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In this
sixth and final extract from Patrick Collins' essay on the Spirituality
of Thomas Merton, we find Thomas Merton grappling with a fear that monastic
life and contemplation was becoming downgraded in the Church, and in the
world. He saw a continual challenge in the tension or balance required
for a contemplative to be both in the world and to be withdraw from the
world.
As Merton became more of a social activist himself during the 1960's,
he wrote of the necessity yet the frustrations of activism for one who
feels called to the contemplative life. In a 1964 letter to the Shaker
scholar, Edward Deming Andrews, he said that in the contemplative life
one may imagine that one would spend all the time absorbed in contemplation,
but this is not the case "There are always
innumerable things to be done and obstacles to getting them done, and
large and small troubles." (Edward
Deming Andrews Mar 13, 64 HGL 39)
By 1962 Thomas Merton had clearly connected contemplation with the world
of action as he wrote to his Brazilian religious friend, Sister M. Emmanuel.
"God works in history, therefore a contemplative
who has no sense of history, no sense of historical responsibility, is
not a fully Christian contemplative: he is gazing at God as a static essence
or as an intellectual light, or as a nameless ground of being... We must
confront Him in the awful paradoxes of our day, in which we see that our
society is being judged. And in all this we have to retain a balance and
a good sense which seem to require a miracle, and yet they are the fruit
of ordinary grace. In a word we have to continue to be Christians in all
the full dimensions of the Gospel." (Sr.
M. Emmanuel 1.16.62 HGL 187)
Carmelite nuns generating spiritual electricity for the
Holy Office…
During the Second Vatican Council, Thomas Merton feared that the Roman
Catholic Church was losing its sense of rootedness in contemplation by
becoming overly activistic — even in the newly emphasized active
participation of the laity in the liturgy. He wrote of his fears to his
Anglican friend, Etta Gullick, in 1964 that the climate of the Anglican
Church seemed to him to be quite favorable to contemplation. He suggested
that the Anglicans have a special job to keep alive this spiritual simplicity
and honesty quite apart from all fuss and works. "It
seems to me that the atmosphere in our Church on the other hand is going
to become more and more hostile to contemplative prayer. There will certainly
be official pronouncements approving it and blessing it. But in fact the
movement points in the direction of activism, and an activistic concept
of liturgy. I think the root of the trouble is fear and truculence, unrealized,
deep down. The realization that the Church of Rome is not going to be
able to maintain a grandiose and pre-eminent sort of position, the old
prestige she has always had and the decisive say in the things of the
world, to some extent even in the last centuries. Contemplation will be
regarded more and more as an official 'dynamo' source of inspiration and
power for the big guns out there: Carmelite nuns generating spiritual
electricity for the Holy Office, not so much by contemplative prayer as
by action and official public prayer within an enclosure."
He saw the temper of the Roman Church as combative and aroused. The emphasis
on contemplation will be more and more dominated by a specific end in
view. Implicitly then contemplation will become ordered to action. "When
this happens, the real purity of the life of prayer is gone."
As novice master at Gethsemani Abbey he was pleased that there was a
good proportion of contemplative prayer. He didn't teach any particular
special methods but tried to make them love the freedom and peace of being
with God alone in faith and simplicity. That would help to abolish all
divisiveness and diminish all useless strain and concentration on one's
own efforts and all formalism: "all the
nonsense of taking seriously the apparatus of an official prayer life,
in the wrong way but to love liturgy in simple faith as the place of Christ's
sanctifying presence in the community." (Gullick,
Etta 9.12.64 HGL 367-368)
Fears for the dilution of the contemplative life…
After Vatican II Monk Merton wrote to Archbishop George Flahiff of Winnipeg,
Manitoba, Canada about his fears for the dilution of the contemplative
life in monasteries in general and at Gethsemani in particular. In the
spring and again in the summer of 1966 he wrote of monasteries becoming
such busy places that monks could not concentrate on the contemplative
life. For him it was a matter of conscience. He stated that he personally
did not want to get involved in a great deal of very active work except
to do his "small part, at least by discreetly
participating in closed meetings, giving small retreats or occasional
conferences." The basic question for him was to be one
of a correct understanding of the contemplative life. He spoke of his
own Abbot, Dom James Fox, as pursuing "a
policy of negation and suppression in regard to anything that would bring
monks into any kind of contact with the world... His view, to put it frankly,
is that as long as the monks are all kept locked up in the monastery and
as long as contacts of any kind with anyone outside the monastery are
cut off, the monks are 'contemplatives'......he was for a while a standing
joke among the American abbots of our Order.... I can say that we are
not really forming contemplatives at all, that there is a great deal of
unrest and questioning, and that the monks themselves feel that this kind
of policy of suppression is merely stultifying and sterilizing."
(Flahiff, George 5.15.66 HGL 250-2)
Thomas Merton had a long-standing dispute with Dom James, about not being
able to travel and attend conferences outside the monastery. The abbot
feared that travelling and lecturing away from the monastery would dissipate
Merton's monastic energies and perhaps contribute to confusion in his
vocation. To Archbishop Flahiff the monk wrote of what he felt were deleterious
effects of such extreme claustration for monastics. He said that the principle
is being misapplied that contemplatives are not supposed to leave their
monasteries to undertake any form of active work. Admittedly some were
trying to lure them out into the active ministry. This, Merton held, is
self-defeating and leads only to inertia and stagnation in the contemplative
life. "This stagnation is in fact one of
the problems we confront. The stultifying effect of rigid formalities
is still very evident in many contemplative monasteries."
Principles were being misinterpreted and misapplied especially in what
concerns the difference between essentials and accidentals in monastic
living. While the differences are by no means absolutely clear, it is
often reduced to antique customs and interpretations still regarded as
essentials. This makes valid renewal impossible. The whole question of
communication with the outside world and information about the outside
world on the part of men contemplatives and women too was a case in point.
"Some are still considering that men have
to be so strictly cloistered that they never go out, except in case of
grave illness, never participate in study sessions, conferences, which
might be of great use to them, etc. etc. Certainly there ought to be great
liberality in letting them visit other monasteries, to broaden themselves."
(Flahiff, George 6.7.66 HGL 253-4)
During 1967 Thomas Merton reflected with Rosemary Ruether, a theologian
at Howard University in Washington, D. C., about the secular context and
the effects of contemplation upon the world. Ruether had suggested that
monastic life was too anti-worldly. He contended that contemplative awareness
and living leads to a less divided person. It integrates mind, soul and
body beyond the usual Western dualism. It is this unity of the person
that is contemplation's great contribution to society. He refused in practice
to accept any theory or method of contemplation that simply divides soul
against body, interior against exterior by pushing creatures out into
the dark. "What dark? As soon as the split
is made, the dark is abysmal in everything, and the only way to get back
into the light is to be once again a normal human being who likes to smell
the flowers and look at girls if they are around, and who likes the clouds,
etc. On the other hand, the real purpose of asceticism is not cutting
off one's relation to created things and other people, but normalizing
and healing it."
Merton reflected the Greek Father in considering the contemplative life
to be the restoration of man in Christ. He said that he was in the line
of the paradise tradition in monastic thought. This is also part and parcel
of the desert tradition as eschatological. "The
monk here and now is supposed to be living the life of the new creation
in which the right relation to all the rest of God's creatures is fully
restored. Hence Desert Father stories about tame lions and all that jazz."
(Ruether, Rosemary 3.9.67 HGL 503)
Request from Pope Paul VI — more questions than answers…
In 1967 Pope Paul VI asked Thomas Merton to write something about the
contemplative life for the Vatican's Synod of Bishops. The Trappist was
disturbed by the request, not knowing what in reality could be said. He
also questioned whether he was the best one to write on the subject of
"spiritual aviation." In earlier years he had had more "answers."
Now he had far more "questions" about contemplation and action.
Having become more re-connected to "the world" during the 1960's,
monk Merton was more aware of the difficulty in conveying the contemplative
message to people of that time. He wrote of his reactions to Dom Francis
Decroix, the Cistercian abbot, stating that he was acutely embarrassed
by the Holy Father's request. "It puts us
all in a difficult position. We are not experts in anything. There are
few real contemplatives in our monasteries. We know nothing whatever of
spiritual aviation and it would be the first duty of honesty to admit
that fact frankly, and to add that we do not speak the language of modern
man... The problem of the contemplative Orders at present, in the presence
of modern man, is a problem of great ambiguity. People look at us, recognize
we are sincere, recognize that we have indeed found a certain peace, and
see that there may after all be some worth to it: but can we convince
them that this means anything to them?"
Monk Merton said that, when he first became a monk, he was more sure
of 'answers,' But as he aged and advanced further into solitude, he was
becoming aware that he had only begun to seek the questions. "And
what are the questions? Can man make sense out of his existence? Can man
honestly give his life meaning merely by adopting a certain set of explanations
which pretend to tell him why the world began and where it will end, why
there is evil and what is necessary for a good life? My brother, perhaps
in my solitude I have become as it were an explorer for you, a searcher
in realms which you are not able to visit – except perhaps in the
company of your psychiatrist. I have been summoned to explore a desert
area of man's heart in which explanations no longer suffice, and in which
one learns that only experience counts." (Decroix,
Dom Francis 8.22.67 HGL 158-159)
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Thomas
Merton, known in the monastery as Fr. Louis, was born on 31 January
1915 in Prades, southern France. The young Merton attended schools
in France, England, and the United States. At Columbia University
in New York City, he came under the influence of some remarkable
teachers of literature, including Mark Van Doren, Daniel C. Walsh,
and Joseph Wood Krutch. Merton entered the Catholic Church in 1938
in the wake of a rather dramatic conversion experience. Shortly
afterward, he completed his masters thesis, “On Nature and
Art in William Blake”.
Following some teaching at Columbia University Extension and at
St. Bonaventure’s College, Olean, New York, Merton entered
the monastic community of the Abbey of Gethsemani at Trappist, Kentucky,
on 10 December 1941. He was received by Abbot Frederic Dunne who
encouraged the young Frater Louis to translate works from the Cistercian
tradition and to write historical biographies to make the Order
better known.
The abbot also urged the young monk to write his autobiography,
which was published under the title The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)
and became a best-seller and a classic. During the next 20 years,
Merton wrote prolifically on a vast range of topics, including the
contemplative life, prayer, and religious biographies. His writings
would later take up controversial issues (e.g., social problems
and Christian responsibility: race relations, violence, nuclear
war, and economic injustice) and a developing ecumenical concern.
He was one of the first Catholics to commend the great religions
of the East to Roman Catholic Christians in the West.
Merton died by accidental electrocution in Bangkok, Thailand, while
attending a meeting of religious leaders on 10 December 1968, just
27 years to the day after his entrance into the Abbey of Gethsemani.
Many esteem Thomas Merton as a spiritual master, a brilliant writer,
and a man who embodied the quest for God and for human solidarity.
Since his death, many volumes by him have been published, including
five volumes of his letters and seven of his personal journals.
According to present count, more than 60 titles of Merton's writings are in print in English, not including the numerous doctoral
dissertations and books about the man, his life, and his writings.
Brother Patrick Hart, OCSO
From:
www.monks.org/thomasmerton.html
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During the fall months of 1967, Thomas Merton commented to others about
this difficult task of writing the message from contemplatives which the
pope had requested. To Etta Gullick in August he admitted the importance
of trying to say something about the subject in order to "protect
these people against the irresponsible gossip and nonsense of those who
haven't the faintest idea what it is all about in the first place."
He ended by telling here that contemplation is a matter for minorities
while "the majorities are all rushing off
with banners waving to conquer something or other." (Gullick,
Etta 8.31.67 HGL 378-379)
To his friend at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions,
W. H. "Ping" Ferry, Merton was more blunt in expressing his
frustrations that September. He wrote that, in his private opinion, "contemplatives
are a bunch of dolts and squares – at least the Catholic ones, and
they have nothing to say to the modern world at least until such time
as they wake up and come alive." (Ferry,
W. H. 9.5.67 HGL 234) He wrote in October in a similar vein to
Bruno Schlesinger, a professor at St. Mary's College in Indiana. He was
amused that the progressive and activist Catholics were hailing the Beatles as very hip people. But then all of a sudden the Beatles started going
to a yogi to learn contemplation which is anathema to the progressive
Catholics. "My feeling is that our progressives
don't know what they are talking about, in their declarations about modern
man, the modern world, etc. Perhaps they are dealing with some private
myth or other. That is their affair..." (Schlesinger,
Bruno 10.16.67 HGL 546)
Not without hope for the future…
Still, for Thomas Merton, contemplatives were not without hope for the
future. With his ever broadening reading and learning from persons in
other cultures, he found the greatest hope for the future of the contemplative
life in the Third World. In September of 1967 he wrote to an African priest
who later became a bishop named Christopher Mwoleka stating that the African
sense of the wholeness and unity of life could give a new birth to the
contemplative life and will bring new life to the Church of the future.
He sensed that God wanted him to experience contemplation in a deeply
African way which would be "a way of wholeness,
a way of unity with all life, a sense of the deep rhythm of natural and
cosmic life as the manifestation of God's creative power: and also a great
warmth of love and praise." He concluded that, If one
realizes that God's gift of Spirit is the source of all joy and strength,
and of one trusts God to purify the heart with the Divine presence and
love, "in great simplicity, He will teach
you the joy of being a child of God, an African child of God with your
own special unique gifts." (Mwoleka,
Christopher 9.13.67 HGL 462)
Thomas Merton had come a long way toward realizing the simplicity of
a child of God during his twenty-seven years as a monk of the Abbey of
Gethsemani. And his letters to his friends enable us to join the same
Journey.
NAVIGATION: PART I | PART
II | PART
III | PART
IV | PART
V | PART
VI
Photo
Credits:
The background images used in the headline are sourced from stock.xchng
and are the work of Kay Pat, New Delhi, India. URL: www.sxc.hu/profile/KayPat.
The image of Thomas Merton used in the text was sourced from Thomas Merton
Books website at: www.thomasmertonbooks.com/about_us.asp
Other images by Brian Coyne
Links to Merton websites:
The Thomas Merton Collection at Bellarmine University
The International Thomas Merton Society
The Merton Institute for Contemplative Living
 Fr
Patrick W. Collins PhD lives in Michigan and has long been
very supportive of our endeavours here at Catholica
Australia. Fr Collins retired from active ministry earlier
last year but one suspects that "retirement" is the inappropriate
descriptor. It's more like a change of direction as to how he continues
his ministry. On his own website (www.vatican2.org/patrickcollins/)
he describes himself as "author, preacher, musician and university
professor. He senses that his principal vocation is to contemplative living
— out of which his various ministries flow. In addition to numerous
books and articles, Fr. Collins has produced forty-five TV programs, and
a number of videos, among them Thomas
Merton: Man, Monk, Myth with Music. Fr. Collins
presents various kinds of retreats, missions, and workshops, including
what he calls 'spiritual concerts' which combine texts and tunes for spiritual
insight and growth. This approach gives a feelingful dimension to the
meaning of the words and connects head with heart, reason and imagination.
He calls it "Music with a Message."
What are your thoughts on Patrick's commentary?
You can contribute to the discussion in our forum.
Patrick can be contracted through his own website at: www.vatican2.org/patrickcollins/.
©2007Patrick
W Collins
[Index of commentaries
by Patrick Collins]
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