THOMAS MERTON MYSTIC

ENCOUNTERING GODPresentation by Mary Ellen Durante

Who Is Thomas Merton?

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain, first published October 4th, 1948, has sold over one million copies and has been translated into over fifteen languages. He wrote over sixty other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race.

http://www.mertoncenter.org/chrono.htm: accessed: 18 July 2011.

A CHRONOLOGY OF THOMAS MERTON'S LIFE

Thomas Merton was born in Prades, France on January 31st, 1915.

Merton’s mother dies from cancer when he is six years old.

His father dies ten years later from a brain tumor.

Merton enters Columbia University, 1935. 

While attending Columbia University, Merton converted to Roman Catholicism. He was baptized and received his First Holy Communion at Corpus Christi Church, in New York City, on November 16, 1938.

On December 10th, 1941 he entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, a community of monks belonging to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists), a Roman Catholic monastic order.

Merton was ordained a priest on May 26, 1949 and took the name Father Louis. 

http://www.mertoncenter.org/chrono.htm: accessed: 18 July 2011.

• Merton believed that we must urgently work towards world peace.

• Merton was a strong supporter of the nonviolent civil rights movement, which he called "certainly the greatest example of Christian faith in action in the social history of the United States."

Thomas as a young child.

A CHRONOLOGY OF THOMAS MERTON'S LIFE continued

Merton was a social activist and believed that we must urgently work towards world peace.

Merton was a strong supporter of the nonviolent civil rights movement, which he called "certainly the greatest example of Christian faith in action in the social history of the United States.“

Merton became deeply interested in Asian religions, particularly Zen Buddhism, and in promoting inter-religious dialogue.

The Dalai Lama praised him as having a more profound understanding of Buddhism than any other Christian he had known.

Merton died, in Bangkok on December 10, 1968, the victim of an accidental electrocution. The date marked the twenty-seventh anniversary of his entrance to Gethsemani.

 http://www.mertoncenter.org/chrono.htm: accessed: 18 July 2011.

Merton and the Dalai Lama

Ancient Roman Ruins and the interior of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran

“I found myself looking into churches rather than into ruined temples. Perhaps it was the frescos on the wall of an old chapel. The effect of this discovery was tremendous…what a thing to come upon the genius of an art full of spiritual vitality and earnestness and power. And now for the first time in my life I began to find out something of Who this Person was that men called Christ. It was in Rome that my conception of Christ was formed. It was there I first saw Him.” Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain (New York: Harcourt, Inc.1948), 119, 120.

THOMAS MERTON MYSTIC: ENCOUNTERING GOD

God’s self revelation is “encountering God” and this theme blooms in stages throughout Merton’s lifetime. This “encountering” is a process of a ripening vulnerability with God. Catholic theologian Louis Bouyer also sheds light on the topic of mysticism; “ Genuine mysticism does not consist so much in the experience of ecstasies or ‘visions’…but quite simply in total self-abandonment in naked faith, through an efficacious love of the Cross that is one with the very love of the crucified God.” (Mysterion, p. 322). Michael Downey, Editor, The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1970), 682.

Columbia University

William Harmless in his book, Mystics (2008), probes the question of what mysticism is and turns to the authoritative theologian Karl Rahner; “Rahner emphasizes, God in God’s own radical freedom does choose to communicate to us. We may experience God’s self communication in any number of ways…But beneath any experience is an encounter that is at once God’s self revelation and self communication.”

William Harmless, Mystics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 267.

Corpus Christi Church

“How beautiful and how terrible are the words with which God speaks to the soul of those He has called to Himself, and to the Promised Land which is participation in His own life – that lovely and fertile country which is the life of grace and glory, the interior life, the mystical life.”

Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain (New York: Harcourt, Inc.1948),247.

Abbey of Gethsemani

Father Louis: Christian Mystic

Humanitarian, prolific writer, poet, contemplative, seeker of solitude, silence, and truth; reverent priest,

prophet, and lover of the Crucified Christ.

“For the birds there is not a time that they tell, but the virgin point between darkness and light, between nonbeing and being.”

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 128.

“It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake…I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate…And if only everyone could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”Merton entered this into his personal journal on March 19, 1958 although the occurrence happened on the previous day. He then included this story in his book ,Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 1965.

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 153, 154.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers…”

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Thomas Merton, Thoughts In Solitude (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1958), 79.

“It is she, it is Mary, Sophia, who is sadness and joy, with the full awareness of what she is doing, sets upon the Second Person, the Logos, a crown which is His Human Nature. Thus her consent opens the door of created nature, of time, of history, to the Word of God.”Cunningham, Lawrence S., Editor, Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master: The Essential Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 263.

“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. It is the love of God that sends the winter days when I am cold and sick, and the hot summer when I labor and my clothes are full of sweat: but it is God Who breathes on me with light winds off the river and in the breezes out of the wood.”Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Books, 1961), 16.

“FLY CATCHERS, SHAKING THEIR WINGS AFTER RAIN”.

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 137.

“ Poetry, music and art have something in common with contemplative experience…Hence contemplation is a sudden gift of awareness, an awakening to the Real within all that is real.”

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Books, 1961), 2,3.

(No light, no gold, no name, no colorAnd no thought:O, wide awake!)

A golden heavenSings by itselfA song for nobody.

Thomas Merton, The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton (New York: W. W. Norton & Co Inc, 1980), 337, 338.

Original Painting by Anne Hartigan

SONG FOR NOBODY

A yellow flower(Light and spirit)Sings by itselfFor nobody.

A golden spirit(Light and emptiness)Sings without a wordBy itself.Let no one touch this gentle sunIn whose dark eyeSomeone is awake.

He who deems death to be lovely, as Joseph, gives up his soul in ransom for it; He who deems it to be like a wolf, turns back from the path of salvation.Everyone’s death is of the same quality as himself, my son: To the Enemy of God an enemy, to the friend of God a friend…Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 235.

The Beauty of Death

Persian Sufi poet Rumi

“He it is also born each instant in our hearts: for this unending birth, this everlasting beginning, without end, this

everlasting, perfect newness of God begotten of Himself, issuing from Himself without leaving Himself

or altering His oneness, this is the life that is in us.” Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain (New York: Harcourt, Inc.1948), 446.

“If I affirm myself as a Catholic merely by denying all that is Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc., in the end I will find that there is not much left for me to affirm as a Catholic: and certainly no breath of the Spirit with which to affirm it.”

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 141.

“Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tired vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. The queer evidence of the reclining figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with arms folded…All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya…everything is emptiness and everything is compassion.” 1.

1.Lawrence S., Cunningham, Editor, Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master: The Essential Writings: The Asian Journal (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 226.2.http://www.mystudios.com/artgallery/J/John-La-Farge/Colossal-Statue-Of-Ananda--Near-The-Ruined-City-Of-Pollanarua--Ceylon--1891.html: accessed 22 July 2011.

2.

There Is Beauty in the Face of Thomas Written in memory of Thomas Merton (1915 -1968)By M.E. DuranteJuly 5, 2011 Bronx, NY

There is beauty in the face of Thomas As the face of Christ seems to have been formed in hisThe spirit of the Pantocrator: a mist mingling two faces into one.It is within the mist where true self-transcendence breathes With eyes that lift to see the far hills of ZionAnd in looking ask the maker of heaven and earth For help to enter into the darkness of the inexhaustible LordTo be guarded against all evilTo be enlightened as Christ in his coming and in his goings

There is beauty in the face of Thomas As the face of Buddha seems to have been formed in hisThe spirit of the atman: a mist mingling two faces into one.It is within the mist where true self-transcendence breathes With eyes that lift seeing the far hills of Nirvana And in looking ask the maker of heaven and earth 1.

For help to enter into the void of the LordTo be guarded against all evilTo be compassionate as the Bodhisattva of Buddha in his coming

and his goings Ancient ruins of Polonnaruwa in Ceylon (renamed after 1972, Sri Lanka).

1.Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ with Folded Arms

The face of Thomas is serene, his forehead smoothIn death a peaceful smile has formed on the monk’s face Like the Buddha’s smile of emptiness and great clarityThe ebb and flow of new life is obtained through annihilation and reintegration of Christ’s life in Thomas Detached from the complexities of this earthly placeThomas is the compassion, the ultimate reality of loveHe is the lightning of electricity that flashes And sparkles like a new star born above the far hills of Zion.Please note that this poem is a reflection based on Psalm 121 and Thomas Merton’s, The Asian Journal (1973).

Polonnaruwa Ancient Sculptures : Reclining Buddha

Merton embraced the crucified God. He honored the “poor and ordinary life” of Christ. In his continued act of self renunciation, in his solitude, and in his celebration of God’s creation he encountered God time and time again. He diligently and bravely sought Christ, to communicate with Him, and to live in the presence of God. Merton penetrated the Paschal Mystery, the most central mystery of Christian spirituality; the mystery of suffering, death, and transformation.”1.

1.Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 142.

 

Merton understood life in a sacramental way.

He could interpret the flight of birds as a holy ritual giving praise to God.

http://www.canadiannaturephotographer.com/birdsinflight.html: accessed 23 July 2011.

“I have only one desire and that is the desire for solitude –

to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace,

to be lost in the secret of His face.”Jonathan Montaldo, Editor, Thomas Merton, Entering the Silence: becoming a monk and writer: Part III :

The Whale and the Ivy (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 32.

“Mystics’ experiences are not discontinuous from our own. Think about color, about the spectrum of light. It is one thing to say “that thing is purple”; it is quite another to see purple within the broader color spectrum… Ordinary religious experience may be a "lower” frequency in some sense, a “yellow” or “orange” or “red” – less intense somehow but still light, still in continuity with the more intense, higher light frequency that moves ever so gradually from purple to violet to ultraviolet invisibility.” 1.

http://www2.astro.psu.edu/users/stark/outreach/StarLives/nebula/: accessed July 4, 2011.

1.William Harmless, Mystics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 268.

Professor Jean FlannellyFordham GSRRE

REGR 6109

Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master for the Twenty First

CenturyMary Ellen Durante

Summer 2011July 25, 2011

Thomas Merton’s Grave

Bibliography

Cunningham, Lawrence S., Editor, Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master: The Essential Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1992).

Downey, Michael, Editor, The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1970).

Harmless, William, Mystics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Merton, Thomas, The Seven Story Mountain (New York: Harcourt, Inc.1948).

Merton, Thomas, Thoughts In Solitude (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1958).

Merton, Thomas, The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1959)

Merton, Thomas, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Books, 1961).

Merton, Thomas, Conjectures of a Guilt Bystander (New York: Doubleday, 1965).

Mary Ellen Durante’s youngest son, Michael Joseph Monroe on “Meditation Hill” Abbey of Gethsemani

“Meditation Hill” Abbey of Gethsemani

Merton, Thomas, The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton (New York: W. W. Norton & Co Inc, 1980) Montaldo, Jonathan, Editor, Thomas Merton, Entering the Silence: becoming a monk and writer: Part III: The Whale and the Ivy (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996).

Rolheiser, Ronald, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality (New York: Doubleday, 1999).

Theme Concept, Design and Text by: Mary Ellen Durante: 24 July 2011.

http://www.mertoncenter.org/chrono.htm: accessed: 18 July 2011.

http://www.mystudios.com/artgallery/J/John-La-Farge/Colossal-Statue-Of-Ananda--Near-The-Ruined-City-Of-Pollanarua--Ceylon--1891.html: accessed 22 July 2011.

http://www.canadiannaturephotographer.com/birdsinflight.html: accessed 23 July 2011.

http://www2.astro.psu.edu/users/stark/outreach/StarLives/nebula/: accessed 4 July 2011.