We will have to wait a little longer!

Since Tuesday evening we have known that we weren’t going to open before the end of January, assuming that all is well and a third wave does not arrive to pin us to the ground like those plane stuck on the runway. So we will celebrate Christmas as we celebrated Easter and All Saints Day, in the intimacy of our community. However, rest assured that the silence of the Cave will vibrate with the presence of the many of you.

The liturgical readings of Advent will resound as they do every year with multiple cries for waiting, calling and hoping: “Come, Lord, do not be late” I’m sure that the outcry of Israel, calling for the coming of the Messiah finds within us a special resonance in these insufferable days of waiting. How long has it been since we had to wait as essentially as this?

We are all waiting, watching, wishing, hoping for the end of the pandemic, the end of lockdown, the end of masks and the infamous “social distancing”, for the freedom to finally greet one another properly, to hold our elderly or sick loved ones in our arms. For months we have been suspended, powerless to the news on health, politics and the economy. Perhaps we will end up rediscovering something beyond our own personal wait, the waiting of a people, of humanity, the waiting for deliverance for the whole of humanity.

We are delighted to offer Florin’s text to start the liturgical year. It finishes with these words by Teilhard de Chardin: “Christians, charged with keeping the flame of desire alight for eternity following Israel, just twenty centuries after the Ascension, what have we done with our wait?”

This coming Advent and Christmas, we invite you all to revisit waiting, to dive into the secret of our caves, to listen out and examine the confusing signs of our time. The Resurrected one is already there, he has the face of the Child who is coming. Nestled in the arms of Mary, he says, “It is I, fear not.”

Danièle Valès

French to English translation by Debbie Garrick and Cécile Simon