An Essay on Thomas Merton

A very good essay on Thomas Merton from The Internet Monk.

An American Monk's Call to Africa

I have had the honor of meeting Father Anthony Delisi, O.C.S.O. on several occasions and have had the privilege of being in a retreat led by Father Anthony.  Father Anthony has been a monk of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia since 1948.

Father Anthony Delisi, O.C.S.O.

In Black Like Licorice: A Contemporary Monk’s Call to Africa (Monastery of the Holy Spirit, 2011), Father Anthony tells of his call to the priesthood and monastic life.  At age 9, in the back of his family’s delivery truck for their produce business, he heard a voice telling him that he would be a priest and that he would one day go to Africa.

The title Black Like Licorice comes from an anecdote about the first time Father Anthony saw a person of African descent.  He asked a neighbor why their skin was black.  She replied “From eating too much licorice.”  Father Anthony’s memoir is like a “Who’s Who” of great Catholics from the mid-twentieth century.  He has visited the poor with Dorothy Day, went to school with scripture scholar Raymond Brown, prayed with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and discussed the Charismatic movement with Thomas Merton.

Father Anthony is an accomplished farmer.

Father Anthony tells about his racist novice master from Texas who did not want the novices to wave at black children while they worked in the fields on the monastery farm.  Father Anthony loves to grow things, especially tomatoes, and the story of how he became the primary tomato grower at the monastery is very entertaining.

Father Anthony makes fudge at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit

In the late 1970's, true to his childhood revelation, Father Anthony went on a mission to Nigeria to help found a Trappist monastery there.  This was to be the first of three mission trips to Africa.  Altogether, Father Anthony lived in Africa for approximately eight years.  After helping to found the men’s monastery, Father Anthony returned to Nigeria and Cameroon to serve as chaplain to a foundation of Trappistine nuns.

Father Anthony’s memoirs of these years are truly fascinating.  Father Anthony’s holiness and love for God and his fellow human beings shines through on every page of this wonderful book.  

Would Thomas Merton Use An I-Pad?

An interesting review of a new book.  The review is written by a great Catholic contemplative Intellectual, my friend Carl McColman.

Great Quote from Thomas Merton

Gina at Metanoia has posted a great quote from Thomas Merton about imitating Our Lord:

Wisdom of Merton
Posted by Gina
A Meditation:
Why should I want to be rich, when You were poor? Why should I desire to be famous and powerful? Why should I cherish in my heart a hope that devours me—the hope for perfect happiness in this life—when such hope, doomed to frustration, is nothing but despair? My hope is in what the eye has never seen. Therefore, let me not trust in visible rewards. My hope is in what the heart cannot feel. Therefore let me not trust in the feelings of my heart. My hope is in what the hand has never touched. Do not let me trust what I can grasp between my fingers. Death will loosen my grasp and my vain hope will be gone.
A Lesson:
We must devote ourselves with generosity and integrity to the real values: there is no time for falsity and compromise. But on the other hand we do not have to be greatly successful or even well known. It is enough for our integrity to be known to God. What we do that is pure in His sight will avail for the liberty, the enlightenment, and the salvation of His children everywhere.
Merton, Thomas; Kathleen Deignan; John Giuliani (2007-03-01). A Book of Hours (pp. 169-171). Sorin Books. Kindle Edition.

The Sign of Jonas

In case anybody is interested, my spiritual reading over the last few months has included Thomas Merton's journal, THE SIGN OF JONAS. Merton would keep his private journal and then edit portions for publication. THE SIGN OF JONAS is Merton's edited and polished journal which runs from Advent of 1946 just before Merton's solemn profession, through his ordination to the priesthood, and ends in July, 1952.

I was actually surprised at how much moaning and complaining that the Trappist censors allowed through to publication in 1953 when this book was first published. Merton starts off complaining about not enough solitude, complaining about writing, complaining about this and about that. There is also much beautiful writing here. There are many spiritual gems which provide much food for thought and deep prayer. The epilogue to this book, the famous "Fire Watch, July, 1952," is considered by many Merton aficionados to be some of Father Louis' best writing. (Merton's name in religion was "Father Louis").

Merton was wonderfully eccentric and wonderfully flawed. In other words, Merton is a "regular guy" that many of us can relate to. He is very approachable. Thomas Merton richly deserves the title of "Spiritual Master."

Thought for the Day

From THE SIGN OF JONAS by Thomas Merton, entry for Sunday,November 19, 1950:

"Silence not a virtue, noise not a sin. True. But the turmoil and confusion and constant noise of modern society are the expression of the ambiance of its greatest sins - it godlessness, its despair. A world of propaganda, of endless argument, vituperation, criticism, or simply of chatter, is a world without anything to live for."

Standing at the Foot of the Cross

I have been away from this blog for quite some time now. But I have been very busy. I can hardly remember what life was like B.C. ("Before Cancer"). I heard a priest last week on Father Benedict Groeschel's program on EWTN say that standing in support of someone who is sick is like St. John standing at the foot of the cross. In some mystical way, those who suffer represent Christ on the cross and suffer with him.

Today at Eucharistic Adoration I read this from Thomas Merton's The Sign of Jonas: "The source of all sorrow is the illusion that of ourselves we are anything but dust. God is all our joy and in Him our dust can become splendor. The great sorrow of mankind is turned to joy by the love of Christ, and the secret of happiness is no longer to see sorrow except in the light of Christ's victory over sorrow. And then all sorrow contributes somehow to our happiness."

Saint Paul says "For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ." 2 Corinthians 1:5. "For I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." Romans 8:18.

We will always suffer to greater or lesser degree. When we suffer directly we suffer with Christ on the cross. When we stand by those who suffer directly we stand at the foot of the cross with Saint John and Our Lady.

HEAVENLY FATHER, GIVER OF LIFE AND HEALTH: COMFORT AND RELIEVE YOUR SICK SERVANTS, AND GIVE YOUR POWER OF HEALING TO THOSE WHO MINISTER TO THEIR NEEDS, THAT THEY MAY BE STRENGTHENED IN THEIR WEAKNESS AND HAVE CONFIDENCE IN YOUR LOVING CARE; THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD. AMEN. (1979 Book of Common Prayer p. 459).

Arms of Mercy

My life is a great mess and tangle of half-conscious subterfuges to evade grace and duty. I have done all things badly. I have thrown away great opportunities. My infedelity to Christ, instead of making me sick with despair, drives me to throw myself all the more blindly into the arms of His mercy.

THOMAS MERTON
THE SIGN OF JONAS

Thomas Merton on Walker Percy

A racy, psychedelic 1960's - '70s paperback cover of Walker Percy's second novel The Last Gentleman and the most famous Trappist monk in the world, Thomas Merton, a.k.a. Father Louis.

Volume 21 of The Merton Annual from the INTERNATIONAL THOMAS MERTON SOCIETY arrived in the mail on Saturday. There were apparently three papers presented at this year's society meeting on the intersection of the thought of Thomas Merton and the novels of Walker Percy.

Here is an excerpt from a letter dated May 22, 1966 from Thomas Merton to his editor Bob Giroux regarding Merton's thoughts on Percy's second novel, The Last Gentleman:

Walker Percy is one of the few novelists whose books I am able to finish. This is in fact a haunting, disturbing, funny and fantastic anti-novel structered like a long dream and relentlessly insisting that most of reality is unconscious. It ends up being one of the most intelligent and sophisticated statements about the South and about America, but one which too many people will probably find so baffling that they will not know what to make of it. Even then, if they persist in reading it, they cannot help being affected by this profoundly wacky wisdom of the book. Precisely because of the wackiness I would call it one of the sanest books I have read in a long time.