November 27, 2008

By Jeanne Trott

Giving up driving was hard enough, but my mother did that with some grace after open heart surgery at 89. Giving up going to the grocery store was another matter altogether. She had her reserved place at our dinner table; soup and crackers was her daily lunch. A box of Wheaties and a quart of milk were all the groceries she regularly required. But the trip to the Safeway was much more than a time to replenish breakfast needs.

It usually involved a little tour of the neighborhood to see whose house was for sale and whose flowers were blooming. Inside, the grocery cart was just the right height to support her arthritic joints on a leisurely meander up and down the aisles. She examined the engaging displays of foodstuffs usually inappropriate to her diet, and always ended up at the "Ice Cream Treats." The appearance of a neighbor or parishioner who had time for a chat made the pilgrimage even brighter. It was never just a trip to the grocery store. And it was never a trip to my grocery store.

After one hectic day of going to two grocery stores, I was rolling my eyes. Somewhere in my head a little voice chided, "You're taking Jesus to the grocery store." The trip was never the same again.

Caryll Houselander taught me to see the Body of Christ in a way that has colored my life for the past 50 years. This eccentric Englishwoman, writing during the time of the Second World War, breaks open the meaning of Incarnation. "Her message," says her biographer Maisie Ward, "can be summarized in a single sentence: we must learn to see Christ in everyone." Hardly a new idea. But what was new for me and what I continue to struggle with is the idea that we can find Christ in everyone. It is easy enough for me to see Christ in the innocence of my toddler grandson and in the generosity of my friend Calista. It is not hard to see Christ in Blessed Theresa of Calcutta or in my friends who brought home a child from her orphanage.

But what about suicide bombers? What about greedy investment bankers and anti-immigrant vigilantes? What about the cranky selfish people in my own life? Is Jesus really in all of them? Houselander says, "We must know Him by faith, not by vision. We must help Him not only in those who seem to be Christlike, but more in those in whom Christ is hidden: in the most unlikely people, in those whom the world condemns. It is in them that Christ, in dwelling man, suffers most…" Those words, in her book "The Way of the Cross," opened my eyes when my father-in-law was dying—a grumpy difficult man in whom Christ was suffering. I went to his bedside with a heart cracked by the chisel of her pen.

Every Lent, I go back to "The Way of the Cross," and every Advent I open "The Reed of God." "(Mary) was consenting not only to bear her own child, Christ, but to bear Christ into the world in all men, in all lives, in all times; not only in secluded lives, protected lives, the lives of holy people, but into the lives of those haunted by worry, by poverty, by debts, by fears and temptations, subject to chance, to accident, to persecution, to the fortunes of war."

I probably would have rolled my eyes at Caryll Houselander had I ever met her in person. She probably would have seen right through me. But she comes with me to Mass every morning. We kneel and watch the people coming back from communion:

The Body of Christ is wearing a bar t-shirt and a few tattoos. The Body of Christ has Down syndrome and watches out for her young brother twirling around her knees. The Body of Christ carries his infant grandchild. The Body of Christ hauls himself forward on two metal crutches. The Body of Christ, newly widowed, looks stunned. The Body of Christ wears a parochial school uniform…

I no longer take Jesus to the grocery story; I'm writing this on the second anniversary of my mother's death. But once in a while He does ask for a ride to the comic book store.

Jeanne Trott is a freelance writer living in Falls Church, Virginia with her husband, Ted. She is a mother of six and a grandmother.