When I was a Protestant and a college student, I wanted to know Christ: not like talking to Him on the telephone, which was how I experienced prayer- but to be in His presence. I knew I was unworthy, still am, but there was some corner of me that knew that He wanted me there; that that was where I would begin to grow. Finally, I did enter into His presence, and because I was, by His grace, looking for it and believed it to be possible, recognized it at once in the small wafer inside the monstrance of a Catholic Church. My next line of thinking was, “If He is here in a real and present way, then this must be His Church.” This sustained me all the way through my dark, lonely and yet wonderful journey home to Rome.
Now, seven years after confirmation and First Communion, I am feeling the longing and the need to be Christ for others. I feel as in the dark about this as I did as a Protestant praying for something I’d never heard of before. How am I to be Christ? The instant I write something or do something good, I’m like the blow-fish, puffed up so that I’m unrecognizable and no one is able to swallow me. I fail daily, on some days hourly, to imitate Christ. I am like a caterpillar dreaming of flying.
A caterpillar, crawling on the ground and so vulnerable to attack from birds, feet and even just making a wrong turn and being fried like an egg on the sidewalk, is no creature that should be dreaming of flying. The most prudent course for it is to take lessons from the earthworm and go underground. And yet this caterpillar does dream; in its very desire, it cocoons itself in order to delve deeper into the dream. Then God produces a miracle in its very make-up, which scientists call metamorphosis.
In order to be Christ, to pass Him on to others, He must work this miracle in me. I have to be willing to dream, to pray past the attacking birds and the burning sidewalks. I have to believe past what is apparent to me as a caterpillar- and my ugliness and insufficiency.
An essential part of this metamorphosis is the aid of Our Blessed Mother, at least, in my case. St. Louis de Montfort asserts that especially in the latter days, when things are so confusing and dark, that Our Lady’s intercession in making saints, making Little Christs, will be essential for everyone. So a process of consecration to Our Lady is the beginning of this for me. “I want to know Christ in His suffering so that I may participate in the glory of His Resurrection” (paraphrased from St. Paul). Our Lady understood this road better than anyone besides Our Lord, and she has been appointed to walk with us along the way, as our mother.
In the writings of the saints, a common theme is resounded: that to go to Christ, to be Christ, is to love your neighbor. The greatest thing one can do in this life, the greatest thing one can do with one’s gifts is to communicate Christ to another. Loving God, living in God, is to imitate Him: and He has laid His own life down for us caterpillars: He waits for us to crawl into the sanctuary and receive Him as a humble wafer.Fr. Von Zeller, in his book The Choice of God, elucidates this process of communicating Christ. And perhaps it is in the attempts, failures and small successes of communicating Christ that He does finally deign to reach down and begin metamorphosis.
Fr. Von Zeller says: “To communicate Christ…it means that there will be one of you in Christ where there were two before.” What a glorious task! What joy! He goes on: “The giving of Christ to others depends upon living in Christ oneself…it will produce a great longing to give others to God.”
Perhaps, like many parts of the spiritual life, there is a paradox here, one that is only solved by the person of Christ Himself, doing all the essential work. Yet we have to cooperate with our wills, and to be willing to dream of flying. Once we have begun, we begin not to induce the knowledge of Christ into others, but rather to educe what we find in them which bears affinity to Christ. Von Zeller says, “ In order to influence another person we have to have understanding of that person. There has to be sympathy before there can be communication.” Instead of sympathy, I like the Italian word, ‘simpatico’. This means a kind of easy, affectionate affinity and friendship with another person. Most often this happens with people who have naturally similar tastes and world-views, but I venture to say here that the more Christ-like a person is, the more a saint, the more people he will be able to have ‘simpatico’ with; the more humble and simple a person is, the more people he can relate to-for they are all viewed as above himself, more interesting than himself, and yet like himself. A saint is a true “common man”.
What, though, of the truism that saints, and Christ Himself, were and are persecuted? I think of Christ Himself, who had simpatico with individual Pharisees like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, with harlots like Mary Magdalene, with fishermen like Peter and Romans like the Centurion. It was when they came to Him with an open heart, they already bore something of Himself, a humility or a searching. It was the proud, the self-sufficient whom He did not reach. Von Zeller uses a Latin term to explain this: Quidquid recipitur est in recipiente secundum modum recipientis- “ Whatever is received is received according to the disposition of the recipient’. Von Zeller further explains: “ The man who expects the Kingdom of God to be a threepenny bit receives the Kingdom of God as a threepenny bit. The sheer grace of God may widen him- nothing else will.”
The Little Christ is supposed to “stimulate the love of God he finds.” And, “ it is idle to worry about the effect we are producing on souls: we have not been asked to produce effects on them- God must be left to do that- but to serve them. All we have to consider is the effect His influence is having on us- whether or not we are yielding completely to the impact of His character upon ours. My good impression upon the world counts for nothing, nothing at all; what matter is His impression upon me, and upon souls… ‘not changing nature but perfecting the will’ says St. John Chrysostom of the Holy Spirit’s work in the soul; ‘finding a publican and producing an evangelist, finding a persecutor and producing an apostle, finding a thief and leading him into paradise, finding a harlot and putting her on an equality with virgins.’”
And, I might add, poetically speaking of myself: finding a caterpillar and: I dream, I pray, I believe: producing a butterfly.
