Thomas Merton: A Life of Faith and Peace

Advent greetings, my friends. This week is an incredible week. We celebrated the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Today is the 56th anniversary of the death of the American monk and writer

Thomas Merton on Thursday, the great Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. And on Saturday, the Feast of Saint John of the Cross, that wonderful Carmelite saint. A wonderful group and a wonderful opportunity for us to celebrate. I wanted to take a minute to reflect on Thomas Merton and his life and his importance to the Church, although, not a saint he's certainly one of the great spiritual writers of our generation.

Thomas Merton died on December 10th, 1968, after giving a talk in Bangkok, Thailand.

He spoke about the commonality of the search for God among a variety of Asian religions, including Christianity. And died on that trip. 

Thomas Merton was an inspirational character in my own life. And our own previous pastor, Father Rod Poythress. Father Rod and I, a number of years ago, took a journey and went to Gethsemani Abbey in Louisville, Kentucky. And there we visited where Thomas Merton lived and spent his life as a monk.

Thomas Merton wrote one of the great spiritual autobiographies that inspired all kinds of vocations in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. In fact, Bishop Barron refers to his own reading of Thomas Merton’s “The Seven Storey Mountain” as one of the events that helped to shape his vocation.

He was given the book by his brother. Then, upon reading the book, he came across a writer, Etienne Gilson, who wrote a book about medieval scholastic philosophy and theology. It was that book that then captured the attention of Bishop Barron and led his life as both a philosopher and a theologian. Questing to follow Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Bernard and so many of those great medieval theologians, Thomas Merton’s inspiration and carry it on.

He was a voice for the civil rights movement. And the recognition of the evil of racism in our society. He stood against the war in Vietnam, believing that we are all, as Christians, called to be people of peace. Thomas Merton stands to, for many of us, a challenge and an invitation. One of his great works, the” New Seeds of Contemplation,” was an invitation to a life of prayer and transformation.

He told us that deep within us is the original person that God created us to be. We oftentimes live our lives on the surface with a persona that we create to protect ourselves. He said the call of the Christian life through the grace of the Holy Spirit is to become and be that person. We were always created to be.

That gift for us is represented in the coming Feast of the Nativity, where Christ shows us that we all indeed can live a human life divinely well.