HE AND i Gabrielle B. Dec 1, 1949

First Sunday of Advent. Community Mass.
Fr. Hugh (Homily) quoted Merton this morning, who had complained to the Senior Monks at Gethsemani Abbey, that the Novices were not keeping the "SILENCE".
Fr. Louis (Merton), Novice Director, commented, "Silence begins when you realize someone else is speaking."
Latest Weblog Post gives the same wavelength, "the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar urged Catholic thinkers to develop la théologie a genoux, a theology on one's knees." 
Today, even better, is to listen to the speaking in the "HE AND i" communion of Gabrielle. The listening here 'realizing someone is speaking!'   

Weblog HE AND i, Gabrielle B.

1949

December 1 -  Holy hour.

•  "Concentrate on going higher, always higher in the Holy Trinity. This is your Family, your End and your Centre. Your Home, too, so you must take up your residence there. (. . . )
  
• Be grateful to be invited to it. Dwell on the thought of it with praise and song, remembering your nothingness and the tenderness of the invitation. It's a long time since the invitation was sent out, isn't it? Don't you think you should respond by focalising all your desires on this one end? What a blessed Home - the heart of the Trinity opening up all its unutterable delights for you in the love untold of the Father and the Son! How can you refrain from thinking of it every day with impetuous longing?
  
• Ask your heavenly mother who understood better to lead you there. She is the bride of the Spirit, the mother of the Son, the daughter of the Father on whom her immaculate heart was forever centred. Let her go with you before the Holy Trinity to whom you belong, free though you are.
  
• You are thinking, 'But these three Persons are so great. What can I say - I, who am so little?'
  
• Have you forgotten that it is your weakness that attracts your God? Then give Him your utmost confidence - boundless trust, you understand? He can give you everything. He owns everything and is only waiting for your call. Be sure of Him. Aspire to reach Him. Thirst for Him with a thirst that can never be quenched. Your loving insistence honours Him greatly. Don't be like the silent ones who consider themselves too unworthy to ask for magnificent favours. I tell you, they will never overcome their unworthiness. Be like the humble ones who expose their poverty and count on their Christ to transform them at each confession, because He hears their cry of regret and turns it into a hymn for His glory. Don't restrain your heart's upsoarings, My child. Come more often into the secret place of the Most High. That's where your permanent home will be. "