A Year With Thomas Merton - March 22

The New Man

The old and the new. For the "old man," everything is old: he has seen everything or thinks he has. He has lost hope in anything new. What pleases him is the "old" he clings to, fearing to lose it, but he is certainly not happy with it. And so he keeps himself "old" and cannot change: he is not open to any newness. His life is stagnant and futile. and yet there may be much movement--but change that leads to no change. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

For the "new man" everything is new. Even the old is transfigured in the Holy Spirit and is always new. There is nothing to cling to, there in nothing to be hoped for in what is already past--it is nothing. The new man is he who can find reality where it cannot be seen by the eyes of the flesh--where it is not yet--where it comes into being the moment he sees it. And would not be (at least for him) if he did not see it. The new lives in this realm of renewal and creation. He lives in life.

The old man lives without life. He lives in death, and clings to what has died precisely because he clings to it. And yet he is crazy for change, as if struggling with the bonds of death. His struggle is miserable, and cannot be a substitute for life.

Thought of these things after Communion today, when I suddenly realized that I had, and for how long, deeply lost hope of "anything new." How foolish, when in fact the newness is there all the time.

March 18, 1959, III.269,

A Year With Thomas Merton - August 13

The Beauty of the Church

I was in Louisville today and had dinner at the Little Sisters of the Poor. The moral beauty of the place, the authentic beauty of Christianity, which has no equal. The beauty of the Church is the charity of her daughters.

The good Mother Superior, whom I shall never forget. Her transparency, unearthliness, simplicity, of no age, a child, a mother, like the Blessed Virgin—as if no name could apply to her, that is, no name known to anyone but God. And yet more real than all the unreal people in the rest of the world.

The old people. The old man playing the piano and the old man dancing. The sweet, dignified Negro lady who had worked for Fr. Greenwell. The old, beat, heavy Negro lady with wisps of white beard, sunk in her dream, her blank expression, slowly coming out of it when spoken to. The lady who had both legs cut off. The little-girl lady who made the speech in the dining room. The old lady with the visor cap on. And the golden wedding couple.

Sweet, good people. Now I have the prayers of the poor, the strong, merciful, invincible prayer of the poor behind me, and in me, changing my whole life and my whole outlook on life.

August 16, 1960, IV.31-32