The experience of ecstatic oneness with the Divine comes in many forms: quiet contentment, a sense of gentle rapture, a mystical feeling of universal harmony, all-consuming passion, flights of spiritual abandon, and ferocious joy. But the most powerful experience of ecstasy is a combination of these feelings, when, in one unforgettable moment, we touch the hidden God – the terrible and wonderful Mystery that has given birth to all things and that makes them glow and dance with Its life force. In those moments we may see what It sees and feel at least an infinitesimal part of what It feels.
It was Christ who chose the stable to be born in and who continues to choose unlikely places. In each of us, just beyond the noise of our outward life, there is some place of silence and darkness, an emptiness where, if we have courage enough, we are alone with ourselves. In this place of silence, we know that God alone can fill our emptiness, God alone can content us, God alone is our peace. And in this secret place of the soul, Christ wants to be born in us, that through us, God may live in this world again and make it new ... make it young and childlike ... make it true and pure. In this dark place of our heart, Christ wants the light of the world to begin to burn and from its burning to radiate, until it shines back from the face of humanity. Here it is that the light begins to shine in darkness and the life of the world begins again. It is easy to see that the world is wounded, hard to see that its healing begins in our own heart. Christ can be born in us only if we accept God in littleness, humility, silence -- hidden and small -- to be fostered and loved in us, cradled and clothed in us, that Christ may grow naturally in our lives to full stature.