We have just returned from the first vespers of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I am filled with those happy antiphons and I rejoice in the feast and what it means, for through her we shall enter heaven. “You are the window to heaven.” I am glad that in our order we enter heaven through a window. I believe that this line of the hymn has been reformed in the Roman liturgy, and thus the rest of the Church enters more decorously through the doors. But we Cistercians still manage to get there through the window.
(Thomas Merton /1915–1968/, diary entry from September 7, 1947)
