This war is the passion,

If you suffer in life you will love this book. Caryll Houselander's words touch to the heart. She had a deep understanding of the Passion of Christ during her time of suffering in the war, but she also applies it to everyday suffering to everyone who is a Christian struggling to carry their crosses in this world. I highley recommend this book to everyone!! God bless

This is a beautiful little book (replete with poetic and mystical passages of real beauty and full of joy). It is not a classic (as her book the "Reed of God" most surely is) - it was her first book after all. But I think what marks her work out is a kind of intimacy - she knows what it means to be a friend of God - she is kind of tough and zany version of St Terese of Lisieux without the sentimentality. Not only is it an important spiritual work it gives a real insight into life in wartime London. Again, I wish to thank again Fr James V Schall for recommending Houselander as, but for him and indeed Dom Hugh Gilbert I would never have come across her and she does appear to be a spiritual master. But why is she so good - because like all great spiritual writers she has an understanding of the great mysteries as of in some way she inhabits them. Even so, I suppose I was a little surprised to her reaction to her forthcoming death from cancer - I suppose I expected she would great her death with a kind of joy but she freely admits she would rather stay behind. In a way this showed me how holy persons really differ depending on their individuality - for example, all that people like St Ignatius of Antioch want is to be with the Lord. As a dying person, who has undergone a fair bit of suffering, I too can understand this desire to see the face of God, which surpasses all things. But let me give some extracts to who why this is a good book. In this extract, she understands precisely the extent of Christ's identification with us and the need for sacrificial love: "All of us can literally imitate him in the wholeness of sacrifice, in offering all that we are - and that, stripped of our selfishness - to God, as an act of adoration to God and of love for one another". "If Christ is growing in you, you are growing towards sacrifice...in real sacrifice there is joy which surpasses all other joys, it is the crescendo and culmination of love...it means a whole attention, a whole concentration, a whole donation". Here she tells us not to be fussily pious: "Don't be an expert in spiritual life. Treat Christ as the real person that he is, don't fuss and worry about your soul" And, she knows of intimacy with Christ: "Christ asks for a home in your soul, where he can be at rest with you, where he can talk easily to you, where you and he. Alone together, can laugh and be silent and be delighted with one another. ...Forget yourself, forget your soul, let him tell you how he loves you, show what he is like, prove to you that he is real... he asks only one thing, that you will let him tell you this, directly, simply; that you will treat him as someone real, not as someone who does not really exist...Christ is God's Word, saying to the world: "I love you...every moment has been a self-donation to you". And she really understands how Christ communes with us: "We are one body, Christ. His life in us is like the bloodstream in the body, a torrent which flo