Becoming Christs

NOTE: Yet another inspirational Advent reflection from Caryll Houselander's The Reed of God, which we continue to listen to in the monastery refectory. -- Br. Francis

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Christ said, "Without me you can do nothing," and we see how true this is. How could we imitate an example of uncompromising unworldliness, chastity, sacrifice, and love, offered two thousand years ago by someone we have never seen, when we are unable to keep our promises to people we know well and saw yesterday, and instinctively belittle the qualities of our more heroic friends because we dislike and resent the fact that their example challenges our rationalization of the line of least resistance?

Of course we could but fail if we were merely trying to imitate him.

But that is not what is asked of us, and that is not the meaning of Christianity.

What we are asked to do is to be made one with Christ, to allow him to abide in us, to make his home in us, and gradually, through the oneness that results from living one life, and through the miracles of his love, consummated again and again in Communion with him, to become Christs , to live in him as Our Lady did. When we are changed into him as the bread into the Host, then with his power we can follow his example.

-- Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God