Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism - 3

p. 10: "Some see Faith as Dante saw Beatrice: an adorable yet intangible figure, found in this world yet revealing the next."

"...must deliberately break with our inveterate habit of taking the 'visible world' for granted; our lazy assumption that somehow science is 'real' and metaphysics is not."

I hear in this sentence a hint of the kind of sight that mysticism gives you, i.e., an ability to look at what catches your attention in this world and see in it/them/her/him another piece of the revelation of the Real.

A Year With Thomas Merton - April 8 (Easter 2012)

A Task to Spiritualize the World

The task of a priest is to spiritualize the world. He raises his consecrated hands, and the grace of Christ's resurrection goes out from him to enlighten the souls of the elect and of them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death. Through his blessing material creation is raised up and sanctified and dedicated to the glory of God. The priest prepares the coming of Christ by shedding upon the whole world the invisible light that enlightens every man that comes into the world. Through the priest the glory of Christ seeps out into creation until all things are saturated in prayer.

All week I have been thinking of the inestimable greatness and dignity of faith. Faith is higher and more perfect than all knowledge that accessible to us on earth. The only really valuable experience is a deepening and intensification of faith by love and the gifts of the Holy Ghost--an intensification that only simplifies our faith and makes it more clear by purifying it of every created image and species. So that the purest experience of all begins with the realization of how far faith transcends experience. Our only true greatness is in the humility of living faith. The simpler and purer our faith is, the closer it brings us to God, Who is infinitely great. That is why everyone who humbles himself shall be exalted, and everyone who exalts himself, in the appetite for great lights and extraordinary experiences and feelings and mystical consolations, shall be humbled. Because the richer he desires to be in these things, the poorer he will be in the sight of God, in Whose eyes greatness is nothing.

April 16 and 18, 1950, II. 431-32

A Year With Thomas Merton - February 2

Bearing Witness to the Resurrection

A priest bears witness to the Resurrection by holding in his hands the Risen Christ--high over his head for all the people to see. And none of us see, except by faith. Faith itself is the light of the Resurrection, our sharing of the Resurrection. It is the effect of the Resurrection in our souls. By it we are buried and rise from the dead in Christ.

Gone are the days when "mysticism" was for me a matter of eager and speculative interest. Now, because it is my life, it is a torment to think about. Like being in the pangs of childbirth and reading an essay on mother love written by a spinster.

In choir I am happier than I have ever been there, extremely poor and helpless, often strained, hardly able to hold myself in place. "Expecting every moment to be my last." Sometimes it is a great relief to be distracted. There is a "presence" of God that is like an iron curtain between the mind and God.

But when I am at my toolshed hermitage, Saint Anne's, I am always happy and at peace no matter what happens. For here there is no need for anyone but God--no need of "mysticism."

A fly buzzes on the windowpane!

February 24, 1953, III.35-36

A Year With Thomas Merton - December 30

The Hope Faith Gives Us

(From Thomas Merton's letter to Tommie O'Callaghan upon the death of her mother)

It seems that we all have to face one sad thing after another. But let us not forget the hope our faith gives us. God is our strength and no amount of trouble should make us fail to realize it. On the contrary, trouble should help us deepen and confirm our trust. This is an old story, but as far as I am concerned, it is the one we always get back to. There is no other.

June 28, 1968

A Year With Thomas Merton - December 24

Raised from the Dead

Issac of Stella's Easter sermon--deep, deep intuition of faith as a resurrection because it is an act of obedience to God considered as supreme life. What matters is the act of submission to infinite life, to the authority of Creative and Redemptive Life, the Living God. Faith is this submission. The interior surrender of faith cannot have its full meaning except as an act of obedience, i.e., self-commitment in submission to God's truth in its power to give life, and to command one to live.

Hence Faith is not simply an act of choice, an option for a certain solution to the problem of existence, etc. It is a birth to a higher life, by obedience to the Giver of life, obedience to the source of life.

To believe is to consent to a creative command that raises us from the dead.

December 5, 1960, IV.72

A Year With Thomas Merton - November 16

Through Faith and Fire

(Merton is baptized a Roman Catholic at Corpus Christi Church in New York City on November 16, 1938)

The chief thing that struck me today before the Blessed Sacrament: I have put my fingers too much in the running of my own life.

I put myself in God's hands, and take myself out again to read just everything to suit my own judgment. On that condition I abandon myself to Him.

Consequence? We seek the good and behold we find disturbance. We say "Peace! Peace!" and there is not Peace!

Jesus, I put myself in Your hands. I rest in Your wisdom, which has arranged all things for me. I promise to stop jumping out of Your arms to try and walk on my own feet, forgetting that I am no longer on the ground, or near it!

Now, at last, let me begin to live by faith. "Seek first, therefore, the kingdom of God."

November 16, 1947, II.134

A Year With Thomas Merton - September 24

Only Faith Is to Be Taken Seriously

A magnificent line from Karl Barth: "Everyone who has to contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. Only faith is to be taken seriously, and if we have faith as a grain of mustard seed, that suffices for the devil to have lost his game (Dogmatics in Outline)." What stupendous implications in that!

Always the old trouble, that the devil and our nature try to persuade us that, before we can begin to believe, we must be perfect in everything. Faith is not important as it is "in us." Our faith is "in God," and with even a very little of it, God is in us. "To believe is the freedom to trust in Him quite along" (and to be independent of any other reliance) and to rely on Him in everything that concerns us.

September 30, 1963, V.20

A Year With Thomas Merton - August 30

Brother Mathias to the End

Brother Mathias received Extreme Unction--the sacrament of the sick and dying--after None, sitting in a brown chair at the head of the choir. He is dying of cancer. Again, the mystery of the present. Wasted and changed by illness, he is still Brother Mathias, in fact, more Brother Mathias than ever--his life is crowned by his patience and goodness in his suffering, so that this will be the definitive Brother Mathias--and I am sure he no longer knows anything about this and has lost sight of himself. He just suffers, and the days go by. How strange it would be to say he received the sacrament "with great faith." Which, of course, is true. How true to say he received it with the earnestness and depth of feeling which we know in him and which is his very self to us. He received it as Brother Mathias--as one loved by Christ, and chosen by him. This is the real heart of the mystery, so obvious and simple. The presence of Divine Mercy in the midst of us, in Christ.

August 25, 1958, III.215