A Year With Thomas Merton - March 23

Prodigals Going Home

Yesterday afternoon, when Fr. Amadeus was preaching to us about the Holy Ghost in the infirmary chapel, Fr. George came bursting in, made the sign of "Thank you" three or four times, and departed. Last night he came down and wandered around the monastery.

Reverend Father, who used to be the infirmarian, says that sometimes, when they are near death, they get this urge to travel.

There was a Brother Mary up there who used to be the gatekeeper. He was dying. He had a wooden leg and a cane. He used to take his cane and go clumping around instead of staying in bed. They hid his wooden leg. He found it behind the door, and put it on and got going. They hid it again, in a closet where he couldn't find it. He lay in bed waving his hand and making signs, "The cane! The cane!"

There was another Brother who was dying. It was summer, very hot. He was in bed with very few clothes on. They found him walking out of the infirmary with nothing on him but a shirt. "Where are you going?" they asked him. "Nebraska!" he said. Nebraska is where he used to live.

I think I am beginning to understand something about the fifteenth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel--the lost sheep, the lost drachma, the Prodigal Son. Our dearest Lord is showing that He means everything about the fatted calf and the rejoicing to be taken literally, and that He means to pour out every kind of happiness in rivers upon those who ran away from His mercy but could not escape it.

March 15 and 21, 1949, II.292, 295

A Year With Thomas Merton - March 16

My Ruin Is My Fortune

In the Penitential Psalms, Christ recognizes my poverty in His poverty. Merely to see myself in the psalm is a beginning of being healed. For I see myself through His grace. His grace is working, therefore I am on my way to being healed. O the need of that healing! I walk from region to region of my soul and I discover that I am a bombed city.

When I meditated on Psalm 6--"Lord, not in thy fury"--I caught sight of an unexpected patch of green meadow along the creek on our neighbor's land. The green grass under the leafless trees and the pools of water after the storm lifted my heart to God. He is so easy to come to when even grass and water bear witness to His mercy. "I will water my couch with tears."

I have written about the frogs singing. Now they sing again. It is another spring. Although I am ruined, I am far better off than I have ever been in my life. My ruin is my fortune.

March 3, 1953, III.39

A Year With Thomas Merton - January 14

Thrown into Contradiction

God reveals Himself in the middle of conflict and contradiction--and we want to find Him outside all contradiction.

Importance of contradiction: the contradiction essential to my existence is the expression of the world's present: it is my contribution to the whole. They are my "place." It is in my insight and acceptance of contradiction that the world creates itself anew in and through my liberty--I permit God to act in and through me, making His world (in which all are judged and redeemed). I am thrown into contradiction: to realize it is mercy, to accept it is love, and to help others do the same is compassion. All this seems like nothing, but it is creation. The contradiction is precisely that we cannot "be creative" in some other way we would prefer (in which there is no contradiction).

January 20, 1966, VI.354-55

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

A Year With Thomas Merton - August 25

A Prayer for God’s Mercy

Lord, have mercy.

Have mercy on my darkness, my weakness, my confusion. Have mercy on my infidelity, my cowardice, my turning about in circles, my wandering, my evasions.

I do not ask for anything but such mercy, always, in everything, mercy.

My life here—a little solidity and very much ashes.

Almost everything is ashes. What I have prized most is ashes. What I have attended to least is, perhaps, a little solid.

Lord, have mercy. Guide me, make me want again to be holy, to be a man of God, even though in desperateness and confusion.

I do not necessarily ask for clarity, a plain way, but only to go according to your love, to follow your mercy, to trust in your mercy.

I want to seek nothing at all, if this is possible. But only to be led without looking and without seeking. For thus to seek is to find.

August 2, 1960, IV.28

A Year With Thomas Merton - July 4

Mercy Within Mercy

The Voice of God is heard in Paradise:

“What was vile has become precious. What is now precious was never vile. I have always known the vile as precious: for what is vile I know not at all.

“What was cruel has become merciful. What is now merciful was never cruel. I have always overshadowed Jonas with my mercy, and cruelty I know not at all. Have you had sight of Me, Jonas, my child? Mercy within mercy within mercy. I have forgiven the universe without end, because I have never known sin.

“What was poor has become infinite. What is infinite was never poor. I have always known poverty as infinite: riches I love not at all. Prisons within prisons within prisons. Do not lay up for yourselves ecstasies upon earth, where time and space corrupt, where the minutes break in and steal. No more lay hold on time, Jonas, my son, lest the rivers bear you away.

“What was fragile has become powerful. I loved what was most frail. I looked upon what was nothing. I touched what was without substance, and within what was not, I am.”

There are drops of dew that show like sapphires in the grass as soon as the morning sun appears, and leaves stir behind the hushed flight of an escaping dove.

July 4, 1952, II.488