Thoughts for Advent from Thomas Merton

[Martinius]

In his book Seasons of Celebration, Thomas Merton has two chapters on Advent. Here is an excerpt from the chapter "Advent: Hope or Delusion", written in 1963. It seems quite applicable to what is happening in our world today. I share it in the spirit of the season.

"In Advent we celebrate the coming and indeed the presence of Christ in our world. We witness to His presence even in the midst of inscrutable problems and tragedies. Our Advent faith is not an escape from the world to a misty realm of slogans and comforts which declare our problems to be unreal, our tragedies inexistent...Our task is to seek and find Christ in our world as it is, and not as it might be. The fact that the world is other than it might be does not alter the truth that Christ is present in it and that His plan has been neither frustrated nor changed: indeed, all will be done according to His will. Our Advent is the celebration of this hope."

 

[Martinius]

Here is a little more from the same book and chapter on Advent by Merton:

"What is uncertain is not the coming of Christ but our own reception of Him, our own response to Him, our own readiness and capacity to 'go forth to meet Him'...If His presence is so 'spiritual' that it has absolutely no visible or meaningful effect in contemporary society, we might as well admit it has no meaning that our contemporaries are likely to be interested in...

"Do they have a right to see in us some evidence of the presence and action of Christ, some visible manifestation of the Pneuma? Surely it is not impertinent of them to ask to be shown what we claim is present in us. And this claim is not a matter of esoteric and perilous theologies. Our favorite apologetic argument for the divine mission of Christ is the holiness of the Church. But how evident does holiness have to be? Where, with what frequency, and how incontestably does it have to be manifest? Is it sufficient that we should be the only ones to be aware that we are holy?"

 

[Martinius]

double posting deleted.

 

[Martinius]

More on Advent from Merton:

"It may happen that the best Christians are among those who think themselves, for some reason or other, bad Christians. This may be part of the mystery of Advent, and it can remind us of Christ’s way, as recorded in the Gospels: He came most readily and most willingly to those who had most need of Him, that is to the unfortunate, the sinful, the destitute—those who were ‘empty’. The Advent mystery is then a mystery of emptiness, of poverty, of limitation. It must be so. Otherwise it could not be a mystery of hope."