... and like the Last Morning of the world when all the fragments of Adam will return from death at the voice of Hagia Sophia, and will know where they stand

Solstice, schmolstice, it's just matter doing what matter does, nothing to get excited about.   I can't  be bothered to even repost the things I usually do pointing out the jolly olde pagan customs of animal and human sacrifice on the Yule.  To today's Pagans, other than being omitted from their ahistorical depictions, human sacrifice is about as foreign as the commemoration of The Birth of Jesus Christ is to Saturnalia - RMJ has written about why that mythic association is ahistorical, as well. As I said, he does good Advent posts.   Given that, I definitely like our Pagans better than those old ones.  As long as they can the SS and other Nazi content that white supremacists have foisted on them in their ahistorical naivety.

Instead....

I. Dawn.  The Hour of Lauds.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.  This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura naturans.  There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fount of action and joy.  It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly, saluting me with indescribable humility.  This is at once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of my Creator’s Thought and Art within me, speaking as Hagia Sophia, speaking as my sister, Wisdom.

I am awakened, I am born again at the voice of this my Sister, sent to me from the depths of the divine fecundity.

Let us suppose I am a man lying asleep in a hospital.  I am indeed this man lying asleep.  It is July the second, the Feast of Our Lady’s Visitation.  A Feast of Wisdom.

At five-thirty in the morning I am dreaming in a very quiet room when a soft voice awakens me from my dream.  I am like all mankind awakening from all the dreams that ever were dreamed in all the nights of the world.  It is like the One Christ awakening in all the separate selves that ever were separate and isolated and alone in all the lands of the earth.  It is like all minds coming back together into awareness from all distractions, cross-purposes and confusions, into unity of love.  It is like the first morning of the world (when Adam, at the sweet voice of Wisdom awoke from nonentity and knew her), and like the Last Morning of the world when all the fragments of Adam will return from death at the voice of Hagia Sophia, and will know where they stand.

Such is the awakening of one man, one morning, at the voice of a nurse in the hospital.   Awakening out of languor and darkness, out of helplessness, out of sleep, newly confronting reality and finding it to be gentleness.

It is like being awakened by Eve.  It is like being awakened by the Blessed Virgin.  It is like coming forth from primordial nothingness and standing in clarity, in Paradise.

You can read the rest of Thomas Merton's great poem, Hagia Sophia, here.