Many, many Epiphanies: Seeing Christ in All
Caryll Houselander mystic
“I was in an underground train, a crowded train in which all sorts of people jostled together, workers of every description going home at the end of the day. Quite suddenly, I saw with 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 in them, and because they were here, the whole world was here too … all those people who had lived in the past, and all those yet to come.”—Caryll Houselander, A Rocking-Horse Catholic (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 137–139, 140.
This twentieth-century English mystic, Caryll Houselander (1901–1954), describes how a powerful vision of Christ’s presence in all occurs on an ordinary underground train journey in London. It brings to mind Thomas Merton’s epiphany in Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut.
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.” — Thomas Merton.
This is the first line of Thomas Merton’s famous mystical revelation and epiphany in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, described in his 1968 journal, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, about the world of the 1960s. pp. 140-142.
Merton had been a Trappist monk for 17 years and was on an errand for the monastery on an ordinary day in March 18th, 1958. The story became so famous that Louisville erected a plaque at the site in 2008, at the 50th anniversary of Merton’s revelation. Ordinary people and popes continue to visit the corner of Fourth and Walnut, where Merton’s life-changing experiences and those of his readers began.
Merton’s and Houselanfer’s experience also seems similar to what James Finley describes in Christian Meditation: Experiencing God’s Presence as “having a finger in the pulse of Christ, realizing oneness with God in life itself.”
This experience may also be similar to what St. Francis realized in nature when he called the sun his brother and the moon his sister. Richard Rohr calls it finding our True Self, “our basic and unchangeable identity in God.” 1
Methodists might relate it to John Wesley’s experience at 8:45 pm on May 24th, 1738, at a Society meeting in Aldersgate Street, when someone read from Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to Romans, and Wesley said, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” 2
Suppose you ever have an opportunity to visit Louisville. In that case, we hope you can go to the corner of Fourth and Walnut and let us know what epiphanies may come to you in London, in the underground, on Aldersgate Street, or in a new place!
1 Richard Rohr in “Richard Rohr Meditation: Thomas Merton Part II,” Center for Action and Contemplation, October 6th, 2017.
2 John Wesley in Journal of John Wesley (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1903), p. 51.
Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/