~~ OFFICIAL HOLY CROSS PARISH COMMUNICATION
Holy Cross Family,
Below is an Advent reflection from Father Tim.
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As we advance to the end of Advent, Christmas is just around the corner with the golden rays of the winter sun coming to warm the Earth, we have the wonderful opportunity of finding the real meaning of this season in the gift of prayer. I have discovered during the past several weeks that silence and reflection are essentials to a meeting face to face with the Incarnate Son of God; but I have also discovered one of the tangible blessings of contemplative prayer by renewing my memories of one of my favorite authors in my theological training, Thomas Merton.
On December 10th, the 50th anniversary of the death of this Trappist monk, was celebrated throughout the world. This 53 year old writer of spiritual journals was on a quest in the Orient to bring the thoughts of Buddhist monks into the prayer discipline of Western monasteries.
He had learned from his prayers as a hermit, living in a small hut in back of the Trappist Monastery in Gethsemani, Kentucky, the beauty of silence and a constant prayer-filled day.
It had freed him from the prison of his own false self to become the hands and the voice and the tender compassion of the Divinity. For him, God was not "out there" but was within his very being as the way to experiencing full and lasting happiness.
On the feast of Christmas, we can feel the real happiness of that day as we see the darkness of our world illuminated with the stars and angels urging us to sing with them: Joy To The World, The Lord Has Come!
Father Tim