"Christ used the flesh and blood of Mary for His life on earth, the Word of love was uttered in her heartbeat. Christ used
His own body to utter His love on earth; His perfectly real body,
with bone and sinew and blood and tears; Christ uses our
bodies to express His love on earth, our humanity.
A Christian life is a sacramental life, it is not a life lived only in the mind, only by the soul; through the bodies of men and women Christ toils and endures and rejoices and loves and dies; in them He is increased, set free, imprisoned, restrained. In them He is crucified and buried and rises from the dead.
Our humanity is the substance of the sacramental life of Christ in us, like the wheat for the host, like the grape for the chalice.
Christ works His love through material as well as spiritual things. Into His worship, following His own lead, the Church, His Church, brings material things, pure wax, flame, oil, salt, gold, water, linen, the voices of people, the gestures and actions of people, our own souls and bodies–the substance of our flesh and blood. All this is consistent with the Incarnation, when Christ took the human nature of our Lady to be Himself."
Caryll Houselander
The Comforting of Christ
Stained glass atop from chapel of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur
Bambury Road, Oxford
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