Book Summary of The Risen Christ: The Forty Days After the Resurrection by Caryll Houselander

The Risen Christ: The Forty Days After the Resurrection by Caryll Houselander, Scepter Publishing, New York: 2007. Kindle Edition. 

Chapter 1: Resurrection

In this powerful opening chapter, Houselander reflects on the astonishing truth that the life of the Christian is not merely an imitation of Christ, but a real participation in His risen life. As she writes, “Our Christ-life is the life of the Risen Christ” (5).

Christ did not return from death simply to reassure or impress: “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 (see John 16:33)” (7).

Houselander boldly declares: “We are the resurrection, going on always, always giving back Christ’s life to the world” (8). In other words, Christians are called to be living witnesses—ongoing signs of Christ’s triumph over death, even in the simplest acts of love and mercy.

She describes how this happens: “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” (8). Here, resurrection becomes not only eschatological, but deeply personal and ongoing—a daily rhythm of death and rebirth within each soul.

Houselander reminds us that Christ not only taught but showed us how to live the Risen Life during His forty days on earth: “It is to be a life of love, love that creates, love that fills us the measure of each life with joy” (10). Joy, then, is not a fleeting feeling but the fruit of living in the love of the Risen Christ.

One of the most poignant observations in this chapter is Christ’s hiddenness after the Resurrection. Despite His glorified state, “in his glorified body, he remained in the same little district, he hid his splendour, he kept the wounds of his Passion, he walked and talked and ate with men. He seemed as intent on persuading them to realize that he was human as he had been before on proving that he was divine, and instead of appearing in dazzling light all over the world, he sent other people to carry the news of his Resurrection, people who were still afraid, who still had the stains of their tears on their faces, who were still broken by the grief and horror of Calvary” (12). Rather than displaying divine majesty, He emphasized His closeness to humanity—choosing to work through His fragile, grieving disciples.

Finally, Houselander beautifully concludes: “The ultimate miracle of Divine Love is this, that the life of the Risen Lord is given to us to give to one another. It is given to us through our own human loves. It is no violation of our simple human nature. It is not something which must be cultivated through a lofty spirituality that only few could attain; it does not demand a way of life that is abnormal, or even unusual; it is not a specialized vocation. It is to be lived at home, at work, in any place, any circumstances. It is to be lived through our natural human relationships, through the people we know, the neighbours we see… So it is that we, sinners, wranglers, weaklings, provided only that we love God, are sent to give the life of the Risen Christ to the whole world, through the daily bread of our human love” (14). This Risen Life is not reserved for mystics or spiritual elites—it is to be lived in kitchens, workplaces, and among neighbours. Christ’s glory shines through our ordinary relationships when they are animated by love.

Chapter 2: As I Have Loved You

In this chapter, Houselander deepens her meditation on the Risen Life by exploring its most radical demand: Christ-like love. While it may not take much courage to accept the joy and beauty of the Risen Christ, Houselander insists that truly living the Risen Life—loving as Christ loves—requires immense courage (16).

That’s because Christian love is not sentimental—it’s cruciform. It always costs. She reminds us that Christ’s Resurrection only comes after His Passion: “It is only on the condition that Christ dies that He rises” (16). Therefore, when Jesus commands, “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12), He is calling us to a love that passes through the cross—obedient, universal, self-emptying, and sacrificial (17).

One of the chapter’s most vivid and beautiful metaphors compares the soul that loves to a craftsman who must patiently form raw, twisted material into something beautiful: “The lover is like the craftsman: he has to give himself to years of discipline, of patient work and perseverance… Just so is the lot of the lover, who has life for his material, life that sin has twisted, so that it is like wood that is knotted and warped… Yet on this material he acquires the skill… to fashion his own life into a thing of sheer beauty” (18). Love, then, is not instant—it is trained. It is formed slowly through habit, perseverance, and repeated dying to self.

She also issues a sobering warning: much of what masquerades as love is simply a disguised demand to be loved. “Many who imagine that they love are really concerned with nothing else but being loved. Their husbands, wives, parents, children, and friends become their victims; their self-love is plaintive, possessive, and suffocating. They depend on others and demand continual reassurance and flattery from them. They do not manage to go out from themselves and to give life even to those of their own household, let alone beyond it to the ends of the earth: and that is our final problem” (19). 

Yet what is most striking in this chapter is Houselander’s unapologetic affirmation of voluntary suffering. In a world addicted to comfort and pragmatism, this kind of love—self-sacrificing, hidden, and offered freely—is both mysterious and scandalous. She holds up the children of Fatima, St. Thérèse, and cloistered religious as those who willingly enter into Christ’s Passion—not because suffering is good in itself, but because love impels them to unite with Christ and offer reparation for sin: “If what Christ chose to do as the ultimate expression of his love… was to die on the cross, then surely the children and the saints are right in making their way of love quite literally like his” (21). “When they deny themselves… God sees Christ in them; he sees them as his beloved Son loving with ineffable love on the cross; and in him their love is effective” (22).

And yet, Houselander is not romanticizing suffering or love as something lofty or out of reach. She insists that the most authentic expression of Christ-like love happens in the ordinary and often unnoticed rhythms of daily life: “It is at home, in the family, that we can all learn the lesson of sacrifice, the miracle of grace that seems useless to the world… all through the lovely folly of the cross” (24).

Chapter 3: The Hidden Glory

In this chapter, Houselander meditates on a paradox that lies at the heart of Easter: though Christ is risen in glory, He remains hidden. This hiddenness is not an absence. It is, rather, a deliberate mystery. He is “the Way” and His way does not change (26). This consistent hiddenness is what enables us to know Christ not only in sacraments and Scripture, but also in our own daily lives—in silence, obscurity, and ordinary tasks.

Houselander reflects with imaginative tenderness on what Jesus may have been doing in the unrecorded moments of those forty days: “After his Resurrection, Christ showed himself to his friends five times, which are recorded. But what was he doing, where was he during the rest of the forty days? We may guess that he visited many unknown people; he may have gone to the slums of Jerusalem, the prisons, the cave of lepers. He may have been suddenly among children, playing with them, not recognized for who he was, but not questioned either. But this is guesswork. St. John simply tells us that “there are many other miracles Jesus did in the presence of his disciples, which are not written down in this book…” (John 20:30)” (27).

These musings are not idle speculation—they point to a profound theological truth: the hidden Christ is still at work, in places we least expect. His love is active, even when unrecognized.

She connects this hidden presence to the greatest mystery of all—the Eucharist.

“Some of the Fathers of the Church say that when Christ broke the bread at Emmaus, he gave his Body to the two disciples in Communion; in our life now that miracle is worked day after day, with just the same secrecy. It happens before our eyes in the hands of men; it is a thing of such glory that the tongues of angels could not speak aptly of it. Yet while we watch we see nothing. There is the wafer of unleavened bread; it is changed to the body of Christ who is God; it looks, feels, tastes, the same as before. The Blessed Sacrament is so much part of our ordinary life that we hardly ever realize that we are involved in a deed greater than any miracle every day” (27).

The miracle of the Eucharist—greater than any healing or dramatic sign—happens daily in silence and simplicity. And we, so often distracted, hardly notice.

This mystery of hidden glory extends to our relationships with others. We are called to look for Christ not only in the Host, but in each person:

“We must look for Christ in one another… We shall perceive Christ in others only if we realize that he is hidden in his Risen Life; that we can discern him only with the eyes of faith… He says to us, as he said to St. Thomas: “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have learned to believe” (John 20:29)… We must learn to see Christ in others with the eyes of faith, because the whole orientation of our will, in which is the secret of peace, will depend upon whether we act as if we did see Christ in them or not” (30-31).

Faith opens our eyes to see beyond appearances. If Christ is hidden in others, then our entire posture toward the world must change. Reverence becomes a way of life.

“If we see everyone in our life as “another Christ” we shall treat everyone with the reverence and objectivity that must grow into love, and as a matter of sheer logic we shall accept whatever they bring to us, in the way of joy or sorrow or responsibility, as coming from the hand of Christ; and because nothing comes from his hand that is not given for our ultimate happiness, we shall gradually learn that the things they do, the demands they make, are all part of God’s plan for us” (32).

This includes not only the joy people bring, but also the trials and burdens. Every encounter becomes a gift, a grace-laden mystery wrapped in the fabric of our daily lives.

But perhaps the greatest challenge, Houselander admits, is to recognize the hidden Christ in ourselves:

“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” (33).

It is not our spiritual achievements or visible holiness that allow us to recognize Him—but love alone:

“The only condition for finding and recognizing the Risen Christ today is that we love him: not power, chance, or virtue, but only love” (34-5).

Love is the lens through which the hidden glory of the Risen Christ is revealed—whether in the Eucharist, in others, or in our own imperfect hearts.

Chapter 4: Revealing Christ’s Love

In this chapter, Houselander reflects on how Christ, even in his risen glory, continues to reveal his love with exquisite tenderness and deep respect for each soul. He never forces himself upon anyone, but allows each person to discover him through their own experience:

“Christ never forced his love on anyone… In the five recorded incidents of Christ appearing in his Risen Body, he allowed each of those to whom he showed himself to discover that it was he in their own way, through their own medium. His approach to them, always exquisite in courtesy, miraculous in humility, was in each case one that showed his intimate knowledge of each one individually. He knew which would be the most natural way for that person to respond to his love, and what each needed to lift his or heart from the sorrow or shame which was crushing it and restore it to the joy that would enable it to enter into communion with him” (36-37).

This intimate, personal approach is the model for how we are called to bear witness to the Resurrection with our own lives:

“Why we, who are members of Christ’s body on earth, his Church, are so, is a great mystery; there cannot be a living Catholic who does not know a Protestant, or a pagan, or an agnostic who does not seem to him to be far worthier of our vocation, far better endowed for it by nature, and even by grace. But the fact remains that God has chosen us for the tremendous destiny of love, and if the wonder and the joy of it is ours, so too is the responsibility of it. That responsibility is to prove to those who are still unaware of it that Christ has risen from the dead and that he is in the world now. We have to prove Christ to the world, and we have to prove him to the world by our own lives” (40-41).

Christ’s method flows from his profound knowledge and reverence for each person’s uniqueness:

“Christ “knew what was in man”: that is the secret of his method; he knew and loved every man, objectively and individually, as a separate person, a unique person; he respected their otherness, their independence, even their slowness, their limitations, which were all part of the experience which was to bring them to the realization of his love” (41-42).

Following Christ means learning to love others in the same way—meeting them as they are, with patience and sensitivity:

“Christ’s example shows us so clearly and simply how to practice his objective love, how to learn what is in the hearts of others. First, we must realize everyone separately and approach each one differently” (43-44).

Houselander warns against the temptation to approach evangelization with force rather than love, overwhelming rather than awakening souls. We tend to use methods like apologetics “and we tend to use them like a sledgehammer with which we deal blow upon blow upon the head of the unfortunate victim of our apostolic zeal, as if we could stun him into belief, and convert him by concussion” (42).

We tend to give the impression that we have all the answers and are no longer seeking, that we have a formula for everything, that we hold feeling in contempt and live only by acts of will. But this is not true. We are still seeking God.

“To those who come to Christ through their minds, through study, and through considering the problems of today, suffering above all, we should be ready to discuss their thoughts with them, not in order to score points against them in argument, but to help them to clarify their own ideas, to form their own conclusions – this, with the gentleness of Christ, that they, like the disciples on the road, may feel their hearts burning within them as the mystery of the Redemption begins to shine on their minds” (44).

Finally, Christ’s love is revealed not just through words or even mighty works, but through the humility, tenderness, and self-giving quality of love itself:

“Not only by words or acts can we show Christ to men, but also by the quality of our love. Sometimes in denying ourselves its immediate delight—“Do not cling to me thus” (Jn 20: 17); sometimes in the humility which causes us to put ourselves into the hands of the loved one: “Let me have thy hand; put it into my side” (Jn 20: 27). Sometimes by serving, lighting the fires, cooking the food, in the simplicity of the Risen Christ. Sometimes by forgiving, with his forgiveness that heals because it asks only for love: “Simon, son of John, dost thou love me?” (Jn 21: 17)” (44).

In all things, we are called to reveal the risen Christ by embodying his way of love—gentle, patient, self-sacrificing, and real.

Chapter 5: The Personality of Christ

In this chapter, Houselander reflects that growing in Christ is not just about imitation, but about acquiring His very personality, letting even the smallest details of daily life be transformed by His grace:

“It is not enough for us, if we live in Christ, to try to imitate what he did; we must also acquire his personality and grow to the maturity of our Christhood through the means by which he grew to his maturity of manhood, so that the trifling things of our experience, transitory by themselves as the fall of a rose, become charged with eternal meaning by the ray of his light. It is not by chance that God’s plan for our risen life is sacramental and that the substances which are the outward signs of the sacraments are also the simplest things used daily in our homes, reminding us hourly of the effects of sacramentals on our souls, and showing us how we are to “advance in wisdom with the years” by just the same quiet attention and response to our small worlds that Christ gave to his. Water purifies and quenches thirst, oil softens, cleans, lubricates, and burns in our lamps. Wheat contains the germ of life and bread is life’s mainstay. Wine warms, invigorates, feeds, and uplifts us” (48). 

The ordinary, sacramental fabric of daily life forms the hidden ground where Christ’s personality takes root in us.

Houselander then reminds us that the Christian life is not solitary but deeply communal; grace comes to us through others, especially through the Church and her sacraments:

“Every day, in our homes, we look on the invisible, handle the intangible, use the substances that Christ uses for Heaven’s mysteries, and, performing the work of Martha, possess the key to Mary’s contemplation. It is God’s plan, too, that the sacraments are given to us at the hands of men. Those who misunderstand God’s tenderness for us boast that they need no priest. They “go straight to God.” But in the most critical times in our lives, we are normally incapable of such an act of will. At baptism someone must pledge our souls for us. When we are dying, normally we need another human being to help and comfort us, to make our act of contrition for us, to be our voice in God’s ears because once again we are inarticulate, to put the Holy Viaticum, the food for the journey, into our mouths for us” (49). 

God’s love meets us through human mediation—through the hands, voices, and compassion of others.

She underscores that our life in the Risen Christ is a continuous exchange of His love, moving through us to others:

“We cannot remind ourselves too often that our life in the Risen Christ is an interchange between us of his love. In the power of his love in ourselves, we give to him in our neighbor” (51). 

Each act of love offered to our neighbour becomes a living offering to Christ himself.

Houselander broadens the vision to see Christ’s wounded presence in the suffering and marginalized, calling us to recognize and reverence Him in the broken of our world:

“Christ rose, bearing his wounds. There are “other Christs” today, who are not always recognized as such, because they carry a stigma—his stigmata. People who bear a burden of hereditary disease, or temperament or temptation, neurotics and “borderline cases” made helpless and dependent by affliction which at the same time makes them shunned by society. Mentally ill people, often neglected by their families and left to strangers to visit them in mental hospitals; old senile people who have outlived all on whom they had a claim and are unwanted; people who are outcasts and who are broken in mind and body by the wars caused by our habitual sins. In these people Christ asks only for compassion, that we shall be awake to his presence and to his suffering in them, and visit them in the redeeming sympathy of love” (52).

We meet the risen, wounded Christ today wherever we show compassion to those the world tends to forget.

Finally, Houselander calls us to embrace the deep, steady joy that Christ desires for us—joy rooted in a sacramental vision of all life:

“Christ in his humanness wanted joy. He chose to suffer completely and to the end, but he also wanted absolute joy; he wanted to receive it and he wanted to give it… It is a great part of our Christ-life to increase joy in the world, just as it is. First of all in our own lives, for joy must be a reality, something as deep and still and pure as water in a hidden well, under the ground. The forced smile of the amateur Christ is blasphemy. We cannot increase joy unless we “put on” Christ’s personality, and our own joy actually is his… First of all its increase must begin in ourselves; we must grow in wisdom as Christ did, by deepening our understanding of the sacramental life, through the very substance of every day. Until there is nothing we see or touch that is not charged with wonder for us, though it is something as familiar as the bread on the table. And there is nothing that we do, though it be no more than filling a glass with water for a child, which does not sweep the loveliness of God’s sacramental plan through our thoughts, like a great wave of grace washing them clean from sin and the sorrow that is inseparable from it. Then we can increase joy through compassion, even where there is incurable suffering, for if we even want to put on Christ’s personality we shall radiate his light, and he is the light which shines in darkness, which darkness cannot overcome” (53-54).

True joy in Christ is not superficial happiness but a deep, hidden wellspring of wonder and compassion, radiating light into even the darkest places.

Chapter 6: The Prayer of the Body

In this chapter, Houselander explores how the Incarnation has transformed our very bodies into instruments of prayer.

Because Christ took on flesh, our physical gestures—kneeling, standing, bowing—are no longer neutral. They become sacramentally charged actions, filled with the redeeming power of Christ’s love. In the Liturgy, the prayer of the Body, even our most ordinary movements participate in something eternal: “our bodies play an enormously important part in our life in the Risen Christ” (56). Through this, life itself becomes a liturgy.

The Liturgy, then, is truly the prayer of Christ’s Mystical Body, drawing our personal intentions into the perfect offering of the Son to the Father.

“The Liturgy is the expression of Christ’s love, his prayer in his Mystical Body, into which our own prayer is gathered and integrated. It is not subject, as our personal prayer is, to moods. It never fails, day after day, from the rising of the sun to its setting, in age after age, to adore God, to express sorrow for sin, to praise and thank God, to offer sacrifice, to petition for peace. It is the perfect expression of every individual, the voice of the inarticulate lifted in a hymn of love. At the same time, it is the chorus of the whole human race made one in communion with Christ” (59-60).

This transformation begins in surrender. Before the altar, we set aside our anxieties, our inconsistencies, even our lack of fervour, and allow ourselves to be drawn into Christ’s own movements and desires.

“We begin the lesson before the altar, and the first lesson is to be rid of anxiety about our fervor, our failure, our personal intention, our self—to give ourselves up through Christ’s words and Christ’s gestures to Christ’s intentions and desires. This can begin simply by making the sign of the cross at the beginning of Mass as slowly and widely as the priest is doing at the foot of the altar. We lift our hand, we make a gesture in the power of the Trinity. Then, not troubling about what we feel, what we fret for, we put into our kneeling and standing and sitting all the majesty, all the obedience, all the simplicity that we can. That is all. We shall carry this idea into the world, into the kitchen and the office, making life a liturgy, so that through it those prayers that Christ wishes to be made unceasingly will be made, regardless of our mood and in tranquility” (61). 

The implications of this are profound: daily life, even in its humblest moments, can become a continuation of the Liturgy. Every action—no matter how hidden or mundane—can be offered with Christ’s redeeming love and the power of the Trinity:

“Now it will be in the power of the Trinity and the majesty of the Liturgy that we do the things which before seemed only effort and boredom.  Every step to the office, or to and fro in the home, will be a counted, preordained step, like the numbered steps in the sanctuary. We shall kneel in sorrow for sin and in adoration, whether we kneel to scrub the floor or to fasten the little child’s shoe. In its simplest terms, the way to restore our souls in this prayer of the Body is to slow down our pace to the pace of the Liturgy, to prune our minds to its huge simplicities. This, starkly simple though it is, is a life’s work” (62).

In the end, Houselander offers us not simply a theology of the body, but a vision of embodied sanctity. She invites us to live each moment as a prayer—rooted in the Liturgy, sustained by grace, and ordered toward God.

Chapter 7: Work

In this chapter, Houselander offers a profoundly dignified theology of human labour. Against the backdrop of modern work culture—often reduced to survival, productivity, or economic gain—she invites us to recover a deeply Christian vision: that work is not merely toil, but a sacred calling to participate in God’s own creative love.

To understand this properly, Houselander turns our eyes to the Risen Christ. The Resurrection, she says, cuts through the “thick grey fog” of utilitarian drudgery like “the transparent sunlight of early morning.” Christ emerges not only from the tomb, but from the “captivity of all human affliction” (66). In Him, a new kind of work is revealed—radiant, joyful, redeemed.

“What connection is there between these two men, the somber, menacing worker of today, and the radiant young man in the garden of tombs, whose every heartbeat renews the love dormant in all men? The answer is that the Christ who lives on in the life of every worker is potentially that same Christ who rises daily, hourly from the dead… to whom all work was, and is, what God intended it to be—adoration or contemplation that makes all things new” (67).

This vision of redeemed work reaches all the way back to Eden. Houselander recalls that Adam, as gardener, was created not only to work but to find joy and communion with God in the very act of working: “Adam was intended to work [as a gardener], and since in Eden the whole joy that man was made for was to know and love God, work must have been one of the ways of knowing him, a means of blissful contemplation…” (68).

And so when Christ rises in the garden, appearing to Mary Magdalene as a gardener, it is not a coincidence—it is a theological symbol. Christ, the new Adam, comes to restore the original dignity of work. In Him, human labour once again becomes a way of knowing and loving God.

To illustrate this restoration, Houselander turns to the artist as a kind of icon. The true artist works not out of necessity or compulsion, but out of joy, beauty, and love. In this sense, all Christians are called to become artists—co-makers with God:

“In the heart of man, an essential part of his likeness to God is this, he is a maker. God made everything; man, if he is to be happy, like God, must make something. He reflects his Creator. He must make something which he has conceived in his own mind and which he longs to see, to be able to touch and hold, something that will have substance and shape and purpose, that will be outside of himself, and yet will remain, as an idea, in himself. In this kind of making man comes to know God, not from what anyone outside tells him, but from himself; he learns his Creator’s joy from the joy in his own, the maker’s heart” (69). 

Even if the artist’s work is imperfect or modest, their attitude toward labour makes all the difference. Theirs is a prayerful way of working—an interior posture that transforms daily effort into liturgy:

“It is the exceptional work of art that is a real gift to the world, but the artist contributes a great deal more than his work of art. He keeps alive the idea of work as a joy in itself; even when he is ignorant of what prayer means theologically, in him the idea of work as prayer is manifest” (70). 

Importantly, Houselander is not idealizing a romantic or pre-industrial way of life. She explicitly rejects escapism, insisting instead that this vision applies equally to office workers, mothers, doctors, factory girls, schoolchildren, and anyone who lives the Christ-life in ordinary conditions:

“Those who live the Christ-life must keep the artist’s ideal always before them, even in their lives as they are now. They must regard themselves, not first of all as workers, but as makers, even as co-makers with God. This will apply to everyone.” (70). 

The key lies not in what we do, but in how and why we do it. If God created the world out of Trinitarian love, then human work, too, must be rooted in love—self-giving, generative, joyful. And in this light, every task—however small—can become a sacred act:

“The meaning of Creation is love… It is this part of the mystery that should reform our idea of work. We cannot all make works of art in the narrow sense, but we can all be artists and creators: in our attitude to our work we can make what we make first of all for love… We use the expression to “make love,” but limit it to one idea. The whole life of every worker should make love. All work should be an act of creative love” (71).

Houselander closes with a note of inspiration: one person, working with joy, can change their corner of the world. Thought may not always be contagious—but joy is:

“But each individual who does renew his own spirit to work with this ideal does do something; in fact, he does a great deal to bring about the reform of the world’s work, which is a basic necessity for human happiness, and this because no one can have this idea of work without getting some joy out of his own work, and, if thought is not always infectious, joy is. But before all else, when work becomes contemplation, man learns to know the joy of the love of the Blessed Trinity through his own experience; learns it from his own heart, making his own world one in which Christ is made new. He possesses himself of the inexpressible mystery of the Creator’s joy in making a new world that is to cradle Christ” (73). 

Chapter 8: The Crown of Thorns

In this chapter, Houselander confronts the notion that Catholic faith discourages critical thought. On the contrary, she insists: “A Christian is bound to think; he owes it to God, and he owes it to the world. He is bound to think about these hard facts as well as the lovely things in life, because he is here precisely for one purpose, to lead the Risen Life of Christ, who has overcome the world” (78). 

This light is not merely something we reflect from Him at a distance. Rather, as Jesus says, “I am the light of the world,” and again to His disciples, “You are the light of the world” (cf. John 8:12; Mt 5:14–16). For Houselander, this means that the Christian shares not only in Christ’s work and His heart, but also in His very mind. We are meant to be the presence of Christ’s wisdom illuminating the world: “We are not only given the hands of Christ to work with, and the heart of Christ to love with, but the mind of Christ to illuminate the world with. His plan of love is consistent through and through; through our personal lives we are to give his love to one another, through the sacraments we are to give his life to one another, through his light in us, we are to give his mind to one another” (78-79).

“This means first of all that we are to see everything in life as he sees it, with his mind, through his eyes, in his light” (80). Seeing with Christ’s mind means recognizing divine love even in suffering—because Christ has transformed suffering by pouring into it the power of His love. It also means perceiving joy, beauty, and blessing in the simple things around us: wildflowers, birds, wheat, bread, wine, domestic labour—all of which Jesus used as signs of His Father’s love. Houselander urges us to let our vision be renewed in the very places we are most tempted to take for granted: our homes, our daily routines, our overlooked surroundings: “This was Christ’s motive in all his thinking; he did not point to flowers and birds only because they are intrinsically lovely, but because if we would only begin to think, we would come to the inevitable conclusion that we are far more dear to God than they are, and can trust him unhesitatingly for all that we need” (82).

“Again, we are not told by Christ to think only about stark and terrible things,” she writes, “but about the little and lovely and happy things all round us. We are usually so preoccupied with anxiety that we hardly see them at all… Christ himself evidently thought about everything, and saw in everything an example or a symbol of his Father’s love” (80). This kind of sacramental vision is both deeply human and deeply divine. The ordinary becomes a path to the eternal.

But this kind of thinking—thinking with the mind of Christ—is not without cost. To adopt His gaze is to share in His suffering. Houselander puts it starkly: “Thinking with Christ’s mind today is, as it was two thousand years ago, putting on the crown of thorns” (82). The Christian thinker will be wounded by truth, labor in love, and suffer in hope. Yet this crown of thorns is also a crown of glory. It brings not only clarity but joy, the dawn of divine light through human darkness.

She closes with an extraordinary image: the Christlike person, bowing under the weight of the world’s pain, shines with the rising sun—waking the world to God’s love. In such moments, the soul can cry out, with Russian poet Nekrasov, “There are times, there are ages, when nothing is more desirable, nothing more beautiful than the crown of thorns” (83).

Chapter 9: Rest

In this final chapter, Houselander presents rest not as passive withdrawal, but as an essential condition for living the Christ-life on earth. Rest, she writes, is “so essential to our life in the Risen Christ” (86) because “the Christ life in us follows a natural law of growth” (88). Just as Christ took on our human nature and submitted Himself to the rhythms of time and season, so too must we surrender to the spiritual seasons that shape His life within us.

There will be times when prayer feels dry, when we feel no consoling sense of Christ’s presence. Houselander names these moments the “blessed winters of the spirit” (89)—seasons of silence and interior emptiness in which, though hidden from our awareness, Christ is actively growing within. She urges us not to resist these barren periods, but to yield to God’s quiet work: “This time of emptiness is the preparation for the new influx of life, the new sweetness, which we cannot force but which will come only when there is an empty heart, a fallow mind, waiting the inrush of Heaven’s life” (89).

There will also be times when we feel like activism is the holier path, and we need to take action now and no longer wait. But Houselander offers a corrective: the fruitfulness of the Church’s mission does not depend on frenetic effort, but on the hidden surrender of the soul to God:

“Too many anxious Christians today think that their efforts to preach and teach and enter into outward activities can do more to save the world than the surrender of their souls to God, to become Christ-bearers” (90).

Even Christ told His apostles to wait. He said it was better for them that He go—so that the Spirit could come (John 16:7). That same pattern holds for us. We are to wait in stillness, with quiet minds and open hearts, just as Mary waited for the Word to be made flesh within her: “The preparation is the same: the still, quiet mind, acceptance, and remaining close to the Mother of God, resting in her rest while the life of the world grew within her toward the flowering of everlasting joy” (92).

Ultimately, rest is not inactivity—it is receptivity. It is the womb of joy, the hidden ground of transformation. In resting with Christ, we are readied to bear Him once again into a weary world.