On the Anniversary of the Death of Thomas Merton
On this day in 1968 the world lost perhaps the greatest Catholic author of the 20th century, a spiritual guide who will go down among the great contemplative writers in Catholic history. Thomas Merton died this day, 41 years ago, and 27 years to the day after his entrance into the Trappist monastery, the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemane. Like millions of others, my own life has been profoundly impacted by Thomas Merton. He is still supremely influential in opening the paths of contemplation to those who have a loving desire for God, who seek God through pray and through silence. He was profoundly important in helping everyday Catholics recognize that contemplation is not simply a call for monastics and cloistered religious, but rather is a vocation for all mankind.
It is interesting, today happens to be a day on the Roman calendar where no feast day occurs. And the feasts of saints are typically celebrated on the anniversary of their death. I'm just saying, the anniversary of Thomas Merton's death happens to occur on a date where there are no other feasts…
In honor of this anniversary I am going to include here a section from his great autobiography, Seven Storey Mountain. The following passage recounts his first ever visit to Gethsemane, where he would eventually come back and stay for good. Here is Thomas Merton's first encounter with the Trappists, in his own words:
Presently the key turned in the door. I passed inside. The door closed quietly behind me. I was out of the world.
The effect of that big, moonlit court, the heavy stone building with all those dark and silent windows, was overpowering. I could hardly answer the Brother's whispered questions.
I looked at his clear eyes, his graying, pointed beard.
When I told him I came from St. Bonaventure's, he said drily"
"I was a Franciscan once."
We crossed the court, climbed some steps, entered a high, dark hall. I hesitated on the brink of a polished, slippery floor, while the Brother groped for the light switch. Then, above another heavy door, I saw the words: "God alone."
"Have you come here to stay?" said the brother.
The question terrified me. It sounded too much like the voice of my own conscience.
"Oh no!" I said. "Oh no!" And I heard my whisper echoing around the hall and vanishing up the indefinite, mysterious heights of a dark and empty stair-well above our heads. The place smelled frighteningly clean: old and clean, an ancient house, polished and swept and repainted and repainted over and over, year after year.
"What's the matter? Why can't you stay? Are you married or something?" said the Brother.
"No," I said lamely, "I have a job…"
We began to climb the wide stairs. Our steps echoed in the empty darkness. One flight and then another and a third and a fourth. There was an immense distance between floors; it was a building with great high ceilings. Finally we came to the top floor, and the Brother opened the door into a wide room, and put down my bag, and left me.
I heard his steps crossing the yard below, to the gate house.
And I felt the deep, deep silence of the night, and of peace, and of holiness enfold me like love, like safety.
The embrace of it, the silence! I had entered into a solitude that was an impregnable fortress. And the silence that enfolded me, spoke to me, and spoke louder and more eloquently than any voice, and in the middle of that quiet, clean-smelling room, with the moon pouring its peacefulness in through the open window, with the warm night air, I realized truly whose house that was, O glorious Mother of God!
How did I ever get back out of there, into the world, after tasting the sweetness and the kindness of the love with which you welcome those that come to stay in your house, even only for a few days, O Holy Queen of Heaven, and Mother of my Christ?
It is very true that the Cistercian Order is your special territory and that those monks in white cowls are your special servants, servitors Sanctae Mariae. Their houses are all yours - Notre Dame, Notre Dame, all around the world. Notre Dame de Gethsemani: there was still something of the bravery and simplicity and freshness of twelfth-century devotion, the vivid faith of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Adam of Perseigne and Guerric of Igny and Ailred of Rievaulx and Robert of Molesme, here in the hills of Kentucky: and I think the century of Chartres was most of all your century, my Lady, because it spoke you clearest not only in word but in glass and stone, showing you for who you are, most powerful, most glorious, Mediatrix of All Grace, and the most High Queen of Heaven, high above all the angels, and throned in glory near the throne of your Divine Son.
And of all things, it is the Rules of the Religious Orders dedicated to you, that are the loudest and truest in proclaiming your honor, showing forth your power and your greatness obliquely by the sacrifices that love of you drives men to make. So it is that the Usages of the Cistercians are a Canticle for your glory, Queen of Angels, and those who live those Usages proclaim your tremendous prerogatives louder than the most exalted sermons. The white cowl of the silent Cistercian has got the gift of tongues, and the flowing folds of that grey wool, full of benediction, are more fluent than the Latin of the great monastic Doctors.
How shall I explain or communicate to those who have not seen these holy houses, your consecrated churches and Cistercian cloisters, the might of these truths that overpowered me all the days of that week?
Yet no one will find it hard to conceive the impression made on a man thrown suddenly into a Trappist monastery at four o'clock in the morning, after the night office, as I was the following day.
Bells were flying out of the tower in the high, astounding darkness as I groped half blind with sleep for my clothing, and hastened to the hall and down the dark stairs. I did not know where to go, and there was no one to show me, but I saw two men in secular clothes, at the bottom of the stairs, going through a door. One of them was a priest with a great head of white hair, the other was a young man with black hair, in a pair of dungarees. I went after them, through the door. We were in a hallway, completely black, except I could see their shadows moving towards a big window at the end. They knew where they were going, and they had found a door which opened and let some light into the hall.
I came after them to the door. It led into the cloister. The cloister was cold, and dimly lit, and the smell of damp wool astounded my by its unearthliness. And I saw the monks. There was one, right there, by the door; he had knelt, or rather thrown himself down before a pieta in the cloister corner, and had buried his head in the huge sleeve of his cowl there at the feet of the dead Christ, the Christ Who lay in the arms of Mary, letting fall one arm and a pierced hand in the limpness of death. It was a picture so fierce that it scared me: the abjection, the dereliction of this seemingly shattered monk at the feet of the broken Christ. I stepped into the cloister as if into an abyss.
The silence with people moving in it was ten times more gripping than it had been in my own empty room.
And now I was in the church. The two other seculars were kneeling there beside an altar at which the candles were burning. A priest was already at the altar, spreading the corporal and opening the book. I could not figure out why the secular priest with the great shock of white hair was kneeling down to serve Mass. Maybe he wasn't a priest after all. But I did not have time to speculate about that: my heart was too full of other things in that great dark church, where, in little chapels, all around the ambulatory, behind the great altar, chapels that were caves of dim candlelight, Mass was simultaneously beginning at many altars.
How did I live through that next hour? It is a mystery to me. The silence, the solemnity, the dignity of these Masses and of the church, and the overpowering atmosphere of prayers so fervent that they were almost tangible choked me with love and reverence that robbed me of the power to breathe. I could only get the air in gasps.
O my God, with what might You sometimes choose to teach a man's soul Your immense lessons! Here, even through only ordinary channels, came to me graces that overwhelmed me like a tidal wave, truths that drowned me with the force of their impact: and all through the plain, normal means of the liturgy - but liturgy used properly, and with reverence, by souls inured to sacrifice.