+
 |
| La fuga in Egitto - Giotto |
Caryl Houselander wrote this during the Second World War:
Looking about us now we can see all these things which were started and lived so intensely by those unknown peasants Joseph and Mary. We can see them happening all over the world, to everyone in the world. We can see that the human race, with its great vocation to be the Mother of God, is experiencing the very things that Mary and Joseph experienced when Christ was still a child in the womb.
A little while ago I went to register for National Service, Compulsory Registration. A group of women were waiting outside the doors for our turn ; several carried babies in their arms ; one was pregnant (we gave her the only chair) ; one of them grumbled: "No use for us to register," she said, "for in any case those with kiddies will have to stay at home."
I looked at the pregnant woman, and I thought of that great Registration at Bethlehem, when a poor peasant woman came in obedience ; she need not have done so ; she could have claimed exemption. But Mary never claimed exemption from the common lot, from the circumstances that would be the common lot of all women for all time.
She knew it was "useful"—that those who are patient, obedient, humble, will be the mothers of Christ, will give Life back to the world.
"Be it done unto me . . ."
She spoke for all those poor women who stood with me waiting to register in the Second World War.
Everywhere the Flight into Egypt goes on : the little slain ; everywhere the refugees—Jesus, Mary and Joseph— come to us: strangers, foreigners in a strange land from Greece, Holland, France, Norway, Denmark, Malta, Gibraltar, Austria, Bavaria, Germany. For them all Our Lady has answered, long ago: "Be it done unto me."
In this great fiat of the little girl Mary, the strength and foundation of our life of contemplation is grounded, for it means absolute trust in God, trust which will not set us free from suffering but will set us free from anxiety, hesitation, and above all from the fear of suffering. Trust which makes us willing to be what God wants us to be, however great or however little that may prove. Trust which accepts God as illimitable Love.
Caryll Houselander
The Reed of God
Pages 26-27
Copyright © 1944 by Caryll Houselander
Sheed and Ward, London
