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The Wonder of God's Mercy(Merton becomes a novice at Gethsemani on February 22, 1942)
Once again the 22nd--the day I received the habit of novice--comes around on the First Sunday of Lent. I received a Lenten book from the hands of my spiritual children, and in a short time I have become the spiritual father of many. Once again I am aware of the mystery of my vocation.
The greatest mystery is here at St. Anne's, my toolshed hermitage. Just as Baptism makes us potential martyrs, so also it makes us potential priests, potential monks, potential hermits.I was clothed in this hermitage, when I received the habit of novice, without even knowing it. The black and white house indeed is a kind of religious habit--and a warm enough one when the stove is going.
All this is to say that this silence is Christ's love for me and bought by His death, and it purifies me in His sufferings and His Blood. I must receive it with compunction and love and reverence, lest His love be in vain.
When I am most quiet and most myself, God's grace is clear, and then I see nothing else under the sun. What else is there for us but to be tranquil and at peace in the all-enchanting wonder of God's mercy to us? If falls upon this paper more quietly than the morning sun, and then I know that all things, without His love, are useless, and in His love, having nothing, I can possess all things.
February 22, 1953, III.34-35
The Unknown Power of the CrossYesterday, day of recollection, realized again above all my need for profound and total humility--especially in any work I may do for peace. Humility is more important than zeal. Descent into nothingness and dependence on God. Otherwise I am just fighting the world with its own weapons and there the world is unbeatable. Indeed it does not even have to fight back, for I will exhaust myself and that will be the end of my stupid efforts.To seek strength in God, especially in the Passion of Christ.The mysterious, unknown power of the Cross. Preachers of the Cross hide its power and distort its meaning by their own image of the Crucified.The crucifixion is literally the destruction of the "Image" of God.An "image" is presented and then taken away from man (and restored if man follows into the night). There is no adequate image. Preachers preserve an image, often a very faulty one. Meaning of the stress on the Resurrection here.But to descend into the Night of the Passion, the Night of Christ's death, baptism in His sufferings, without image.December 11, 1961, IV.184-85
Dying and Being Reborn in Christ(Thomas Merton enters Gethsemani on December 10, 1941; he dies by accident while attending a monastic conference in Bangkok, Thailand, on December 10, 1968)
I come into solitude to die and love. I come here to be created by the Spirit in Christ.
I am called here to grow. "Death" is a critical point of growth, or transition to a new mode of being; to a maturity and fruitfulness that I do not know (they are in Christ and in His Kingdom). The child in the womb does not know what will come after birth. He must be born in order to live. I am here to learn to face death as my birth.
This solitude--a refuge under His wings, a place to hide myself in His Name, therefore, a sanctuary where the grace of Baptism remains a conscious, living, active reality valid not only for me but for the whole Church. Here, planted as a seed in the cosmos, I will be a Christ seed, and bring fruit for other men. Death and rising in Christ.
I need to be "confirmed" in my vocation by the Spirit (speaking through the Church, i.e., the abbot and the community). This ordains me to be the person I am and to have the particular place and function I have, to be myself in the sense of choosing to tend toward what God wants me to be, and to orient my whole life to being the person He loves. (We are all "loved in general," but we have to personally accept a special love of God for ourselves.)
December 1, 1965, V.333-34
