THE HOST LIFE

The Passion of the Infant Christ

Caryll Houselander Sheed & Ward 1949

Chapter 10:

THE HOST LIFE

IT WOULD SEEM impossible, did we not know it to be true, that God could abide with us always, in littleness and humility even more extreme than infancy. Or that His love should choose to give us the unity of His birth and death and resurrection, always taking place at the heart of the world, from sunrise to sunset, and all life, and all love, always radiating from it.

Yet this is so. Every day, every hour, Christ is born on the altar in the hands of the priest. Christ is lifted up and sacrificed; Christ is buried in the tomb of the human heart and Christ rises from the tomb to be the life of the world through His Communion with men.

This is the Host-life. Everything that has been said in this book could be said again of the Host. Everything relates to the Host.

If we live the Host-life in Christ, we shall bring to life the contemplation of the Passion of the Infant Christ and live it in our own lives.

The Host is the Bread of Life. It is the good seed that the Sower sowed in His field; it is the Harvest ready for the reaping.

It is the seed that is sown by the Spirit in every public way and every secret place on earth. It is the seed which, whenever it is buried, springs up from the grave, to Rower with Everlasting Life.

It is the mystery of the Snowflake. The Inscape of Thabor and of the Passion of the Infant. It is the whiteness, the roundness, the littleness, which at once conceals and reveals the plan of Eternal Love.

It is the littleness, the dependence, the trust in human creatures of the Divine Infancy. It is the silence of the Child in the womb: the constriction of the swaddling bands.

It is the Bread which is broken and yet is our wholeness.

The wholeness of all that is. It is the breaking of the Bread which is the Communion of all men in Christ, in which the multiple lives of the world are one Christ-life, the fragmentary sorrows of the world are one Christ-Passion: the broken loves of the world are one Christ-love.

The Host seems to be divided among us; but in reality we, who were divided, are made one in the Host.

It is the obedience of childhood. The simplicity which is the singleness of childhood's love. It is the newness in which Heaven and earth are made new.

It is the birth of Christ in the nations; the restoring of the Christ-Child to the world; of childhood to the children.

With the dawning of this turbulent twentieth century came the children's Pope, Pius X, to give Holy Communion to the little ones. In the hearts of the little children, Christ went out to meet Herod all over the world.

The Mass is the Birth and Death and Resurrection of Christ: in it is the complete surrender of those who love God.

The Miracle of Cana takes place. The water of humanity is mixed into the wine and is lost in it. The wine is changed into the Blood of Christ.

In the offering of the bread and wine we give material things, as Our Lady gave her humanity, to be changed into Christ. At the words of Consecration the bread and wine are not there any more; they simply are not any more but, instead, Christ is there.

In that which looks and tastes and feels like unleavened bread, Christ comes closer to us even than the infant could come, even than the child in the womb. He is our food, our life.

We give ourselves up to Him. He gives Himself up to us. He is lifted up in the priest's hands, sacrificed. God accepts the sacrifice and gives Christ back to us. He is lowered onto the altar; He who was taken down from the Cross is given to us in Communion; buried, laid to rest in our hearts.

It is His will to rise from the dead in our lives and to come back to the world in His risen Host-life.

In His risen life on earth Christ often made Himself recog­nized only by the characteristic of His unmistakable love; by showing His wounds, by His infinite courtesy, by the breaking of Bread. He would not allow the sensible beauty and dearness of His human personality, His familiar appearance, to hide the essential Self that He had come back to give.

Wholly consistent with this is Christ's return to us in the Host. We know that in It He is wholly present, Body, Blood, Soul, Divinity. But all this is hidden, even His human appearance is hidden. He insists, because this is the way of absolute love, on coming to us stripped of everything but Himself.

For this Self-giving Christ in the Host is poor, poorer than He was when, stripped of everything, He was naked on the Cross. He has given up even the appearance of His body, the sound of His voice, His power of mobility. He has divested Himself of colour and weight and taste. He has made Himself as close to nothing as He could be, while still being accessible to us.

In the Host He is the endless "Consurnmaturn est" of the Passion of the Infant Christ.

In the Host He is our Life on earth today.

There is no necessity for me to describe the average life.

Too many know it. Countless millions have to make the way of the Cross and the way to Heaven through the same few streets, among the same tiny circle of people; through the same returning monotony; while many, many others have even less variety in their lives, less outward interest and less chance of active mercy or apostleship-e-those who are incurably ill or in prison, or very old, confined not only to one town or village, but to one room, to one bed in a ward, to one narrow cell.

Everyone wants to take part in the healing and comforting of the world, but most people are dogged by the sense of their own futility.

Even the power of genius and exceptional opportunity dwindles, measured against the suffering of our times. It is then hardly to be wondered at if the average person whose life is limited by narrow circumstances and personal limita­tions feels discouragement that is almost despair.

Living the Christ-life means that we are given the power of Christ's love. We are not only trustees of God's love for man, entrusted to give it out second-hand, but miraculously, our love IS His love!

"I have bestowed my love upon you, just as my father has bestowed his love upon me; live on, then, in my love." (John xv. 9.)

The Host-life is an intense concentration of this power of love.

The Host-life is not something new or different from the Christ-life that we know already. It is the very core of it, and it was given to us at the Last Supper when Christ gave Himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament.

The Host-life is the life which Christ Himself is living in the world now. It is His choice of how to live His life among us today. At first sight it is baffling that it should be so.

Have you never stood before the tabernacle and asked yourself: "Why is He silent, while the world rocks with blasphemies and lies?" "Why is He passive while His followers are persecuted and innocent people are crushed?"

It is almost frightening to seek an answer to the question:

"Why does God remain in our midst silent and passive, knowing and seeing everything, but saying and doing nothing, while cruelty, injustice, ignorance and misery go on and on and on?"

It is a frightening question until we remember what it is which alone can restore humanity to happiness; that it is one thing only that can do it, namely supernatural life, beginning secretly in each individual heart; just as Incarnate Love began secretly on earth in the heart of Mary. It is one thing only, the birth of the Infant Christ in us, Incarnate Love.

No voice of warning could effect this. That could make men tremble; it could not make them love. No armed force could do it, not even supernatural force. That could make men slaves; love is always free.

Love must begin from within. It must be sown in the in­most darkness of the human heart, and take root and flower from the dust that man is.

This can only happen if the Holy Spirit descends from Heaven and penetrates human nature, as the rays of the sun and summer rain come down into the earth, warming and irrigating the seed that is sown there and quickening it.

Christ sowed the seed of His life in us when He sowed the world with the drops of His Blood from the Cross. Now it is Christ in the Host who draws down the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit is the Eternal Love between the Father and the Son. Love which cannot resist the plea of the silence, the patience, the obedience of the Sacred Host.

In the Host Christ gives Himself to live the ordinary life as it is today, to live it fully in all its essentials, and to take into Himself, into His own living of the Host-life, the most ordinary, the most numerous, seemingly the most mediocre lives, bestowing upon them His own power to bring down the Spirit of Love.

In those who have received Him in Holy Communion Christ goes among whom He will, to whatever places He chooses to be in: with little children He goes into the schoolroom; with office-workers to the office; with shop-assistants to the shop. Everyone with whom the communicant has even a passing contact during the day is someone whom Christ wished to meet. Not only priests, but doctors and nurses and the servants and paper-sellers in hospitals take Him to the sick and the dying: to patients who have forgotten God. Not only the military chaplain, but common soldiers take Him into the barracks and into battle. In their comrades Christ marches side by side with boys who have never been told about His love. He walks in their footsteps.

An unknown martyr priest of our own times, whose anointed hands had been cut off by his persecutors, so that he might never again consecrate bread and wine, sent this message secretly from his exile, asking his friends to take it from one to another round the world:

"I can never again carry the Sacred Host or lift It up in my hands, but no one can prevent me from carrying Our Lord in my heart wherever I am. You, who are not prisoners, who are not held in one place, go often to Holy Communion. Carry Christ everywhere in your hearts. Make your souls monstrances, and go into those places where Our Lord has never been adored in the Host, where the monstrance has never been lifted up."

How often we think that but for this or that person in our lives we should be saints! That troublesome person in the office; that exasperating fellow lodger; that spiteful old rela­tive who is on our back like the old man of the sea! They are our stumbling blocks. Why is it allowed? Why is it that we cannot get away from them?

It is because Christ wishes to be with them and has chosen us to take Him to them. He loves them; He sees the depths of their loneliness: He has plumbed it with His love. Moreover He approaches us in them. They bring Him to us in just that aspect that He wishes to be known to us. His presence in them may save us from some particular sin. They may be to us Christ forgiving, Christ in His patience, Christ teaching. They may be Christ in His weariness, or Christ in His fear in Gethsemane, Christ facing His death. They may come dependent and helpless as Christ in His childhood or infancy. They may come as Christ in that par­ticular need of His to which our response means our salvation. Possibly the neglected Christ in the tabernacle to whom we have made such fervent promises of reparation, such acts of self-dedication, still awaits our rudimentary courtesy-unrecognized, unloved and lonely under our own roof.

It takes our breath away to think of Christ's self-giving in the Host. We hardly realize it, because it is so amazing that to speak realistically of it demands a daring that sounds like blasphemy to our unaccustomed ears.

In the Host Christ is silent-in fact voiceless, dependent, even helpless. He is carried in the hands of men wherever they choose. His obedience is beyond death.

Think how aptly countless lives approximate to the Host.

In His silence how many there are who must endure in silence; who, sometimes in tragic circumstances, have no opportunity to plead their case. How many, too, are silent through fear. Fear that a complaint may cost them a detested but necessary job. Fear of ridicule, like new children at boarding-school, or boys and girls in the throes of first love. How many there are who are dumb-hearted, inarticulate, unable to express themselves, or who, though they long to unburden their minds to a fellow-creature, never find a willing and sympathetic listener. And there is the religious Silence, the "Great Silence" of religious houses, in which men and women bring their whole will to entering into the silence of the Host.

In His dependence and helplessness, surely everyone, at the begml11ng and end of life, is included. Children, and old people in their last illness; and on any given day, since the supernatural life must be lived out fully every day, all those filling the crowded hospitals of the world.

In His obedience; there are vast numbers of people who are subject to others-workers, soldiers, sailors and airmen. Hospital nurses, inmates of institutions, prisoners, children. With few exceptions, everyone.

In the light of the Host-life, shining upon the modern world, it becomes clearly visible that the power of love, of comforting, if healing and alleviating suffering is given to the most unlikely people; to those who seem to be the most restricted; that the most effective action belongs to those who seem .helpless and unable to do anything at all, and that there IS a tremendous force of contemplation, unrecognized but redeeming, in the midst of the secular world.

But it would be presumptuous to suppose that the mere fact of narrow, limiting circumstances is all that is required. No .one is excluded from this contemplation in action. The genius as well as the simpleton can enter into the Host-life because it does not depend first of all upon outward things, but upon interior things.

The condition on our side is surrender as complete as that which we learn from the service of the Divine Infant: un-reserved surrender of self to the life of Christ in the Host. Surrender to Christ as complete as His surrender to us in the Host-life.

It is seldom, when much is asked for, that human nature fails to respond. It is when too little (as we think) is asked of us, when we have little to offer, that we fail.

When the offering seems too slight or too fragmentary; something absurd in the face of the Eternal Love that consecrates it, and the immensity of the human suffering that needs it.

In every normal lifetime certain days stand out when some crisis-such as acute pain or danger-integrates, points and concentrates the offering of self; when, momentarily, human nature is vested in a little majesty, and so the idea of immo­lation seems less absurd. But in the ordinary way it seems futile.

In spite of the heaviness with which they afflict us personally, we have, after all, such trifles to offer: boredom, hurt vanity, uncongenial environment, self-consciousness, little aches and pains, trifling disappointments, brief embarrassments, half-imaginary fears and anxieties. We can hardly be­lieve that God accepts these!

Christ has forestalled all that. The offering to be changed into His Flesh is the most fragile wafer of unleavened bread, light as the petal of a rose; flexible, colourless, only just substance at all. It is made out of tiny separate grains. It is this that Christ chooses for His supreme miracle of love. Moreover, He chooses that it shall be offered every day anew. That every day this offering shall be changed into His Body.

We are asked to offer only what we have, what we are today. That it is so little means nothing: it is our wafer of unleavened bread.

If we are troubled by the fact that we are not at one with ourselves, that we are full of conflict and distraction, that we have not even achieved singleness of heart sufficient for one perfect prayer, that we are broken up by distractions, by scattered thoughts, emotions, desires, we must realize that our offering, too, begins by being many separate grains.

We must take one grain, the nearest at hand; a momentary joy, a particular anxiety, a slight discomfort, an aching limb, an embarrassment, and offer that. But in order to offer that, our whole self must be gathered in, integrated in the offering. The offering cannot possibly be made otherwise.

We must bring our minds to it, our will, our heart. We must close our thoughts round it, at least for a second in a shining circle. Thus the offering itself integrates us: in it the scattered grains of our life become one bread.

Imitating Christ in the Host literally, we must make our offering daily, not grieving at the failure of yesterday, but through the offering of today being made new today, and this every day.

The Host is Rest. Still, infinite Peace. In this rest is the mysterious activity of Love. It is the rest of the love between the Persons of the Blessed Trinity.

It is the rest of Christ on earth.

It is Christ's rest in Advent: the silence, the dependence, the secrecy of the unborn. In the Host-life men contribute to this rest by giving themselves to be Himself, as Our Lady gave herself. It is the rest of surrender.

It is Christ's rest by the well, when He asked the woman of Samaria for a drink of water. The rest of the Human Christ, who allows Himself to be tired for our sake and asks for refreshment. It is the rest that asks for reparation, for the cup of cold water, for which Christ will give back the living water of immortality. It is the rest of the Humility which allowed the woman-a sinful woman at that-to achieve, through His weariness, what He Himself did not achieve through His power: the conversion of a whole village.

It is the rest of Christ sleeping in the boat, while the storm terrified His Apostles. The Faith which enables the children of God to sleep on His heart while the storm of evil and suffering rocks the world around them.

It is the rest of Christ in the tomb, the profound rest of Communion, when Christ is laid in the human heart and asks of those who receive Him there Silence, Darkness, Death. Silence, which is the stillness of the heart at Holy Communion, not broken by fear or thought or wilfulness: the wordless silence of trust. The Silence of the trust in the Father into whose hands we commit not only our little life, comparable to a sparrow's life and the life of grass, but the Real Life, Christ in us, our Being. The Silence of the lips closed upon the "Consummatum est!"

The Darkness is the darkness of Faith which is content to see nothing, to feel nothing; the darkness and obliteration of the senses, the Faith which asks for no reassurance, no sign of the Divine Presence, no stir of life in the sown field. The Faith which accepts the appearances in which the Divine life is concealed in the Host as its own soul's portion, and is content without colour or odour or sound or taste.

The Death is the death of self. In this death the life of self which is the life of corruption, the restlessness of the worms in a corpse, ceases in silence and darkness: in this death is peace: like the peace which embalmed the dead Christ in the tomb. All the sensible sweetness that is foregone is the precious ointment spilt put of the broken alabaster box for Christ's burial: what is left in the box is emptiness, the spikenard is there to comfort the wounded Body of Love.

That spikenard, that lovely waste is, as we have seen, one with the frankincense and myrrh poured out for the Divine Infant. The Rest of Christ in the tomb of our hearts is the sleeping of the seed in winter. The Midnight of Bethlehem is the Morning of Resurrection.

Holy Communion - the Holy Eucharist - is thanksgiving.

Ultimately our trust, our faith, our peace, is all summed lip in thanksgiving, thanksgiving to our Heavenly Father for His Son, His Gift to us.

Present at our thanksgiving are the angels. We enter into Christ's rest again in the presence of the angels. We are in the eternal moments in the Wilderness and in Gethsemane, when in His unimaginable humility, Christ leaned upon the comforting of His holy angels. May our own guardian angels, who are with us in temptation and with us in the Gethsemane of the world's agony today, be with us in our thanksgiving, fending the flame of Christ's life in us with their spread wings, folding them upon our peace, to comfort Him in our souls. May they roll back the stone at the door of the tomb of our hearts, that, every day, Christ in whom we die may rise from the dead in us and go back, in our lives, to the world.

The Crucifixion was public; the shame, the humiliation, the mockery, were seen by the crowd. Just as it is now. The Resurrection and the Risen Life was secret; then as now, to be discovered gradually and individually in each life, according to the individual necessity of love. The Glory of the Host is hidden, seen only by God. The glory of the Host-life is hidden, too, a secret apostolate, a secret Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

There is no outward sign of the miracle that is taking place. Office-workers are bending over their desks, mothers working in their kitchens, patients lying quietly in hospital wards, nurses carrying out the exacting routine of their work of mercy, craftsmen are at their benches, factory workers riveted to their machines, prisoners are in their cells, children in their schools. In the country, farmers rise with the sun and go out to work on the land until sunset; the farm wives are feeding, milking, churning, cooking for their men and their children. Everywhere an unceasing rhythm of toil, monotonous in its repetition, goes on.

To those inside the pattern of love that it is weaving, it seems monotonous in its repetition, it seems to achieve very little.

In the almshouses and the workhouses old people, who are out of the world's work altogether at last, sit quietly with folded hands. It seems to them that their lives add up to very little too.

Nowhere is there any visible sign of glory. But, because in every town and village and hamlet of the world there are those who have surrendered their lives to the Host-life, who have made their offering daily, from the small grains of the common life, a miracle of Love is happening all the time everywhere. The Holy Spirit is descending upon the world. There is Incarnation everywhere-everywhere the Infant Christ is born; every day the Infant Christ makes the world new.

Upon the world that seems so cruel, mercy falls like summer rain; upon the world that seems so blind, light comes down in living beams. The heart of man that seems so hard is sifted, irrigated, warmed; the water of life floods it. The fire and light of the Spirit burn in it. The seed of Christ-life, which seemed to have dried up, lives and quickens, and from the secret depths of man's being the Divine Life flowers.

Caryll Houslander 1901-1954

As this self-portrait shows, Caryll Houselander is an artist as well as a writer. It is very like her, ex­cept that she usually looks much more cheerful.

There seems to be no end to the things she can find time to do-wood-carving, teaching drawing and toy-making to displaced children from Europe, work with the insane (for which she has a really extraordinary gift), work among the very poor. Yet she has never stopped writing, even when it has meant doing it in the early hours of the morning.

She lives in a flat at the top of a high apart­ment building in London, with a wide view

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