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The Reed of God

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Reading this book is a humbling experience that draws you closer to Mary. It gives prayerful ways to bring Christ to you and allow Him to grow quietly within you. A book to read over and over again. The author has a wonderful gift to share.

Caryll Houselander was a wonderful, lyrical writer on top of her beautiful philosophical and theological understanding. She is one of my favorite Catholic writers. I wish she had been with this world longer, but The Reed of God is a classic that women of many generations to come will treasure.

This is a beautiful little book (replete with poetic and mystical passages of real beauty and full of joy) which should really be regarded as a classic- a kind of extended love poem to Christ; "It is impossible to know God, even through the sense of Absence, without falling in love with him". Any biographical notices I have read of Caryll Houselander refer to her as a modern mystic and I can well believe this to be the case, having read this book. In this book, the significance of our Lady as Christ bearer (Theotokos - God bearer, as know to our eastern brethren) is that she teaches us also to be Christ bearers: "The one thing that she did and doe is the one thing that we all have to do, namely, to bear Christ into the world".

But not only in this book full of mystical insight, I found myself very much taken by her penetrating insights into human nature, describing Pilate as "the weak and timid civil servant" and seeing the "aesthetic sense" as "a kind of deeply buried inherited memory of innocence, like an old man's memory of his nursery".

This is a wonderfully practical non-sentimental/non-treacle understanding of the Blessed Virgin's role in salvation history. But this does not mean it is not devotional - it is in the right sense so much that one is almost startled by what Houselander draws from the simple fact of Mary's motherhood: "He was completely her own, utterly dependent upon her: she was His food and warmth and rest, His shelter from the world, His shade in the Sun. She was the shrine of the Sacrament, the four walls and the roof of His home". But the true significance of Mary's motherhood is that "in giving her humanity to God, Mary gave all humanity to Him to be used for His own will" and "In surrendering to the Spirit and becoming the Bride of Life, she wed God to the human race and made the whole world pregnant with the life of Christ". But, "we can give birth to Christ only by unity with the Holy Spirit".

But, there is a lot more in this small book - one comes away with a strong sense of the mystical body of Christ: "We cannot discern God through our senses, but faith tells us that we should treat one another with the reverence that we give to the Host"; and "An old man whose love for his fellow creatures endeared him to them all confessed that whomsoever he met - before greeting hum out loud - he greeted Christ within him in secret". And her insight into how we should be disposed towards those caught in serious sin is astonishing: "We should never come to a sinner without the reverence that we should take to the Holy Sepulchre. Pilgrims have travelled on foot for years to kiss the Holy Sepulchre, which is empty. In sinners we can kneel at the tomb in which the dead Christ lies". Houselander also reminds us that "In many people Christ lives the life of the Host, Our life is a sacramental life" and "The Host life may be lived in prisons, in prisons of war, in internment camps, in almshouses, workhouses; by blind people, mental patients...."

But we also see how the holy life is to be lived in the little things of the day which God sends our way. In this sense, Houselander is like St Therese of Lisieux: "God did mean it to be the ordinary thing, for it is His will that Christ shall be born in every human being's life and not, as a rule, through extraordinary things, but through the ordinary daily life and the human love that people give to one another". Further, "If Christ is formed of our lives, it means that He will suffer in us. Or, more truly, we will suffer in Him".

Like Chesterton she sees that because of the Spirit of Wisdom: "we shall be haunted by a nostalgia for divine things, by a homesickness for God which is not eased in this world even by the presence of God". Christ is "the Pied Piper to the human heart".

And it is in a passage such as this that we really begin to hear Houselander the mystic:

"It is only necessary to give ourselves to that life, all that we are, to pray without ceasing, not by a continual effort to concentrate our minds but by a growing awareness that Christ is being formed in our lives from what we are. We must trust Him for this, because it not a time to see His face, we must possess Him secretly and in darkness, as the earth possesses the seed. We must try not to force Christ's growth in us but with a deep gratitude for the light burning secretly in our darkness, we must hold our concentrated love upon Him like earth, surrounding, holding, and nourishing the seed. We must be swift to obey the winged impulses of His love, carrying Him to wherever he longs to be, and those who recognise His presence will be stirred, like Elizabeth with new life. They will know His presence, not by any special beauty or power shown by us, but in the way that the bud knows the presence of the light, by an unfolding in themselves, a putting forth of their own beauty"

And we see in Houselander a refreshing attitude to the body - an approach that seems to pre-empt John Paul II's theology of the body: "The body is, for us, the means by which we can give ourselves wholly and "when we give out body willingly to another as means of deliberate self-donation then our union with another is complete. In this most lyrical and mystical, she gloriously celebrates Christian marriage which is "the dim showing of the reflected glory of Christ's union through the giving of Himself, in the flesh, to humanity":

"What supreme worship marriage is! With is comes a great increase of sanctifying grace, so that all the natural ecstasy and delight of the response of the senses and of the sensitive mind and heart are transformed into the very joy of Christ: and what worship can equal that of gratitude and joy".

But ,we are also challenged to be joyful: "We think less often of the joy that should be ours through Christ's body. It was the Word that was made flesh. Not only did He take our sorrows to Himself, but He gave the delight, the happiness that He is, to out humanness" And this is because: "Christ on earth was a Man in love" and "With his body He united himself to the World".

But not only is in the ordinary things that we live spiritual lives but it is through material things that we encounter Christ. Thus "The Church blesses ordinary material things" and "We can feel the smile of Christ in these blessings, warming them through and through like the sun shining in an orchard and saturating the thin leaves with gold".

Houselander warns us against idols noting that "We cannot change Christ, but instead we invent imaginary Christs, and they can be made to be anything in all that we would like Him to be" and thus we are tempted so that "We become what our conception of Christ is: God made us in his own likeness, but we have an extraordinary power of changing ourselves into the likeness of the idols we make".

But listen to what she says will happen when we follow the true conception of
Christ:

"In the degree of the truth of our conception of Him, our minds grow broader, deeper and warmer, our hearts grow wiser and kinder; our humour deeper and more tender; we become more aware of the wonder of life, our senses become more sensitive; our sympathies stronger; our capacity for giving and for receiving greater; our minds are more radiant with a burning light, and the light is the light of Christ"

What can I say but that this book made me feel utterly impoverished spiritually in the sense that I knew I was reading the work of a woman who like the moon was radiating the light of the Sun, which is Christ. And reflecting on myself, I realised how little light I seem to radiate (so it seems to me). But far from this sense of impoverishment making me feel disheartened, I too wished to carry the light of love which Houselander held in her hands and I too wished to share that light of love.

I wish to thank again Fr James V Schall for recommending Houselander as, but for him and indeed Dom Hugh Gilbert I would never have come across her and she does appear to be a spiritual master.

This book, written in 1944 (I believe) is just wonderful. It, more than anything I have read, has brought me closer to Our Blessed Mother, and hence, to Christ Himself. Filled with lyrical prose and touching analogies, Houselander shows how Mary was the "Reed of God" waiting to be filled (with her maternity)...and that we are ALL vessels waiting to do God's work, and carrying Christ within us. Just remarkable.

What a wonderful book! I would highly recommend it to all who are wanting a closer relationship with Jesus and His Mother,It is a very profound book written by a convert!

Through the words and illustrations of this book what shines through is the beautiful love of a woman for Christ and His Church. It is a devotional work, interspersed with Houselander's poetry. She writes from an early twentieth century English outlook and thus her chapters are interspersed with examples from the war. She doesn't get stuck in this contemporary setting though, but rather effectively uses it to bring the life of the Christian to greater clarity. In the course of the book she accomplishes two things beautifully. First she shows the importance for the Christian of a relationship with Mary. How the example of Mary can inspire and guide us, especially in difficult times, and how we can turn to her as an intercessor and mother. Secondly, she shows how Mary draws us towards Christ, and how ultimately our relationship with Mary is senseless otherwise.

This beautiful work sat near me on a bookshelf for years before I picked it up to read. Now I've read it again and again and enjoy it more each time. Caryll stirs the spirit and will inspire many reflections. She conveys a deeply spiritual message with a writing style that is simply a joy to read.

The title, as does the contents of the book, reflects the person, character, and inner life of Mary. A single reed: hollow, fragile but strong, able to bend and to be filled, only to pass on its contents. My thoughts! What is more, Caryll Houselander has a remarkable talent in getting down to the essence of things as she does with the Mother of Jesus. This is worth picking up. It's good spiritual reading. There's a lot to meditate upon. We follow Jesus as disciples. This is our calling! Our life as Christians, however, does not stop there! We are also the Bride of Christ: individually & collectively. We are not simply to follow Christ, but to give ourselves to him in a "spousal relationship" that which we are destined for at the "Wedding Feast of the Lamb" (see Rev. 19:7, ff.). That's for eternity, but this relationship needs to begin in the here and now. Mary shows us how. Mary shows us how to be the Bride of Christ. One sample is shown in the excerpt below:

"Our Lady said yes for the human race. Each one of us must echo that yes for our own lives. We are all asked if we will surrender what we are, our humanity, our flesh and blood, to the Holy Spirit and allow Christ to fill the emptiness formed by the particular shape of our life. The surrender that is asked of us includes complete and absolute trust; it must be like Our Lady's surrender, without condition and without reservation. We shall not be asked to do more than the Mother of God; we shall not be asked to become extraordinary or set apart or to make a hard and fast rule of life or to compile a manual of mortifications or heroic resolutions; we shall not be asked to cultivate our souls like rare hothouse flowers; we shall not, most of us, even be allowed to do that. What we shall be asked to give is our flesh and blood, our daily life - our thoughts, our service to one another, our affections and loves, our words, our intellect, our waking, working, and sleeping, our ordinary human joys and sorrows - to God. To surrender all that we are, as we are, to the Spirit of Love in order that our lives may bear Christ into the world - that is what we shall be asked. Our Lady has made this possible. Her fiat was for herself and for us, but if we want God's will to be completed in us as it is in her, we must echo her fiat."

There's not much that we can do better than imitate the Mother of God. She is the Icon of what we are called to be. Hopefully, our devotion to her will allow her to mold us into true disciple of her Son--disciples in her image: Brides able to offer our own "gift of self"!

Splendid! Beautiful lyrical prose! Deep theology

and wisdom. A tremendous reading and learning

experience.

A very beautiful, very human portrayal of Mary, Mother of God. Houselander steps into the heart of Mary and reveals to us a real, down-to-earth wife and mother with whom we can identify. Catholic and non-Catholic readers alike will be pleasantly surprised: "Mary of Nazareth is not so different from me!"