The Humiliated Christ in Russia

Caryll Houselander was an interesting cat: quirky and Catholic, a bit of a mystic, a bit of a crazy cat lady without the cats. She was born in England in 1901 and died of breast cancer at the age of 53. The words in blue are hers (from a Magnificat meditation); the ones in black are mine.

I had long been haunted by the Russian conception of the humiliated Christ, the lame Christ limping through Russia, begging his bread; the Christ who, all through the ages, might return to the earth and come even to sinners to win their compassion by his need. Now, in the flash of a second, I knew that this dream is a fact; not a dream, not the fantasy or legend of a devout people, not the prerogative of the Russians, but Christ in man. It belongs therefore to the Catholic Church; Christ in his perfect human nature, Christ in his risen glory and Christ in his need and his suffering on earth, are reconciled. We have the whole Christ.

I copied down this meditation, because I seem unable to turn my back on anything related to Russia. The nation’s history and literature fascinate me, even if I feel as though I know so little about each. This particular image from Houselander caught my attention, not because I’ve “seen” it in the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (a number of which I’ve read), but because I’ve encountered it in a novel by a contemporary Russian writer. It’s been a number of years since I’ve read Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin, but it was significant enough that Laurus, the man who gave up everything for a chance at heaven, still visits me in my thoughts and I now see that he was the humiliated Christ. Of course, I have to wonder why I’d not realized this before now, as I learned about Houselander’s visions years before I read Laurus. I guess I imagined that her insights pertained more to Germany during World Wars I and II and less to Russia at any point in time.

If I let my mind wander, I find it poking its nose into a rabbit hole marked “René Girard: single victim mechanism.” Christ the victim. Christ the scapegoat. Christ the disturber of the universe and revealer of Satan’s evil method. Compassion: will it show us the way or pull us to our doom? Dorothy Day saw Jesus in her fellow humans and did all she could to alleviate their suffering. She served God by serving her neighbor. How am I to go about that? Well, it’s not a big question, a here’s-the-answer-that-will-apply-for-all-time question. It’s a daily reminder, like an alarm that might remind a diabetic when it’s time for the daily shot of basal insulin. It’s a question to be asked over and over and answered whenever the opportunity presents itself, and perhaps more than anything, it is a query put to me, specifically: “How will you show me that you love me now, Cheryl?”

The “vision” lasted with that intensity for several days, and each of them revealed the mystery and its implications for me a little more clearly. Although it did not prevent me from ever sinning again, it showed me what sin is … it was to spit on him, perhaps to crucify him. I saw too the reverence that everyone must have for a sinner; instead of condoning his sin, which is in reality his utmost sorrow, one must comfort Christ who is suffering in him. And this reverence must be paid even to those sinners whose souls seem to be dead, because it is Christ, who is the life of the soul, who is dead in them; they are his tombs, and Christ in the tomb is potentially the risen Christ. For the same reason, no one of us who has fallen into mortal sin himself must ever lose hope.

And no one of us who judges the mortal(?) sin of others must ever think that we have the right or even a smitch of enough insight to pray, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.”

God, have mercy on me, a sinner.