I love mystics. I just got back from Richard Rohr’s conference in Albuquerque on the “Universal Christ” . He opens his book with a vision that the mystic Caryll Houselander had in which she suddenly saw Christ in everyone.
I looked up Caryll Houselander and read that this was not her only vision, but that the gist of all her visions was the same - Christ in everyone. As a young girl, she had her first vision in a convent. One day, she entered a room and saw a Bavarian nun sitting by herself, weeping and polishing shoes ( I wonder how she knew the nun was Bavarian?). This was during a time when there was much anti-German prejudice. As she stared, she saw the nun's head being pressed down by a crown of thorns and she interpreted this as Christ's suffering in the woman.
Later, in July 1918, Houselander was sent by her mother on an errand. On her way to the street vendor, she looked up and saw what she later described as a huge Russian-style icon spread across the sky. The icon was of Christ crucified, lifted up and looking down, brooding over the world. Shortly after, she read in a newspaper an article about the assassination of Russian Tsar Nicholas II. She said the face she saw in the newspaper photograph was the face in her vision of the crucified Christ.
And then, her third vision (the one Richard Rohr wrote about) occurred when she was on a busy underground train:
“I was in an underground train, a crowded train in which all sorts of people jostled together, sitting and strap-hanging - workers of every description going home at the end of the day. Quite suddenly I saw in my mind, but as vividly as a wonderful picture. Christ in them all. But I saw more than that; not only was Christ in every one of them, living in them, dying in them, rejoicing in them, sorrowing in them, but because He was i them, and because they were here, the whole world was here too, here in the underground train; not only the world as it was at that moment, not only all the people in all the countries of the world, but all those people who had lived in the past, and all those yet to come.
I came out into the street and walked for a long time in the crowds. It was the same here, on every side, in every passer-by, everywhere - Christ.
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….
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….
Christ is everywhere; in Him every kind of life has a meaning and has an influence of every other kind of life. It is not the foolish sinner like myself, running about the world with reprobates and feeling magnanimous, who comes closest to them and brings them healing; it is the contemplative in her cell who has never set eyes on them, bu tin whom Christ fasts and prays for them - or it may be a charwoman in whom Christ makes Himself and servant again, or a king whose crown of gold hides a crown of thorns. Realization of our oneness in Christ is the only cure for human loneliness. For me, too, it is the only ultimate meaning of life, the only thing that gives meaning and purpose to every life.
After a few days the “vision” faded. People looked the same again, there was no longer the same shock of insight for me each time I was face to face with another human being, Christ was hidden again; indeed, through the year to come I would have to seek for Him, and usually I would find Him in others - and still more in myself - only through a deliberate and blind act of faith”
The three mystical experiences she claimed to have experienced convinced her that Christ is to be found in all people, even those whom the world shunned because they did not conform to certain standards of piety. She would write that if people looked for Christ in only the "saints," they would not find him. She is described as having smoked, drank, and had a sharp tongue.
At the conference, I was speaking to a man about the stories in the New Testament that describe people’s encounters with Christ after the resurrection. Mary thinks Jesus is the gardener. The disciples on the road to Emmaeus don’t recognize him. Haven’t you always wondered about that? How could they not have recognized him? I mean, if someone I loved died and came back and appeared to me, I would recognize them! I have often dismissed this part of the story - or more accurately ignored it because it was baffling - and thought, “well, maybe his resurrected body looked super different.” Even though I knew this was a lame explanation.
But what IF:
It WAS the gardener.
It WAS another dude on the road to Emmaeus.
And it WAS Christ in those people. Just like Caryll Houselander’s vision?
“Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.” Luke 24:31
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