May the blessed light be on you, light without and light within. May the blessed sunlight shine on you and warm your heart until it glows like a fire, so that a stranger may come and warm himself at it, and also a friend. May God always bless you, love you and keep you.
"While gentle silence enveloped all things," reads the Wisdom of Solomon, "and night in its swift course was half gone, your all-powerful Word leaped from heaven into the midst of the land that was doomed." Faith is not a frantic reaching out to God, grasping at promised straws of salvation. Faith is an act of welcome; it is a gentle silence that embraces a divine mystery that has already come to us, is now coming, and will always come in time and through eternity. This sacred season proclaims the Light who leaps through eternity. This sacred season proclaims the Light who leaps into our lives even when darkest night reigns. It celebrates the Word of glad tidings that announces the end of quiet doom and despair.
The faithful heart finds in itself a mysterious longing for an epiphany of the Divine. A seed of unceasing prayer is this longing, we must abide with it, attentive to its invitation. Silent abiding is the beginning of fidelity. The gift of holy longing is veiled for us by anxious concern, vexing problems, tedious tasks and ambitious pursuits. How large they loom in daily life! ... Our life is like a dish that is broken, but needs and problems appear trivial in the light of an epiphany of the Holy. In the radiance of this sacred presence, concerns recede in the shadows of attentiveness. Life becomes an unceasing prayer, a lasting gestures of fidelity.
It was Christ who chose the stable to be born in and who continues to choose unlikely places. In each of us, just beyond the noise of our outward life, there is some place of silence and darkness, an emptiness where, if we have courage enough, we are alone with ourselves. In this place of silence, we know that God alone can fill our emptiness, God alone can content us, God alone is our peace. And in this secret place of the soul, Christ wants to be born in us, that through us, God may live in this world again and make it new ... make it young and childlike ... make it true and pure. In this dark place of our heart, Christ wants the light of the world to begin to burn and from its burning to radiate, until it shines back from the face of humanity. Here it is that the light begins to shine in darkness and the life of the world begins again. It is easy to see that the world is wounded, hard to see that its healing begins in our own heart.
In silence which is active, the
Inner Light begins to glow -- a
tiny spark.
By an attention full of love,
we enable the Inner Light to
blaze and illuminate our dwelling
and to make of our whole being
a source from which this Light
may shine out.
~ from GOD IS SILENCE by Pierre Lacout with thanks to Donald & Lesley Holmes
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit lost in a shaft of sunlight,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline,
thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood,
is incarnation.
We realize ourselves, when we discover God. We discover a reality that is identical to ourselves, although a realm that transcends us infinitely ... a reality from which we are estranged, but from which we can never be separated ... In reality, in our search to know God, we realize our true selves.
Holiday Greetings to all Friends of Silence! May each one of you be blessed this holy season and throughout the new year with the joy ... peace ... gratitude ... and, love that arises from the inner sanctum of our hearts, where love is ever born anew. Two offerings from a new book, SONGS FOR EVERY SEASON, seem especially timely:
