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UID:12948-1734998400-1735084799@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org
SUMMARY:Vigils Reading
DESCRIPTION:HOLY NIGHT \nBy Karl Rahner \n◊◊◊ \nWhy do we call the feast we are keeping tonight a “sacred night”? Night \nbecause a beginning\, holy night because a blessed and unconquerable \nbeginning; of such a beginning we would have to say: holy night\, sacred night. \nAnd so the church sings “Silent night\, holy night.” Everywhere in the world \nthese words are sung for this feast… For this hour is the holy and sacred night. \nFaith tells the Christians: that was the beginning. There God himself \ncame gently forth from the terrifying radiance in which he dwells as God and \nLord\, and came to us; he quietly entered the poor dwelling of our earthly \nexistence and was found as a man; he began where we begin\, quite poor\, \nvulnerable\, quite childlike and gentle\, quite helpless. He who is infinite\, distant \nfuture which of ourselves we never reach because it seems to retreat farther and \nfarther away as we hurry towards it on the hard roads of life\, he himself has \napproached us\, arrived among us\, because otherwise we should never have \nfound our way to him. He has accompanied us on our way to him so that this \nmay find a blessed end\, because the very end itself has become our beginning. \nGod is near; his eternal word of mercy is where we are; it is a pilgrim on \nour paths\, experiences our joy and our distress\, lives our life and dies our death. \nHe has brought his eternal life quietly and gently into this world and its death. \nHe has redeemed us\, for he shared our lot. He made our beginning his own\, \nfollowed the path of our destiny and so opened it up into the infinite expanses of \nGod. And because he accepted us irrevocably\, because God’s Word will never \ncease to be human\, this beginning which is ours and his is a beginning of \nindestructible promises… \nThe eternal future has entered our time. Its radiance still dazzles us\, so \nthat we think it is night. But at all events it is a blessed night\, a night in which \nthere is already warmth and light\, which is beautiful\, welcoming and secure by \nreason of the eternal day which it bears hidden within it. It is a silent\, holy night \nfor us\, however\, only if we admit the holy silence of this night into our inner \nselves\, only if our heart too keeps watch in solitude. It can do so easily. For such \nsolitude and quiet is not hard. For of course we are solitary. There exists in our \nheart an interior land where we are alone\, to which no one finds his way but \nGod. This innermost\, unfrequented chamber of our heart is really there – the \nonly question is whether we ourselves avoid it foolishly out of guilty fear\, \nbecause no one and no familiar things of this earth can accompany us if we enter \nit. The silent and solitary soul sings here to the God of the heart its quietest and \nmost ardent song. And it can have confidence that he hears it. For this song no \nlonger has to seek a beloved God beyond the stars in that inaccessible light in \nwhich he dwells and which makes him invisible to all. \nBecause of Christmas\, because the Word was made flesh\, God is near and \nthe quietest word in the stillest room of the heart\, the word of love\, comes to his \near and his heart. And those who have entered into themselves even when it is \nnight\, hear in this nocturnal quiet in the depth of the heart God’s gentle word of \nlove… Let us enter quietly and shut the door behind us. Let us listen to the \nunutterable melody which sounds in the silence of that night. For the ultimate \nis only spoken in the silence of the night\, now that…through the gracious \ncoming of the Word\, there has come to be Christmas\, holy night\, silent night.
URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-248/
CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings
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