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image and likeness

“In Christian scripture, following the Septuagint tradition, tselem was normally translated by the Greek term eikon (see Col. 1:15, etc.). ‘Likeness’ was rendered by homoiosis or homoioma and their cognates, a linguistic fact that would bear difficult fruit in the great Christological controversies that split the early Church between Orthodoxy and Arianism. Eikon, of course, is the same as ‘icon’ in English, and still refers to the sacred image. It is worth noting that the centuries-long dispute in the Eastern Church, as well as later in Puritan England and New England regarding the propriety of sacred images, has its roots in the apophatic rejection of any representations of the unseen, invisible, incomprehensible God.”

Woods, Richard. Meister Eckhart: Master of Mystics. New York: Continuum, 2011, p. 141.

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missionary pilgrims

“It is true, of course, that many of these pilgrimages brought Irish monks into inhabited places where the natives were willing and ready to receive the Christian message. The monks then became missionaries. The main reason for their journeys was not the missionary apostolate but the desire of voluntary exile.”

Merton, Thomas. “From Pilgrimage to Crusade.” (1964) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, p. 189.

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varieties of service

“To love, one must be free, and while the apostolic life implies one mode of freedom in the world, the monastic life has its own freedom which is that of the wilderness. The two are not opposed or mutually exclusive. They are complementary, and, on the highest level, they turn out to be one and the same: union with God in the mystery of total love, in the oneness of His Spirit.”

Merton, Thomas. “The Monastic Renewal: Problems and Prospects.” (1966) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, p. 399.

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changes in solitude

"It is even possible that in solitude I shall return to my beginning and rediscover the value and perfection of simple vocal prayer–and take greater joy in this than in contemplation.

“So that the cenobite may have high contemplation, while the hermit has only his Pater and Ave Maria. In that event I choose the life of a hermit in which I live in God always, speaking to Him with simplicity, rather than a life of disjointed activity sublimated by a few moments of fire and exaltation.”

Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1958. (pbk ed 1999), p.110.

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God speaks, we listen

“To ‘listen to God,’ then, is not merely to hear God. It also requires that we pay attention to God’s words and ‘treasure all these things and ponder them in our heart’ (cf. Luke 2:19, 51). Moreover, God’s call does not always come to us in words; indeed, this would be the exception, rather than the rule. God speaks to us especially through events.”

Okumura, Augustine Ichiro. Awakening to Prayer. Translated by Theresa Kazue Hiraki and Albert Masaru Yamato. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1994, p. 36.

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silence, worship, and noise

"Silence is an attitude of the soul. It cannot be decreed without appearing overrated, empty, and artificial. In the Church’s liturgies, silence cannot be a pause between two rituals; silence itself is fully a ritual, it envelops everything. Silence is the fabric from which all our liturgies must be cut. Nothing in them should interrupt the silent atmosphere that is its natural setting.

“Now, celebrations become tiring because they unfold in noisy chattering.” Thought 250.

Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017, p. 130.

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including the Church triumphant

“We are to be informed by the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus; by the leading of the Spirit; by the wisdom we find in scripture; by the fact of our baptism and all that it means; by the sense of God’s presence and guidance through prayer; and by the fellowship of other Christians, both our contemporaries and those of other ages whose lives and writings are ours to use as wise guides. … Part of the art of being a Christian is learning to be sensitive to all of them, and to weigh what we think we are hearing from one quarter alongside what is being said in another.”

Wright, Tom. Simply Christian. London: SPCK, 2006, p. 191.

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sabbath purpose

“The Genesis account provides a glimpse of God’s view of biblical shalom, in which the world will be made right as God intended it to be. Observation of the sabbath is one of the mechanisms God uses as a part of the process of restoring shalom.”

Cannon, Mae Elise. Just Spirituality: How Faith Practices Fuel Social Action. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2013, p. 129.

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deeper than experience

“Mysticism is a story that begins in silence and only takes on the form of language and narrative after the fact. We say that mysticism involves experience: the experience of union with God, or of the presence of God, or something as extraordinary as Teresa’s encounter with the angel, or Merton’s street corner lovefest. But experience is not the entire story, either. The problem with experience is that it can be driven by the human ego, a self-directed phenomenon that can too easily become self-absorbed. Mysticism affirms the mystery of God more than mere experience. Sometimes God chooses to encounter us deep beneath the horizon of our awareness. That’s one of many reasons why we call this type of spirituality ‘mysticism’–it ushers us into mystery, deeper than what our minds or even our hearts can comprehend.”

McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023, pp. 15-16.

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Christian silence

“The silence that brings us close to God is always a respectful silence, a silence of adoration, a silence of filial love. It is never a trivial silence.”

Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017, p. 206.