A Year With Thomas Merton - March 1

In Me God Takes His Joy

Yesterday--more truly spring, and this is a spring dawn today, cold, but with birds singing. First time I have heard the whistling of the towhee this year. And the cardinals up in the woods to the west. The promise grows more and more definite. I look up at the morning star: in all this God takes His joy, and in me also, since I am His creation and His son, His redeemed, and member of His Christ. Sorrow at the fabulous confusion and violence of this world, which does not understand His love--yet I am called not to interpret or condemn this misunderstanding, only to return the love which is the final and ultimate truth of everything, and which seeks all men's awakening and response. Basically I need to grow in this faith and this realization, not only for myself but for all men.

To go out to walk slowly in this wood--this is a more important and significant means to understanding, at the moment, than a lot of analysis and a lot of reporting on the things "of the spirit."

March 2, 1966, VI.23

A Year With Thomas Merton - August 4

Praising God: The Only Great Thing

It would be so easy and consoling to say, at every moment: “This thing I am doing is regarded by everyone as a sure means of attaining to perfection and to the possession of God.” But would the peace and consolation I felt have anything necessarily to do with perfection or the possession of God? Might it not turn out to be the greatest of all illusions? A surrender to the authority of common opinion—“They say.” How weak our consciences are! We give in and shut our eyes. We have conformed to the “them.” We are at peace. “They say” this is perfection.

Much more to the point: the prayer that struggles to get out of myself and reach God, in obscurity, in trial, fighting down the phantoms.

The great thing and the only thing is to adore and praise God.

To seek Him is to adore Him and to say that He alone is God and there is no other.

We must lay down our life for His Truth. We must bear witness to what is and the fidelity of God to His promises.

We must believe with our whole heart what God our Father has offered and promised us.

We must leave all things to answer His call to us, and to reply to His grace. When we have done this, we can talk of perfection, but when we have done this, we no longer need to talk of perfection.

August 28 and 29, 1956, III. 75-76