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“Contemplation is not a kind of magic and easy shortcut to happiness and perfection. And yet since it does bring one in touch with God in an I-Thou relationship of mysteriously experienced friendship, it necessarily brings that peace which Christ promised and which ‘the world cannot give.’ There may be much desolation and suffering in the spirit of the contemplative, but there is always more joy than sorrow, more security than doubt, more peace than desolation. The contemplative is one who has found what every man seeks in one way or another.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003, pages 116-117 (NOTE: the text belongs to 1959!)

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contemplation and virtue

“Contemplation should not be exaggerated, distorted, and made to seem great. It is essentially simple and humble. No one can enter into it except by the path of obscurity and self-forgetfulness. It implies also much discipline, but above all the normal discipline of everyday virtue. It implies justice to other people, truthfulness, hard work, unselfishness, devotion to the duties of one’s state in life, obedience, charity, self-sacrifice. No one should delude himself with contemplative aspirations if he is not willing to undertake, first of all, the ordinary labors and obligations of the moral life.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. NY: HarperOne, 2003, page 116. (NOTE: the text belongs to 1959!)

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the Church’s teaching authority

“The truth is that the saints arrived at the deepest and most vital and also the most individual and personal knowledge of God precisely because of the Church’s teaching authority, precisely through the tradition that is guarded and fostered by that authority.”

Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. Introduction by Sue Monk Kidd. New York: New Directions Books, 2007, ©1961, p. 146.

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individual vocations and paths

“Why are people so intent on refusing others the right to see a special value in a life apart from the world, a life dedicated to God in prayer ‘on the mountain alone’ when the New Testament itself repeatedly shows Christ retiring to solitary prayer which he himself loved? Certainly one can find God ‘in the world’ and in an active life but this is not the only way, any more than the monastic life is the only way. There are varieties of graces and vocations in the Church and these varieties must always be respected.”

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, pages 397-398.

Comment: in this new year, may you know freedom to walk the path you’ve been called to travel

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

technology’s failure

“Though he now has the capacity to communicate anything, anywhere, instantly, man finds himself with nothing to say. Not that there are not many things he could communicate, or should attempt to communicate. He should, for instance, be able to meet his fellow man and discuss ways of building a peaceful world. He is incapable of this kind of confrontation.”

Merton, Thomas. “Symbolism: Communication or Communion?.” (1966) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, p. 247.

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Comment: And he wrote this way back in 1966, years before cell phones, blogs, social media, and the 24-hour news cycle! What would Merton have said about all these things and our continuing incapability of building a peaceful world?

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

he who has ears to hear

“The ears with which one hears the message of the Gospel are hidden in man’s heart, and these ears do not hear anything unless they are favored with a certain interior solitude and silence.”

Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1958. (pbk ed 1999), Preface, pp. xii-xiii.

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the statements are important, but don’t forget the rest

"Christianity begins with revelation. Though it would be misleading to classify this revelation simply as a ‘doctrine’ and an ‘explanation’ (it is far more than that–the revelation of God Himself in the mystery of Christ) it is nevertheless communicated to us in words, in statements, and everything depends on the believer’s accepting the truth of these statements.

"Therefore Christianity has always been profoundly concerned with these statements: with the accuracy of their transmission from the original sources, with the precise understanding of their exact meaning, with the elimination and indeed the condemnation of false interpretations. At times this concern has been exaggerated almost to the point of an obsession, accompanied by arbitrary and fanatical insistence on hairsplitting distinctions and the purest niceties of theological detail.

“This obsession with doctrinal formulas, juridical order, and ritual exactitude has often made people forget that the heart of Catholicism, too, is a living experience of unity in Christ which far transcends all conceptual formulations.”

Merton, Thomas. “A Christian Looks at Zen.” (1967) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, p. 347.

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peace in prayer

“As long as I am content to know that He is infinitely greater than I, and that I cannot know Him unless He shows Himself to me, I will have Peace, and He will be near me and in me, and I will rest in Him.”

Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1958); (pbk ed 1999), p. 97.

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Zen experience

“The whole aim of Zen is not to make foolproof statements about experience but to come to direct grips with reality without the mediation of logical verbalizing.”

Merton, Thomas. “A Christian Looks at Zen.” (1967) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), p. 346.

‘I don’t understand Zen; and neither do you’ is about as foolproof a statement as I can make.

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good lines for slow reading

“Do not be too anxious about your advancement in the ways of prayer, because you have left the beaten track and are traveling by paths that cannot be charted and measured. Therefore leave God to take care of your degree of sanctity and of contemplation. If you yourself try to measure your own progress, you will waste your time in futile introspection. Seek one thing alone: to purify your love of God more and more, to abandon yourself more and more perfectly to His will and to love Him more exclusively and more completely, but also more simply and more peacefully and with more total and uncompromising trust.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. (NY: HarperOne, 2003), page 97. (NOTE: the text belongs to 1959!)