Fr. Louis
I’m reading some early Thomas Merton stuff - just bits and drabs. I like Merton, but I never really got into him as many people did. Some people think he’s a saint, I wouldn’t know.
After my conversion, now decades ago, I was guided to read him, but he scared me. I thought his ideas of the contemplative life were too “active” - too peace and justice, and he didn’t come off as “pious” enough for my taste.
Now that I am older, much of what he wrote before his Asian adventures makes so much sense to me. Yet, even back then, though it made sense to me, I preferred the holy card version of monastic life - ecstasies and transports, etc. I just wanted to pray all day and didn’t really want to work. I didn’t like living “in the world” and I liked to pray, so I wanted to be a monk. I imagined I could just pray for people, but otherwise I didn’t want to be bothered by them. I wanted to be a contemplative.
Sometimes we say we are seeking God, but we are really just seeking ourselves.
Anyway, I find Merton’s practicality helpful. I honestly do not care what people like Dr. Alice Von Hilderandt say about him, although I really don’t understand the way his monastic life unfolded, or that he fell in love with a nurse; despite his humanness, I’m convinced his early work remains very good. Carmelites have no problem reading Peter Thomas Rohrbach’s “Conversation With Christ” even though he left the priesthood and married. But a lot of folks practically make the sign of the cross out of fear, whenever Merton is even mentioned.
His influence was tremendous however - both for the good, and maybe for the bad. I wouldn’t be surprised if the post-Conciliar dissolution of monasteries and convents could be traced - in some small part - to the influence of his thought and later writings. The openness to Oriental mysticism, leading to New Age spiritualities, may have emanated from the Mertonian ‘revolution’. I’m not a scholar however, so I can’t be sure.
In an introduction of prayers compiled for his novices, Fr. Louis writes well of the practice of prayer, which accords with my own notion of it, as I’ve come to understand it:
“Prayer is an expression of our complete dependence on a hidden and mysterious God. It is therefore nourished by humility…We should never seek to reach some supposed “summit of prayer” out of spiritual ambition. We should seek to enter deep into the life of prayer, not in order that we may glory in it as an “acheivement,” but because in this way we can come close to the Lord Who seeks to do us good, who seeks to give us His mercy, and to surround us with His love. To love prayer is, then, to love our own poverty and His mercy.” - Fr. Louis
