Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality

Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality

Thomas Merton

Photographs and Drawings by Thomas Merton

"Although these pages have been written for monks," Merton says, ".....they will have meaning for all religious and ineded for all Christians, since the monastic life is traditionally regarded as the pure Christian life."

In this early work, Merton urges monks to keep alive in the world that spiritual atmosphere without which all that is good and sane in human culture will die of asphyxiation.

"In the night of our technological barbarism," he says, "monks must be as trees which exist silently in the dark and by their vital presence purify the air."

126 pages soft cover

Review

"Our purpose in life is then to grow in our union with the risen Christ, to lie more and more deeply the life of His Body ..." This book may seem less "ecumenical" than some of his later works contrasting their quest for Christ-union as being more than the Zen quest of liberation. There are also hints "we must be able to see Him in the created things around us - in the hills, the fields, the flowers, the birds and animals that He has created, ..." He speaks of purity and silence "Hence the need of monastic silence, in order that the monk may be ""swift to hear and slow to speak"" (James 1:19). The inclusions of fourteen black-and-white photographs by Merton (most appear from around Gethsemani, Kentucky) also convey the cultivation of nature and silence."