Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Merton on books and reading

“Books can speak to us like God, like men or like the noise of the city we live in. They speak to us like God when they bring us light and fill us with silence. They speak to us like God when we desire never to leave them. They speak to us like men when we desire to hear them again. They speak to us like the noise of the city when they hold us captive by a weariness that tells us nothing, give us no peace, and no support, nothing to remember, and yet will not let us escape.”

Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1958; pbk ed 1999), pp. 55-56.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Contemplative reading

“Active contemplation is nourished by meditation and reading and, as we shall see, by the sacramental and liturgical life of the Church. But before reading, meditation, and worship turn into contemplation, they must merge into a unified and intuitive vision of reality.

“In reading, for instance, we pass from one thought to another, we follow the development of the author’s ideas, and we contribute some ideas of our own if we read well. This activity is discursive. Reading becomes contemplative when, instead of reasoning, we abandon the sequence of the author’s thoughts in order not only to follow our own thoughts (meditation), but simply to rise above thought and penetrate into the mystery of truth which is experienced intuitively as present and actual. We meditate with our mind, which is ‘part of’ our being. But we contemplate with our whole being and not just with one of its parts.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. (NY: HarperOne, 2003), p. 59. [the text belongs to 1959!]

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

From reading to meditation

“Reading should help us to pray by concentrating our attention. Let us not forget the vital connection between prayer and the Word of God. How can we ‘imagine the Lord at our side’ if we do not seek him where he reveals himself? Meditation consists of imagining in silence the earthly, everyday life of Jesus. It is not necessary to recall a historical event; rather, we must seek to bring the Son of God silently into our heart.”

Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. With an Afterword by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Translated by Michael J. Miller. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), p. 52.