A gentle sense of humor will be alert to detect anything that savors of a pious 'act' on the part of the penitent. Thomas Merton More Quotes by Thomas Merton More Quotes From Thomas Merton Lovely morning! How lovely life can be! Thomas Merton lovely-life lovely morning God has brought me to Kentucky...the precise place he has chosen for my sanctification. Thomas Merton sanctification chosen kentucky The friends of Job appear on the scene as advisers and "consolers," offering Job the fruits of their moral scientia. But when Job insists that his sufferings have no explanation and that he cannot discover the reason for them through conventional ethical concepts, his friends turn into accusers, and curse Job as a sinner. Thus, instead of consolers, they become torturers by virtue of their very morality, and in so doing, while claiming to be advocates of God, they act as instruments of the devil. Thomas Merton offering suffering jobs For the sinful self is not my real self, it is not the self YOU have wanted for me, only the self that I have wanted : And I no longer want this false self. But now, Father, I come to You in your own Son's self ... and it is He Who Presents me to You. Thomas Merton real father son Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself. Thomas Merton light views reality Stop asking yourself questions that have no meaning. Or if they have, you'll find out when you need to -- find out both the questions and the answers. Thomas Merton asking answers needs May we all grow in grace and peace and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us. Thomas Merton silence grace may To know the Cross is not merely to know our own sufferings. For the Cross is the sign of salvation, and no man is saved by his own sufferings. To know the Cross is to know that we are saved by the sufferings of Christ; more, it is to know the love of Christ Who underwent suffering and death in order to save us. It is, then, to know Christ. Thomas Merton wisdom men order Happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found. Thomas Merton found For now, oh my God, it is to You alone that I can talk, because nobody else will understand. I cannot bring any other man on this earth into the cloud where I dwell in Your light, that is, Your darkness, where I am lost and abashed. I cannot explain to any other man the anguish which is Your joy nor the loss which is the Possession of You, nor the distance from all things which is the arrival in You, nor the death which is the birth in You because I do not know anything about it myself and all I know is that I wish it were over - I wish it were begun. Thomas Merton distance wisdom loss It is by the Holy Spirit that we love those who are united to us in Christ. The more plentifully we have received of the Spirit of Christ, the more perfectly we are able to love them: and the more we love them the more we receive the Spirit. It is clear, however, that since we love them by the Spirit Who is given to us by Jesus, it is Jesus Himself Who loves them in us. Thomas Merton able wisdom jesus The pleasure of a good act is something to be remembered - not in order to feed our complacency but in order to remind us that virtuous actions are not only possible and valuable, but that they can become easier and more delightful and more fruitful than the acts of vice which oppose and frustrate them. Thomas Merton complacency vices order Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives. Thomas Merton gods-will light wisdom For our duties and our needs, in all the fundamental things for which we were created, come down in practice to the same thing. Thomas Merton wisdom practice needs Our thought should not merely be an answer to what someone else has just said. Or what someone else might have said. Our interior world must be more than an echo of the words of someone else. There is no point in being a moon to somebody else's sun, still less is there any justification for our being moons of one another, and hence darkness to one another, not one of us being a true sun. Thomas Merton echoes moon wisdom Everybody has an instinctive desire to do good things and avoid evil. But that desire is sterile as long as we have no experience of what it means to be good. Thomas Merton evil long mean The world as pure object is something that is not there. It is not a reality outside us for which we exist....It is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself, my own unique door. Thomas Merton unique responsibility wisdom People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular- and too lazy to think of anything better. Thomas Merton lazy people thinking The whole function of the life of prayer is, then, to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows and perceives the outward, written precepts of the moral and divine laws, but above all lives God's law in concrete reality by perfect and continual union with His will. Thomas Merton wisdom prayer reality The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a simple and individual response to reality, and even a tendency to moments of thoughtful silence and absorption. All these tendencies, however, are soon destroyed by the dominant culture. The child becomes a yelling, brash, false little monster, brandishing a toy gun or dressed up like some character he has seen on television. Thomas Merton character children reality
