Memorial of St. John Bosco, Priest

Today's Mass Readings

 

As we have walked with these great writers on faith in the last few days I want to introduce one of the best monastic writers of the last century, Thomas Merton. Merton lived as one who lived faith wandering and wondering. He could put to writing words that others longed to express and yet couldn’t find to say about faith in God. He is one who, like Augustine, lost his mother and father at a young age, and he lost his brother John Paul in the Second World War. Merton found his faith in his twenties, and found his calling as a monk of Gethsemane Abbey. He attracted considerable fame with the publication of his autobiography,

The Seven Storey Mountain.

He wrote of his relationship to God who called him in faith:

“I will give you what you desire. I will lead you into solitude. I will lead you by the way that you cannot possibly understand, because I want it to be the quickest way…But you will taste the true solitude of my anguish and my poverty and I will lead you into the high places of my joy and you shall die in Me and find all things in my mercy which has created you for this end and brought you from Prades to Bermuda to St. Antonin to Oakham to London to Cambridge to Rome to New York to Columbia to Corpus Christi to St. Bonaventure to the Cistercian Abbey of the poor men who labor in Gethsemane. That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men.” [5]

He finished this book by writing;

Sit finis libri, non finis quaerendi. The book is finished, yet the searching is not finished.

Let us turn to Thomas Merton for guidance in our own journeys of faith. Amen.

Reflection by Br. Matthew Marie, OSB

 


[5] The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton, Doubleday Press, (2015), Epilogue.