Born in 1901, Caryll Houselander was received into the Catholic Church when she was six years old. “Strictly speaking,” in her own words, she “was not a ‘cradle’ Catholic but a ‘rocking-horse’ Catholic.” But the operative word was certainly Catholic—for Caryll Houselander loved Jesus Christ and His Church, deeply and happily. And her work over the course of a challenging and illness-plagued life testified to that: until her untimely death at the age of fifty-four, Houslander cared for the poor and desolate, materially as well as intellectually and spiritually, and most especially with her writing. So profound were her insights that Monsignor Ronald Knox once declared that Caryll Houselander ought to open a school of spirituality, describing how “In all she wrote, there was a candour as of childhood: she seemed to see everything for the first time, and the driest or doctrinal considerations shone out like a restored picture when she had finished with it.”