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by Caryll Houselander (Author), Caryll Houselander (Illustrator)
2021 Reprint of the 1955 Edition. Facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Illustrated by the author with fourteen woodcuts. A feeling that compassion is the only thing that matters invades the reader of this powerful series of thoughts on the sufferings of our Blessed Lord. Caryll Houselander's one theme was that in the suffering of man the suffering of Christ continue. In this section of her exposition of suffering she stresses that our Lord suffered in us all, for us all, with us all, by anticipation, everything that we suffer, and that because he suffers it (for Calvary is timeless) we are Christ suffering. It is one of the richest veins of real spirituality that can be tapped. The authoress surely lived these thoughts and gave them their convincing, penetrating quality from her own experience and her own soul. Like every deep truth about our Lord, this theme is prolific. The ideas that come unasked to the mind, as one follows and ponders, are many and helpful. To each meditation is added a prayer in rhythmic prose, worthy of the subject, rounding off the meditation, putting into words for us the thoughts and feeling born of our meditation. In the meditations we have pictures, partial but effective, of what happened. In the prayers Caryll Houselander seems to say to us: 'Now this is what you must say.' That she is so often right, even in the detail of the phrases, is a measure of the spiritual sympathy of this book. The illustrations, fourteen, black-and-white from wood-cuts also made by Caryll Houselander, seal the unity of the theme. Stark and dark at first glance, they grow on you as the meditation sinks in. Even the Fourth Station, where our Lady is made taller than our Lord, is a perfect vehicle of the thought and feeling of the text.
