A vision for 2012

The ultimate perfection of the contemplative life is not a heaven of separate individuals, each on viewing his own private intuition of God; it is a sea of Love which flows through the One Body of all the elect, all the angels and saints, and their contemplation would be incomplete if it were not shared, or if it were shared with fewer souls, or with spirits capable of less vision and less joy.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation. (New York: New Directions Books) : 65
 

Advent II - December 4, 2011

"Be empty and see that I am God." It is our emptiness in the presence of the abyss of His reality, our silence in the presence of His infinitely rich silence, our joy in the bosom of the serene darkness in which His light holds us absorbed, it is all this that praises Him.

Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation. (New York: New Directions Books): 231

 

Merton on Identity

What is meant by identity? ...For practical purposes here we are talking bout one's own authentic and personal beliefs and convictions, based on experience of oneself as a person, experience of one's ability to choose and reject even good things which are not relevant to one's own life.

Merton, Thomas. Contemplation in a World of Action. (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1998) 61



 

Merton On Identity

Identity in this deep sense is something that one must create for oneself by choices that are significant and that require a courageous commitment in the face of anguish and risk.

Merton, Thomas, Contemplation in a World of Action: 61

The power of silence

Our being is silent, but our existence is noisy. Our actions tend to be noisy, but when they stop, there is a ground of silence which is always there. ...Silence is greatly symbolic in our time.

Merton. Thomas. The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1992), 18
 

Does every problem demand a solution?

Certainly our life is full of real problems, some of them perhaps without solution. It would be an impertinence to suggest that all of our problems are fabricated. And yet we are so obsessed with the idea that we are supposed to possess "answers" and "solutions" for everything that we evade the difficult problems, which are all too real, by raising other less real problems to which we think we have the answer.

Merton, Thomas. Contemplation in a World of Action. (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1998) 48

The contemplative soul...

All truly contemplatives souls have this in common: not that they gather exclusively in the desert, or that they shut themselves up in reclusion, but that where He is, there they are. And how do they find Him? By technique? There is no technique for finding Him. They find Him by His will. And His will, bringing them grace within and arranging their lives exteriorly, carries them infallibly to the precise place in which they can find Him. Even there they do not know how they have got there, or what they are really doing.


Thomas Merton. Thoughts in Solitude.  (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux)  95