Reflecting on Thomas Merton
Ordinary Sunday 24: 17th September, 2000
Fr John Davis, Vicar, St Peter's Eastern Hill
"But you, who do you say that I am?"
Peter answered him, "You are the Christ." Mk 8: 29
Peter's declaration of faith at Caesarea Philippi is one of the turning points of the gospel. With this confession of faith all was changed. This then was the one who was leading them, shaping them, changing them, bringing them to God. It is another case of the penny dropping, of whole perspectives being re-formed. This was the start of a new understanding, a new way of interacting. The relationship of love and faith between disciple and Lord was even more deeply etched. And we, in this church dedicated to the glory of God under the patronage of St Peter, of all people know how badly damaged that relationship was to get, how it would stretch and seemingly be broken. And yet. The experience, the time together, the insights and teachings to this point, plus the grace of God at work, brought Peter to this understanding, this discernment. It was really just the beginnings of his life of discipleship and growing in faith. It was to involve challenge and great sacrifice, but also glory and great promise. But apart from his initial almost impulsive decision by the Sea of Galilee to follow Jesus in the first place, there was no more significant moment.
We all need such beginnings or renewed inspiration. The Christian life can be full of them. For instance, the more attentive among you or those that are regular in their attendance here may well be detecting a new and perhaps consistent theme that is emerging in my preaching over this last couple of months. I am simply re-convinced of some very old truths. In some senses it represents a new beginning of the sort that we are considering.
My night time reading at the end of the day for the last several weeks has consisted of carefully working through a collection of the writings of Thomas Merton entitled "Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master. The Essential Writings." It is in print and Carol has several on order for our St Peter's Bookroom. Approaching some spiritual reading in small reflective doses is a good way to go. Restful sleep can then follow. There is no shortage of possibilities on offer. And we have a most wonderfully encouraging resource right here in the spiritual and literary riches available to us any day from our Bookroom. It is well worth supporting. There is really no excuse for any of us; even if all we can afford this week is one of the pre-loved treasures.
Anyway, I was previously familiar with some of Merton's early writings only. Attendance at a full day seminar last July, led by the editor of this particular volume, Lawrence Cunningham, changed all that. I have certainly rather belatedly found a different spiritual writer who speaks to me and I'm pleased to share some of these insights.
There is so much that is particularly challenging and thought provoking in his later material, so tragically cut short by his early death in 1968. People on the edge and indeed beyond the edge of Christianity find Merton most attractive. People right at the centre can still find him affirming. He is a good Catholic but he crossed unexpected boundaries. He opens up many questions.
His best writing is a joy to read. Some of the articles and addresses of the last year of his life in 1967 and 1968 are for me the most stimulating of all. For whatever reason, he is now becoming more and more popular.
Unpublished material from his journals and correspondence is still being assembled and put into book form. There are dozens of titles in print, by or about this Trappist monk living for 27 years as a monk in rural Kentucky. The contemplative, the searcher, the political activist, the environmentalist, those interested in Eastern religions, particularly Zen and Buddhism, those looking to discover their own authenticity in a life with God, those who enjoy good written English - all of these and more can find a fellow spirit in Merton. We will be offering a quiet day in the Hills on Merton at the Epiphany in the New Year for those who would like to discover more.
Some examples and some illustrations of how he writes and what he says are in order. For instance, in a contribution for a student publication in the midst of the turmoil of 1968 (Contemplation in a World of Action) he wrote:
Real Christian living is stunted and frustrated if it remains content with the bare externals of worship, with "saying prayers" and "going to church", with fulfilling one's external duties and merely being respectable.
He goes on to develop his themes of prayer and meditation.
And in relating this to action he says:
He who attempts to act or do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others.
Another essay (Learning to Live, 1967) begins with the following assertion:
Life consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling: to do this one must recognize what is one's own - be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering valid.... The graduate level of learning is when one learns to sit still and be what one has become....
"If our prayer", he reminds us, again in Contemplation in a World of Action, "is the expression of a deep and grace-inspired desire for newness of life - and not the mere blind attachment to what has always been familiar and "safe" - God will act in us and through us to renew the Church...." Many who did not or have not retained Merton's asserted confidence in the institution, have found this renewal beyond the Church.
Thus, many who are outside the formal boundaries of the Church have found his writings an inspiration and a source of hope, maybe even more so in today's changing and less optimistic ecclesial climate, than when he first wrote a generation or two ago.
These writings force you back to the basics. True, it is not as if we can each live a life of solitary prayer, or want to, or even live in the beautiful and remote countryside. But absolutely basic is our relationship with God in the context of God's creation. That is open to every person in whatever circumstance. For Merton, there is an inner vision, a gift of God, from God, nurtured by the disciplines of contemplation and the habit and attitude of prayer, fed and encouraged in worship and sacraments, generally lived alongside our companions on the Way, engaging with the world, honouring the world. Prayer for him is a 'celebration of love', an 'inner awareness, (an) experience of love as an immediate and dynamic presence'.
You would think that someone with those themes so strongly evident in all that he said and wrote would have a limited audience of the most devout faithful. Yet because of his quite remarkable powers of communication and writing, this man continues to challenge, to confront and yes, to offer hope. As the summary on the back of the collection I am reading puts it: "To read Merton today is to be swept up in the deepest issues of the 20th century".
So the insights of this great near contemporary figure are one of the possible ways to further enrich and develop our spiritual journey. Like the great saints through the ages, he is merely a signpost towards God; a person travelling the same paths, facing the challenges that life throws in our direction. Our life, our way is all the richer when populated by many such people. It is indeed worth searching them out.
In time some of Merton's themes will be offered in our new prayer group on Thursday evenings. Last Thursday was the first. There were 12 present. With some introductory guiding and concluding, the time was of silent prayer. Silent prayer offered together in the Handfield Chapel for one hour, in our own small way trying to as we said above, develop the disciplines of contemplation and the habit and attitude of prayer, a prayer that is an experience of love. You are very welcome to join us and perhaps to find variations in approach to prayer, springing from the rich tradition of which we are heirs, that are helpful.
Merton reproached himself in his later years for once being too earnest, too eager to push aside the world, too dismissive of much that made up ordinary everyday life. He changed his position on these things. He came to embrace and to love this world, so embraced and loved by God in Jesus Christ and in the very action of creation.
Our epistle today is one of the most renowned and down to earth of all spiritual texts. It is a great balancer of the other-worldy and the disconnected. Yet it was the Protestants who found it difficult, not the inhabitants of the monasteries. It was the subject of great controversy at the time of the Reformation. Martin Luther, if he had been able to work out a way, would have had this letter removed from the canonical scriptures. This 'epistle of straw' he declared was too dangerous because it could be used to back up a theology that just relied on what you did rather than what you believed. 2:24 is quite explicit in a key battleground - "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." A problem text for those who like to use individual texts as weapons. The quite apparent medieval abuses of indulgences where you could, if you were rich enough, set about trying to buy your way out of Purgatory was Luther's background. That was an excellent money raising system, so long as people believed or feared enough. For all that, the letter of James stands. There is indeed no either/or here, but two sides of the one coin.
All our desires and efforts to grow in faith and in the discernment of an inner spiritual vision must also have issue in how we live. Our relationship to each other and the rest of the created order must also be addressed. So today's lesson says: "So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead."
So too a spiritual search and a spiritual discernment based on a growing awareness of God's love, will have issue in works and acts of love. The way of love is by no means easy and straightforward.
For someone like Peter in today's gospel, there turns out to be not much choice. The one who responded first to a simple "follow me", was today the one who saw the Christ for who he was. Stumblings and disappointments were to follow, but his way was there. Almost at once his first attempts at understanding the implications were declared to be wrong. But he persevered.
As one commentator summed the issue up:
Who is Jesus Christ? Still a living question. No amount of acquired knowledge about him will ever replace a personal knowledge of Jesus which results from a progressive sharing of his life.... To share the life of someone we love, is not that the very logic of friendship? It is to this vocation of friendship with Jesus that we are invited. That is what it is to be a christian. (Glenstal Bible Missal)
The Lord be with you.
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