Thomas Merton
This is the first of a series of Christmas Messages. This one is from the Advent-Christmas circular letter of Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, sent to friends late in 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 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; p 108.
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