Christmas

[Circular Letter, Advent-Christmas, 1967] The times are difficult. They call for courage and faith. Faith is in the end a lonely virtue. Lonely especially where a deep authentic community of love is not an accomplished fact, but a job to be begun over and over... Love is not something we get from Mother Church as a child gets milk from the breast: it also has to be given. We don't get love if we don't give any.

Christmas, then, is not just a sweet regression to breast-feeding and infancy. It is a serious and sometimes difficult feast. Difficult especially if, for psychological reasons, we fail to grasp the indestructible kernel of hope that is in it. If we are just looking for a little consolation-we may be disappointed.

--Thomas Merton. The Road to Joy, Robert E. Daggy, editor (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989): 108

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A deeply authentic community of love. This is not a given, and requires diligence. Most of us may not even know such an idealized communion. Impatience, old grudges, habitual behaviors, holiday perfection-fatigue, loss: these can often speak louder than love. Because among us, love is quiet and patient and unassuming. Love smiles at a mistaken slight and burns away fear in the hearth fire like kindling. And Merton reminds us that we must give love to bask in its blessings. We must be love, to witness it. Is this possible in a family of many, each struggling for their own identity and security and voice to be heard? There is hope, of course, as in that elusive hope in Christmas lore. The indestructible kernel of hope, he says.

Hope hides in the ritual birth of a child—in children born every day. Life created, again and again. Life exists. Every morning, a new day. Every January, a new year. Wise "men" and glimmers of celestial light have always been and will always be, no matter our own stresses and family dramas and insecurities.

The assurance: faith—that after the snow and frost, after the months of cold hard earth in readied sleep, that life will recreate Itself again. That after a long day, another one begins with refreshed energy. That a child will be born after nine quiet, unassuming months in the womb.

Joyous Christmas, and New Year blessings for all. May our difficult times be devoured by Love. Amen.

(Merton quote received via weekly email newsletter from The Merton Institute. To subscribe, go here.)