"A Bethlehem where Christ comes to be born"

One thing I like to do at the end of the year is to catch up on my serious reading. And with the rain pouring down every other day, sitting home with a good book in hand is often, indeed, the better choice.  Better still if it comes with a nice cookie and warm tea on the side :-)

Anyway, this December, I've been able to finish three books.  "The Accidental Diplomat", by Maurice Baker, is a series of stories of this veteran Ambassador's experiences, both in the Japanese occupation and after, including the highlights of his tours in India, Philippines and Malaysia.   Then, I tackled the massive biography of Dickens - "Charles Dickens: A Life", by Claire Tomalin.  This is the second time I've read Tomalin's meticulously researched biographies - the first was her life of Jane Austen.  Indeed, I really learnt so much more about Dickens than ever before! Of course I knew basic facts, like his early days spent working in the blacking factory whilst his father languished in the debtors' prison.  But I never realised the energy and drive which characterised him and on the negative side, I certainly didn't know he deserted his wife and had a secret mistress!

But the third book I finished, just on Christmas Day, was "The Seven Storey Mountain" (Harcourt Books, 1999 edition).  Thomas Merton's account of his spiritual journey - leading him to become first a Catholic and then a Trappist monk.  

Merton takes us through the key events of his life - marked with sorrow as he lost his mother at age 6, his father at age 16, and his younger brother about 10 years later, soon after he entered the monastry.  His brother was a bomber in WWII and he died when his plane went down.  It was one of the most poignant and moving moments in the book.

But the main thrust of the book was how Merton transformed from a wayward young man, into a fervent Catholic who went to daily mass (!), seeking for an ever-closer relationship with God.  His story was so inspiring that it led to young men all over the US looking for the nearest Trappist monastry.

I find it inspiring too - and would like to share my favourite quotes from the book here:

"When a ray of light strikes a crystal, it gives a new quality to the crystal.  And when God's infinitely disinterested love plays upon a human soul, the same kind of thing takes place.  And that is the life called sanctifying grace." (p186)

"...aseity - simply means the power of a being to exist absolutely in virtue of itself, not as caused by itself, but as requiring no cause, no other justiication for its existence except that its very nature is to exist. There can be only one such Being: that is God." (p189)

"The life of the soul is not knowledge, it is love, since love is the act of the supreme faculty,the will, by which man is formally united to the final end of  all his strivings - by which man becomes one with God. " (p209)

"All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one.  Don't you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if only you will consent to let Him do it.  All you have to do is desire it." (p261)

"I had to be led by a way that I could not understand, and I had to follow a path that was beyond my own choosing.  God did not want anything of my natural tastes and fancies and selections until they had been more completely divorced from their old track, their old habits, and directed to Himself, by His own working." (p319) 

"The soul of the monk is a Bethlehem where Christ comes to be born - in the sense that Christ is born where His likeness is re-formed by grace, and whre His Divinity lives, in a special manner, with His Father and His Holy Spirit, by charity, in this "new incarnation," this "other Christ." (p417)

 Indeed, I do think the last quote applies not to just monks but for all of us.  Blessed Christmas to all, as we start off a new year ahead.