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The Climate of My PrayerOur mentioning of the weather--our perfunctory observations on what kind of day it is--are perhaps not idle. Perhaps we have a deep and legitimate need to know in our entire being what the day is like, to see it and feel it, to know how the sky is grey, paler in the south, with patches of blue in the southwest, with snow on the ground, the thermometer at 18, and cold wind making your ears ache. I have a real need to know these things because I myself am part of the weather and part of the climate and part of the place, and a day in which I have not shared truly in all this is no day at all. It is certainly part of my life of prayer.February 27, 1963, IV.299-300
Advent WeatherIt is beautiful Advent weather, greyish and cold, with clouds of light snow howling across the valley, and I see it is really winter. I put some bread out for the birds.I feel closer to my beginning than ever, and perhaps I am near my end. The Advent hymns sound as they first did, as if they were the nearest things to me that ever were, as if they had been decisive in shaping my heart and my life, as if I had received their form, as if there could never be any other melodies so deeply connatural to me. They are myself, words and melody and everything. So also the Rorate Coeli that brought me here to pray for peace. I have not prayed for it well enough, or been pure enough in heart, or wise enough. And today, before the Blessed Sacrament, I was ashamed of my impertinences and the deep infidelities of my life, rooted in weakness and confusion.Yesterday, I celebrated my Mass for the new generation, the new poets, the fighters for peace, and my novices. There is in many of them a peculiar quality of truth that older squares have driven out of themselves in a days of rigidity and secure right thinking. May God keep us from being "right thinking" men, who think, that is, with their own police (and since the police don't think, neither do these others).December 9, 1962, IV.272-73
