Contemplative Haven

“Laziness and cowardice are two of the greatest enemies of the spiritual life.  And they are most dangerous of all when they mask as “discretion.”  This illusion would not be so fatal if discretion itself were not one of the most important virtues of a spiritual man….

Discretion tells us what God wants of us and what He does not want of us.  In telling us this, it shows us our obligation to correspond with the inspirations of grace and to obey all the other indications of God’s will….

Discretion warns us against wasted effort:  but for the coward all effort is wasted….

Laziness flies from all risk.  Discretion flies from useless risk:  but urges us on to take the risks that faith and the grace of God demand of us.” 

[Thomas Merton:  Thoughts in Solitude, Chapter V, pgs. 22-23] 

“We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity.  Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.

If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest,
God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will silently withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.”

[Thomas Merton:  "No Man Is an Island", pgs. 127-128]

Father Louis is at Consecrated to Mary today.

Oh, c’mon.  It’s just one more click!

After browsing through several of Merton’s journals and other writings, I was beginning to think I would never find anything concerning the Sacred Heart of Jesus, until I came upon this entry for the Feast of the Sacred Heart in 1947 in ”The Sign of Jonas”:

“I ought to know, by now, that God uses everything that happens as a means to lead me into solitude.  Every creature that enters my life, every instant of my days, will be designed to wound me with the realization of the world’s insufficiency, until I become so detached that I will be able to find God alone in everything.  Only then will all things bring me joy….Today I seemed to be very much assured that solitude is indeed His will for me and that it is truly God Who is calling me into the desert.” [pgs. 51-52] 

Upon first and even second reading I was disappointed; I said to myself, “Thomas, tell me about the Sacred Heart.  I want to know what you think about the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Why are you talking about yourself - it is the Feastday; why don’t you write about the Sacred Heart on the Feastday, instead of your own call to solitude?”  And then I realized he was writing about the Sacred Heart – about what It evoked for him and in him; about his experience of It. 

So I did a little more browsing – googling, to be exact, on the Sacred Heart and solitude.  There were some interesting things to be found; for example, The Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Theology of Benedict XVI, by Father Mark D. Kirby, O.Cist.  Father Kirby writes:

“At the core of devotion to the Sacred Heart is a passing-over into the prayer of Christ to the Father, a long apprenticeship to silence by which we begin to let the Heart of Christ speak in us and for us to the Father.” [emphasis mine]  Among other references, Father Kirby uses quotes from [then] Cardinal Ratzinger’s “Behold the Pierced One”, in which he helps us see the links between Jesus’ solitude, our own solitude, the Sacred Heart, prayer, and communication with the Father.

And so Thomas Merton truly is speaking of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as he describes his assurance of an even stronger calling to solitude, for it is not a call to solitude for the sake of solitude – it is a call to enter into the Sacred Heart, into the solitude of Jesus, and in Jesus’ solitude we share in prayer to the Father.    

When I first met Pia online in the summer of 2006, it was over a discussion in some comboxes and later by email of Merton’s concept of ”le point vierge”.  I had never heard of it until Pia brought it to my attention.  In turn, I shared with her what I had read about Merton’s concept of “le temps vierge”.  Both of these concepts (the virginal point and virginal time) could warrant many hours of pondering (and did), but also, ever since, I have been wondering about the connection between the two.  Surely, I thought, there must be a connection between this point, this Divine Spark, and ourselves being offered this potentiality of time.  Yet I could not find what I was grasping after in anything I read by or about Merton, or anywhere else for that matter.  But, patience is a virtue…

Do you remember Arthur Young and his wonderful discovery of St. Basil’s theory?  Well here he is again in a very short clip (just a little over a minute) which you may want to listen to more than once.  (I’m surprised I haven’t worn it out all by myself).  To my knowledge he and Merton did not know each other, but I dearly wish they had.  One can only imagine the insights, discussions and correspondence that might have ensued.

From the Arthur Young Series:

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For anyone not familiar with the two concepts mentioned, or who would like a little refresher:

Le point vierge:

“Again, that expression, le point vierge, (I cannot translate it) comes in here.  At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will.  This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.  It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship.  It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.  It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.” [Thomas Merton:  Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, pg. 158]

Le temps vierge:

“…not a blank to be filled or an untouched space to be conquered and violated, but a space which can enjoy its own potentialities and hopes – and its own presence to itself.  One’s own time.  But not dominated by one’s own ego and its demands.  Hence open to others – compassionate time, rooted in the sense of common illusion and in criticism of it.” [The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton,  pg. 117]

“The Mass is the most wonderful thing that has ever entered into my life. When I am at the altar I feel that I am at last the person that God has truly intended me to be.  About the lucidity and peace of this perfect sacrifice I have nothing coherent to say.  But I am very aware of the most special atmosphere of grace in which the priest moves and breathes at that moment – and all day afterwards!  True, this peculiar grace is something private and inalienable, but it springs also from the social nature of the Mass.  The greatest gift that can come to anyone is to share in the infinite act by which God’s love is poured out upon all men.  In this sense the supreme graces of solitude and of society coincide and become one – and they do this in the priest at Mass, as they do in the soul of Christ and in the Heart of Mary.” 

[The Sign of Jonas.  The Journal of Thomas Merton]  Taken from the entry for June 4, 1949:  The Vigil of Pentecost.  pgs. 195-196

I’m cheating this morning because I think you’ll get such a kick out of this post by Beth over at louie, louie. 

I know I did. 

“God never does things by halves.  He does not sanctify us patch upon patch.  He does not make us priests or make us saints by superimposing an extraordinary existence upon our ordinary lives.  He takes our whole life and our whole being and elevates it to a supernatural level, transforms it completely from within, and leaves it exteriorly what it is:  ordinary.”

[The Sign of Jonas.  The Journal of Thomas Merton]  pg. 182 

“Saint Gregory Nazianzen calls the soul of the spiritual man – the mystic – an instrument played by the Holy Spirit:  organum pulsatum a Spiritu Sancto.  The Holy Ghost draws from this instrument harmonies and a melody of which reason and the will of man alone could never even dream.  It is this music vibrating on the well-tuned strings of a perfect human personality that makes a man a saint.  It is when special harmonies are wrung from a human instrument that the Holy Ghost makes a man a contemplative.  What part has reason in this silent song that God sings for Himself and for His elect in the soul of a mystic?  It is the function of reason not to play the instrument but only to tune the strings.  The Master Himself does not waste time tuning the instrument.  He shows His servant, reason, how to do it and leaves him to do the work.  If He then comes and finds the piano still out of tune, He does not bother to play anything on it.  He strikes a chord, and goes away.  The trouble generally is that the tuner has been banging on the keys himself all day, without bothering to do the work assigned to him:  which is to keep the thing in tune.”

[The Ascent to Truth:  Chapter XII, pgs. 181-182]

It’s a tremendous benefit having a large body of work available from a writer such as Merton.  We can identify with the material at so many points along the journey.

Most assuredly Merton would eventually arrive at answers to his musings in the following excerpt, yet it brings us solace and comfort in knowing that early on, he dealt with many of the same questions, frustrations and heartaches as we do:

“Just because a cross is a cross, does it follow that it is the cross God intends for you?
Just because a job is a nuisance, is it therefore good for you?
Is it an act of virtue for a contemplative to sit down and let himself be snowed under by activities?
What am I doing in that room over there: piling up fuel for Purgatory?
Does the fact that all this is obedience make it really pleasing to God? I wonder. I do not ask these questions in a spirit of rebellion. I would really like to know the answers.”

[The Sign of Jonas.  The Journal of Thomas Merton].  pg. 46.  Entry of May 1, 1947.  Merton has been five years in the monastery at this point, and is approaching the time when he will take his solemn vows.

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Merton was perfectly serious, as am I… but it’s Monday morning, so I simply can’t resist. Just a little something to get us through the week.  It’s a catchy tune, with a refrain you might find very familiar.