Perhaps it is most difficult of all to realize, or to believe, that the Risen Christ is hidden in our own lives. Difficult not only for others, but for ourselves.
If his purpose in indwelling [humans] is to radiate the light and heat of his love through the whole world, how can we honestly believe that he chooses people for such a mission who have no great talents, no work of importance, nothing to show for the work they have done, and no influence; people moreover whose circumstances, humanly speaking, are, by God’s own will for them, both cramping and inescapable?
But it is precisely from such lives that his love can and does radiate. We know nothing about the “many miracles” which were not written down. But what we do know of what things he did and how he did them in his Risen Life, shows us that the power of his endless miracle of love is given to the most circumscribed lives, and the means whereby it is worked are means that belong to us all …
He used these means to bring peace, to comfort, to give courage, to restore self-respect, to change fear to love, shame to joy …
To the stricken world in the person of Magdalen, compassion: “Why are you weeping, for whom are you looking?”
To the apostles, his first word, “Peace!”
To Thomas, “Believe” because of the wounds – “the courage of faith.”
The only condition for finding and recognizing the Risen Christ today is that we love him: not power, chance or virtue, but only love.
Caryll Houselander, The Risen Christ, as found in Give Us This Day, March, 2016, page 392.
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