Blessed Are the Eyes That See

By Catherine de Hueck Doherty

image cr: Google

Advent is a short season, yet it covers a long distance.

It is the road of a soul from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

It seems such a short distance as we are accustomed to thinking of distances.

Yet it is a road into infinity, into eternity.

It has a beginning, but no end.

In truth, Advent is the road of the spiritual life, which all of us must start if we do not want to miss the way.

We must start with a fiat that re-echoes Mary’s fiat - Let it be done, O Lord. It is a fiat that each of us should say in the quiet of our hearts.

Let us arise, then.

Let us shake the sleep out of our eyes, the sleep of emotions run amuck; the sleep of indifference, of tepidity, of self-pity, of fighting God.

Let us arise from that sleep…and begin our journey to Bethlehem.

But let us understand that this “Bethlehem” we seek is within our own souls, our own hearts….

It is an inner pilgrimage, a pilgrimage in which we don’t use our feet…. So, then, let us enter, you and I, into the pilgrimage that doesn’t take us from home.

For ours is a journey of the spirit, which is a thousand times harder than a journey of the feet. Let us “arise and go”.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty(† 1985) was born in Russia, established the Friendship House of Harlem, New York City in 1938 and later the Madonna House Apostolate in Combermere, Canada.

Reproduced from Magnificat magazine, 2/12/25