Advent is the season of the secret, the secret of the growth of Christ, of divine love growing in silence…For nine months, Christ grew in his mother's body. By his own will, she formed him from herself, from the simplicity of her daily life.

There is no way of learning of God except through the adventure of our own heart.

Advent is the season of the secret, the secret of the growth of Christ, of divine love growing in silence…For nine months, Christ grew in his mother's body. By his own will, she formed him from herself, from the simplicity of her daily life.

The Passion of Christ was an experience which included in itself every experience except sin, of every member of the human race. If one may say this with reverence, the fourteen incidents of the Stations of the Cross show not only the suffering but the Psychology of Christ. Above all, they show, in detail, his way of transforming suffering by love. He shows us, step by step, how that plan of love can be carried out by men, women, and children today, both alone in the loneliness of their individual lives and together in communion with one another.

I often think that the ideal of our perfection that we set up, and often go through torture to achieve, may not be God's idea of how He wants us to be at all. That may be something quite different that we never would have thought of, and what seems like a failure to us may really be something bringing us closer to His will for us.

It is a time of darkness, of faith. We shall not see Christ's radiance in our lives yet; it is still hidden in our darkness; nevertheless, we must believe that He is growing in our lives; we must believe it so firmly that we cannot help relating everything, literally everything, to this almost incredible reality.

We are the mediocre, we are the half givers, we are the half lovers, we are the savourless salt. Break the hard crust of complacency. Quicken in us the sharp grace of desire.