Vigils Reading
May 19
THE MANY SECRET
RESURRECTIONS
From “The Risen Christ” by Caryll Houselander
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Christ seems to have fallen in love with our suffering, so passionately has
he laid hold of it and made it his. He is known to the whole world as the Man of
Sorrows. Yet he came to give us life, life full of joy. It was not with our suffering
that Christ fell in love, but with us. He identified himself so wholly with our
suffering, because our lives are necessarily made up of it. It is the inescapable
consequences of sin. No one can escape it; everyone must somehow either make
friends with suffering or be broken by it. No one can come close to another, let
alone love him, without coming closer to his suffering. Christ did far more, he
wed himself to our suffering, he made Death his bride, and in the
consummation of his love, he gave her his life. Christ has lived each of our lives,
he has faced all our fears, suffered all our griefs, overcome all our temptations,
labored in all our labors, loved in all our loves, died all our deaths.
He took our humanity, just as it is, with all its wretchedness and ugliness,
and gave it back to us just as his humanity is, transfigured by the beauty of his
living, filled full of his joy. He came back from the long journey through death,
to give us his Risen Life to be our life, so that no matter what suffering we meet,
we can meet it with the whole power of the love that has overcome the world. “I
have said this to you, so that in me you may find peace. In the world, you will
only find tribulation; but take courage, I have overcome the world“.
He has come back as spring comes back out of the ground, renewing the
earth with life, to be a continual renewing of life in our hearts, that we may
continually renew one another’s life in his love, that we may be his Resurrection
in the world. We are the resurrection, going on always, always giving back
Christ’s life to the world.
In every life there are many secret resurrections. In our sin, we are the
tombs in which Christ lies dead, but at the first movement of sorrow for sin he
rises from the dead in us, the life of the world is renewed by our sorrow, the soul
that was in darkness radiates the morning light. In the moment that we are
forgiven, the world is flooded with forgiveness. No wonder that angels rejoice
when one sinner does penance more than over the ninety-nine who need no
penance, for the resurrection in the soul of the sinner is complete. It is not just
the poor sinner licking his wounds and limping on, crippled by the past; it is
Christ risen, alive, whole.