Christmas Day with Thomas Merton

Today on Christmas, I’ll share with you Thomas Merton’s words. In Seasons of Celebration, he writes about the birth of Christ. Merton is particularly moved by Christ as light, and our human need not only to receive the light within us, but more, to allow the light to shine through us. This is what Merton says:


Christ is born. He is born to us. And, he is born today. For Christmas is not merely a day like every other day. It is a day made holy and special by a sacred mystery. It is not merely another day in the weary round of time. Today, eternity enters into time and time, sanctified, is caught up into eternity. Today, Christ, the Eternal Word of the Father, who was in the beginning with the Father, in whom all things were made, by whom all things consist, enters into the world which he created in order to reclaim souls who have lost their identity. Therefore, the Church exults as the angels come down to announce not merely an old thing that happened long ago, but a new thing that happens today. For, today, God the Father makes all things new, in his Divine Son, our Redeemer, according to his words: Ecce nova facio omnia. . . .

At Christmas, more than ever, it is fitting to remember that we have no other light but Christ, who is born to us today. Let us reflect that he came down from heaven to be our light, and our life. He came, as he himself assures us, to be our way, by which we may return to the Father. Christ gives us light today to know him, in the Father and ourselves in him, so that thus knowing and possessing Christ, we may have life everlasting with him in the Father. . . .

Having realized, once again, who it is that comes to us, and having remembered that he alone is our light, let us open our eyes to the rising Sun, let us hasten to receive him and let us come together to celebrate the great mystery of charity which is the sacrament of our salvation and of our union in Christ. Let us receive Christ that we may in all truth be “light in the Lord” and that Christ may shine not only to us, but through us, and that we may all burn together in the sweet light of his presence in the world: I mean his presence in us, for we are his Body and his Holy Church. . . .

Christ, light of light, is born today, and since he is born to us, he is born in us as light and therefore we who believe are born today to new light. That is to say, our souls are born to new life and new grace by receiving him who is the Truth. For Christ, invisible in his own nature, has become visible in our nature. What else can this mean, except that first he has become visible as a man and second he has become visible in his Church? He wills to be visible in us, to live in us, and save us through his secret action in our own hearts and the hearts of our neighbors. So, we must receive the light of the newborn Savior by faith, in order to manifest it by our witness in common praise and by the works of our charity towards one another.

[Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration, pp. 102-105.]

Birth: A Poem

On Christmas Day I shared a guided meditation that I've called The Cave of the Heart. You can find that meditation in the post previous to this one.

After praying with the "Cave of the Heart" image a few weeks ago, the meditation continued to unfold for me over several days.

One fruit of the meditation came out in this poem, which became an expression of my desire to be open to whatever God wanted to birth within me, as well as my yearning for some hiddenness and solitude in the midst of a very full Advent season.


Birth

For some it is enough
to have a place to sleep
out of the cold
a modest cave
to deflect the swirling
wind unobstructed
across the cold plains;

Not that the necessary births
cannot emerge from the
street-corner tumult,

But I always say:
Do it in private

Let the cavern womb what
is trying to be born in you

What wants to save you.

The Cave of the Heart: A Guided Meditation for Christmas Day

[Note: Two or three weeks ago I was praying with the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. In one particular meditation on the birth of Jesus, the writer described his birthplace as a cave dug into the side of a hill just below Bethlehem. Before reading those words, I had a set scene in my mind for the birthplace of Jesus, a stable scene behind an inn that I had carried in my imagination from childhood.

For the first time in my life, I saw the birthplace as something other than that old scene I had envisioned for decades. I saw the hillside cave in such vivid detail that not only did the birth of Christ come alive for me, but I also envisioned the cave as a place in my heart.

This guided meditation comes from that prayer experience. It considers the birth of Christ, and so it is appropriate for Christmas Day. As I prayed with this image, however, the cave became more than a place Christ as born 2,000 years ago. The cave became an image for that part of my heart where the conceiving and birthing work of God continues to happen within me.

I share the meditation with you here as my Christmas gift and offering for you. If you decide to use it for prayer or meditation, read it slowly. Pause as needed, shut your eyes for a few minutes, and let God's Spirit lead you. The goal is not to get through the exercise quickly, but to linger with the parts of the prayer that seem to have substance for you. And don't be afraid to use your imagination, what some have called, "holy imagination." In other words, don't censor where your soul wants to lead you. Take in the experience. Let it happen.

In a day or so I'll share with you a poem that came to me out of this meditation experience. jw]


I sit still and settle into prayer. . . . I consciously take several deep breaths, each one slower and deeper than the one before.

As much as possible, I lay aside the things that preoccupy my mind and distract me. I want to become aware of God, who is present to me at this very moment.

In my imagination I see a small Middle Eastern town on a hilltop, crowded with people who are bustling about and tending to important business . . . Some people are eating or drinking . . . others are talking on the streets . . . while others are buying or selling in the marketplace. I notice the seriousness with which these people are tending to their affairs. The rush of activity is obvious.

I allow my gaze to move outside the confines of the little town . . . down a hillside, to a small grotto dug into the earth.

It is the kind of place created to shelter animals from the elements of weather . . . but in this shallow “cave” are a man and woman, along with several animals. I take a moment to let my mind shape this scene for me.

The young woman is in labor and the man is assisting her with childbirth. I let my imagination fill in the details of the scene . . . what happens . . . what is spoken . . . where I am in the cave.

Perhaps I talk to this holy family, or just stand aside and watch, or maybe I take the place of one of the animals. I ask God to help me understand the significance of this event of which I am a part. I stay with this scene in the hillside cave as long as I’m able.

At some point I realize that there is also a cave in my heart . . . It may seem as if I live most of my life on the streets of activity and in the marketplaces of busyness, but there is within my heart a cave.

This cave is an interior space where the really important things in my life are conceived and given birth. . . . Conception and birth do not happen on busy street-corners, but in the privacy and hiddenness of the cave. . . . I notice where that cave is within me.

I may find that much of my life is spent on busy streets and in crowded marketplaces. How might I ask God to help me spend more time in the cave? If I can ask God for more "cave-time," what might God say back to me?

Then I ask God to help me see what is being conceived in my heart . . . what is being brought to birth within that cave of my heart. I ask God for the grace to find a life-giving rhythm that includes time in this quiet, interior cave . . . and time on the streets engaging daily life, people, and events. . . . I talk to God about both the busy streets of my life, and the hidden caves of my heart. I make this my prayer.

When I feel like my prayer has completed, I say the Lord’s Prayer as a way of bringing the prayer time to an end.

Amazed at What You Find Within

Thomas Merton followed Bernard of Clairvaux (12th century) in writing about the three Advents of Christ. The first Advent, Bernard said, was the coming of Christ in human form, born to Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem.

The third Advent will be the coming of Christ again at the end of the age.

During the season of Advent, we give most of our time to the first Advent, and a little less to the third Advent.

We seem to be slowly recovering the second Advent, which according to Bernard and Merton, is the continual coming of Christ into our lives in our times. This is an ongoing Advent that happens every day within us and in our world. Christ is born into our life-world momently, whether we notice his coming or not.

Thus, Meister Eckhart and others have urged us to prepare a space within our hearts for his birth every day -- not just for one day or one season a year!

Merton put it this way in Seven Storey Mountain: "The soul of a monk is a Bethlehem where Christ comes to be born." And not only monks, but all who give themselves to Jesus in openness and with intention, are invited to open up the stable of the heart, the Bethlehem of the heart to allow Christ's birth within.

I am drawn to meditations and art that help me open up to this birth. It can be hard to trust that God could birth something of value within me . . . yet deep within I believe that is what God does in and with each one of us. Like Mary, we open ourselves to God's work within us and we, too, bear Christ constantly in our lives.

These words, written by Kathleen Norris, helped me believe today that Jesus is being birthed in me.

The job of any preacher, it seems to me, is not to dismiss the Annunciation because it doesn’t appeal to modern prejudices but to remind congregations of why it might still be an important story. I once heard a Benedictine friend who is an Assiniboine Indian preach on the Annunciation to an Indian congregation. “The first thing Gabriel does when he encounters Mary,” he said, “is to give her a new name: ‘Most favored one.’ It’s a naming ceremony,” he emphasized, making a connection that excited and delighted his listeners. When I brood on the story of the Annunciation, I like to think about what it means to be “overshadowed” by the Holy Spirit; I wonder if a kind of overshadowing isn’t what every young woman pregnant for the first time might feel, caught up in something so much larger than herself. I think of James Wright’s little poem “Trouble,” and the wonder of his pregnant mill-town girl. The butt of jokes, the taunt of gossips, she is amazed to carry such power within herself. “Sixteen years, and / all that time, she thought she was nothing / but skin and bones.” . . . Told all her life that she is “nothing,” the girl discovers in herself another, deeper reality. A mystery: something holy, with a potential for salvation. The poem has challenged me for years to wonder what such a radically new sense of oneself would entail. Could it be a form of virgin birth?

[Meditations on Mary: With Essays by Kathleen Norris (New York: Viking Studio, 1999), 30 – 31.]