December 12, 2001
Our knowledge of God is paradoxically not of him as the object of our scrutiny, but of ourselves as utterly dependent on his saving and merciful knowledge of us. It is in proportion, as we are known to him that we find our real being and identity in Christ. We know him in and through ourselves in so far as his truth is the source of our being and his merciful love is the very heart of our life and existence.
Thomas Merton
Website.
May 12, 2004
The whole Christian life is a life in which the further a person progresses, the more he has to depend directly on God...The more we progress, the less we are self-sufficient. The more we progress, the poorer we get so that the man who has progressed most, is totally poor - he has to depend directly on God. He's got nothing left in himself.
Thomas Merton
December 30, 2004
If my prayer is centered in myself, if it seeks only an enrichment of my own self, my prayer itself draws my attention and longing away from God and toward myself. I am left rich and alone and nothing can assuage my hunger. The most dangerous spiritual violence is that which carries our will away with a false enthusiasm which seems to come from God but which is in reality inspired by passion.
Thomas Merton
April 21, 2005
Man is not at peace with his fellow man because he is not at peace with himself; he is not at peace with himself, because he is not at peace with God.
Thomas Merton
April 8, 2006
As long as I am content to know that He is infinitely greater than I, and that I cannot know Him unless He shows Himself to me, I will have Peace, and He will be near me and in me, and I will rest in Him.
Thomas Merton
June 1, 2006
To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law--the law of grace and love--but that one *must* do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism.
Thomas Merton
October 30, 2006
If we can, by God's grace, turn ourselves entirely to Him, and put aside everything else in order to speak with Him and worship Him, this does not mean that we can always imagine Him or feel His presence. Neither imagination nor feeling are required for a full conversion of our whole being to God. Nor is intense concentration on an idea of God especially desirable. Hard as it is to convey in human language, there is a very real and very recognizable (but almost entirely undefinable) Presence of God, in which we confront Him in prayer knowing Him by Whom we are known, aware of Him Who is aware of us, loving Him by Whom we know ourselves to be loved.
Thomas Merton<
April 23, 2007
I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Thomas Merton
December 2, 2007
God is everywhere. His truth and his love pervade all things as the light and the heat of the sun pervade our atmosphere. But...God does not touch our souls with the fire of supernatural knowledge and experience without Christ.
Thomas Merton
July 20, 2008
The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.
Thomas Merton
August 1, 2008
If we try to contemplate God without having turned the face of our inner self entirely in His direction, we will end up inevitably by contemplating ourselves, and we will perhaps plunge into the abyss of warm darkness which is our own sensible nature. That is not a darkness in which one can safely remain passive.
Thomas Merton
June 4, 2009
We must remember that our experience of union with God, our feeling of His presence, is altogether accidental and secondary. It is only a side effect of His actual presence in our souls, and gives no sure indication of that presence in any case. For God Himself is above all apprehensions and ideas and sensations, however spiritual, that can ever be experienced by the spirit of man in this life.
Thomas Merton
September 18, 2010
The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer, because smaller things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of suffering.
Thomas Merton
March 31, 2011
We must be willing to accept the bitter truth that, in the end, we may have to become a burden to those who love us. But it is necessary that we face this also. The full acceptance of our abjection and uselessness is the virtue that can make us and others rich in the grace of God. It takes heroic charity and humility to let others sustain us when we are absolutely incapable of sustaining ourselves. We cannot suffer well unless we see Christ everywhere, both in suffering and in the charity of those who come to the aid of our affliction.
Thomas Merton
Website
April 14, 2012
Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart has turned to stone.
Thomas Merton
Website
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