Pope Benedict XVI (from Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives)
From the moment of his birth, [Jesus] belongs outside the realm of what is important and powerful in worldly terms…. Perhaps one could say that humanity’s silent and confused dreams of a new beginning came true in this event—in a reality such that only God could create…. Not only do [the three Magi] represent the people who have found the way to Christ: they represent the inner aspiration of the human spirit, the dynamism of religions and human reason toward him.Father Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O.
Advent means a readiness to have eternity and time meet not only in Christ but in us, in our life, in our world, in our time. If we are to enter into the beginning of the new, we must accept the death of the old…. I begin to live to Christ when I come to the ‘end’ or to the ‘limit’ of what divides me from my fellow man: when I am willing to step beyond this end, cross the frontier, become a stranger, enter into the wilderness which is not ‘myself,’…where I am alone and defenseless in the desert of God.
