Christmas is the mystery of contact with God

"Christmas is the mystery of contact with God, fundamentally and actually." (p. 72)

- Fr. Alfred Delp SJ, “The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp”, 1963 Herder and Herder New York
See also: The Prison Meditations of Father Delp

Whose small Heart bleeds with infinite fire

Harlan Hubbard woodcut

When the white stars talk together like sisters
And when the winter hills
Raise their grand semblance in the freezing night,
Somewhere one window
Bleeds like the brown eye of an open forge.

Hills, stars,
White stars that stand above the eastern stable,
Look down and offer Him
The dim adoring light of your belief,
Whose small Heart bleeds with infinite fire.

Shall not this Child
(When we shall hear the bells of His amazing voice)
Conquer the winter of our hateful century?

And when His lady Mother leans upon the crib,
Lo, with what rapiers
Those two loves fence and flame their brilliancy!

Here in this straw lie planned the fires
That will melt all of our sufferings:
He is our Lamb, our holocaust!

And one by one the shepherds, with their snowy feet,
Stamp and shake out their hats upon the stable dirt,
And one by one kneel down to look upon their Life.

-Thomas Merton, "A Christmas Card", Figures for an Apocalypse, p. 79

the darkness is enough

Photograph: During Christmas services in the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Palestine, by the American Colony Jerusalem Photo Department, between 1934 and 1939.

“Your brightness is my darkness.
I know nothing of You and, by myself,
I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You.
If I imagine You, I am mistaken.
If I understand You, I am deluded.
If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy.
The darkness is enough.”

—Thomas Merton, prayer before midnight mass at Christmas, 1941.

the silver threads of God's mystery; let us trust in life

Rainbow Shells Around an Aging Star. The Egg Nebula, located 3,000 light-years away, offers astronomers a special look at the normally invisible dust shells swaddling an older star. These dust layers, extending over one-tenth of a light-year from the star, have an onionskin structure that forms concentric rings around the star. 

NASA / ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI / AURA 

from the 2019 NASA Advent Calendar

"Whoever is true to life, 

however hard and barren it may be, 

will discover in himself 

fountains of very real refreshment.   

The world will give him more than he ever imagined possible.   

The silver threads of God's mystery 

will begin to sparkle visibly in everything round him 

and there will be a song in his heart.   

His burdens will turn to blessings 

because he recognizes them as coming from God 

and welcomes them as such. … 

"Let us trust in life because this night will pass and a new day will dawn. 

Let us trust in life because we do not have to live through it alone.   

God is with us."  ((p. 69)

- Fr. Alfred Delp SJ, “The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp”, 1963 Herder and Herder New York
See also: The Prison Meditations of Father Delp

acute awareness of shrouded mystery

Alfred Delp S.J. 

" … On the fourth Sunday in Advent 

the acute awareness of shrouded mystery 

is deepening for the final hour of darkness 

that heralds the dawn.   

There is an intense awareness of captivity, 

of crippling disability 

and despair, 

but it is already shot through 

with a premonition of the divine grace -- 

the premonition that will soon become certainty." (p. 51)

- Fr. Alfred Delp SJ, “The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp”, 1963 Herder and Herder New York
See also: The Prison Meditations of Father Delp

the locks of time, our sepulchre

A Close Encounter. 

This Hubble image from 2013 shows two interacting galaxies. NGC 2936 at top, once a standard spiral galaxy, and NGC 2937 below, a smaller elliptical galaxy. The pairing, known as Arp 142, bears a resemblance to a penguin guarding its egg. The gravitational chaos caused by the close interaction is twisting NGC 2936 and gradually tearing it apart. 

NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI / AURA

From NASA 2019 Advent Calendar

O night of admiration, full of choirs,
O night of deepest praise,
And darkness full of sweet delight! 
What secret and intrepid Visitor 
Has come to raise us from the dead?
He softly springs the locks of time, our sepulchre,
In the foretold encounter.

-Thomas Merton, "The Dark Encounter", Collected Poems, p. 113

a homeless God, without even a number

Alone in the Void. 

In this image, only three nearby stars can be seen (the ones with 'diffraction spikes'), every other object is a distant galaxy. The bright spiral galaxy at center, named MCG+01-02-015, because of its lonely location, is called a 'void galaxy'. 

ESA / Hubble & NASA and N. Gorin, STScI

From NASA 2019 Advent Calendar

The shadows fall.  The stars appear.  The birds begin,
     to sleep.
Night embraces the silent half of the earth.
A vagrant, a destitute wanderer with dusty feet, finds his
     way down a new road.
A homeless God, lost in the night, without papers,
     without identification,
without even a number, a frail expendable exile
lies down in desolation under the sweet stars of the world
and entrusts Himself to sleep.

-Thomas Merton,  "Hagia Sophia" IV Sunset, The Hour of Compline, Salve Regina, Collected Poems, p. 369