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 - November 8

The Gift of Fatherhood

On the night watch, hurrying by, I pushed open the door of the novice's scriptorium and flashed the light over all the empty desks. It was as if the empty room was wholly full of their hearts and their love, as if their goodness had made the place wholly good and rich in love. The loveliness of humanity which God has taken to Himself in love, and the wonder of each individual person among them. This is of final and eternal significance. To have been appointed by God to be their father, to have received them from God as my children, to have loved them and been loved by them with such simplicity and sincerity, without nonsense or flattery or sentimentality: this is completely wonderful and is a revelation, a parousia of the Lord of History.

From this kind of love necessarily springs hope, hope even for political action, for here, paradoxically, hope is most necessary. Hope is always most necessary precisely when everything, spiritually, seems hopeless. And this is precisely in the confusion of politics. Hope against hope that man can gradually disarm and cease preparing for destruction and learn at last that he must live at peace with his brother. Never have we been less disposed to do this. It must be learned, it must be done, and everything else is secondary to this supremely urgent need of man.

November 27, 1961, IV.183

Well-Timed Wall Rainbows

I felt like I was about to go over the edge. I prayed and didn't pull any punches. I sat at my table, about as angry at God as I can ever remember. Then I saw it. The Austrian crystal that has been hanging in my window since I moved here three years ago was casting not just one, but three or four rainbows on the walls and bookshelves. Such a little thing, but it was the right time to be sitting there, the right time of year for the sun to hit the right angle, and the right time for me to receive that perhaps insignificant, coincidental hello from God. Sentimental tripe? My broken heart thinks otherwise and I'm not about to argue. I mean, it was good enough for Noah.