Mercy Is Searching

But in a world of huge atomic stockpiles, a Christian mercy that confines itself to interior feelings of benevolence and “good intentions” in the use of appalling destructive power can manifestly not meet the demands of eschatological love. The only event that can be ushered in by this kind of sentimentality is too grim to be contemplated, and it belongs more to Antichrist than to the Kingdom of the risen Kyrios.

Christian mercy must discover, in faith, in the Spirit, a power strong enough to initiate the transformation of the world into a realm of understanding, unity, and relative peace, where men, nations, and societies are willing to make the enormous sacrifices required if they are to communicate intelligibly with one another, understand one another, cooperate with one another in feeding the hungry millions and in building a world of peace.

Thomas Merton, Love and Living, pg. 197

Two Updates

1)  Many of you know Cathy Keller (aka GrandmaK) from her blog, A Bit of the Blarney.  At the beginning of Lent I intended to do a post about Cathy’s other site, Provident God.  I feel badly that I didn’t get that done, but on the other hand, the reflections she shares are wonderful reading at any time of the year.

Cathy has been using “Lent and Easter.  Wisdom from Thomas Merton” as a guide for reflection and a devotional throughout Lent this year and sharing some on her blog, which is very beautiful and soothing for the eyes as well. 

What I really appreciate about Cathy’s personal reflections is the honesty in her self-examination, and the quiet insights she comes to.  It’s not like bombshells or fireworks of epiphanies, but like little caps going off every morning; self-reflection as it is meant to be, I think – - - ending up in a call to action of how she will move forward with her day, and setting off a few caps under her readers as well…  So, thank you, Cathy; blessings to you as you move steadily on towards Easter.

2)  Many of you also know Father Joseph Homick from his original blog Word Incarnate and more recently, Making All Things New.  But now there is another to add to your reading pleasure, learning and faith-building:  Father Joseph’s newest site, Two Pillars:  Holy Eucharist and Our Lady. 

With Father’s reflections on his main page, and ten separate pages (to date) on subjects such as consecration to Mary, reparation, Eucharistic locutions, Adrienne von Speyr and much more, this is truly a blog after my own mystical heart, and yours.  I can’t wait to really dig in.  Thank you, Father J!

Thomas Merton's Anniversary

 

 

The world has lost a great man.  Monasticism has lost a great man.  But all of us, and I say this in all simplicity of heart, have gained a saint….

As yet, I have not absorbed completely the news of his birthday in the Lord, but somehow I feel him intensely close to me these last 24 hours.  If there be any communication of this type, closeness of this type, then I have to say that it is one of joy.

[Taken from a letter written by Catherine Doherty of Madonna House to Father Flavian, O.C.S.O., Abbot, Abbey of Gethsemani, on December 12, 1968, two days after Thomas Merton's death. Catherine had received a telegram from Fr. Flavian on December 11th. Excerpt from: Compassionate Fire. The Letters of Thomas Merton & Catherine de Hueck Doherty, pg. 89, edited by Robert A. Wild, Ave Maria Press]

Prayer of the Heart

In Chapter XI of Contemplative Prayer (by Thomas Merton, with an Introduction by Thich Nhat Hanh), Merton writes:

What is the purpose of meditation in the sense of “the prayer of the heart”?

In the “prayer of the heart” we seek first of all the deepest ground of our identity in God. We do not reason about dogmas of faith, or “the mysteries.” We seek rather to gain a direct existential grasp, a personal experience of the deepest truths of life and faith, finding ourselves in God’s truth….

We wish to gain a true evaluation of ourselves and of the world so as to understand the meaning of our life as children of God redeemed from sin and death. We wish to gain a true loving knowledge of God, our Father and Redeemer. We wish to lose ourselves in his love and rest in him. We wish to hear his word and respond to it with our whole being. We wish to know his merciful will and submit to it in its totality.

Sister Donna has recently discovered prayer of the heart, and her joy and enthusiasm is contagious, as you will see in this video. She has put together a 6-part YouTube series (the introduction to which is the second video in this post), based on St. Teresa of Avila’s The Way of Perfection. [Note:  Although she mentions St. Therese of Lisieux's 'little way' in the first video here, her series is actually based on St. Teresa of Avila's writing.]  So we will be taking a little journey here at Contemplative Haven with Sister Donna! If you would like to read the chapters that Sister Donna is highlighting in her videos but do not have a copy of The Way of Perfection, you can read it online at Catholic First.

Easter Sunday

From: The Sign of Jonas [Thomas Merton], pgs. 297-298 – Easter Sunday, 1950

“The grace of Easter is a great silence, an immense tranquility and a clean taste in your soul. It is the taste of heaven, but not the heaven of some wild exaltation. The Easter vision is not riot and drunkenness of spirit but a discovery of order above all order – a discovery of God and of all things in Him. This is a wine without intoxication, a joy that has no poison hidden in it. It is life without death….

If Mass could only be, every morning, what it is on Easter morning! If the prayers could always be so clear, if the Risen Christ would always shine in my heart and all around me and before me in His Easter simplicity! For His simplicity is our feast, this is the unleavened bread which is manna and the bread of heaven, this Easter cleanness, this freedom, this sincerity. O my God, what can I do to convince You that I long for Your Truth and Your simplicity, to share in Your infinite sincerity which is the mirror of Your True Being, and is Your Second Person! Only the little ones can see Him. He is too simple for any created intelligence to fathom. Sometimes we taste some reflection splashed from the clean Light that is the Life of all things: Baptism, First Mass; Easter morning. Give us always this bread of heaven. Slake us always with this water that we may not thirst forever.”

Monday Morning With Merton: Holy Beauty, Hopeless Passion

“But creatures remain untouchable, inviolable.  If God wants you to suffer a little, He allows you to learn just how inviolable they are.  As soon as you try to possess their goodness for its own sake, all that is sweet in them becomes bitter to you, all that is beautiful, ugly.  Everything you love sickens you.  And at the same time your need to love something, somebody, increases a hundred times over.  And God, Who is the only one who can be loved for His own sake alone, remains invisible and unimaginable and untouchable, beyond everything else that exists.

You flowers and trees, you hills and streams, you fields, flocks and wild birds, you books, you poems, and you people, I am unutterably alone in the midst of you.  The irrational hunger that sometimes gets into the depths of my will, tries to swing my deepest self away from God and direct it to your love.  I try to touch you with the deep fire that is in the center of my heart, but I cannot touch you without defiling both you and myself, and I am abashed, solitary and helpless, surrounded by a beauty that can never belong to me.

But this sadness generates within me an unspeakable reverence for the holiness of created things, for they are pure and perfect and they belong to God and they are mirrors of His beauty.  He is mirrored in all things like sunlight in clean water:  but if I try to drink the light that is in the water I only shatter the reflection.

And so I live alone and chaste in the midst of the holy beauty of all created things, knowing that nothing I can see or hear or touch will ever belong to me, ashamed of my absurd need to give myself away to any one of them or to all of them.  The silly, hopeless passion to give myself away to any beauty eats out my heart.  It is an unworthy desire, but I cannot avoid it.  It is in the hearts of us all, and we have to bear with it, suffer its demands with patience, until we die and go to heaven where all things will belong to us in their highest causes.”

[Thomas Merton:  The Sign of Jonas, pg. 238, Sept. 14, 1949]

Dear friends, this will be my last post at Contemplative Haven. As I stated on my “Mary” blog, it is time now for me to slip back into a more contemplative life, offline. I want to thank you all for the years of friendship, fun, angst, joys, sorrows, humour and prayer – you have all sustained me – each and every one of you. May God bless you and keep you, and may you continue to flourish in your contemplative lives.
 

Monday Morning With Merton: Mary, Window To Heaven

“Nativitas est hodie sanctae Mariae Virginis (Today is the nativity of Saint Mary the Virgin: First antiphon for Vespers of the feast). We have just come from first Vespers of Our Lady’s birthday. I am full of those happy antiphons, and glad because of the feast and because of what it means, for through her we come to heaven. Coeli fenestra facta es. (Thou art become the window of heaven: from the hymn O gloriosa Domina). I am glad that in our Order we still enter heaven through the window. I believe that line of the hymn was reformed in the Roman liturgy so that the rest of the Church goes in more decorously through the door. But we Cistercians still get in by the window….

This afternoon I was content looking at the low green rampart of woods that divides us from the rest of the universe and listening to the deep silence: content not for the sake of the scene or the silence but because of God. And now I hear a car in the distance, a solitary car coming down the road. The sound of action reminds me that I must soon wash my neck and go and read Monsignor Sheen to the retreatants at their supper.

That is how everything stands, Mother of God, after the first Vespers of your Nativity in the year 1947. Dona nobis pacem (Give us peace). Keep us in your heart until next year and the year after and until we all die in peace, disposed in the four corners of America in new foundations, and myself perhaps you know where, alone with you and with God. His will is my cell. His love is my solitude. Dona nobis pacem.”

[Thomas Merton: The Sign of Jonas, pgs. 62-63, Sept. 7, 1947]

Monday Morning With Merton: Wordless

Thank you, Pia, for last week’s poignant Merton quote; I would like to pick up on the same theme here today, specifically with regard to contemplative prayer:

“Hence monastic prayer, especially meditation and contemplative prayer, is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him whom we have found, who loves us, who is near to us, who comes to us to draw us to himself. Dominus enim prope est. Prayer, reading, meditation and contemplation fill the apparent “void” of monastic solitude and silence with the reality of God’s presence, and thus we learn the true value of silence, and come to experience the emptiness and futility of those forms of distraction and useless communication which contribute nothing to the seriousness and simplicity of a life of prayer.

Whatever one may think of the value of communal celebration with all kinds of song and self-expression – and these certainly have their place – the kind of prayer we here speak of as properly “monastic” (though it may also fit into the life of any lay person who is attracted to it) is a prayer of silence, simplicity, contemplative and meditative unity, a deep personal integration in an attentive, watchful listening of “the heart.” The response such prayer calls forth is not usually one of jubilation or audible witness: it is a wordless and total surrender of the heart in silence.”

[Thomas Merton: Contemplative Prayer, pgs. 29-30]