The first line of the first reading from Isaiah 60:1-6 is so instructive for one reading the bloody history of Jerusalem.

“Arise, shine out, Jerusalem, for your light has come.”

The priest at Mass today said “A man with many possessions has many needs.” I was rereading Thomas Merton’s Elected Silence. This passage grabbed my attention in his chapter The Harrowing of Hell, when he is torn by doubts:

“I was in my room. It was night. The light was on. Suddenly it seemed to me that Father, who had been dead for more than a year, was with me. The sense of his presence was as vivid and real and as startling as if he had touched my arm or spoken to me.”

I certainly get these fleeting intense impressions of a loved one. For years you can forget almost the pictures of a dead mother or brother and suddenly they are there, absolutely clear cut and familiar in their features. By what power of some hidden recess of the mind are they conjured up or perhaps they are there? But often their “presence” here is a profound feeling or thought.

Merton continues:

“The whole thing passed in a flash, but in that flash, instantly, I was overwhelmed with a sudden insight into the misery of my own soul. … And how I think for the first time in my whole life I really began to pray.”

I was in the Abbey in the same place I had been some weeks before. And once again I lit a candle before the wonderful statue of Christ in the dark church. I have been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Jerusalem: the Biography. It is vaguely depressing to see the life of Christ dissected by an academic author, reduced to footnotes. Did He have brothers and sisters? Did Mary re-marry? In fact, the attraction of Christ is a supernatural quality that cannot be grasped.

That night, re-reading my notes, I saw that in front of this same image I had been gripped by both a spiritual sense and a rational one that this was not just illusion – a mere wooden statue. This time as the candle flickered in the gloom. I felt no conflicting emotions at all, only a sense, however temporary, of acceptance.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks “What do you seek?”

Is this not the ultimate question? What do we seek?

Faith. We seek faith, belief, self-belief, belief in a purpose, belief in eternity.

But the seeking can of itself be the purpose, even if we can never for sure find or be given the answer. Unless we are lucky enough to be given faith.

What is in a name? Everything. Because the name of Jesus means Saviour (or literally the anointed one). Is it that we all seek a saviour? A saviour from death, from doubt?

And His very enigmatic Self, half lost in barely recorded history is a question. How do we seek Him?

This feast is about friendship. In the evening we watched by mistake the film New Year’s Day. Apparently the Guardian film critic has panned it. True, it is cheesy and corny, but also life-enhancing. There is one line that no doubt irritated the too-intellectual critics. “Think of something you are afraid to do because you might fail, then do it.” The daughter returning to the dying man (Robert de Niro) may be predictable but the power of love is not lessened for being predictable.

The cult of Mary is a strange phenomenon which never ceases to amaze.

At Mass today in the bulletin there was a modern picture of Mary at the top of a short flight of steps waiting to hold a supplicant. That is what Mary is to many people. To the Atheist this is all absurd posturing, a whim of the human need for maternal reassurance. But like so many atheistical arguments, while they are instantly recognisable and indeed appeal in their rationality. They are quietly stated and as quietly come to an end. There is no more save the statement. But Mary is also continuing history and a personal presence.

If you pray to her, there does seem to be a response. So what if this is only a product of our imagination? To those who pray it, it is real. It works. It produces results.