A Year With Thomas Merton - March 29

Grateful for Another Miracle

Shall I reread the bits in St. John of the Cross’s The Ascent of Mount Carmel about the memory? They seem to do me so much good—always. Year after year, returning to them. In what sense do they make a difference in my life?

This Journal—the one I am writing right now. Apparently I have not yet written enough of it to become completely solitary and to be able to do without it. It is useless to drop the thing and say I am solitary just because I am not writing a Journal, when, in fact, the writing could help me find my way to where I am supposed to be traveling.

So I read about “forgetting” and write down all I remember. And somehow there is no contradiction here. It is simply a somewhat peculiar way of becoming a saint. I by no means insist that it is sanctity. All I say is that I must do what the situation seems to demand, and sanctity will appear when out of all this Christ, in His own good time, appears and manifests His own glory.

Tenderness of the Epistle, austerity of the Gospel in this morning’s Mass, the Vigil of Passion Sunday. Last night, before Compline, out by the horse barn, looking at the orchard and thinking about what St. John of the Cross said about having in your heart the image of Christ crucified.

Confusion and fog pile up in your life, and then, by the power of the Cross, things once again are clear, and you know more about your wretchedness and you are grateful for another miracle.

March 4 and 10, 1951, II.452-53