Paradise is around us…
Here is an unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand.
–Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
Let prayer pray…
The best way to pray is: stop. Let prayer pray within you, whether you know it or not.
–Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
To enter into contemplation…
To enter into the realm of contemplation, one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience as joy, as being. [Every form of intuition and experience] die to be born again on a higher level of life.
–Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
On the threshold of despair…
Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair.
–Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
We are the Body of Christ…
Our glory and our hope— We are the Body of Christ. Christ loves us and espouses us as His own flesh. Isn’t that enough for us? But we do not really believe it. No! Be content, be content. We are the Body of Christ. We have found Him, He has found us. We are in Him, He is in us. There is nothing further to look for, except for the deepening of this life we already possess. Be content.
–Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
The life of prayer…
The life of prayer is not static. It develops in stages and makes progress — progress that is not always in a straight line but sometimes even seems to fall back.
–Jacques Philippe (1947-
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