Thomas Merton had the same sort of experience as Edward Ives in Mr. Ives’ Christmas, one day on a city street in Louisville, Kentucky. More than sixteen years after first joining the Trappist monks of Our Lady of Gethsemani, and long after his bestselling memoir, The Seven Storey Mountain had made him the most famous monk of the twentieth century, Merton suddenly saw the world as it really was. In his memoir, Merton wrote enthusiastically about how monks are men who have rejected the world so as to embrace it more profoundly, in prayer. A monk is a man who turns away from the world of people and chaos and things, in order to dedicate himself to pray for the salvation of that same world. That was his understanding for the first decade and a half in the monastery.

But on March 18, 1958—he recorded the day and its profound meaning for his life—Merton was in Louisville on a rare visit to the city. Walking down the street toward the busy corner of Fourth Avenue and Walnut, he suddenly realized that he loved all of the people before him. He wrote the following:

“I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream. Not that I question the reality of my vocation, or of my monastic life: but the conception of “separation from the world” that we have in the monastery too easily presents itself as a complete illusion …. [W]e are in the same world as everybody else, the world of the bomb, the world of race hatred, the world of technology, the world of mass media, big business, revolution, and all the rest …. This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud …. To think that for sixteen or seventeen years I have been taking seriously this pure illusion that is implicit in so much of our monastic thinking …. I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

The nameless faces of men and women going to and from their responsibilities—he adored them with a love that was not his own, but was a gift from God. Even as a cloistered, contemplative monk—or, perhaps, especially because he was a contemplative—Merton realized on that day and that street corner that he was not separated from anyone, but united essentially with every other human being. His spiritual practice changed on that afternoon, as he began to realize the essential oneness of all people. No longer was he looking out from his monastic cell on a world that needed his prayers. After his epiphany moment, Merton sought to be in solidarity with people of all backgrounds; he worked to understand others, and to speak, pray, and act in unity with them. His practice could no longer be solitary. It wouldn’t make sense.

A few days ago, I talked about the vision of Edward Ives from Hijuelos’s novel, Mr. Ives’ Christmas. I think that the sort of vision he has, involves both will and imagination. When we believe, we still pray for more belief; this sort of vision involves both seeing and willing ourselves to see the secret of life laid out before us.

One of the popular chants in a Taize-style prayer service goes: “I am sure I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” We wouldn’t have to say “I am sure” at the start of that chant, if we were not just at least a little bit unsure. It’s okay to be a little unsure.

The spiritual way of seeing the world is a hope and a wish at the same time.

In Oscar Hijuelos’ Mr. Ives’ Christmas, you watch the up and down life of devout Catholic, Edward Ives. Ives loves the Christmas season, reveling in its rituals and joy each year until his 17-year old son is murdered just before Christmas 1967 in a random and senseless act of street violence in New York City. Just before that event, he has a vision.

At the corner of Madison Avenue and 41^st Street in Manhattan, Ives “blinked his eyes and, in a moment of pure clarity that he would always remember, began to feel euphoric, all the world’s goodness, as it were, spinning around him.” The moment of epiphany continues for several minutes. “And in those moments he could feel the very life in the concrete below him, the ground humming—pipes and tangles of cables and wires beneath him, endless ticking, moving, animated objects. Why, it was as if he could hear molecules grinding, light shifting here and there, the vibrancy of things and spirit everywhere.”

Ives begins to experience a love for all things and all people that he sees before him on the street that afternoon, in the bustling before-Christmas busyness near Macy’s. “In the glow of such feelings people truly seemed blessed; truck and car horns sounded like heavenly trumpets, the murmur of the crowds and all the other voices fell upon his ears like music…. To hear, to smell, to see, to feel, all were miraculous.”

Have you ever been blessed with a similar experience, even if just for a moment?

Meister Eckhart was a German Dominican who taught that the real meaning of Christmas is not only that God’s Son was born in a stable, but that Christ is born in us. His most famous sermon, usually presented first in collections of his writings, was preached on Christmas morning. He begins with this summary:

Here in time we celebrate the eternal birth that God the Father bore and still bears constantly in eternity, and which is also now born in time, in human nature. St. Augustine says that this birth is happening continually. We should ask ourselves: If it doesn’t happen in me, what good is that birth after all? What ultimately matters is that God’s birth should happen in me.

What I really love about the Catholic mystics, ancient, medieval and modern, is how they can think abstractly and physically at the same time. I think that Eckhart meant what he said on that Christmas morning quite literally and physically—that just as a baby was born in a stable long ago, a small fragment or spark or seed of God in Christ is born in each human being. That holy, inexplicable-but-physical-reality may grow or not grow, depending in part on us. Often, he waits.

If you are still looking for something good to read this Advent, something that will challenge or inspire you, take a look at my suggestions at Explorefaith.org.

I haven’t seen anything of this sort, and if I were more organized I would start something myself… There ought to be a petition, a worldwide campaign for everyone on the planet to NOT PURCHASE anything today. Let’s demonstrate that we honestly want to break the cycles of excessive acquiring, owning, and focusing on all of the wrong things. This one day, more than any other, would be terrific to not buy.

Headlines in the papers tomorrow would scream that the world is coming to an end.

This paragraph from St. Francis’s original Rule of Life feels appropriate to my life these days. I wanted to share it with you, too…

“I counsel, admonish and beg my brothers that, when they travel about the world, they should not be quarrelsome, dispute with words, or criticize others, but rather should be gentle, peaceful and unassuming, courteous and humble, speaking respectfully to all as is fitting. They must not ride on horseback unless forced to so by obvious necessity or illness. Whatever house they enter, they are first to say, ‘Peace to this house’ (Lk. 10:5). According to the holy gospel they can eat whatever food is set before them.”

Today is the Feast Day of St. John Chrysostom, one of the greatest teachers in the history of the Christian Church. He is recognized as one of the “Eastern Fathers.”

I recently came across this passage from one of his sermons on 1 Corinthians chapter 13, which will soon be published in the book, The Love Chapter:

The first and great commandment is, “You shall love the Lord your God,” and then he adds the second (never wanting the first to be heard alone), which is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” See how Christ demands this of us with nearly the same exactitude. Concerning God, he says, love with all your heart. And concerning your neighbor, love as yourself—which is tantamount to with all your heart!

Listen: if this were truly observed there would be neither slave nor free, neither ruler nor ruled, neither rich nor poor, neither small nor great. And no devil would ever have to become known. Only Satan would have been known and whatever other evil spirits there a even if they numbered in the hundreds, thousands, or to ten thousand, they would have no power while love ruled. For grass would more easily endure a scorching fire than the devil the flame of love (cf. Jms. 1:11).

Love is stronger than any wall, and is firmer than any rock. If you can name any material stronger than walls and rocks, the firmness of love transcends them all. Neither wealth nor poverty overcomes love. The truth is, there would be no poverty, no unbounded wealth, if there were love (cf. Mt. 6:31–34). There would only be the virtuous qualities, without the bad, that stem from each state, poverty and wealth. We would only reap the abundance from wealth, and from poverty we would only have its freedom from care; no one would have to undergo the anxieties of riches or the dread of poverty.

I’ve just returned this morning from the 7:30 a.m. mass at Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal. Even the Kyrie and the Sanctus were in French!

Still, I find that a mass, and many other forms of religious language, don’t need much translation. It’s not just that I know what’s happening when the priest begins the Kyrie in French and so I can recite along in my English, but it’s that the gestures of faith and religious language say as much, or more, than do the actual words.

Candle lighting is a way of prayer. Long after our attention has moved on to other things, a lit votive candle symbolizes the intention of our love for God in Christ and the presence of our request before heaven. Votive comes from the Latin word votum, meaning vow, but vigil—a much better word for this practice—means watchfulness.

Candles are often set aside in the front or back of churches for this purpose. I will sometimes light one of these at my home parish, either before the service begins or immediately after taking Communion, as a prayer to my grandmother or as a petition for a needy friend. I’ve been lighting a lot of candles, lately.

When used in prayer, a candle can show our persistence and continual desire to be with God, to listen for God’s will, and to seek the intercession of one of the saints. I often use a candle in this spirit in the early morning when I am the only person awake in the house, reading or praying.

Many Christians from all denominations have small spaces called home altars where vigil candles are often kept and used for prayer. Like the psalmist, we may say, “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice” (Psalm 141:2).

This is a great practice: Offer a blessing over your candles, sanctifying them for the purpose of prayer. I sometimes use this prayer…

God of light, light to the nations,

light that reaches into all darkness,

use these candles to illuminate us.

May the light of our prayers always be with You,

quietly in Your holy presence,

and may we always be

reflected in Your true Light. Amen.