What an  atmosphere of expectation and joy there is in a Cistercain monastery when the monks get up; not at two in the morning but at nine in the evening. They have gone to bed at five. Now at this unaccustomed hour when the winter night has not yet begun to get that paralysing desolate coldness of the small hours, the church is full of unaccustomed lights. There is the crib, all lit up with a soft glow and in the high darkness of the sanctuary, the forest of Cedar branches that has grown up around the altar sparkles with tinsel here and there.

It is then that the night office begins begins at once with a solemn and stately invitatory that nevertheless rocks the church with cadences of superlative joy;  from then on it is as though the angels themselves were singing there Gloria in excelsis and showering upon the Earth from the near stars, the stars that seem to have become close and warm their messages and promises of peace, peace. Peace on earth to man of goodwill.   As the Midnight Mass begins the whole place glows with happiness and after that it is indescribable, building up to the

climax of unworldly interior peace at Communion.

The emptiness that had opened out within me; that had been prepared during Advent and laid open by my  my own silence and darkness now became filled

and suddenly I was in a New World.

    (….. contiued ..)

Quotation is from “Seven storey mountain” by Thomas Merton who was a Trappist monk He was a professed member of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.