To mark our anniversary, we have invited 50 Catholics to choose a person from the past 175 years whose life has been a personal inspiration to them and an example of their faith at its best Twice I have encountered Caryll House­lander in a per­sonal way. The first was by way of her cat. A friend once sent me a short excerpt from her first book, This War Is the Passion (1941). She rescues her frantic feline from the clutches of a neighbouring tom; once in the safety of her lap, the cat falls asleep. Houselander saw this incident as a lesson in prayer: “There should be, even in the busiest day, a few moments when we can close our eyes and let God possess us.”The second was by way of a woodcut that another friend gave me from The Stations of the Cross (1954), which House