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See, See Who God Is, See The Glory Of God, Going Up To Him Out Of This Incomprehensible And Infinite Sacrifice In Which All History Begins And Ends, All Individual Lives Begin And End, In Which Every Story Is Told, And Finished, And Settled For Joy Or For Sorrow: The One Point Of Reference For All The Truths That Are Outside Of God, Their Center, Their Focus: Love.

-Thomas Merton

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See, See Who God

Thomas Merton

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See, See Who God Is, See The Glory Of God, Going Up To Him Out Of This Incomprehensible And Infinite Sacrifice In Which All History Begins And Ends, All Individual Lives Begin And End, In Which Every Story Is Told, And Finished, And Settled For Joy Or For Sorrow: The One Point Of Reference For All The Truths That Are Outside Of God, Their Center, Their Focus: Love.

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Duty Does Not Have To Be Dull. Love Can Make It Beautiful And Fill It With Life.

One Of The First Things To Learn If You Want To Be A Contemplative Is To Mind Your Own Business. Nothing Is More Suspicious, In A Man Who Seems Holy, Than An Impatient Desire To Reform Other Men.

Mind Your Own Business

We Must Slow Down To A Human Tempo And We’ll Begin To Have Time To Listen.

Happiness Is Not A Matter Of Intensity But Of Balance And Order And Rhythm And Harmony.

To Hope Is To Risk Frustration. Make Up Your Mind To Risk Frustration.

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.

Do Not Depend On The Hope Of Results. You May Have To Face The Fact That Your Work Will Be Apparently Worthless And Even Achieve No Result At All, If Not Perhaps Results Opposite To What You Expect. As You Get Used To This Idea, You Start More And More To Concentrate Not On The Results, But On The Value, The Rightness, The Truth Of The Work Itself. You Gradually Struggle Less And Less For An Idea And More And More For Specific People. In The End, It Is The Reality Of Personal Relationship That Saves Everything.

What Is 'grace'? It Is God's Own Life, Shared By Us. God's Life Is Love. Deus Caritas Est. By Grace We Are Able To Share In The Infinitely Selfless Love Of Him Who Is Such Pure Actuality That He Needs Nothing And Therefore Cannot Conceivably Exploit Anything For Selfish Ends. Indeed, Outside Of Him There Is Nothing, And Whatever Exists Exists By His Free Gift Of Its Being, So That One Of The Notions That Is Absolutely Contradictory To The Perfection Of God Is Selfishness.

All Men Who Live Only According To Their Five Senses, And Seek Nothing Beyond The Gratification Of Their Natural Appetites For Pleasure And Reputation And Power, Cut Themselves Off From That Charity Which Is The Principle Of All Spiritual Vitality And Happiness Because It Alone Saves Us From The Barren Wilderness Of Our Own Abominable Selfishness.

Be Still: There Is No Longer Any Need Of Comment. It Was A Lucky Wind That Blew Away His Halo With His Cares, A Lucky Sea That Drowned His Reputation.

I Came With The Notion Of Perhaps Saying Something For Monks And To Monks Of All Religions Because I Am Supposed To Be A Monk. ... My Dear Brothers, We Are Already One. But We Imagine That We Are Not. And What We Have To Recover Is Our Original Unity. What We Have To Be Is What We Are

If There Was No Other Proof Of The Infinite Patience Of God, A Very Good One Could Be Found In His Toleration Of The Pictures That Are Painted Of Him.

Our Job Is To Love Others Without Stopping To Inquire Whether Or Not They Are Worthy. That Is Not Our Business And, In Fact, It Is Nobody's Business. What We Are Asked To Do Is To Love, And This Love Itself Will Render Both Ourselves And Our Neighbors Worthy.

Imagination Has The Creative Task Of Making Symbols, Joining Things Together In Such A Way That They Throw New Light On Each Other And On Everything Around Them. The Imagination Is A Discovering Faculty, A Faculty For Seeing Relationships, For Seeing Meanings That Are Special And Even Quite New.

The Meaning Of Life Is Found In Openness To Being And "being Present" In Full Awareness.

God Must Be Allowed The Right To Speak Unpredictably.... We Must Find Him In Our Enemy, Or We May Lose Him Even In Our Friend. We Must Find Him In The Pagan Or We Will Lose Him In Our Own Selves, Substituting For His Living Presence An Empty Abstraction.

It Is True That We Are Called To Create A Better World. But We Are First Of All Called To A More Immediate And Exalted Task: That Of Creating Our Own Lives.

Because Of Their Enmity You Will Be Left Alone. They Will Cast You Out And Forsake You.

Grains Of Error Planted Innocently In A Well-kept Greenhouse Can Become Giant Poisonous Trees.

The Deepest Level Of Communication Is Not Communication, But Communion. It Is Wordless. It Is Beyond Words, And It Is Beyond Speech, And It Is Beyond Concept. Not That We Discover A New Unity. We Discover An Older Unity. My Dear Brothers [and Sisters], We Are Already One. But We Imagine That We Are Not. And What We Have To Recover Is Our Original Unity. What We Have To Be Is What We Are.

The Selfishness Of An Age That Has Devoted Itself To The Mere Cult Of Pleasure Has Tainted The Whole Human Race With An Error That Makes All Our Acts More Or Less Lies Against God.

To Consider Persons And Events And Situations Only In The Light Of Their Effect On Me Is To Live On The Doorstep Of Hell. Selfishness Is Doomed To Frustration Centered As It Is Upon A Lie. To Live Exclusively For Myself, I Must Make All Things Bend Themselves To My Will As If I Were A God.

Each Individual Christian And Each New Age Of The Church Has To Make This Rediscovery, This Return To The Source Of Christian Life.

The Degradation Of The Sense Of Symbol In Modern Society Is One Of Its Many Signs Of Spiritual Decay.

Peace Demands The Most Heroic Labor And The Most Difficult Sacrifice. It Demands Greater Heroism Than War. It Demands Greater Fidelity To The Truth And A Much More Perfect Purity Of Conscience.

To Allow Oneself To Be Carried Away By A Multitude Of Conflicting Concerns, To Surrender To Too Many Demands, To Commit Oneself To Too Many Projects, To Want To Help Everyone In Everything, Is To Succumb To The Violence Of Our Times.

The Silence Of The Forest Is My Bride And The Sweet Dark Warmth Of The Whole World Is My Love, And Out Of The Heart Of That Dark Warmth Comes The Secret That Is Heard Only In Silence, But It Is The Root Of All The Secrets That Are Whispered By All The Lovers In Their Beds All Over The World.

Learn How To Meditate On Paper. Drawing And Writing Are Forms Of Meditation. Learn How To Contemplate Works Of Art. Learn How To Pray In The Streets Or In The Country. Know How To Meditate Not Only When You Have A Book In Your Hand But When You Are Waiting For A Bus Or Riding In A Train.

When You Expect The World To End At Any Moment, You Know There Is No Need To Hurry. You Take Your Time, You Do Your Work Well.

Faith Is The Door To The Full Inner Life Of The Church, A Life Which Includes Not Only Access To An Authoritative Teaching But Above All To A Deep Personal Experience Which Is At Once Unique And Yet Shared By The Whole Body Of Christ, In The Spirit Of Christ.

Those Who Think They 'know' From The Beginning Will Never In Fact Come To Know Anything.

For Perfect Hope Is Achieved On The Brink Of Despair, When Instead Of Falling Over The Edge, We Find Ourselves Walking On Air.

We Are Obliged To Love One Another. We Are Not Strictly Bound To 'like' One Another. Love Governs The Will: 'liking' Is A Matter Of Sense And Sensibility. Nevertheless, If We Really Love Others It Will Not Be Too Hard To Like Them Also.

Love One Another

The Biggest Human Temptation Is... To Settle For Too Little.

We Are Not At Peace With Others Because We Are Not At Peace With Ourselves, And We Are Not At Peace With Ourselves Because We Are Not At Peace With God

To Be Ordinary Is Not A Choice: It Is The Usual Freedom Of Men Without Visions.

In The Last Analysis, The Individual Person Is Responsible For Living His Own Life And For 'finding Himself.' If He Persists In Shifting His Responsibility To Somebody Else, He Fails To Find Out The Meaning Of His Own Existence.

Self Improvement

A Man Knows When He Has Found His Vocation When He Stops Thinking About How To Live And Begins To Live.

We Refuse Love, And Reject Society, In So Far As It Seems, In Our Own Perverse Imagination, To Imply Some Obscure Kind Of Humiliation

....it Is Of The Very Essence Of Christianity To Face Suffering And Death Not Because They Are Good, Not Because They Have Meaning, But Because The Resurrection Of Jesus Has Robbed Them Of Their Meaning.

The Man Who Lives In Division Is Living In Death. He Cannot Find Himself Because He Is Lost; He Has Ceased To Be A Reality. The Person He Believes Himself To Be Is A Bad Dream.

Even The Darkest Moments Of The Liturgy Are Filled With Joy, And Ash Wednesday, The Beginning Of The Lenten Fast, Is A Day Of Happiness, A Christian Feast.

Ash Wednesday Is Full Of Joy...the Source Of All Sorrow Is The Illusion That Of Ourselves We Are Anything But Dust.

Self-conquest Is Really Self-surrender. Yet Before We Can Surrender Ourselves We Must Become Ourselves. For No One Can Give Up What He Does Not Possess.

I Will Not Fear, For You Are Ever With Me And You Will Never Leave Me To Face My Perils Alone.

The Only Right Way: To Love And Serve The Man Of The Modern World, But Not Simply To Succumb, With Him, To All His Illusions About The World.

If There Is No Silence Beyond And Within The Many Words Of Doctrine, There Is No Religion, Only A Religious Ideology. For Religion Goes Beyond Words And Actions, And Attains To The Ultimate Truth Only In Silence And Love.

The Whole World Has Risen In Christ... If God Is 'all In All,' Then Everything Is In Fact Paradise, Because It Is Filled With The Glory And Presence Of God, And Nothing Is Any More Separated From God.

A Happiness That Is Sought For Ourselves Alone Can Never Be Found: For A Happiness That Is Diminished By Being Shared Is Not Big Enough To Make Us Happy.

Now Anxiety Is The Mark Of Spiritual Insecurity. It Is The Fruit Of Unanswered Questions. But Questions Cannot Go Unanswered Unless They First Be Asked.

Finally I Am Coming To The Conclusion That My Highest Ambition Is To Be What I Already Am. That I Will Never Fulfill My Obligation To Surpass Myself Unless I First Accept Myself, And If I Accept Myself Fully In The Right Way, I Will Already Have Surpassed Myself.

For Each One Of Us, There Is Only One Thing Necessary: To Fulfill Our Own Destiny, According To God's Will, To Be What God Wants Us To Be.

We Cannot Master Everything, Taste Everything, Understand Everything, Drain Every Experience To Its Last Dregs. But If We Have The Courage To Let Almost Everything Else Go, We Will Probably Be Able To Retain The Thing Necessary For Us-whatever It May Be. If We Are Too Eager To Have Everything, We Will Almost Certainly Miss Even The One Thing We Need

If We Wait For Some People To Become Agreeable Or Attractive Before We Begin To Love Them, We Will Never Begin. If We Are Content To Give Them A Cold Impersonal 'charity' That Is Merely A Matter Of Obligation, We Will Not Trouble To Understand Them Or To Sympathize With Them At All. And In That Case We Will Not Really Love Them, Because Love Implies An Efficacious Will Not Only To Do Good To Others Exteriorly But Also To Find Some Good In Them To Which We Can Respond."

But There Is No Substance Under The Things I Have Gathered Together About Me. I Am Hollow, And My Structure Of Pleasures And Ambitions Has No Foundation. I Am Objectified In Them. But They Are All Destined By Their Very Contingency To Be Destroyed. And When They Are Gone There Will Be Nothing Left Of Me But My Own Nakedness And Emptiness And Hollowness, To Tell Me That I Am A Mistake.

Anxiety Is The Mark Of Spiritual Insecurity.

Pride Makes Us Artificial And Humility Makes Us Real.

God Utters Me Like A Word Containing A Partial Thought Of Him. A Word Will Never Be Able To Comprehend The Voice That Utters It. But If I Am True To The Concept That God Utters In Me, If I Am True To The Thought Of Him That I Was Meant To Embody, I Shall Be Full Of His Actuality And Find Him Everywhere In Myself, And Find Myself Nowhere.

People Have No Idea What One Saint Can Do: For Sanctity Is Stronger Than The Whole Of Hell.

Pardon All Runners, All Speechless, Alien Winds, All Mad Waters. Pardon Their Impulses, Their Wild Attitudes, Their Young Flights, Their Reticence. When A Message Has No Clothes On How Can It Be Spoken.

In The Spiritual Life There Is No Such Thing As An Indifference To Love Or Hate.

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.

He Who Hopes In God Trusts God, Whom He Never Sees, To Bring Him To The Possession Of Things That Are Beyond Imagination.

In All His Acts God Orders All Things, Whether Good Or Evil, For The Good Of Those Who Know Him And Seek Him And Who Strive To Bring Their Own Freedom Under Obedience To His Divine Purpose. All That Is Done By The Will Of God In Secret Is Done For His Glory And For The Good Of Those Whom He Has Chosen To Share In His Glory.

A Purely Mental Life May Be Destructive If It Leads Us To Substitute Thought For Life And Ideas For Actions. The Activity Proper To Man Is Purely Mental Because Man Is Not Just A Disembodied Mind. Our Destiny Is To Live Out What We Think, Because Unless We Live What We Know, We Do Not Even Know It. It Is Only By Making Our Knowledge Part Of Ourselves, Through Action, That We Enter Into The Reality That Is Signified By Our Concepts.

The Illusion That Mechanical Progress Means Human Improvement ... Alienates Us From Our Own Being And Our Own Reality. It Is Precisely Because We Are Convinced That Our Life, As Such, Is Better If We Have A Better Car, A Better Tv Set, Better Toothpaste, Etc., That We Condemn And Destroy Our Own Reality And The Reality Of Our Natural Resources. Technology Was Made For Man, Not Man For Technology. In Losing Touch With Being And Thus With God, We Have Fallen Into A Senseless Idolatry Of Production And Consumption For Their Own Sakes.

To Some Men Peace Merely Means The Liberty To Exploit Other People Without Fear Of Retaliation Or Interference. To Others Peace Means The Freedom To Rob Others Without Interruption. To Still Others It Means The Leisure To Devour The Goods Of The Earth Without Being Compelled To Interrupt Their Pleasures To Feed Those Whom Their Greed Is Starving. And To Practically Everybody Peace Simply Means The Absence Of Any Physical Violence That Might Cast A Shadow Over Lives Devoted To The Satisfaction Of Their Animal Appetites For Comfort And Pleasure.

There Is Only One Problem On Which All My Existence, My Peace, My Happiness Depend: To Discover Myself In Discovering God. If I Find Him I Will Find Myself And If I Find My True Self I Will Find Him.

There Is In All Visible Things An Invisible Fecundity, A Dimmed Light, A Meek Namelessness, A Hidden Wholeness.

Love Winter When The Plant Says Nothing.

There Is No Greater Disaster In The Spiritual Life Than To Be Immersed In Unreality, For Life Is Maintained And Nourished In Us By Our Vital Relation With Realities Outside And Above Us.

I Would Call The Attention Of The Reader To The Difference Between "reason" And "reasoning." Reason Is A Light, Reasoning A Process. Reason Is A Faculty, Reasoning An Exercise Of That Faculty. Reasoning Proceeds From One Truth To Another By Means Of Argumentation. This Generally Involves The Whole Mind In Labor And Complexity. But Reason Does Not Exist Merely In Order To Engage In Reasoning. The Process Is A Means To An End. The True Fulfillment Of Reason As A Faculty Is Found When It Can Embrace The Truth Simply And Without Labor In The Light Of Single Intuition.

What Do I Mean By Loving Ourselves Properly? I Mean First Of All, Desiring To Live, Accepting Life As A Very Great Gift And A Great Good, Not Because Of What It Gives Us, But Because Of What It Enables Us To Give To Others.

What I Wear Is Pants. What I Do Is Live. How I Pray Is Breathe.

The Closer We Are To God, The Closer We Are To Those Who Are Close To Him.

I Suppose What Makes Me Most Glad Is That We All Recognize Each Other In This Metaphysical Space Of Silence And Happening, And Get Some Sense, For A Moment, That We Are Full Of Paradise Without Knowing It.

True Encounter With Christ Liberates Something In Us, A Power We Did Not Know We Had, A Hope, A Capacity For Life, A Resilience, An Ability To Bounce Back When We Thought We Were Completely Defeated, A Capacity To Grow And Change, A Power Of Creative Transformation.

Meditation Is One Of The Ways In Which The Spiritual Man Keeps Himself Awake.

The Grateful Person Knows That God Is Good, Not By Hearsay But By Experience. And That Is What Makes All The Difference.

We Do Not Exist For Ourselves.

Humility Sets Us Free To Do What Is Really Good, By Showing Us Our Illusions And Withdrawing Our Will From What Was Only An Apparent Good.

Our Knowledge Of God Is Perfected By Gratiitude: We Are Thankful And Rejoice In The Experience Of The Truth That He Is Love.

Knowledge Of God

The Desire To Kill Is Like The Desire To Attack Another With An Ingot Of Red -hot Iron: I Have To Pick Up The Incandescent Metal And Burn My Own Hand While Burning The Other. Hate Itself Is The Seed Of Death In My Own Heart, While It Seeks The Death Of The Other.

I Believe That The Desire To Please You Does In Fact Please You.

Art Is Not An End In Itself. It Introduces The Soul Into A Higher Spiritual Order, Which It Expresses And In Some Sense Explains.

I Shall Lead You Through The Loneliness, The Solitude You Will Not Understand; But It Is My Shortcut To Your Soul.

The Bible Is Not Primarily A Written Or Printed Text To Be Scrutinized In Private, In A Scholar's Study Or A Contemplative Cell. It Is A Body Of Oral Messages, Announcements, Prophecies, Promulgations, Recitals, Histories, Songs Of Praise, Lamentations, Etc., Which Are Meant Either To Be Uttered Or At Least Read Aloud, Or Chanted, Or Sung, Or Recited In A Community Convoked For The Purpose Of A Living Celebration.

You Are Made In The Image Of What You Desire.

Spiritual Awakening

It Is In Deep Solitude And Silence That I Find The Gentleness With Which I Can Truly Love My Brother And Sister.

Love Is The Door To Eternity.

But Precisely This Illusion That Everything Is "clear" Is What Is Blinding Us All. It Is A Serious Temptation, And It Is A Subtle Form Of Pride And Worldly Love Of Power And Revenge.

To Be A Saint Is To Be Yourself.

Do Not Look For Rest In Any Pleasure, Because You Were Not Created For Pleasure: You Were Created For Joy. And If You Do Not Know The Difference Between Pleasure And Joy You Have Not Yet Begun To Live.

Prayer Is An Expression Of Who We Are...we Are A Living Incompleteness. We Are A Gap, An Emptiness That Calls For Fulfillment.

Modern Man Believes He Is Fruitful And Productive When His Ego Is Aggressively Affirmed, When He Is Visibly Active, And When His Action Produces Obvious Results.

The Simplest And Most Effective Way To Sanctity Is To Disappear Into The Background Of Ordinary Every Day Routine.

Not All Of Us Are Called To Be Hermits, But All Of Us Need Enough Silence And Solitude In Our Lives To Enable The Deeper Voice Of Our Own Self To Be Heard At Least Occasionally.

The Only Influence That Can Really Upset The Injustice And Iniquity Of Men Is The Power That Breathes In The Christian Tradition, Renewing Our Participation In The Life That Is The Light Of Men.

Keeping A Journal Has Taught Me That There Is Not So Much New In Your Life As You Sometimes Think. When You Re-read Your Journal You Find Out That Your Latest Discovery Is Something You Already Found Out Five Years Ago. Still, It Is True That One Penetrates Deeper And Deeper Into The Same Ideas And The Same Experiences.

Life Reveals Itself To Us Only In So Far As Well Live It.

Contemplative Living Is Living In True Relationship With Oneself, God, Others And Nature, Free Of The Illusions Of Separateness.

True Relationship

To Consider Persons And Events And Situations Only In The Light Of Their Effect Upon Myself Is To Live On The Doorstep Of Hell.

A Man Can Radically Change His Life And Attain To A Deeper Meaning, A More Perfect Integration, A More Complete Fulfillment, A More Total Liberty Of Spirit Than Are Possible In The Routines Of A Purely Active Existence Centered On Money-making.

I Stand Among You As One Who Offers A Small Message Of Hope. . . There Are Always People Who Dare To Seek On The Margin Of Society, Who Are Not Dependent On Social Acceptance, Not Dependent On Social Routine, And Prefer A Kind Of Free-floating Existence Under A State Of Risk.

Love Is Not A Mere Emotion Or Sentiment. It Is The Lucid And Ardent Responses Of The Whole Person To A Value That Is Revealed To Him As Perfect.

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.

The Whole Idea Of Compassion Is Based On A Keen Awareness Of The Interdependence Of All These Living Beings, Which Are All Part Of One Another, And All Involved In One Another.

It Is A Glorious Destiny To Be A Member Of The Human Race, Now I Realize What We All Are . If Only They [people] Could All See Themselves As They Really Are I Suppose The Big Problem Would Be That We Would Fall Down And Worship Each Other At The Center Of Our Being Is A Point Of Nothingness Which Is Untouched By Sin And By Illusions, A Point Of Pure Truth This Little Point Is The Pure Glory Of God In Us. It Is In Everybody.

No Writing On The Solitary, Meditative Dimensions Of Life Can Say Anything That Has Not Already Been Said Better By The Wind In The Pine Trees.

Each One Of Us Has Some Kind Of Vocation. We Are All Called By God To Share In His Life And In His Kingdom. Each One Of Us Is Called To A Special Place In The Kingdom. If We Find That Place We Will Be Happy. If We Do Not Find It, We Can Never Be Completely Happy. For Each One Of Us, There Is Only One Thing Necessary: To Fulfill Our Own Destiny, According To God's Will, To Be What God Wants Us To Be.

Love Is An Intensification Of Life.

Why Do We Have To Spend Our Lives Striving To Be Something That We Would Never Want To Be, If We Only Knew What We Wanted? Why Do We Waste Our Time Doing Things Which... Are Just The Opposite Of What We Were Made For?

Our Real Journey In Life Is Interior.

The Mission Of Christian Humility In Social Life Is Not Merely To Edify, But To Keep Minds Open To Many Alternatives. The Rigidity Of A Certain Type Of Christian Thought Has Seriously Impaired This Capacity, Which Nonviolence Must Recover.

We Are Not Converted Only Once In Our Lives But Many Times And This Endless Series Of Conversions And Inner Revolutions Leads To Our Transformation.

The Root Of War Is Fear.

Reason Is In Fact The Path To Faith, And Faith Takes Over When Reason Can Say No More.

Be Good, Keep Your Feet Dry, Your Eyes Open, Your Heart At Peace And Your Soul In The Joy Of Christ.

Solitude Is Not Something You Must Hope For In The Future. Rather, It Is A Deepening Of The Present, And Unless You Look For It In The Present You Will Never Find It.

I Am Willing To Admit That Some People Might Live There For Years, Or Even A Lifetime, So Protected That They Never Sense The Sweet Stench Of Corruption That Is All Around Them - The Keen, Thin Scent Of Decay That Pervades Everything And Accuses With A Terrible Accusation The Superficial Youthfulness, The Abounding Undergraduate Noise, That Fills Those Ancient Buildings.

Love Not Only Prefers The Good Of Another To My Own, But It Does Not Even Compare The Two.

His Justice Is The Love That Gives To Each One Of His Creatures The Gifts That His Mercy Has Previously Decreed. And His Mercy Is His Love, Doing Justice To Its Own Exigencies, And Renewing The Gift Which We Had Failed To Accept.

To Worship Our False Selves Is To Worship Nothing. And The Worship Of Nothing Is Hell.

Souls Are Like Athletes, That Need Opponents Worthy Of Them, If They Are To Be Tried And Extended And Pushed To The Full Use Of Their Powers, And Rewarded According To Their Capacity.

In The End, It's The Reality Of Personal Realtionships That Save Everything.

The Holy Spirit Is The Most Perfect Gift Of The Father To Men, And Yet He Is The One Gift Which The Father Gives Most Easily.

The Danger Of Education, I Have Found, Is That It So Easily Confuses Means With Ends. Worse Than That, It Quite Easily Forgets Both And Devotes Itself Merely To The Mass Production Of Uneducated Gradtuates - People Literaly Unfit For Anything Except To Take Part In An Elaborate And Completely Artificial Charade Which They And Their Contemporaries Have Conspired To Call "life".

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.

We Cannot Achieve Greatness Unless We Lose All Interest In Being Great.

The Center Of Our Being Is A Point Of Nothingness Which Is Untouched By Sin And By Illusion, A Point Of Pure Truth.

Finally I Am Coming To The Conclusion That My Highest Ambition Is To Be What I Already I Am.

The Real Hope Is Not In Something We Think We Can Do, But In God, Who Is Making Something Good Out Of It In Some Way We Cannot See.

A Faith That Is Afraid Of Other People Is No Faith At All.

Business Is Not The Supreme Virtue, And Sanctity Is Not Measured By The Amount Of Work We Accomplish. Perfection Is Found In The Purity Of Our Love For God, And This Pure Love Is A Delicate Plant That Grows Best Where There Is Plenty Of Time For It To Mature

In An Age Where There Is Much Talk About "being Yourself," I Reserve To Myself The Right To Forget About Being Myself, Since In Any Case There Is Very Little Chance Of My Being Anybody Else.

Then It Was As If I Suddenly Saw The Secret Beauty Of Their Hearts, The Depths Of Their Hearts Where Neither Sin Nor Desire Nor Self-knowledge Can Reach, The Core Of Their Reality, The Person That Each One Is In God's Eyes. If Only They Could See Themselves As They Really Are. If Only We Could See Each Other That Way All The Time, There Would Be No More War, No More Hatred, No More Cruelty, No More Greed . . . I Suppose The Big Problem Would Be That We Would Fall Down And Worship Each Other.

It Is By Desiring To Grow In Love That We Receive The Holy Spirit, And The Thirst For More Charity Is The Effect Of This More Abundant Reception.

God Has Left Sin In The World In Order That There May Be Forgiveness: Not Only The Secret Forgiveness By Which He Himself Cleanses Our Souls, But The Manifest Forgiveness By Which We Have Mercy On One Another And So Give Expression To The Fact That He Is Living, By His Mercy, In Our Own Hearts.

We Are Living In A World That Is Absolutely Transparent And God Is Shining Through It All The Time. God Manifests Himself Everywhere, In Everything - In People And In Things And In Nature And In Events ... The Only Thing Is We Don't See It ... I Have No Program For This Seeing. It Is Only Given. But The Gate Of Heaven Is Everywhere.

When We Are Strong, We Are Always Much Greater Than The Things That Happen To Us.

Do Not Be One Of Those Who, Rather Than Risk Failure, Never Attempts Anything.

The Monk In Hiding Himself From The World Becomes Not Less Than Himself, Not Less Of A Person, But More Of A Person, More Truly And Perfectly Himself: For His Personality And Individuality Are Perfected In Their True Order, The Spiritual, Interior Order.

When I Pray For Peace, I Pray Not Only That The Enemies Of My Own Country May Cease To Want War, But Above All That My Country Will Cease To Do The Things That Make War Inevitable.

We Assume That Others Are Receiving The Kind Of Appreciation We Want For Ourselves, And We Proceed On The Assumption That Since We Are Not Loveable As We Are, We Must Become Lovable Under False Pretenses, As If We Were Something Better Than We Are.

In The Devil's Theology, The Important Thing Is To Be Absolutely Right And To Prove That Everybody Else Is Absolutely Wrong.

I Have Learned That One Cannot Truly Know Hope Unless He Has Found Out How Like Despair Hope Is.

The Reality That Is Present To Us And In Us: Call It Being...silence. And The Simple Fact That By Being Attentive, By Learning To Listen (or Recovering The Natural Capacity To Listen) We Can Find Ourself Engulfed In Such Happiness That It Cannot Be Explained: The Happiness Of Being At One With Everything In That Hidden Ground Of Love For Which There Can Be No Explanations.... 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.

To Be Alone By Being Part Of The Universe-fitting In Completely To An Environment Of Woods And Silence And Peace. Everything You Do Becomes A Unity And A Prayer. Unity Within And Without.

Yet It Is In This Loneliness That The Deepest Activities Begin. It Is Here That You Discover Act Without Motion, Labor That Is Profound Repose, Vision In Obscurity, And, Beyond All Desire, A Fulfillment Whose Limits Extend To Infinity.

The Biggest Disease In North America Is Busyness.

Actions Are The Doors And Windows Of Being. Unless We Act, We Have No Way Of Knowing What We Are.

The Art Of Our Time, Sacred Art Included, Will Necessarily Be Characterized By A Certain Poverty, Grimness And Roughness Which Correspond To The Violent Realities Of A Cruel Age.

We Thank Him Less By Words Than By The Serene Happiness Of Silent Acceptance. It Is Our Emptiness In The Presence Of His Reality, Our Silence In The Presence Of His Infinitely Rich Silence, Our Joy In The Bosom Of The Serene Darkness In Which His Light Holds Us Absorbed, It Is All This That Praises Him.

But It Certainly Is A Wonderful Thing To Wake Up Suddenly In The Solitude Of The Woods And Look Up At The Sky And See The Utter Nonsense Of Everything Including All The Solemn Stuff Given Out By Professional Asses About The Spiritual Life; And Simply To Burst Out Laughing, And Laugh And Laugh, With The Sky And The Trees Because God Is Not In Words, And Not In Systems, And Not In Liturgical Movements, And Not In "contemplation" With A Big "c," Or In Asceticism Or In Anything Like That, Not Even In The Apostolate.

I Will No Longer Wound Myself With The Thoughts And Questions That Have Surrounded Me Like Thorns: That Is A Penance You Do Not Ask Of Me.

Conscience Is The Light By Which We Interpret The Will Of God In Our Own Lives.

The Sky Is My Prayer, The Birds Are My Prayer, The Wind In The Trees Is My Prayer, For God Is All In All.

... Nothing Resembles Reality Less Than The Photograph. Nothing Resembles Substance Less Than Its Shadow. To Convey The Meaning Of Something Substantial You Have To Use Not A Shadow But A Sign, Not The Limitation But The Image. The Image Is A New And Different Reality, And Of Course It Does Not Convey An Impression Of Some Object, But The Mind Of The Subject; And That Is Something Else Again.

Our Real Journey In Life Is Interior; It Is A Matter Of Growth, Deepening, And Of An Ever Greater Surrender To The Creative Action Of Love And Grace In Our Hearts. Never Was It More Necessary To Respond To That Action.

My Lord God, I Have No Idea Where I Am Going. I Do Not See The Road Ahead Of Me...you Will Lead Me By The Right Road, Though I May Know Nothing About It. Therefore I Will Trust You Always Though I May Seem To Be Lost And In The Shadow Of Death. I Will Not Fear, For You Are Ever With Me, And You Will Never Leave Me To Face My Perils Alone.

Shadow Of Death

Prayer Is Not So Much A Way To Find God As A Way Of Resting In Him...who Loves Us, Who Is Near To Us.

Before We Can Realize Who We Really Are, We Must Become Conscious Of The Fact That The Person We Think We Are, Here And Now, Is At Best An Impostor And A Stranger.

But The Man Who Is Not Afraid To Admit Everything That He Sees To Be Wrong With Himself, And Yet Recognizes That He May Be The Object Of God's Love Precisely Because Of His Shortcomings, Can Begin To Be Sincere. His Sincerity Is Based On Confidence, Not In His Own Illusions About Himself, But In The Endless, Unfailing Mercy Of God.

Every Man Has A Vocation To Be Someone: But He Must Understand Clearly That In Order To Fulfill This Vocation He Can Only Be One Person: Himself.

Music And Art And Poetry Attune The Soul To God.

Saints Are What They Are Not Because Their Sanctity Makes Them Admirable To Others, But Because The Gift Of Sainthood Makes It Possible For Them To Admire Everyone Else.

A Bad Book About The Love Of God Remains A Bad Book.

How Can I Be Sincere If I Am Constantly Changing My Mind To Conform With The Shadow Of What I Think Others Expect Of Me?

To Serve The God Of Love One Must Be Free, One Must Face The Terrible Responsibility Of The Decision To Love In Spite Of All Unworthiness Whether In Oneself Or In One's Neighbor.

The Rush And Pressure Of Modern Life Are A Form, Perhaps The Most Common Form, Of Contemporary Violence. To Allow Oneself To Be Carried Away By A Multitude Of Conflicting Concerns, To Surrender To Too Many Demands, To Commit Oneself To Too Many Projects, To Want To Help Everyone In Everything, Is To Succumb To Violence. The Frenzy Of Our Activity Neutralizes Our Work For Peace. It Destroys Our Own Inner Capacity For Peace. It Destroys The Fruitfulness Of Our Own Work, Because It Kills The Root Of Inner Wisdom Which Makes Work Fruitful.

The Fruitfulness Of Our Lives Depends In Large Measure In Our Ability To Doubt Our Own Words And To Question The Value Of Our Own Work. The Man Who Completely Trusts His Own Estimate Of Himself Is Doomed To Sterility.

The Land Which Thou Goest To Possess Is Not Like The Land Of Egypt From Whence Thou Camest Out... For My Thoughts Are Not Your Thoughts, Nor Your Ways My Ways, Saith The Lord...seek The Lord While He May Be Found, Call Upon Him While He Is Near...why Do You Spend Money For That Which Is Not Bread And Your Labor For That Which Doth Not Satisfy You?

Every Moment And Every Event Of Everyman's Life On Earth Plants Something In His Soul. For Just As The Wind Carries Thousands Of Winged Seeds, So Each Moment Brings With It Germs Of Spiritual Vitality That Come To Rest Imperceptibly In The Minds And Wills Of Men.

It Is The Will Of God That We Live Not Only As Rational Beings, But As "new Men" Regenerated By The Holy Spirit In Christ. It Is His Will That We Reach Out For Our Inheritance, That We Answer His Call To Be His Sons. We Are Born Men Without Our Consent, But The Consent To Be Sons Of God Has To Be Elicited By Our Own Free Will.

How Deluded We Sometimes Are By The Clear Notions We Get Out Of Books. They Make Us Think That We Really Understand Things Of Which We Have No Practical Knowledge At All.

Love Is Our True Destiny.

Our Whole Life Is A Meditation Of Our Last Decision - The Only Decision That Matters.

Contemplation In The Age Of Auschwitz And Dachau, Solovky And Karaganda Is Something Darker And More Fearsome Than Contemplation In The Age Of The Church Fathers. For That Very Reason, The Urge To Seek A Path Of Spiritual Light Can Be A Subtle Temptation To Sin. It Certainly Is Sin If It Means A Frank Rejection Of The Burden Of Our Age, An Escape Into Unreality And Spiritual Illusion, So As Not To Share The Misery Of Other Men.

Sincerity Must Be Bought At A Price: The Humility To Recognize Our Innumerable Errors, And Fidelity In Tirelessly Setting Them Right.

Since No Man Ever Can, Or Could, Live By Himself And For Himself Alone, The Destinies Of Thousands Of Other People Were Bound To Be Affected, Some Remotely, But Some Very Directly And Near-at-hand, By My Own Choices And Decisions And Desires, As My Own Life Would Also Be Formed And Modified According To Theirs.

The Christian Life, And Especially The Contemplative Life, Is A Continual Discovery Of Christ In New And Unexpected Places.

Contemplative Life

It Is In Deep Solitude That I Find The Gentleness With Which I Can Truly Love My Brothers. The More Solitary I Am, The More Affection I Have For Them. It Is Pure Affection, And Filled With Reverance For The Solitude Of Others. Solitude And Silence Teach Me To Love My Brothers For What They Are, Not For What They Say.

Our Vocation Is Not Simply To Be, But To Work Together With God In The Creation Of Our Own Life, Our Own Identity, Our Own Destiny....to Work Out Our Identity In God.

Let Me Rest In Your Will And Be Silent. Then The Light Of Your Joy Will Warm My Life. Its Fire Will Burn In My Heart And Shine For Your Glory. This Is What I Live For. Amen, Amen.

I Myself Am Part Of The Weather And Part Of The Climate And Part Of The Place … It Is Certainly Part Of My Life Of Prayer.

Nothing Has Ever Been Said About God That Hasn't Already Been Said Better By The Wind In The Pine Trees.

We Stumble And Fall Constantly, Even When We Are Most Enlightened.

There Is In All Visible Things An Invisible Fecundity, A Dimmed Light, A Meek Namelessness, A Hidden Wholeness. This Mysterious Unity And Integrity Is Wisdom, The Mother Of Us All, "natura Naturans." There Is In All Things An Inexhaustible Sweetness And Purity, A Silence That Is A Fountain Of Action And Joy. It Rises Up In Wordless Gentleness, And Flows Out To Me From The Unseen Roots Of All Created Being.

Happiness That Is Sought For Ourselves Alone Can Never Be Found.

The Only Thing To Seek In Contemplative Prayer Is God; And We Seek Him Successfully When We Realize That We Cannot Find Him Unless He Shows Himself To Us, And Yet At The Same Time That He Would Not Have Inspired Us To Seek Him Unless We Had Already Found Him.

Take More Time, Cover Less Ground.

We Cannot Arrive At The Perfect Possession Of God In This Life, And That Is Why We Are Travelling 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!

Life Is Not Accomplishing Some Special Work But Attaining To A Degree Of Consciousness And Inner Freedom Which Is Beyond All Works And Attainments.

Technology Is Not In Itself Opposed To Spirituality And To Religion. But It Presents A Great Temptation.

It Is In The Ordinary Duties And Labors Of Life That The Christian Can And Should Develop His Spiritual Union With God.

The Silence Of The Spheres Is The Music Of A Wedding Feast. The More We Persist In Misunderstanding The Phenomena Of Life, The More We Analyze Them Out Into Strange Finalities And Complex Purposes Of Our Own, The More We Involve Ourselves In Sadness. But It Does Not Matter Much Because No Despair Of Ours Can Alter The Reality Of Things, Or Stain The Joy Of The Cosmic Dance Which Is Always There.

If We Are To Love Sincerely, And With Simplicity, We Must First Of All Overcome The Fear Of Not Being Loved.

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.

The Greatest Temptations Are Not Those That Solicit Our Consent To Obvious Sin, But Those That Offer Us Great Evils Masking As The Greatest Goods.

You Cannot Be A Man Of Faith Unless You Know How To Doubt.

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