Contemplation in a World of Action, Part 2

Contemplation in a World of Action: Thomas Merton

"Man has a responsibility to his own time, not as if he could seem to stand outside it and donate various spiritual and material benefits to it from a position of compassionate distance, but man has a responsibility to find himself where he is, namely in his own proper time and in his place, in the history to which he belongs and to which he must inevitably contribute either his resopnses or his evasions, either truth adn act or slogan and gesture."

"It would prehaps be more truly monastic to say that the monk who is effectively liberated from the servitudes and confusions of "the world" in its negative and sterile sense ought to be enabled by that very fact to be more truly present to his world and to his tie by love, by compassion, by understanding, by tolerance, by a deep and Christlike hope."

"We would not seek God unless he were not already " in us," and to go "beyond ourselves" is just to find the inner ground of our being where he is present to us as our creative source, as the fount of redemptive light and grace."

"The real function of discipine is not to provide us with maps but to sharpen our own sense of direction so that when we really get going we can travel without maps."

"Obedience then becomes an expression of hte new life and the new creation which restores the simplicity and peace of paradise to a communal life in whcih each is the servant of all, and each finds fulfillment in a meaningful service of love that is inspired and vivified by the presence of Christ in his Spirit. Obedience is in truth a dialogue between two responsibilities- that of thesubject and that of the superior- and i ncarrying out his superior's command the subject cannot allow himself to abdicate moral responsibility and act as a mere utensil. It is also a dialogue between two forms of service."

"Humility, poverty, and love. It is by this spirit of apostolic renunciation that the monk, in spite of his essential solitude, can be open to the needs and to the anguish of hte world and hence exercise his apostolate which is above all the apostolate of understanding and of compassion."

"Is the contemplative life to be considered a state of interior recollection and an affective absorption in God considered as Infinite Love, or is it a resopnse to the concrete Word of God manifesting to us his will and his love not only for ourselves as individuals but for the whole family of man redeemed by the Cross of Christ...Is the cloistered life merely to escape from the troubles and conflicts of the world to a condition of security and peace in which we "rest" and "taste" the consolations of intimacy with God? Or does it mean sharing the anguish and hope of a world in crisis in which millions struggle for the barest essentials of human existence?"

"Openness works two ways. On both sides there is giving and receiving. The result is, or should be, a real increase of charity, a greater love of the conteplative for the world created and redeemed by God, a greater love of the noncloistered person for God, found and experienced more deeply in temporary contact with the cloister."

"What people seek today is not so much the organized, predigested routine of conferences and exercises, but an opportunity to be quiet, to reflect, and to discuss in informal, spontaneous and friendly encounters the things they have on their minds."