His writings, reflections and letters have have guided hundreds and thousands of people in their search for peace and for a spiritual orientation in their lives. He had the “ ability to articulate the human situation and the struggles of mortals to deal with the ambiguities, contradictions, the inequalities of life”(William Shannon, Something of a Rebel, St.Anthony’s Press, Ohio,1997,p.49) People “ read his story and they see something of their story in it. They read his reflections on life and what he says often strikes responsive chords in their lives.”(Hannon,p.50). Many coming from different backgrounds and faith experiences find that Merton is speaking to them in their own concrete situations. According to Lawrence Cunningham, “ people of varied religious persuasions find in his writings an anchor for their spiritual life.”(Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master, St. Paulist Press,N.J.1992,p.48).
Merton is often in seen in different roles, as a poet, a social-critic, an essayist, as a monk and as a theologian. But it is his role as a master of spirituality, as one who one unfolds the beauties of Christian faith through the prism of his monasticism that concerns us here.
Merton used to quote the following words of a monastic writer, Evagrius of Pontus(346-399): “the theologian is the person who prays; the person who prays is truly a theologian” and this is very true of his life as a teacher of spirituality. His theological insights have come from his life of prayer.
New Seeds of Contemplation(1961)
This work is a spiritual classic and is one of his important works on spirituality.
“Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life…It is spiritual wonder…the awareness of the reality of the source.” (p.3)
It is beyond all knowing and unknowing and is a state where our intellectual process stops.
Merton then explain what contemplation is not:
“Contemplation does not arrive at reality after a process of deduction, but by an intuitive awakening in which our free and personal reality becomes fully alive to its own existential depths, which open out into the mystery of God.”(9)
Merton notes that it is not accompanied by trances, gift of prophecy or by any supernatural experiences.
“ In the end the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that he no longer knows what God is.”(13)
Seeds of contemplation:
“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul…Every expression of the will of God is in some measure a “ word of God and therefore a “seed” of new life.(14)
If I were looking for God, every event and every moment would sow, in my will, grains of His life that would spring up one day in a tremendous harvest…For it is God’s love that warms me in the sun and God’s love that sends the cold rain…It is God’s love that feeds me in the bread I eat and God that feeds me also by hunger and fasting.(16)
It is God’s love that speaks to me in the birds and streams; but also behind the clamor of the city, God speaks to me in His judgments…In all that happens, my one desire and my one joy should be to know: Here is the thing that God has willed for me. In this His love is found…”(17)
Merton responds to a natural question that arises in the heart of every one with regard to knowing the will of God for one.
“The very nature of each situation usually bears written into itself some indication of God’s will. For whatever is demanded by truth, by justice, by mercy, or by love must surely be taken to be willed by God.”(18)… “to do the work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose is to unite myself to God’s will in my work.”
Merton also warns us that “no man who ignores the rights and needs of others can hope to walk in the light of contemplation……the contemplative must certainly be detached, but he can never allow himself to become insensible to true human values whether in society , in other men or in himself.”
Merton points out that everything created by God is holy and that it is our selfishness that creates the obstacle between God and us. “There is no evil in anything created by God, nor anything of His becomes an obstacle to our union with Him. The obstacle is in our self.”
Faith:
Merton points out that faith is not just an intellectual assent but that it involves a communion between God and man.
“Faith is not an emotion…not a blind subconscious urge…not something that bubbles up out of the recesses of your soul…not an opinion.. not a conviction based on rational analysis….it is an intellectual assent…perfects the mind, and does not destroy it….We assent …because of something other than intrinsic evidence…the authority of God who reveals them….It is more than an assent of mind…is an assent to God Himself…is a communion of wills.(128)
Faith is the only key to the Universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to questions on which all our happiness depends cannot be reached in any other way….Faith is the acceptance of God which is the very climate of all spiritual living. It is the beginning of communion….The function of faith is not to reduce mystery to rational clarity , but to integrate the unknown and the known together in a living whole.”(136)
Life in Christ:
If I have the divine life in me, what do the accidents of pain and pleasure, hope and fear, joy and sorrow matter to me?…Exterior things come and go , but why should they disturb me? Why should joy excite me or sorrow cast me down?.. If I live only in the Life that is within me by God’s gift?
Speaking about the cosmic significance of the Eucharist, Merton observes,
“ The liturgical sacrifice of the church has at once a mystical and a cosmic significance. There communion of the faithful in the Body and Blood of the Savior not only really joins them to Him in a sacramentally mystical union but also unites them to one another in Christian charity and in the Holy Spirit. The cosmic aspect of the sacrifice is suggested by the very nature of the gifts offered to God. Bread and wine, the produce of the earth and of man’s toil , are transformed into the body and Blood of Christ. Then the whole creation as well as the labor of man in all his legitimate natural aspirations are in some way elevated, consecrated and transformed.” (165)
“Christianity is more than an ethical system…Jesus not only teaches us the Christian life, He creates it in our souls by the actions of His Spirit.(165).If my true spiritual identity is found in my identification with Christ, then to know myself fully , I must know Christ…Christianity is not a religion of law but the religion of a person. His love is our law, and it is absolute. Obedience to this law conforms us to Him as a person (182).
Merton in this book explains very beautifully the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the history of Salvation. He points out the hollowness of many arguments against the role of Mary in our faith.
“Mary’s chief glory is her nothingness…She is blessed not because of some mythical pseudo-divine prerogative, but in all her human and womanly limitations as one who has believed. The glory of Mary is purely and simply the glory of God in her.(170)…When a room is heated by an open fire, surely there is nothing strange in the fact that those who stand closest to the fireplace are the ones who are warmest.(171)….Mary , who was empty of all egotism, free from all sin, was as pure as the gloss of a very clean window that has no other function than to admit the light of the sun.(172)
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND
Merton is sharing some of his thoughts on prayer and spirituality in this work. His reflections on the meaning of suffering in the Christian perspective are also brought out.
“My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another.”
Art and Prayer:
“All true prayer confesses our absolute dependence on the Lord of life and death. It is , therefore, a deep and vital contact with him whom we know not only as Lord but also as Father. It is when we pray truly that we really are.
“If we have the Spirit of God in our hearts, we will live by the law of charity, inclined always to peace rather than dissension, to humility rather than arrogance, to obedience rather than rebellion, to purity and temperance…and we will love others more than ourselves.
“If I am to know the will of God , I must have the right attitude toward life…In order to find my true self in Christ, I must go beyond the limits of my own narrow egoism. In order to save my life, I must lose it. For my life in God is and can only be a life of unselfish charity.
“Without this view of life, we will not even be able to see the most obvious manifestations of the divine will….In the course of each day the duties of our state, the claims made on us by those around us, the demands on our energy, our patience, and our time, all make known to us the will of God and show us the way to realize ourselves in Him, by losing ourselves in charity.
“Action and contemplation …grow together into one life and one unity. Action is charity, looking outward to other men, and contemplation is charity drawn inward to its own divine source.(p.70)
Cross:
“Suffering has no power and no value of its own. It is valuable only as a test of faith. To believe in suffering is pride: but to suffer, believing in God, is humility.
“It is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the Resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.
“When I see my trials not as the collision of my life with a blind machine called fate, but as the sacramental gift of Christ’s love, given to me by God the Father along with my identity and my very name, then I can consecrate them and myself with them to God. For then I realize that my suffering is not my own. It is the passion of Christ, stretching out its tendrils into my life in order to bear rich clusters of grapes, making my soul dizzy with the wine of Christ’s love.(83)
Physical evil has no power to penetrate beneath the surface of our being. It can touch our flesh, our mind, and our sensibility. It cannot harm our spirit without the work of that other evil which is sin.(84)
Sin strikes at the very depth of our personality. It destroys…our fundamental orientation to God.
We are created to will what God wills, to know what he knows, to love what He loves. Sin is the will to do what God does not will, to know what He does not know, to love what He does not love.
Physical evil is not only to be regarded as a real evil in so far as it tends to foment sin in our souls. That is why a Christian monk must seek in every possible way to relieve the sufferings of others….Bodily works of mercy look beyond the flesh and into the spirit and when they are integrally Christian they not only alleviate suffering but they bring grace.
There is no such thing as a sacrifice of ourselves that is merely self-destruction. We sacrifice ourselves to God by the spiritualization of our whole being through our obedience to His Grace.
To spiritualize our lives and make them pleasing to God, we must become quiet. Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things.(108)
To desire a spiritual life is, then, to desire discipline…If we are not strict with ourselves, our own flesh will deceive us.
It is supreme humility to see that ordinary life, embraced with perfect faith , can be more saintly and more supernatural than a spectacular ascetical career.
All nature is meant to make us think of paradise. Woods, fields, valleys, hills…the clouds travelling across the sky …remind us that the world was first created as a paradise for the first Adam.
If we have God dwelling within us, making our souls His paradise, then the world around us can also become for us what it was meant to be for Adam-his paradise.
We have to learn to commune with ourselves before we can communicate with other men and with God. A man who is not at peace with himself necessarily projects his interior fighting into the society of those he lives with.
We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting an immediate reward and to exist without any special recognition.
We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. Our own idea of greatness is illusory.
If I do not know who I am, it is because I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be.
We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.”
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