Thomas Merton, Part I

October 5th, 2017 by Dave Leave a reply »

Thomas Merton, Part I

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was born in France and lived most of his adult life as a Cistercian (Trappist) monk at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He died tragically in Bangkok of accidental electrocution. Merton has been a primary teacher and inspiration to me since I first read his book The Sign of Jonas in my high school seminary library around 1959. Merton almost single-handedly pulled back the veil and revealed the contemplative, mystical wisdom that had been lost in the Western Church for the last five centuries. He remains a spiritual master for many Christians and non-Christians to this day.
Scott Peck explains that Merton “‘left the world’ for the monastery . . . because he was afraid of being contaminated by the world’s institutionalized evil. . . . [But he] continued to consistently and passionately protest the sins of greater society. This burning desire to be in the world but not of the world is the mark of a contemplative.” [1] James Finley, who learned from Merton for six years as a monk in Gethsemani, says Merton would tell him, “We don’t come to the monastery to get away from suffering; we come to hold the suffering of all the world.” [2] This can only be done by plugging into a larger consciousness through contemplation. No longer focused on our individual private perfection—or what Merton called “our personal salvation project”—we become fully usable by God.
Merton wrote, “Paradoxically, I have found peace because I have always been dissatisfied. My moments of depression and despair turn out to be renewals, new beginnings. . . . All life tends to grow like this, in mystery inscaped with paradox and contradiction, yet centered, in its very heart, on the divine mercy . . . and the realization of the ‘new life’ that is in us who believe, by the gift of the Holy Spirit.” [3]
It was in the power of this Spirit that Merton struggled against “the evil [that is also] in us all . . . [and] the blindness of a world that wants to end itself.” He fought against violence, war, racism, poverty, and consumerism. He said, “Those who continue to struggle are at peace. If God wills, they can pacify the world.” [4]
My friend, John Dear writes of Merton:
The contemplative work of inner conversion, inner disarmament, and inner peacemaking as the key to peace for the world held Merton’s interest throughout his life. It’s what he admired most about Mahatma Gandhi, and what he tried to achieve for himself. . . . Merton observed that Gandhi’s political revolution sprang from an inner, spiritual revolution of the heart. . . . Merton wrote . . . “The whole Gandhian concept of nonviolent action and satyagraha is incomprehensible if it is thought to be a means of achieving unity rather than as the fruit of inner unity already achieved.” [5]

Gateway to Silence:
We are all one with You.

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The Nature of Degeneration
By Oswald Chambers

Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned… —Romans 5:12
The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin, but that the nature of sin, namely, my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race through one man. But it also says that another Man took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away— an infinitely more profound revelation (see Hebrews 9:26). The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, “I am my own god.” This nature may exhibit itself in proper morality or in improper immorality, but it always has a common basis— my claim to my right to myself. When our Lord faced either people with all the forces of evil in them, or people who were clean-living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the nature of man (see John 2:25).
Sin is something I am born with and cannot touch— only God touches sin through redemption. It is through the Cross of Christ that God redeemed the entire human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a person responsible for having the heredity of sin, and does not condemn anyone because of it. Condemnation comes when I realize that Jesus Christ came to deliver me from this heredity of sin, and yet I refuse to let Him do so. From that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. “This is the condemnation [and the critical moment], that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light…” (John 3:19).

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