"If Christ is formed of our lives, it means that He will suffer in us. ...It is extremely difficult to lay hold of this fact. ...It is really difficult to realise that if He is formed in our life we are not beside Him but in Him; and what He asks of us is to realise that it is actually in what we do that He wants to act and suffer.
For example, if you are conscripted, it is Christ who is saying good-bye and leaving His home; Christ who is marching on the endless route march. The blisters on the feet of the new recruit are bleeding on the feet of Christ.
It really needs to be practiced to be understood. We need to say to ourselves a thousand times a day: 'Christ wants to do this', 'Christ wants to suffer this.'
And we shall thus come to realise that when we resent our circumstances or try to spare ourselves what we should undergo, we are being like Peter when he tried to dissuade our Lord from the Passion"
- Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God
My goodness! This is difficult. I hope by this it is not meant that we should tamely give in to all hardship and ill-treatment. There are circumstances where we need to feel angry and perhaps resentful and fight. I am thinking of Christ's anger in the temple when he overturned the tables of the money-changers.
ReplyDeleteI always imagine that he did it in a rather cold-blooded way: angry, fed-up, but not losing control. But I think, as you say, we should try to fix the situation, but if our efforts don't work, then we must accept it. The Christian life is always a struggle, though, isn't it, Clare? One way or another. :)
DeleteYes! If we can try to fix things we must but if we can't we must accept and make the best of a bad situation. Life is a struggle, absolutely!
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