Faith Filled Friday: The Light in the Darkness

Two months ago (Vol 26, No. 10, Dec 2024 issue) Magnificat magazine had a super meditation in one of their post Christmas daily meditations.  It came from Caryll Houselander (1901 -1953), a British Catholic mystic who wrote in many Catholic publications.  I have mentioned her before and posted several posts on her book, The Way of the Cross.  You can read my posts concerning Caryll Houselander here.

Houselander’s insights are certainly devotional but I think her imagination can only be described as mystical.  This is no different.  What starts as an imagining of what the innkeeper must have felt when he turned away the pregnant Mary in Bethlehem turns into a contemplation of what we might all feel in our hearts when Mary and the hidden Christ-child enter us. 

 

I used to think how vexed the innkeeper would have been had he found out who it was that he had turned from his door, but I have learned to think that thankfulness would have overcome vexation, because after all he had the quiet, dark stable outside and he had lent that to the peasant girl in whom God was hidden.  Anyway it was Christ himself who chose the stable to be born in.  He still chooses unlikely places.  In each of us, just beyond the noise of our outward life, there is some place of silence and darkness, an emptiness where, if we have courage enough, we are alone with ourselves.  There is this place of silence, we know that God alone can content us, he alone is our peace.  It is in this sacred place of the soul that Christ wants to be born in us.  He wants to be born in us, that through us he may live in this world again and make it new with his new life…young with his youngness, little with his littleness, true with his truth, childlike with his childhood, pure with his purity.

 

It is in this dark place of our heart that Christ wants the light of the world to begin to burn and from its burning to radiate, until it shines back from the face of humanity.  Here it is that he wants the light to begin to shine in darkness and the life of the world to begin again…It is easy to see the world is wounded, hard to see that its healing begins in our own heart.  We say, repeatedly and rather pompously, that only a vital Christianity can save the world, but how do we imagine that a vital Christianity begins?...Vital Christianity means a living Christhood, a living Christ in man’s heart, and Christ can live in our hearts only if he is born in them individually.  He can be born in us only if we accept him in his own way, in littleness, humility, secret, hidden and small, to be fostered and loved in us, cradled and clothed in us, that he may grow naturally in our lives to his full stature.

 

It requires faith to believe that Christ will be born in man this Christmas, but much more faith to believe that he will be born in our heart, that he could fulfill his will of love in our own life, our life with so little radius for his light, so little journeying for his feet, so small a distance for his hands to reach.  (pp. 348-49)

“It is in this dark place of our heart that Christ wants the light of the world to begin to burn and from its burning to radiate, until it shines back from the face of humanity.”  Nothing starts without Christ lighting up our hearts. 

I think there is also a message for all those who criticize the Mass or the liturgical music or some other exterior form.

 

We say, repeatedly and rather pompously, that only a vital Christianity can save the world, but how do we imagine that a vital Christianity begins?...Vital Christianity means a living Christhood, a living Christ in man’s heart, and Christ can live in our hearts only if he is born in them individually.

Ultimately it’s Christ in us, in the hearts of the vast majority of people that will change the world, not some exterior form.  Ultimately it’s conversion of heart—that light being turned on—is what will bring the Kingdom of God.  You can’t force a conversion from exterior forms.  It is the interior that must accept Christ.

I love that last sentence with the image of the baby Jesus inside our hearts reaching out to touch us, to be picked up.