"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, pp. 26-27
Stained glass from chapel of the Sisters of
Notre Dame de Namur
Bambury Road,
Oxford
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