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Rejoice and Leap for Joy

  • CARYLL HOUSELANDER

By surrender to God I mean giving oneself up to God, to be transformed in him.


aaafrancisIt is the cure for self that is the core of the whole thing; we require to be cured of self by being changed, as the bread and wine on the altar are changed, into Christ.

In this surrender is, I believe, the cure for the torment of self, which is precisely what most psychological suffering is.  It is the cure for the weakness that cannot carry the common burden of the world's sin; the cure for the fear that causes the will to wither before the challenge of life, the cure for the feebleness that makes the impact of natural beauty painful, the cure for the cowardice that causes the heart to contract and shrink before the challenge of love.

When a saint surrenders himself wholly in this way, it is true that he will certainly accept whatever circumstances God allows for him.  He may sometimes, because of his individual and unique vocation, go out to meet and welcome some of them.  Such things as poverty, pain, bereavement, persecution — what you will — but he will not accept them or welcome them because he supposes them to be the essential things in his life, but because, compared to the joy, the power and the beauty of God, they will be almost nothing at all.  They will be to him like leaves blown in the wind, the great wind of the Spirit of Love that sweeps the world like blown fire, setting it alight with his glory.  For the saint the surrender to God is a tremendous fling of the heart, comparable to a leap into the fire of eternal Love, to burn with its heat, to take the radiance of its light, to dance in the dancing of its flames.

For us it is a more secret thing, but none the less miraculous for that.  It means that we begin to be able to enjoy life, and gradually gain in strength of spirit until we can enjoy everything.

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Acknowledgement

HouselanderCaryll Houselander. "Rejoice and Leap for Joy." from A Rocking Horse Catholic (London, U.K.: Catholic Way, 2013).

This book is in the Public Domain. This excerpt appeared in Magnificat.

The Author

house1house2Caryll Houselander (1901-1954) was a British Roman Catholic laywoman; a mystic, writer, artist, visionary and healer. Her first book, This War is the Passion, written during World War II, launched her prolific writing career. She is best known for: A Rocking Horse Catholic, The Reed of God, The Way of the Cross, This War is the Passion, The Risen ChristThe Letters Of Caryll Houselander: Her Spiritual Legacy, and Wood of the Cradle, Wood of the Cross: The Little Way of the Infant Jesus.

Copyright © 2013 Public Domain