Posted on by Kurt Bodling

stick with it

“Continue on with what you are doing; labor perseveringly in My vineyard, and I Myself will be your reward. Continue your writing, reading, singing, lamenting, keeping silence and praying, and bearing your troubles bravely; for eternal life is worth all these combats and more.

“Peace shall come at a time known only to the Lord. And it will not last a day or a night as we calculate time; there will be light everlasting, infinite glory, unbroken peace and undisturbed rest.”

Imitatio Christi, Book 3, chapter 47, paragraph 2

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to read like this

“By the reading of Scripture I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green, light is sharper on the outlines of the forest and the hills and the whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music in the earth beneath my feet.”

Merton, Thomas. The Sign of Jonas. (San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1981), p. 115-116. (written on 8 August 1949)

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and a time for every purpose

“Once again I’m having weeks when I don’t read the Bible much; I never know quite what to do about it. I have no feeling of obligation about it, and I know, too, that after some time I shall plunge into it again voraciously. May one accept this as an entirely ‘natural’ mental process? I’m almost inclined to think so; it also happened, you know, during our vita communis.”

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. The Enlarged edition. Edited by Eberhard Bethge. “A Touchstone Book.” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 234. Bonhoeffer to Eberhard Bethge, 19 March 1944

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Take up and read!

“There are times when ten pages of some book will fall under your eye just at the moment when your very life, it seems, depends on your reading those ten pages. You recognize in them immediately the answer to all your most pressing questions. They open a new road.”


Merton, Thomas. The Sign of Jonas. (San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1981), p. 305. (this text written 10 October 1950)

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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.

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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!]

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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.

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get your doctrine right

“All depends on the doctrine. Where doctrine is right, then everything is right: faith, work, love, suffering, good and evil days, eating, drinking, hunger, thirst, sleeping and waking, walking and standing still, etc. Where the doctrine is not right, then it is in vain, all is lost, and everything is completely condemned: work, life, suffering, fasting, prayer, alms, cowls and tonsures, and whatever else belongs to the holiness of the papal church.”

Luther, Martin. “To the Saxon Princes” (1545) Luther’s Works Vol. 42. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), page 281.

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you never pray alone

“Never think that you are kneeling or standing alone, rather think that the whole of Christendom, all devout Christians, are standing there beside you and you are standing among them in a common, unified petition which God cannot disdain. Do not leave your prayer without having said or thought, ‘Very well, God has heard my prayer; this I know as a certainty and a truth.’ That is what Amen means.”

Luther, Martin. “A Simple Way to Pray” (1535) Luther’s Works Vol. 42. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), page 198.

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The Hail Mary

“In the first place, she is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin–something exceedingly great. For God’s grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil.

“In the second place, God is with her, meaning that all she did or left undone is divine and the action of God in her. Moreover, God guarded and protected her from all that might be hurtful to her.

“In the third place, she is blessed above all other women, not only because she gave birth without labor, pain, and injury to herself, not as Eve and all other women, but because by the Holy Spirit and without sin, she became fertile, conceived, and gave birth in a way granted to no other woman.”

Luther, Martin. “Personal Prayer Book” (1522) Luther’s Works Vol. 43. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968), page 40.