Thomas Merton

Why Read Thomas Merton Today?

• Insight into life, prayer, God, and the individual within community

• Wrestled with tension between tradition and innovation

• Addressed peace and non-violence, inter-religious dialogue

• Very compelling life story

“On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French mountain on the borders of Spain, I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born.”

From The Seven Storey Mountain

Early Life and Education

• 1915 January 31 born in Prades, France • 1916 Moved to Douglaston NY, USA • 1921 Mother died from cancer • 1926 Moved to France with his father • 1929 Began attending Oakham in England • 1931 Father died from brain tumor • 1933 Attended Clare College, Cambridge • 1934 Left Cambridge for USA

Early Life and Education, cont.

• 1935 Entered Columbia University • 1938 Graduated from Columbia and began

M.A. program • 1938 November 16, received into Catholic

Church at Corpus Christi Church • 1940-41 Taught at Saint Bonaventure College • 1941 December 10 entered the Abbey of Our

Lady of Gethsemani, Trappist, Kentucky.

Our Lady of Gethsemani

“This is the center of America. I had wondered what was holding the country together, what has been keeping the universe from cracking in pieces and falling apart. It is this monastery if only this one.”

Journal April 7, 1941 Eastertime

Life at Our Lady of Gethsemani

• Founded in 1848 • Order of Cistercians of the Strict

Observance (Trappist) • Reform movement that began in La

Trappe, France in 1664 • Rule of Saint Benedict- vows of obedience,

stability, and conversion of manners • Life characterized by prayer, penance,

work

Life at Our Lady of Gethsemani, cont.

• Divided into choir monks and lay brothers • Liturgical day began at 2:00 a.m. • Matins, Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, None,

Vespers, Compline • Rosary, Mass, Processions, Stations of the

Cross, Eucharistic Adoration, Days of Recollection, Annual Retreats

Why the monastic life?

• To shun the world and live as far as possible from the corrupt life he lived before.

• To live a life of penance for past sins and as a necessary condition for contemplation

• To live a life of contemplation in prayer and praise

First Phase at Gethsemani

• 1941 - December 10-entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, Trappist, Kentucky.

• 1948 - Publication of best-seller autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain

• 1949 - May 26 - ordained priest • Themes: Could he be a contemplative and

writer? Should he leave and join the Carthusians for more solitude?

Middle Period at Gethsemani • 1951 - 1955 - Master of Scholastics (students

for priesthood) • 1953 - The Sign of Jonas • 1955 - No Man Is an Island • 1955 Master of Novices (new monks) • 1958 Thoughts in Solitude • Areas of Interest: Eastern Orthodox thinkers,

Latin American poets and cultural critics, Zen Buddhism

“If I can unite in myself, in my own spiritual life, the thought of the East and the West of the Greek and Latin Fathers, I will create in myself a reunion of the divided church and from that unity in myself can come the exterior and visible unity of the church. For if we want to bring together East and West we cannot do it by imposing one upon the other. We must contain both in ourselves and transcend both in Christ.”

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 1966

Final Phase at Gethsemani and Asian Journey

• 1960 – New Seeds of Contemplation • 1961 – Allowed to spend time in hermitage • 1965 Moves permanently to hermitage • 1966 - Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander • 1966 - Relationship with M. • 1968 Begins Asian Journey; Zen and the Birds of Appetite • 1968 - December 10-died at Bangkok, Thailand, where he

had spoken at a meeting of Asian Benedictines and Cistercians.

• Areas of Interest: Peace and Non-Violence, Camus, Monastic Changes, Photography, Role of the Hermit in Society, Eastern Religion

Merton’s Hermitage: Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Thomas Merton later in 1968 prior to Asian journey