The Reed of God
By Caryll Houselander
The one thing that Our Lady did and does is the one thing that we all have to do, namely, to bear Christ into the world. (Caryll Houselander)
“Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be unto me according to thy word.” With this humble declaration, a woman named Mary accepted a vocation to the infinite: becoming not only the mother of God, but also the mother of all the living. In illustration of this mystery, Caryll Houselander invokes three symbols that represent the unique quality of the Blessed Virgin Mary: a reed through which the Eternal Love was to be piped as a shepherd’s song; a flowerlike chalice into which the purest water of humanity was to be poured, mingled with wine, changed to the crimson blood of love, and lifted up in sacrifice; and a warm nest rounded to the shape of humanity to receive the Divine Little Bird. The result is a tender meditation on the majesty of Mary, the Reed of God, in and through whom flows the infinite music of God’s love.
Regularly hailed since its publication in 1944 as Houselander’s finest work, The Reed of God presents in plain yet powerful prose the Blessed Mother as the model for everyone and every life and as the guarantor of intimacy with God, “whose law is the lovely yoke of the one irresistible love.”
Caryll Houselander (1901–1954) was an English Roman Catholic artist and author. A convert at age six, she left the Church as a teenager, returning as an adult and becoming a fixture of twentieth-century Catholic culture. Her books include The Dry Wood, The Flowering Tree, and A Rocking-Horse Catholic.
Paperback: 216pp.
ISBN: 978-1685955090