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Thomas Merton wroteThe Silent Life a decade after he took orders. In his Prologue, Merton describes the book as "a meditation on the monastic life by one who, without any merit of his own, is privileged to know that life on the inside . . . who seeks only to speak as the mouthpiece of a tradition centuries old." It is a remarkable work-one that combines a lucid and informative description of the nature and forms of monasticism, communal and solitary, with a passionate defense of the contemplative's quest for God. The intensebeauty of Merton's meditation, radiating from beneath its surface calm, makesThe Silent Life a classic of its kind.… (plus d'informations)
Beautiful, insightful little book on the nature of Christian monasticism. Wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked up this book on a whim from my local used book store, other than a dim awareness that Merton wasn’t your typical “Christian” writer. What I found was a book that is partially an explanation of the principles that underlie the monk’s way of life, partially a description of how these principles manifest in various monastic orders.
Even as a non Christian, I could still see the universal significance of the ideas Merton writes about. This is probably because Merton is concerned not only with dogma and liturgy, but how true adherence to the principles of Christian faith manifest in the real world, and how our society as it stands has fallen so far from those principles. You know you are dealing with a real one when Merton decries the way the “totalitarians” and “capitalists” have deformed modern man, or how a monk that pretends to mere bourgeois values can never reach true spiritual purity. Merton recognizes that society as it stands is lacking, and is unsustainable in the long term. The monastic life provides not only the conditions for a closer relationship with god, but also a model for the way man can organize his relationship with his environment, his tools, his work, and his fellow human beings. A monk shares in the work of the cloister, never slacking but also always allowing for plenty of time for contemplation and rest. Mutual aid is a requirement of the communal like style in the cloister, but a monk must always respect the solitude and space of another. A monk is encouraged to take up a creative exploit and devote time to its mastery. A monk lives simply and without extraneous things; the possessions he does own, he treats with the care and dignity befitting tools made to do God’s work.
One might see the monastic lifestyle as meaningless asceticism, a wholesale denial of a big part of what it means to be human; Merton would argue (I think convincingly) that the excision of all unnecessary things makes space for the sliver of human existence that truly makes a life significant, a sliver that has all but been buried by the modern world. ( )
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
Prologue - What Is A Monk? A monk is a man who has been called by the Holy Spirit to relinquish the cares, desires and ambitions of other men, and devote his entire life to seeking God.
Citations
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
Purity of heart, perfect love, is the beginning of unity within the monk himself. Delivered from illusions and selfish projects, saved from the painful necessity to serve his own inexorable will, the monk begins to see how sweet is the yoke of Christ's service and how light is the burden of divine liberty! His eyes are open, and he begins for the first time to see himself, and other men as they are. No longer bound to satisfy his own whims and appetites first of all, he finds that all things bring him joy and happiness because he tastes them in the freedom of the sons of God. That is to say he can use them without belonging to them, and have them without being their slave.
Derniers mots
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
That is why it is important for the monk, above all, to be what he is called, a monk, a solitary, a man made "lonely" by his detachment from all things. But in the loneliness of his detachment he has a far higher vocation to charity than anyone else. For he who has left all things possesses all things, he who has left all men dwells in them all by the charity of Christ, and he who has left even himself for the love of God is capable of working for the salvation of his fellow-man with the irresistible power of God Himself.
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Thomas Merton wroteThe Silent Life a decade after he took orders. In his Prologue, Merton describes the book as "a meditation on the monastic life by one who, without any merit of his own, is privileged to know that life on the inside . . . who seeks only to speak as the mouthpiece of a tradition centuries old." It is a remarkable work-one that combines a lucid and informative description of the nature and forms of monasticism, communal and solitary, with a passionate defense of the contemplative's quest for God. The intensebeauty of Merton's meditation, radiating from beneath its surface calm, makesThe Silent Life a classic of its kind.
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Even as a non Christian, I could still see the universal significance of the ideas Merton writes about. This is probably because Merton is concerned not only with dogma and liturgy, but how true adherence to the principles of Christian faith manifest in the real world, and how our society as it stands has fallen so far from those principles. You know you are dealing with a real one when Merton decries the way the “totalitarians” and “capitalists” have deformed modern man, or how a monk that pretends to mere bourgeois values can never reach true spiritual purity. Merton recognizes that society as it stands is lacking, and is unsustainable in the long term. The monastic life provides not only the conditions for a closer relationship with god, but also a model for the way man can organize his relationship with his environment, his tools, his work, and his fellow human beings. A monk shares in the work of the cloister, never slacking but also always allowing for plenty of time for contemplation and rest. Mutual aid is a requirement of the communal like style in the cloister, but a monk must always respect the solitude and space of another. A monk is encouraged to take up a creative exploit and devote time to its mastery. A monk lives simply and without extraneous things; the possessions he does own, he treats with the care and dignity befitting tools made to do God’s work.
One might see the monastic lifestyle as meaningless asceticism, a wholesale denial of a big part of what it means to be human; Merton would argue (I think convincingly) that the excision of all unnecessary things makes space for the sliver of human existence that truly makes a life significant, a sliver that has all but been buried by the modern world. (