. . .[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 human infant shows this clearly enough. . . .But man’s ideas must grow as he grows. The mature man realizes that his life affirms itself most, not in acquiring things for himself, but in giving his time, his efforts, his strength, his intelligence, and his love to others. [This] “dying” to self in order to give to others is. . .the fruit of life, the evidence of mature and productive living.
. . . .Man physically and mentally declines, having given everything that he had to life, to other men, to his love, to his family, and to his world. He is spent or exhausted, not in the sense that he is merely burned out and gutted by the accumulation of money and power, but because he has given himself totally in love. There is nothing left now for him to give. It is now that in a final act he surrenders his life itself. . .a culminating gift, the last free perfect act of love which is surrender into the hands of God and acceptance of death.
Thomas Merton
“Seven Words” in Love and Living
