Tag Archive for ‘Merton’
The Man in the Mirror
When a man constantly looks and looks at himself in the mirror of his own acts, his spiritual double vision splits him into two people. And if he strains his eyes hard enough, he forgets which one is real. In fact, reality is no longer found either in himself or in his shadow. The substance [...]
Become the brother of God
I hear You saying to me: “I will give you what you desire. I will lead you into solitude. I will lead you by the way that you cannot possibly understand, because I want it to be the quickest way. “Therefore all the things around you will be armed against you, to deny you, to [...]
Work is healthy but Agitation destroys
Work occupies the body and the mind and is necessary for the health of the spirit. Work can help us to pray and be recollected if we work properly. Agitation, however, destroys the spiritual usefulness of work and even tends to frustrate its physical and social purpose. Agitation is the useless and ill‑directed action of [...]
The man who lives in division is living in death
The man who lives in division is not a person but only an “indiÂvidual.” I have what you have not. I am what you are not. I have taken what you have failed to take and I have seized what you could never get. Therefore you suffer and I am happy, you are despised and [...]
Let Jesus pray
It is a risky thing to pray, and the danger is that our very prayers get between God and us. The great thing in prayer is not to pray, but to go directly to God. If saying your prayers is an obstacle to prayer, cut it out. Let Jesus pray. Thank God Jesus is praying. [...]
Death is the end of life
. . .[But it must be seen] in the light of love and grace. All created life is limited. Living beings come into existence and begin at once to develop, for growth is one of the essential functions of life. In the beginning of its growth, the living being must continually receive from others. The [...]
Our Society
We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the [...]
We are made for eternal life
There is something in the depths of our being that hungers for wholeness and finality. Because we are made for eternal life, we are made for an act that gathers up all the powers and capacities of our being and offers them simultaneously and forever to God. The blind spiritual instinct that tells us obscurely [...]
God does not demand perfection
God does not demand that every man attain to what is theoretically highest and best. It is better to be a good street sweeper than a bad writer, better to be a good bartender than a bad doctor, and the repentant thief who died with Jesus on Calvary was far more perfect than the holy [...]
Spreading the Gospel by being saints
There was to be nothing special about it, nothing that savored of a religious Order, no special rule, no distinctive habit. She, and those who joined her, would simply be poor–there was no choice on that score, for they were that already–but they would embrace their poverty, and the life of the proletariat in all [...]
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