A Year With Thomas Merton - March 26

One Spirit Praying in All

Contemplative prayer is the recognition that we are the Sons of God, an experience of Who God is, and of His love for us, flowing from the operation of that love in us. Contemplative prayer is the voice of the Spirit crying out in us, "Abba, Pater." In all prayer it is the Holy Spirit who prays in us, but in the graces of contemplation He makes us realize, at least obscurely, that it is He who is praying in us with a love too deep and too secret for us to comprehend. We exult in the union of our voice with His voice, and our soul springs up to the Father, through the Son, having become one flame with the Flame of their Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, and it is to His presence in us that is attributed the sanctity of each one of the elect. He prays in us now as the Soul of the Church and now as the life of our own soul--but the distinction is real only in the external order of things. Interiorly, whether our prayer is private or public, it is the same Spirit praying in us: He is really touching different strings of the same instrument.

March 21, 1950, II.422

A Year With Thomas Merton - January 17

Weary of Words

Zero weather. Good work yesterday afternoon with the novices, cutting wood at the hermitage. Bright and cold. I went over to the Methodist Seminary at Asbury.

On the way over and back, stopped to take pictures at Shakertown. Marvelous, silent, vast spaces around the old buildings. Cold, pure light, and some grand trees. So cold my finger could no longer feel the shutter release. Some marvelous subjects. How the blank side of a frame house can be so completely beautiful I cannot imagine. A completely miraculous achievement of forms.

The moments of eloquent silent and emptiness in Shakertown stayed with me more than anything else--like a vision.

Tired of war, tired of letters, tired of books. Shaving today, saw new lines under the eyes, a new hollowness, a beginning of weariness. So it is good.

What matters most is secret, not said. This begins to be the most real and the most certain dimension.

I had been secretly worried about my writing, especially on peace, getting condemned. Nothing to worry about. Whenever I am really wrong, it will be easy enough to change. But it is strange that such things should be regarded with suspicion. I know this is wrong. Weary of blindness, of this blindness that afflicts all men, but most of all of the blindness afflicting those who ought to see.

January 12 and 19, 1962, IV.194-95