Thomas Merton – Communio

Merton’s birthday

Today in 1915 Prades, France, Thomas Merton was born. The famous monk of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance (the Trappists), was known in his monastery as Father Louis. The Merton genealogy includes an American mother and a father from New Zealand. Artists, both died early; Merton’s mother died of stomach cancer when he was six years old; 10 years later, his father died of a brain tumor. His early life was wild and seemingly of out of control.

Having met the Lord, Thomas Merton converted to Catholicism in 1938, while he was a student at Columbia University, at Corpus Christi Church on 121st, NYC. Perceiving a call to the contemplative life after the Franciscans rejected him, he entered the Trappist Abbey in Kentucky; Thomas initially gave up his writing career yet it was Abbot Frederic Dunne who recognized his talent noting that it was helpful in bringing others to Christ, he missioned Merton to write.

Thomas Merton once wrote: My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Thomas Merton
Thoughts in Solitude, p. 83

Realize what this Mass is

Thomas Merton on attending Mass at Gethsemani monastery on his first visit:

See Who God is! Realize what this Mass is! See Christ here, on the Cross! See His wounds, see His torn hands, see how the King of Glory is crowned with thorns! Do you know what Love is? Here is Love, here on this Cross, here is Love, suffering these nails, these thorns, that scourge loaded with lead, smashed to pieces, bleeding to death because of your sins and bleeding to death because of people that will never know Him, and never think of Him and will never remember His Sacrifice. Learn from Him how to love God and how to love men! Learn of this Cross, this Love, how to give your life away to Him.

See, see Who God is, see the glory of God, going up to Him out of this incomprehensible and infinite Sacrifice in which all history begins and ends, all individual lives begin and end, in which every story is told, and finished, and settled for joy or for sorrow: the one point of reference for all the truths that are outside of God, their center, their focus: Love.

Do you know what Love is? You have never known the meaning of Love, never, you who have always drawn all things to the center of your own nothingness. Here is Love in this chalice full of Blood, Sacrifice, mactation. Do you not know that to love means to be killed for glory of the Beloved? And where is your love? Where is now your Cross, if you say you want to follow Me, if you pretend you love Me?

(The Seven Storey Mountain, pp.323f.)

Merton lecture in NYC

Today would have been the 99th birthday of Thomas Merton.

Saturday, February 1, 2014, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Corpus Christi Church, 121st and Broadway, NYC

“Thomas Merton and the Utility of Nothing”
Bishop Seraphim Sigrist, presenter

Bishop Seraphim is the retired bishop of the Orthodox Church in America, former bishop of Sendai, Japan.

“For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self” (New Seeds of Contemplation).

Prayer connects all of us to God’s mercy

All prayer is communion, not only between Christ and me but also between everybody in the Church and myself. All prayer takes us into the communion of saints.

Perhaps it would be helpful to think that when I am praying I am closely united with everybody who ever prayed and everybody now praying. I am completely caught up in this communion of saints and this great reality of the prayer of Christ.

I am not lost or submerged in it, but I am truly myself when I am praying in union with Christ and with the communion of saints.

Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton in Alaska

Contemplation AND ordinary experience praise God

I would say that it is very important in the contemplative life not to overemphasize the contemplation. If we constantly overemphasize those things to which access is inevitably quite rare, we overlook the ordinary authentic real experiences of everyday life as real things to enjoy, things to be happy about, things to praise God for.

But the ordinary realities of everyday life, the faith and love with which we live our normal human lives, provide the foundation on which we build those higher things. If there is no foundation, then we have nothing at all!

How can we relish the higher things of God if we cannot enjoy some simple little thing that comes along as a gift from Him!

Thomas Merton
Contemplation in a World of Action

In the face of life’s perils, can we really trust in the Lord?

We all have to face the contours of our existence. Not to do so seems to side-step the gift of freedom and to minimize our desires for happiness. Not knowing where we are going is OK. It is not the how, but the what of our lives that matters. For the Christian, the only reasonable way to engage one’s desires, one’s moral life, freedom, faith, other people is to trust in someone who is greater; the One who comes before all else that IS. The famed Thomas Merton begins to expand what our existence consists in. Give some thought to Merton’s guidance.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Thomas Merton

Thoughts In Solitude

Christian meditation is the gift of the whole person to God

In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with his mind and lips, but in a certain sense with his whole being. Prayer is then not just a formula of words, or a series of desires springing up in the heart – it is the orientation of our whole body, mind, and spirit to God in silence, attention, and adoration. All good meditative prayer is a conversion of our entire self to God.

One cannot then enter into mediation, in this sense, without a kind of inner upheaval. By upheaval I do not mean a disturbance, but a breaking out of routine, a liberation of the heart from the cares and preoccupations of one’s daily business.

Thomas Merton

Thoughts in Solitude

Thomas Merton, a light still shining

Hear with favor our prayers, which we humbly offer, O Lord, for the salvation of the soul of Father Louis (Thomas Merton), your servant and Priest, that he, who devoted a faithful ministry to your name, may rejoice in the perpetual company of your Saints.

The famous Trappist monk, Thomas Merton (b. 1915) died on this date in 1968.

In very many ways Merton was a consummate human being: loved pleasure and engaged his freedom only to transform pleasure and his version of freedom with his embrace a life of prayer and silence as a Strict Observance Cistercian (a Trappist monk) in a Kentucky abbey. In the monastery Thomas Merton was known as Father M. Louis, a name I still prefer to use because of his commitment to the monastic life. At the command of his abbot, Merton wrote of his conversion in his 1949 best seller, The Seven Storey Mountain, introducing millions of people to the monastic life. No other book since this one has had such a critical impact on Catholics. His conversion story was only one of many books and essays published by Merton and even in death Merton continues to publish due to the finding of new materials or the repackaging of thought into new books. The irony of Merton’s life as a monk is that he died in Asia conferencing with an international and interfaith group of monks and nuns. His body was brought home in a steel casket on a military transport.

In his lifetime Merton was a voice of reason, a voice of sanity, a voice speaking the Word of God. As typical of public thinkers he became a voice and an influence for a variety of types of people, from artists, intellectuals, religious types, peace and nonviolence promoters and the like.

Key for me and dare I say for Benedictines of all stripes, Merton argued for a contemplative life which engages the reality of the world so that the monk, nun, oblate could intercede on behalf of the world for others (read The Sign of Jonas). Father Louis helps me to understand the Benedictine charism better when he says,

The Benedictine life is simply living the Gospel without fanfare…. The mainspring of everything in Saint Benedict is the love of Christ in Himself, in the poor, in the monastic community, in the individual brethren…. This is the key to the monastic life and spirit.

A life totally cut of is good for a few, like the Carthusians, but for Benedictines and the Cistercians (a reformed group of Benedictines) who form a school of prayer and love in Christ, nothing is out-of-bounds. Merton, indeed, opened the doors to a new manner of living the vitally important monastic life today.

He sought to be a saint, that is, be yourself, is the vocation that all of us ought to consider doing with seriousness. The Pope echoes this notion, so does Communion and Liberation. Great minds think alike.

Watch Father Jim Martin’s video presentation on Thomas Merton.

Thomas Merton’s work continues with the initiative of The Merton Institute for Contemplative Living.

Paul Quenon: man, Trappist, semi-hermit, poet

Brother Paul Quenon, OCSO, has been a monk for 52 years. That is, he’s been trying to live in God and by learning to deepen one’s capacity to love in community; that’s how he describes life as a Trappist monk. A one-time spiritual son of Father Louis (Thomas Merton), Brother Paul lives a contemplative life –that is, on the margins of society but at the center of the Church. His witness is a life of proclaiming the beauty of Christ from an abbey of the Strict Observance of Cistercians. Religion and Ethics Newsweekly‘s Judy Valente interviewed Brother Paul recently at his home, the Abbey of Gethsemani.

The interview can be viewed here.

Brother Paul continues his conversation with some extra questions and answers noted here. Here he talks about Father M. Louis — Thomas Merton: his personality and life, his call, the spirituality he lived and taught, and the mystery of what he sought.

Thomas Merton: 40 years after he died

Today is the 40th anniversary of the death of Father Mary Louis, a monk and priest of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance (aka the Trappists). In history he was known as Thomas Merton.

When I was in high school (more than 20 years ago now) I discovered Thomas Merton but I don’t remember who put his writings into my hands. I read his significant works; I marveled at him, with him, in him. Merton made it possible for me to understand God and being a Christian better. His writings gave voice to the interior life for which I am grateful. Now we are remembering him 40 years after his died. My how time flies.

O God, Thou did raise Thy servant, Father Mary Louis, to the sacred priesthood of Jesus Christ, according to the Order of Melchisedech as a son of Saint Benedict, giving him the sublime power to offer the Eternal Sacrifice, to bring the Body and Blood of Thy Son Jesus Christ down upon the altar, and to absolve the sins of men in Thine own Holy Name. We beseech Thee to reward his faithfulness and to forget his faults, admitting him speedily into Thy Holy Presence, there to enjoy forever the recompense of his labors. This we ask through Jesus Christ Thy Son, our Lord. Amen.

An appreciative report on Merton was done by Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.

If you are interested in reading some recent essays on Thomas Merton, order Cistercian Studies Quarterly 43.4