Seven Storey Mountian-3

If people had more appreciation of what it means to be converted from rank, savage paganism.. . to the living faith and to the church, they would not think of Catechism as something trivial." "I was never bored. I never missed an instruction. . . I now began to bum with desire for Baptism."

Another desire now begins to form in his mind-to become a priest.

" I was about to set foot on the shore at the foot of the high, seven -circled mountain of a Purgatory steeper and more arduous than I was able to imagine, and I was not at all aware of the climbing I was about to have to do."

He speaks about the state of his mind after his baptism and confession (I tore out all those sins by their roots, like teeth).

"Heaven was entirely mine-that heaven in which sharing makes no division or diminution... Christ, hidden in the small Host.. . was giving Himself for me, and to me, and, with himself, the entire Godhead and Trinity... for now I had entered into the everlasting movement of that gravitation which is the very life and spirit of God.. . And God, that center who is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere, finding me...And he called out to me from His own immense depths."(p.225)

He gives a very poignant reflection on his prayer life: "And to such a one I would say: Whoever you are... your old life and your former ways are crucified now... sacrifice your pleasures and comforts for the love of god and give the money that you no longer spend on those things, to the poor."

While spending time with his friends, he comes to another major decision in his life: " I am going to be a priest. "(P.253)

He meets with Dan Walsh, another visiting member of the Faculty at Columbia who gives him a short briefing of the various religious orders in the Church. He suggests him the Franciscan order for him to join. Merton becomes a daily communicant. He is looking for an order that will accept him for priesthood. Finally, he decides to join the Trappists at Gethsemany. He had been there earlier for a retreat. Before moving over to the monastery, he has entertained an idea to work in Harlem after having listened to a spirited talk by Baroness De Huck. Merton joins the monastery-hands over the little possessions he had to the Treasurer. He participates in the Advent liturgy and does all the menial tasks that were entrusted to him. He describes his brother John Paul's visit to the monastery and his reception of baptism at the monastery. Later, Merton receives the news of the death of his brother while he was participating in an air raid as a bomber pilot with the American Air Force. Towards the end of the book, Merton praises God for being given the grace to experience Him: "My God, it is that gap and that distance which kill me...That is the only reason why I desire solitude... to be lost to all created things, to die to them.. . for they remind me of my distance from you.

Part!!!

Seven Storey Mountian-2

Merton describes his life at Cambridge University and his acquaintance with the works of Dante. He leaves the University without completing his studies and proceeds to Europe.In this section we find a very poetic rendering of the presence of God:

There is not a flower that opens, not a seed that falls into the. ground, and not an ear of wheat that nods on the end of its stalk in the wind that does not preach and proclaim the greatness and the mercy of God to the whole world. . . There is not an act of kindness, or generosity, not an act of sacrifice done... that does not sing hymns to

God. . . All these things, all creatures, every graceful movement, every ordered act of the human will, all are sent to us as prophets from God"(p.129)

He makes a beautiful prayer to the Blessed Virgin: "And when I thought there

was no God and no love and no money, you were leading me all the while into the midst of His love and His mercy. . . "

Merton criticizes the materialistic spirit of the age whose product he has been:

" I saw clearly enough that I was the product of my times, my society and my class... We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible... "

He was fascinated for a while with communist ideology while he was a student at Columbia University.

He expresses a very deep admiration for one of the professors ofEng.Lit.Prof Mark Van Doren: "His classes were literally "education"-they brought things out of you, they made your mind produce its own explicit ideas."

Merton mentions his grandfather's death in 1936: "Now a strange thing happened. Without my having thought about it. . . I closed the door and got on my knees by the bed and prayed."

He sees the emptiness in his life: "In filling myself, I had emptied myself In grasping things, I had lost everything."

He sees the need of God's grace in man's life, as he is unable to settle his problems. He explains grace, in this context, as God's own life, shared by us. " When a ray of light strikes a crystal, it gives a new quality to the crystal. And when God's infinitely disinterested love plays upon a human soul, the same kind of thing takes place. And that is the life called sanctifying grace." He mentions that Gilson's work "The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy" has been very much influential in leading him to the Church: "I began to have a desire to go to church."(p.175). Blake's poems too have been acknowledged to be influential. He meets with an Indian monk who urges him to read the "Confessions" of St. Augustine as well as the "Imitation of Christ. "He develops a strong interest to go to a Catholic church and attend a mass. He goes to the Corpus Christi church in Manhattan and while meeting a priest (Fr.Ford) there, on a sudden impulse; he expresses his desire to become a Catholic.

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PART!!

Merton-Seven Storey Mountain

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

The title is in imitation of the seven st9rey s of the Purgatory of the Divine

Comedy of Dante. "This was published on 4th Oct. 1948. The book was soon selling in all parts of the country at an average of 2000 copies every working day. . . and by Labor day, 1949... almost 300,000 copies had been sold." Merton describes very poetically and vividly his life-experiences and his search for .God in this book. Here we find his reflections on suffering, his disillusionment with the modem educational system, the need for faith, his experience of the presence of God in the beauties of nature and his immense joy in being accepted for ordination to priesthood. The book has three parts. In the first part, Merton describes his early life~his parents' marriage, his childhood experiences and his mother's death due to cancer. "Prayer? No, prayer did not occur to me. How fantastic that will seem to a Catholic -that a six-year old child should find out that his mother is dying, and not know enough to pray for her."(P.14) His father takes him to France and he is enrolled in a school there. Later, they move to England and Merton joins a school there. While he is at the High School, he hears about the fatal sickness of his father: " I sat there in the dark, unhappy room, unable to think, unable to move, with all the innumerable elements of my isolation crowding in upon me from every side: without a home, without a family, without a country, without a father. . . without god.. . without heaven, without grace, without anything. . . "(p, 72) He describes very poignantly his feelings about his father's suffering: "What I could I make of so much suffering? It was a raw wound for which there was no adequate relief.. , we were in the condition of most of the world, the condition of men without faith in the presence of war, pain... suffering... death. You just had to take it, like a dumb animal."(p.82) About his father's death and its impact on his life: "Here was a man with a wonderful mind and a great talent and a great heart: who had... shaped my soul. and to whom I was bound by every possible kind of bond of affection and attachment. "(p. 84). " There was no room for any God in that empty temple full of dust and rubbish which I was to guard against all intruders... to devote it to the worship of my own stupid will."(P.85) Influence of the poetry of Blake on Merton:"The providence of God was eventually to use Blake to awaken something of faith and love in my own soul. . . " Reads the poetry of Hopkins, Merton mentions his visit to Rome and his attempt to pray in a church, "Another thing that Catholics do not realize about converts is the tremendous, agonizing embarrassment and self-consciousness which they feel about praying publicly in a Catholic Church (p.11