Thomas Merton - Everything Done as Prayer or it Turns to Ashes

Everything I do, reading, study, writing, etc., simply must be done in such a way that it is prayer and preparation for prayer. That means first of all not doing it to satisfy my voracious appetite to know, to enjoy, to achieve things, to get tangible results and taste the immediate reward of my own efforts because, if that is what leads me, everything turns to ashes as soon as I touch it. ~ Thomas Merton, Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk and a Writer (The Journals of Thomas Merton Book 2)

Thomas Merton on Spiritual Direction and the Holy Spirit

Come Holy Spirit.

Today is Pentecost Sunday and what better day to comment on the benefits of spiritual direction. 

In his little book called Spiritual Direction and Meditation, Thomas Merton describes what he means by spiritual direction.

He calls it “a continuous process of formation and guidance, in which Christians are led and encouraged (in all of our special vocations), so that by faithful correspondence to the graces of the Holy Spirit, we may attain to the particular end of our vocation and to union with God.” Spiritual direction is not merely ethical, social or psychological, it is going beyond.

The spiritual director focuses on the life of the whole person, not merely the life of the mind or of the heart. According to Merton, the purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of our lives, to get behind the ‘self’ that we project to the world, and to evoke our interdividuality, our interconnectedness, moving us in the direction of holiness – which is the likeness of Christ in us.

The function of the spiritual director is to create a space for the Holy Spirit to help us discern what is truly spiritual in us. Part of this function is to help us discern the movements of our desires, the spirits swirling around in us, to help us sort out which inspirations come from the spirit of evil and which from the Holy Spirit.

Another part of this function is to enable us to recognize and follow the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in everyday life. A spiritual director creates an informal, trusting atmosphere in which a person can feel known and understood. Spiritual direction is necessarily personal and yet ever linked to the beyond.

How can we best take advantage of spiritual direction? “The first thing that genuine spiritual direction requires in order to work properly is a normal, spontaneous human relationship. We must not suppose that it is somehow ‘not supernatural’ to open ourselves easily to a director and converse with him or her in an atmosphere of pleasant and easy familiarity. This aids the work of grace: another example of grace building on nature.”

We need to bring the director into contact with our energy, with our real desires, as best we can, fearing not that nearly every effort we make to talk about our desires is couched or masked to please rather than to reveal. Being prayerful and open in the session with the director and the Holy Spirit brings us to a relaxed, humble attitude in which we let go of ourselves, and renounce our unconscious efforts to maintain a facade.  Merton explains that “often we ourselves do not know what we ‘really want’.” This gets to the key of what spiritual direction is about: the director is facilitating a space with the Holy Spirit to bring to light our inner spirit, “not as we are in the eyes of men, or even as we are in our own eyes, but as we are in the eyes of God.”  

“Direction will school us in being true to ourselves and true to the grace of God.”

In closing Merton asks how many vocations (religious and other) would be more secure if everyone could navigate the waters of life with the assistance of a good spiritual director.

Living into Holiness

Is holiness more than we can strive for?

I think most of us dismiss any connection to being holy, usually saying something like; 'well you don't see a halo over my head' or 'Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, St Ignatius of Loyola, St Francis and any of the other saints are examples of what it is to be holy, and there is no way I am in a league like that'.  Reflecting on these and other excuses I think they all miss the mark of what we are all called to, a life of holiness (1 Peter 1:15).  So what is holiness?

In our world of the ‘autonomous self’ it is hard to realized that holiness is not 'something' we do, rather holiness is a gift that is offered to all.  

Pope Benedict XVI writes: “Holiness does not consist in never having erred or sinned. Holiness increases the capacity for conversion, for repentance, for willingness to start again and, especially, for reconciliation and forgiveness… Consequently, it is not the fact that we have never erred but our capacity for reconciliation and forgiveness which makes us saints. And we can all learn this way of holiness”

So the first exercise is to discern our capacity or receptivity for receiving a gift.

The next lesson is humility with a sense of accountability: being open to the unfathomableness of the Gift-bearer and not being afraid to say yes.  Thomas Merton reflected after being at Gethsemani for less than two weeks: “Your brightness is my darkness. I know nothing of You and, by myself, I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You. If I imagine You, I am mistaken. If I understand You, I am deluded. If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy. The darkness is enough.”

Merton’s quote touches on the abyss between what we can imagine and the incomprehensibility of God and though he ends saying that the darkness is enough, in actuality, it is so often not enough for us and we will, if not kept accountable, makeover Christ in our own image.

As we take our first steps into the labyrinth of holiness we somehow find ourselves being expanded, seeing the world and everyone in it through new eyes. The landscape has changed and the effect is illuminating - creating a new sense of abundance and excess with an invitation to become an active participant, accentuating the gifts we were open to receive and playing it forward.  

At this point we are approaching the center of the labyrinth discovering how our gifts received help others - revealing a way of living into holiness - when holiness bounces off of you to reflect on others.

So, what is holiness?  It is a gift received; and by saying yes to God we enter into God’s realm of love and service helping others to recognize the gift that all are called to receive.

On Thomas Merton

A comtemplative Thomas Merton

"Perhaps the central theme of all of Merton’s writings is contemplation.  What he stressed over and again in regard to this crucial practice is that it is not the exclusive preserve of spiritual athletes, but rather something that belongs to all the baptized and that stands at the heart of Christian life.  For contemplation is, in his language, 'to find the place in you where you are here and now being created by God.'  It is consciously to discover a new center in God and hence at the same time to discover the point of connection to everyone and everything else in the cosmos.  Following the French spiritual masters, Merton called this le point vierge, the virginal point, or to put it in the language of the fourth Gospel, 'water bubbling up in you to eternal life.'” - Father Barron

There are many Merton quotes that provide a gateway into contemplation and yet he is the first to warn us that very few come to true contemplation in isolation or where great stress has been placed on self, whether that is self-acceptance or self-esteem. It is not about feeling good about oneself nor finding your own way on your own terms. The following is from the chapter, Freedom Under Obedience in, Seeds of Contemplation:

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, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility. And if the sheer force of his own self-confidence communicates itself to other people and gives them the impression that he really is a saint, such a man can wreck a whole city or a religious order or even a nation. The world is covered with scars that have been left in its flesh by visionaries like these.

Thomas Merton - Freedom Under Obedience

Merton in chapter seventeen, “Freedom Under Obedience” of Seeds of Contemplation writes:  

Very few men are sanctified in isolation...

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, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility. And if the sheer force of his own self-confidence communicates itself to other people and gives them the impression that he really is a saint, such a man can wreck a whole city or a religious order or even a nation. The world is covered with scars that have been left in its flesh by visionaries like these.