Tag: Merton
Haunted by Thomas Merton
How he has opened my spiritual life to new dimensions J. K. Rowling was inspired by visions of St. John the Baptist as the saga of Harry Potter and friends percolated in her mind. He became the archetype for Professor Dumbledore – a wanderer in worlds earthly and spiritual – as well as a tutor,… Read More ›
Easter: A day of salvation
So, with the Alleluia of victory, the triumphant cry of Easter on her lips, the Church renews the Paschal mystery in which death is conquered, the power of the devil is broken forever, and sins are forgiven: the mystery of the death and resurrection of the Savior who is born to us on this day…. Read More ›
Our real enemy is within our own castle
Often in the course of the liturgical year the Church complains, in our behalf, that we are pressed down under the burden of our own human activity. That seems strange! To be free to do things in our own way would appear, at first sight, to be “the liberty of the sons of God.” But… Read More ›
Christ Himself is the Truth
Those who are quickened to a divine life in Christ, by His Spirit, enter into intimate communion with the Truth. They possess the Truth. Truth lives in their entire being and manifests itself in all their activities, body and soul. The “Truth has made them free.” Christ Himself is the Truth. And to achieve this… Read More ›
Spiritual Emancipation
He who is spiritually “born” as a mature identity is liberated from the enclosing womb of myth and prejudice. He learns to think for himself, guided no longer by the dictates of need and by the systems and processes designed to create artificial needs and then “satisfy” them. This emancipation can take two forms: first… Read More ›
Merton: The Value of Self-Knowledge
To live well myself means for me to know and appreciate something of the secret the mystery in myself: that which is incommunicable, which is at once myself and not myself at once in me and above me. From this sanctuary I must seek humbly and patiently to ward off all the intrusions of violence… Read More ›
Enter the Meaning of the Psalms
. . . There is no aspect of the interior life, no kind of religious experience, no spiritual need of the human person that is not depicted and lived out in the Psalms. But we cannot lay hands on these riches unless we are willing to work for them. … We cannot by mere human… Read More ›
Receiving Gifts
The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts we have to be open. In order to be open we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed identity. We… Read More ›
Silencio: The Beginning of Prayer
Recently, we saw a situation whereby a family member made an observation that was unfair and uninformed. The temptation: confront. And sometimes, we have to correct a situation, to speak up. Yes. But when praying about a course of action, the word, “Silencio” came flying, surprisingly, into our thoughts. Was this a “word of knowledge”… Read More ›
Christmas and the Liturgical Conception of Time.
In order to understand the full meaning of the liturgy we have to grasp the liturgical conception of time. The Christian “present” of the liturgy has some thing of the character of eternity, in which all reality is present at once. The past and the future are there fore made present in the mysteries of… Read More ›