If I insist on giving you my truth, and never stop to receive your truth in return, then there can be no truth between us. Christ is present ‘where two or three are gathered in my name.’ But to be gathered in the name of Christ is to be gathered in the name of the Word made flesh, of God made man. It is therefore to be gathered in the faith that God has become man and can be seen in man, that he can speak in man and that he can enlighten and inspire love in and through any man I meet. It is true that the visible Church alone has the official mission to sanctify and teach all nations, but no man knows that the stranger he meets coming out of the forest [or the desert of Iraq!!!] in a new country is not already an invisible member of Christ and perhaps one who has some providential or prophetic message to utter.
Thomas Merton
