To interpenetrate an entire human life with divine life, it is not enough to kneel once a year in front of the crib and let oneself be moved by the charm of the holy night. One needs to live one's entire life in daily communication with God, to listen to the words that God has spoken and that have been transmitted to us, and to follow these words.
As long as the soul is not still, there can be no vision. But when stillness has brought us into the presence of God, then another sort of silence, much more absolute, intervenes: the silence of a soul that is not only still and recollected, but which is overawed in an act of worship by God's presence.