No Room in the Inn — Thomas Merton

On this particular Christmas Eve where there is so much warfare, hatred, fear, and greed these words of Thomas Merton speak volumes to me.

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited.  But because he cannot be at home in it — because he is out of place in it, and yet must be in it — his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected because they are regarded as weak; and with those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, and are tortured, exterminated.  With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.  He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst. — Raids On the Unspeakable and A Thomas Merton Reader, p. 365