THOMAS MERTON

THIS IS THE SAINT THAT IS GIVEN US FOR OUR TERRIBLE,

UGLY, CRUEL, MANIAC, BLASPHEMOUS, MURDERING AGE

Thomas Merton meet Thérèse

[leggi la traduzione in italiano]

From “Run to the Mountain, The Journal of Thomas Merton”,

Volume one 1939-1941 Edited by Patrick Hart, ocso.

HarperCollins 1996 San Francisco.

[pag 431-34 8 October 1941]

I have just read straight through Ghéon's book about Saint Therese of Lisieux and am knocked out by it completely. What the book is about, if not the book itself, is the most exciting thing I have read for I don't know how long: this is the story of a middle-class French child who went into a convent, who ever, according to the world or to nature, did anything; who died; and who was inexplicably hailed right after her death by Catholics in every part of the world for her great saintliness (because of countless miracles following the invocation of her name) -all this story is more terrific than any I have read since the story of Saint Francis.

Added to this is the terrific complication of the scandal of cheap, molasses-art and gorgonzola angels that surrounds the cultus of this great saint. About that, I'll make ideas maybe some other moment, not this one.

In reading the story of this saint it is not possible to doubt from the very first word about her parents that she was a totally extraordinary saint, more extraordinary than even Saint John of the Cross or Saint Theresa of Avila, who rejoice in heaven in her, their little sister's immense simplicity and love which includes also their love and their wisdom, because all their love and wisdom came from God and was all His.

Not only is she a saint but her father was one very obviously, too. What are they waiting for, to beatify him, too? His goodness is terrific, and the very thought of it makes you weep for joy at God's generosity, to give us such souls for our edification! This completely good man, a clockmaker, who loved to pray and meditate and read holy books, allowed himself one peaceful and harmless recreation- fishing- loved chastity- was miraculously matched with a saint for wife, who gave him five daughters, all nuns and one of them a great saint! This good man, who after a great grace of God's – a mystical experience of high order, prayed to be allowed to suffer, being unworthy of such favours; and so was paralysed, and lay paralyzed, dying slowly for months! This good man in his simplicity and goodness and complete carelessness of anything outside of ordering his quiet, obscure life and that of his daughters, to God- he makes me understand something of the justice of the just man, Joseph, whose justice we know too abstractly, since he has come to us only obscure and shadowy in his great humility.

As to the saint herself, I repeat, everything in her story knocks me flat – her childhood, no matter how bourgeois in its externals, was like the childhood of Blake in its spirituality: and, once again, no matter how vile the statues (there's a reason) of her, her life in her convent was not sentimental, not sweet, but a life of great heroism and austerity and simplicity and charity and wisdom as great as that of the greatest saints and martyrs: this little child was a Saint Peter and Paul, a Saint Francis, a Saint Lawrence, a Saint John of the Cross, mighty, in her childish weakness, as the great apostles, except she was no longer a child, but a nun.

It is remarkable how well Crashaw's “Poem to the Elder Saint Theresa” fits our younger Theresa, our own terrific child! Never forgetting that in her childhood she was imperfect – as a nun, she was perfect) In her real, not metaphorical, childhood, she was even, in a sense, spoiled a little, - but in her mighty and innocent service of Christ in the cold and obscure convent of Lisieux she was the least of all her sisters, suffering terrible spiritual and then physical tribulations in obscurity, for the love of God – and without consolations.

Not only was she not one whose religion was mawkish, or sentimental, or sloppy, or a luxury of polite and sensuous ecstasies, that her cultus suggests, but as a nun she enjoyed no ecstasies, not even consolations at all – only the terrors of the abyss and the Dark Night, and in the midst of this she continually renounced, over and over, the benefits of all her prayers, rejected consolation, offered herself up to a total sacrifice – allowed herself to be totally annihilated for Christ, in favor of sinners – with no reward, no recompense, not even heaven, which she would sacrifice to “faire du bien sur la terre” [Do good while on earth]

The implications of this are tremendous and unimaginable: nobody seems to have reflected for a moment on how much this means! But in any case, one thing is clear (while it is impossible to grasp the seriousness of her sacrifice of heavenly reward- which was undoubtedly accepted – and see what this means), and that is that in Saint Theresa as in Saint Francis is the complete perfection of Saint John of the Cross's way, the perfect pattern of the Ascent of Mount Carmel more perfect than Saint John of the Cross himself, perhaps, ever conceived possible!

In Therese we are face to face with a terrifying miracle – of complete childishness and unbelievable maturity of tribulation: but the tribulation is hidden – and is only expressed – in terms that are totally innocent, totally naïve, and even more or less gay.

It is no easy figure of speech to say she illustrates the counsel – the command – that we should be as little children merely because she talked always like an innocent child: she lived in her life this mystery: that being as a child was to be crucified, but crucified in a kind of innocence which makes the crucifixion not only a secret, bus absolutely incomprehensible.

All we know is – the tribulation is there, and it is terrific – and only she and God knew ho terrific – and she is still, only a child. But a child whose childishness involves maybe a matures mysticism than all Saint John of the Cross, something that rejoins the awful mystery of the Stigmatization of Saint Francis.

Everything about her and her father illustrates Kierkegaard's remarkable intuition that the greatest and most perfect saints are those whose saintliness cannot be contained except beneath some exterior that appears totally mediocre and normal, because it is an incommunicable secret. The height of Saint Francis' saintliness came when he was a poor little sick man, kicked out of the command of his own order, and hiding his bleeding hands wherever he went, and not talking. He was greatest when he ceased to be a romantic hero of humility and became so humble he was incomprehensible; in the same way with Theresa: she is a little middle-class nun in a French town who sticks closely to her rule and is outwardly just like everybody else – zealous, but ordinary, simple, childish, even appearing to be contented and happy – in fact being happy – and yet accepting, the way a lesser saint would accept a consolation of grace – the utter desolation of Gethsemani and Calvary!

The Ascent of Mount Carmel and Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and the “Book of Job” and the Dark Night of the Soul do not suffice to explain the heroism of this mighty child who is still, with all that, under this appearance of mediocrity which has allowed the memory to be surrounded by statues that revolt anyone who ever knew what taste was, and be desecrated by a commercialism that calls to heaven for vengeance – and yet doesn't.

I cannot rest since I have read this book. I am terrified and excited at the thought that a soul so great should suffer so much on earth and after her death remain on earth with us, foregoing until after the Last Day her heavenly reward – and this, while the memory on earth is desecrated by the ones who seem to love her most and who probably actually do!

This is the saint that is given us for our terrible, ugly, cruel, maniac, blasphemous, murdering age, the Saint that suffer for us and remains with us in the thick of everything that is most horrible about our dying, rotting civilization, and she herself most pure, most perfect because only such intense and incomprehensible perfection of innocence is capable of saving us, of suffering for our sins. Close as Saint Francis is to Christ, is Theresa, I believe, to His Blessed Mother: Saint Francis shared the wounds of the Passion, Saint Theresa [shared] not only Mary's joy but her Dolours. I cannot rest, thinking of this great and glorious saint that is given us: I beg and beg her to pray for me and help me to be filled with love and belief to give myself to Christ and lose myself in the terror of His perfection as it manifests itself in us when we suffer Him to come to us on earth. JMJT [Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Theresa]

[From pag. 457s, November 28, 1941]

So I pray to Saint Theresa, in the grove.

While I am praying to her the question becomes clear: all I want to know is, do I habe a chance to be a priest after all. I don't want him to argue for or against the Trappists. I know I want to be a Trappist. I remember the terrific sense of holiness and peace I got when I first stepped inside Gethsemani, something more certain and more terrific than ever hit me anywhere else- and which stayed with me until I got all mixed up about the vocation, the end of the week, in that terrible impasse: I want to be a priest- but I am told there is an impediment. Therefore the desire is just an emotional luxury: I ma kidding myself.

While I am praying to her, Saint Therese of Child Jesus, it is like hearing the bells in the tower, ringing for Matins in the middle of the night. I walk through the grove saying she will help me to be her Trappist, - Theresa's Trappist, at Gethsemani.

[From pag. 465s December 2, 1941]

And I have been praying without ceasing.

If, as soon as I decide on this vocation, obstacles appear, that has some importance! Today, all day, I am ground between two millstones. I keep praying to Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, whom I know to be my friend, and I remember her own vocation and her Holy impatience to be admitted to Carmel.

[From pag. 471]

Saint Theresa, Little Flower, never cease praying for me!

“A Search for Solitude, The Journal of Thomas Merton”,

Volume Three 1952-1960 Edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham

[From pag. 256 February 7, 1959 Feast of St. Romuald]

“In the refectory they are reading the new translation of the original life of St. Thérèse. I knew is would be different but I had not realized what fine, powerful lines and images had been cut out by the unimaginative Mère Agnes to make everything conform to the ideas of people without originality and without taste.

Flatirons on the feet of the little devils. And she “hated” the size of her mother's coffin. That she was so content with her own sisters and so completely unaware that she had something in her they were incapable of understanding or appreciating. Or maybe too in a very pure and matter of fact way she was aware of it, and it did not matter to her at all.

In any case the thing that overpowers you in everything is the realization of her sanctity. It is always deeply moving – and I am reassured by the fact that I can find it moving.