Happy 100th birthday, Thomas Merton

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I’m a day late, but yesterday, Jan. 31, was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Merton, renowned and beloved Trappist and author. 47 years after his untimely death, he continues to touch lives in so many ways: he inspires us, teaches us, challenges us, gets us thinking and talking. Whether or not you agree with or understand all of the things he said and did during his relatively short life (the brevity made all the more apparent since I am now the same age as he was when he died), his profound influence on a generation of Catholics and people of faith from all walks of life cannot be denied. Happy birthday, Fr. Louis!
 
christofirst said:
I’m a day late, but yesterday, Jan. 31, was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Merton, renowned and beloved Trappist and author. 47 years after his untimely death, he continues to touch lives in so many ways: he inspires us, teaches us, challenges us, gets us thinking and talking. Whether or not you agree with or understand all of the things he said and did during his relatively short life (the brevity made all the more apparent since I am now the same age as he was when he died), his profound influence on a generation of Catholics and people of faith from all walks of life cannot be denied. Happy birthday, Fr. Louis!
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👍
 
Sadly, the only people I knew who liked Thomas Merton were anti-magisterium, pro-women-priests, pro-abortion rights, and so on. :sad_yes:

I have never read any of his writings and have no inclination to do so, seeing as I have so many trusted sources still waiting to be read and considered – St. Augustine, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Frances de Sales.

Eternal rest grant to him, O Lord, and let perpetual Light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

Gert
 
Gertabelle said:
Sadly, the only people I knew who liked Thomas Merton were anti-magisterium, pro-women-priests, pro-abortion rights, and so on. :sad_yes:

I have never read any of his writings and have no inclination to do so, seeing as I have so many trusted sources still waiting to be read and considered – St. Augustine, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Frances de Sales.

Eternal rest grant to him, O Lord, and let perpetual Light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

Gert
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Then by all means, let me make your acquaintance, so that you can now know of someone who very much likes Thomas Merton and is not anti-magisterium, pro-women priests, pro-abortion, and so on, and so on. 🙂

Having read some Merton myself, I think he would likely wholeheartedly agree that you should read those giants of the Church first, as he obviously did, whether or not you ever get around to reading him.

I share your prayer: May he rest now in the Peace of Christ.
 
I think his book “The Seven Storey Mountain” was fabulous – I have it on my bookshelf and one of these days I plan to read it again!
 
Some of his writing can be pretty deep. I usually just read a paragraph or so, over and over until I understand what he is saying. By the time I get to that point, it is enough for one sitting. Still, Seeds of Contemplation has remained a favorite of mine for many years.
 
Gertabelle said:
Sadly, the only people I knew who liked Thomas Merton were anti-magisterium, pro-women-priests, pro-abortion rights, and so on. :sad_yes:

I have never read any of his writings and have no inclination to do so, seeing as I have so many trusted sources still waiting to be read and considered – St. Augustine, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Frances de Sales.

Eternal rest grant to him, O Lord, and let perpetual Light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

Gert
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You must have a narrow amount of Catholic aquantances who have read Thomas Merton’s works.

They are solid Catholic, and all but a couple, were given Imprimatur.

The one I know that was not is, “Zen and The Birds of Appetite,” but it wouldn’t because it wasn’t on Catholic doctrine, but on the comparison of Christian beliefs to Zen beliefs.

Thomas Merton was one of the greatest writers in the Catholic Church in modern times.

I put him on par with Archbishop Fulton Sheen, except that Thomas Merton is more on the contemplative level.

Jim
 
christofirst said:
Then by all means, let me make your acquaintance, so that you can now know of someone who very much likes Thomas Merton and is not anti-magisterium, pro-women priests, pro-abortion, and so on, and so on. 🙂

Having read some Merton myself, I think he would likely wholeheartedly agree that you should read those giants of the Church first, as he obviously did, whether or not you ever get around to reading him.

I share your prayer: May he rest now in the Peace of Christ.
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Ditto! 🙂
 
christofirst said:
Then by all means, let me make your acquaintance, so that you can now know of someone who very much likes Thomas Merton and is not anti-magisterium, pro-women priests, pro-abortion, and so on, and so on. 🙂

Having read some Merton myself, I think he would likely wholeheartedly agree that you should read those giants of the Church first, as he obviously did, whether or not you ever get around to reading him.

I share your prayer: May he rest now in the Peace of Christ.
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Thank you for the introduction 😃 Since my return to the Church some years back I have simply stayed away from anything that was advocated by my former crowd of Catholic friends. Now days I have so little time to read, that I tend to stick with the time-tested heavy hitters.

But it’s good to know that I wouldn’t be going wrong if I did choose to make time for some Merton 👍

God bless you!

Gertie
 
Thomas Merton is the best. His writings led me back into the church. “New Seeds of Contemplation” is a good introduction to Merton. It is a collection of short, yet profound writings, each of which can be read easily in one sitting.

Merton has a consuming desire to love God authentically. That desire led him into social activism and ecumenical dialogues that many people to this day fail to understand. Merton never rejected Catholicism. Instead, he met others on common ground. What could be more “Catholic” than that?

Merton will never be easy to classify. He was a trappist monk. He was a leader in the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s. He was a priest. He was a mystic. He was a prolific writer. He has extensive knowledge of psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences. He was a poet, an artist, and a photographer. He was a gifted teacher (Nowyouknow media has hundreds of his audio talks for sale on cd or mp3). He lived within his own paradox of loving God, Whom he found in silence, and the same God Whom he found in other people, ALL other people. Thomas Merton…

Happy birthday.
 
coalcracker said:
Thomas Merton is the best. His writings led me back into the church. “New Seeds of Contemplation” is a good introduction to Merton. It is a collection of short, yet profound writings, each of which can be read easily in one sitting.

Merton has a consuming desire to love God authentically. That desire led him into social activism and ecumenical dialogues that many people to this day fail to understand. Merton never rejected Catholicism. Instead, he met others on common ground. What could be more “Catholic” than that?

Merton will never be easy to classify. He was a trappist monk. He was a leader in the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s. He was a priest. He was a mystic. He was a prolific writer. He has extensive knowledge of psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences. He was a poet, an artist, and a photographer. He was a gifted teacher (Nowyouknow media has hundreds of his audio talks for sale on cd or mp3). He lived within his own paradox of loving God, Whom he found in silence, and the same God Whom he found in other people, ALL other people. Thomas Merton…

Happy birthday.
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Well said! 👍
 
Merton was wonderful. I’ve been reading him for decades and even went on retreat to the Abbey of Gethsemani. Merton is so easy to relate to - he talks about real life challenges and his ongoing quest to be closer to God. He had a real gift and I highly recommend him. I have a stack of his books at my bedside right now - for rereading and spiritual nourishment.
 
“To enter into the realm of contemplation, one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience as joy, as being. [Every form of intuition and experience] die to be born again on a higher level of life.”
― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
 
Interesting to read how Merton assessed his own writings. Both of these passages are from The Intimate Merton; His Life From His Journals (edited by Hart & Montanaldo, 1999).

This from Jun. 1961:

"The things I have said fairly well are the things I needed to say: I stand by them. Most of The Seven Storey Mountain and Jonas, and anything on solitude, esp. the notes in Disputed Questions, a lot of poems, Seeds of Contemplation and New Seeds (I think), a good part of The Silent Life. Perhaps a few pages of No Man Is an Island, a good bit of Secular Journal, and most of the recent work: Behavior of Titans especially. And the stuff on Herakleitos and Chinese thought? Maybe."

And this from Feb. 1967:

"I would say I would be much better off if I had published only these:
Thirty Poems, The seven Storey Mountain, Seeds of Contemplation, The Tears of the Blind Lions, The Sign of Jonas, The Silent Life, The New Man, Thoughts in Solitude, Wisdom of the Desert, (Disputed Questions?), New Seeds of Contemplation, Seeds of Destruction, Chuang Tzu, Emblems of a Season of Fury, Raids on the Unspeakable, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.
That’s 15 or 16 - plenty. Yet the others too - some of them - had something in them that had to be gotten out of my system, I guess."
 
In doing a search for more information about Merton and his relationship with the Church (because of this thread), I came across this article from Catholic Answers Magazine: “Can You Trust Thomas Merton?”

Think I’ll stick with John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila for my understanding of contemplation and the spiritual life. While I appreciate that his earlier writings were orthodox, I feel safer with Doctors of the Church 👍

Gertie
 
Gertabelle said:
In doing a search for more information about Merton and his relationship with the Church (because of this thread), I came across this article from Catholic Answers Magazine: “Can You Trust Thomas Merton?”

Think I’ll stick with John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila for my understanding of contemplation and the spiritual life. While I appreciate that his earlier writings were orthodox, I feel safer with Doctors of the Church 👍

Gertie
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Yes, it is probably for the best that you read those venerable Carmelites, and I hope you do! We Catholics have such a treasury of writings to choose from. We are blessed indeed.

Of course, like Merton, St. John of the Cross was not without controversy in his own time. Members of his own Carmelite Order imprisoned him because they feared and resisted the reforms he proposed. Why, if there had been a 16th century equivalent of Catholic Answers, there might well have been an article entitled, “Can You Trust John of the Cross?” 😉
 
The writings of Thomas Merton on the inner contemplative life mean a great deal to me and I have read through his published journals to get a sense of how his thought was shaped by St Anselm, St Benedict, the Desert Fathers and others. He lived through turbulent times and responded as best he could.

Very glad to see this thread. For some reason I thought Merton might have been censored here. He himself writes of Baker’s The Inner Life of Dame Gertrude More how he admires her “free and courageous spirituality” and I wish we saw more of that today.
 
I’m currently reading “The Seven Storey Mountain”. I’m at the point where he’s just starting to get serious about becoming Catholic, and has just gone to mass for the first time.

I also have a couple of his other books which I picked up in op shops (charity stores) from time to time, but I think the Seven Storey was his magnum opus from what I’ve heard.

We also forget that the Vietnam War was raging during the latter part of Merton’s life. He’d have been well aware one of the facets of that war had been the Catholic Diem family’s persecution of the majority Buddhists in South Vietnam. Self immolation became an act of process by Buddhist monks.

find.galegroup.com/gic/infomark.do?&idigest=fb720fd31d9036c1ed2d1f3a0500fcc2&type=retrieve&tabID=T0011&prodId=GIC&docId=CX2687500018&source=gale&userGroupName=itsbtrial&version=1.0

I think Merton thought we had more to offer the Buddhists than repression, and indeed we had something to learn from them.

However I’m still reading, so I’m really just beginning. What I am hoping was that Merton might fan the spark of meditation I think I should be practising to at least a limited extent.

And I think he’s in heaven, pagan early life or otherwise.👋
 
This winter I’m hoping to reread Dante’s Inferno, a masterpiece and I was reminded yesterday that Merton’s early autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, was based on the Ascent of the Purgatorio.

Bob, you are so right about the breadth and diversity of Merton’s experiences, but the insights I have found most helpful have to do with establishing a regular and disciplined prayer life. He wrote a great deal on St John of the Cross as well as the medieval mystics.
 
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