What seemed to be the end proved to be the beginning…
Suddenly a wall becomes a gate.
~Henri Nouwen from Gracias! A Letter of Consolation
Heaven in Ordinary~
Because high heaven made itself so low
That I might glimpse it through a stable door,
Or hear it bless me through a hammer blow,
And call me through the voices of the poor,
Unbidden now, its hidden light breaks through
Amidst the clutter of the every day,
Illuminating things I thought I knew,
Whose dark glass brightens, even as I pray.
Then this world’s walls no longer stay my eyes,
A veil is lifted likewise from my heart,
The moment holds me in its strange surprise,
The gates of paradise are drawn apart,
I see his tree, with blossom on its bough,
And nothing can be ordinary now.
~Malcolm Guite from “After Prayer”
As Christians we do not believe in walls,
but that life lies open before us;
that the gate can always be unbarred;
that there is no final abandonment or desertion.
We do not believe that it can ever be “too late.”
We believe that the world is full of doors that can be opened. Between us and others.
Between the people around us.
Between today and tomorrow.
Our own inner person can be unlocked too:
even within our own selves,
there are doors that need to be opened.
If we open them and enter,
we can unlock ourselves, too,
and so await whatever is coming to free us and make us whole.
~ Jörg Zink from “Doors to the Feast”
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
~T.S. Eliot from “Little Gidding” The Four Quartets
We stand on the threshold outside the gate,
incapable of opening it ourselves,
watching as God Himself throws it open wide.
We can choose to enter this unknown unremembered gate
into the endless length of days,
or we choose to remain on the outside,
lingering in the familiar confines of what we know,
though unless we step through at His invitation,
eventually it will end, and we with it.
There we shall rest and we shall see;
we shall see and we shall love;
we shall love and we shall praise.
Behold what shall be in the end and shall not end.
~Augustine of Hippo
My 2025 Advent theme:
On the threshold between day and night
On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness.
It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—
with no distinction between day and night.
When evening comes, there will be light.
Zechariah 14:6-7
So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
TEXT
O salutaris hostia,
Quæ cæli pandis ostium:
Bella premunt hostilia,
Da robur, fer auxilium.
Uni trinoque Domino,
Sit sempiterna gloria,
Qui vitam sine termino,
Nobis donet in patria. Amen.
TRANSLATION
O saving victim,
Who opens the gate of heaven:
Hostile wars press upon us,
Give strength, bring aid.
To the one and triune Lord,
May there be eternal glory,
Who gives us life without end,
In our heavenly homeland. Amen.
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