Category: Thomas Merton

Sunday Quote: You Know My Soul, God

You know my soul. You know all that needs to be done there. Do it in Your own way. Draw me to You, O my God. Fill me with Pure Love of You alone. Make me never go aside from the way of Your Love. Show me clearly that way and never let me depart from it: that will be enough. I leave everything in your hands. You will guide me without error and without danger and I will love You all the way. I will belong to You. I will not be afraid of anything for I shall remain in Your hands and never leave You.

Thomas Merton, Dialogues with Silence: Prayers and Drawings (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2001),45.

Sunday Quote: Traveling toward God

Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. In the quote below, he highlights well the already/not-yet tension as one travels toward God.

In one sense we are always traveling, and traveling as if we did not know where we are going.
In another sense we have already arrived.
We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are traveling and in darkness.  But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore, in that sense, we have arrived and are dwelling in the light.
But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!1

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1. Thomas Merton, Dialogues with Silence (Prayers & Drawings), ed. Jonathan Montaldo (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 13.