If you are anything like me, you get annoyed and overstimulated in large, pushy crowds. If you haven't been out shopping the day after Thanksgiving, then you can at least appreciate this sensation by being stuck in traffic. It's our instinct, I think, to depersonalize crowds. We don't think of the throngs of people (or people in cars) as individuals with their own lives and families and hopes and fears; we think of them as objects to maneuver that only get in our way.

How difficult (and how important!) to change this mindset by recalling the face of Christ! Christ is in them! Our Savior is not just in the nicely dressed, gracious, model Christian serving food at a soup kitchen. He is in that overweight, tattooed plumber on a cell phone that cut you off in the intersection! How can we recognize Him in the mulitudes? In the same way our Blessed Mother searched for her lost Child in the multitudes. We must seek in faith. Beyond what our deceptive senses would have us believe. We have to blind ourselves to what we see and hear, going only by the faith that we pray for on a daily basis.

In Caryll Houselander's "The Reed of God", it was noted that an old man... before he ever met someone, he greeted Christ in them in secret. Can you imagine how this could affect our world?! Before we put our groceries on the conveyor belt, we greet Christ in the cashier and bagger, and the frustratingly slow woman with two FULL carts in front of us, who is determined to empty her purse finding the exact change. This is the way to live in charity! It won't be easy to see Christ in everyone; it's not easy to see Him in the Blessed Sacrament either... but He is there.

Personalize it even more. Don't just look for Christ in strangers. Greet Him in yourself. And greet Him in your husband and children. This is what it means when the Bible talks about doing things for the littlest of men... you are doing them for HIM. Fold your clothes for the Christ Child. Prepare you food for the Christ Child. Wash the feet of the Christ Child. Kiss His wounds when He is hurt. Do these things-- these ordinary acts of motherhood-- in the way our Blessed Mother must've lovingly nurtured her Son.

-Ellie (reflections based off of readings from Houselander's book)