal, a rebuke or a warning?

In a sense it is none of these, but a showing, a pointing to something which, if these women miss, and if we miss today, they and we will have missed the meaning of Christ's passion. Which if we miss, all our devotion to the person of Jesus Christ in His historical Passion, all our meditations and prayers, will be sterile and will fall short of their object to reach and comfort the heart of Christ. He is pointing to His passion in the souls of each of those women, in the souls of each of their children and their children's children all through time. He is pointing to all those lives to come through all the ages in which His suffering will go on.

* * * * * * * *

It is in order that we should seek Him and give our compassion to Him, weep for Him in [especially those that suffer alone and ignored], that Christ showed His need for sympathy in His earthly life and on the way of the cross. We must weep for Him in these and in our own souls, in these day, the days of the dry wood: "It is not for me that you should weep . . . you should weep for yourselves and your children. Behold, a time is coming when men will say, It is well for the barren, for the wombs that never bore children, and the breasts that never suckled them. It is then that they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us. If it goes so hard with the tree that is still green, what will become of the tree that is already dried up?" (Luke xxiii, 28-31).

When CH said, "days of the dry wood" she was speaking of the days during and after World War II in England, where, of course, there was much more suffering than in the United States. I think, however, that we can rightly appropriate those words for the times in which we live, and almost beyond a doubt for those that are to come.

When I was younger, I thought a lot about that passage from Luke which says that it is well for the barren. I wondered what that meant, and supposed that it was because mothers would not be able to provide for their children and that they would have to watch them suffer. Then, I always thought about it in terms of babies or young children, but now I can see that it also applies to mothers of adults.

What never occurred to me in the past was that people would say it was well for the barren because they thought that their lives would be so much better without children. Today, we have seen that phrase that speaks of mothers' selfless love turn into a phrase that denotes a complete selfishness. And I think that one of the things that CH would tell us about this is that Christ is suffering in these women who have made a decision against motherhood, and that we ought to be weeping for Him in them. This, of course, is not our natural inclination, and that is why Lent and devotions like the Way of the Cross, are so important to us. They give us the time and space to look at things from the perspective of Jesus's Passion.

Father,

do not let me find consolation

in sensible devotion

to the person of Jesus Christ

while Jesus Christ passes me by

unrecognized,

unknown,

unsought,

uncomforted

on the Via Crucis

we travel together.

* * * * * * * *

Do not give me tears

to shed at the feet of the crucifix

while they blind me to Christ crucified,

unwept for

in the souls of sinners

and in my own sinful soul.

AMDG

The Seventh Station~Jesus Falls the Second Time~Watchfulness

Christ is down in the dust. This second fall is harder than the first; He is nearer the end of His tether now, more dependent than before on others to help Him to get up and go on. It may have been something trifling, almost absurd, that threw Him down. Perhaps something as small as a pebble on the road; yes, that would have been enough to send Him hurtling down, with that terrible burden on His back, and His own exhaustion as He nears the end of His bitter journey.

It is the same today, the same for those "other Christs" who have gone a long way on the road and who fall, not for the first time now, under the heavy cross of circumstance--those who have carried this cross for a long time, who have become exhausted by the unequal struggle and fall, who with Him are down in the dust. It is for them that Christ falls for the second time and lies under the crushing weight of His cross, waiting for those who will come forward to lend their hands to lift it from His back and enable Him to go on to the end of His way of suffering and love.

Caryll Houselander, The Way of the Cross

Since I began writing this series, I've always had CH's meditations turning over and over in the back of my mind. I read them about a day before I write, and then I mull over them. The "something small as a pebble on the road," struck me when I first read it, but I wasn't sure that I would write anything about it. Then something happened when I was on the way home from Mass this morning--something small. I was praying the third mystery when I realized that although I had started out thinking about the mystery in terms of myself, I had pretty soon turned to the faults of a friend. Almost immediately I hit, not a pebble, but a small hole in the road that jolted the entire car. Aha! Thoughts like this may be small, but they add up. And it's not just the thoughts, although those are really difficult to catch, but all our little habits, all through the day, day after day. And on the right day, they can cause a fall that much more serious that we can imagine.

So, we have to learn to be watchful, and that's so hard. How can we even begin to be aware all the little faults and habits. It would be nice if we could get a little jolt every time we did something, or even better, when we were about to do something, but how can we achieve that? The one thing that I've found that helps at all is frequent Confession. When I got really serious about a particular fault, I decided that I would go to Confession and confess it every week, no matter how embarrassing it might be--and it was. However, I noticed after a while that a little space, a very little space seemed to open up between the temptation and the action. It was just long enough for me to make a conscious decision. That was several years ago, and I don't always go to Confession every week. There have been periods when I haven't gone for several months, but I can always tell the difference in the way my life is going.

Well, I didn't start out to talk about Confession, and this has gotten to be much longer than I intended, but I also wanted to say something about CH''s second paragraph above. There are always so many people who are in those crushing circumstances, and perhaps there are even more in our current economic and political situation. I'm sure we all feel crushed from time to time. I think that we all need to be aware that those around us may be suffering much more than we know, that they may be on the brink of falling at any time, and that we need to be careful not to be the pebble that makes them fall. We never know what small word or careless unkindness might be enough to send [them] hurtling down, with that terrible burden on [their] backs.

AMDG

The Sixth Station~Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus~Mercy

Until someone comes to reveal the secret of Christ indwelling the sufferer's soul to him, he cannot see any purpose in his pain. There is only one way to reveal Christ living on in the human heart to those who are ignorant concerning it. That is Veronica's way, through showing Christ's love. When someone comes--maybe a stranger, maybe someone close at home but whose compassion was not guessed before--and reveals Christ's own pity in herself, the hard crust that has contracted the sufferer's heart melts away, and looking into the gentle face of this Veronica of today, the sufferer looks, as it were, into a mirror in which he sees the beauty of Christ reflected at last from his own soul.

Until Veronica came to Him on His way to Calvary, Christ was blinded by blood and sweat and tears. The merciful hands of Veronica wiped the blindness from His eyes; looking into her face, He saw His own beauty reflected in it. He saw His own eyes looking back at Him from hers. She had done this thing in the power in which alone she could do it, the power of Christ's own love.

In the compassion on her lifted face, Christ saw, in the hour of His extreme dereliction, the triumph of His own love for men. He saw His love, radiant, triumphant in her, and in all the Veronicas to come through all time, in them and in those sufferers in whom His own divine beauty would be restored by their compassion.

Caryll Houselander

When I began praying the novena to the Divine Mercy, I formed the habit of praying for people I knew that fit in each day's category. I would pray for someone different on each bead of the chaplet. Most days I had no problem: plenty of priests and religious, scads of souls who have become lukewarm, many devout and faithful souls, but I always had trouble on the 7th day. When I read, "The souls who especially venerate and glorify Jesus' mercy," I understand it to be something more than just loving the mercy that Jesus pours on us and thinking that mercy is pretty cool in general. Surely people who "glorify Jesus' mercy" are people who are actively merciful. I knew lots of people who were charitable and generous with their time and money. They were always ready to help when someone asked, but they seemed to be missing something that we see in Veronica. She had a special ability to see what was needed before it was asked, and a willingness to risk doing whatever was needed even when it was dangerous.

Since then, I've made several friends who exemplify the gift of mercy. They never seem to be too tired or sick to help someone else. They never let fear get in between them and whatever God is calling them to do at the moment. I've known them to literally risk their lives to help someone who was desperate. I have to admit, they make me uncomfortable--not on purpose--it's just that they make me see so clearly how truly lacking I am in this area. And truthfully, I'm not sure that I even have much desire to emulate them. Sometimes I think that maybe I could do just this one small thing or that one, but it frightens me. There seems to be a line there that once crossed is crossed forever. It doesn't seem like it can be done by halves. All I can really do at the moment is pray to be willing to be willing.

Saviour of the world,

take my heart,

which shrinks

from the stark realism

and ugliness of suffering,

and expand it with Your love.

Open it wide

with the fire of Your love,

as a rose is opened

by the heat of the sun.

Drive me by the strength

of Your tenderness

to come close to human pain.

Give me hands.

that are hardened

by pity,

that will dip into any water

and bathe any wound

in mercy.

Lord take my heart

And give me Yours

CH

AMDG