From Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (1958):
What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?”
1960
From Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, Saying from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century," (1960):
XIII: A certain brother went to Abbot Moses in Scete and asked him for a good word. And the elder said to him: Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.
XXXVIII: Once there was a disciple of a Greek philosopher who was commanded by his Master for three years to give money to everyone who insulted him. When this period of trial was over, the Master said to him: “Now you can go to Athens and learn wisdom.” When the disciple was entering Athens he met a certain wise man who sat at the gate insulting everybody who came and went. He also insulted the disciple who immediately burst out laughing. “Why do you laugh when I insult you?” said the wise man. “Because,” said the disciple, “for three years I have been paying for this kind of thing and now you give it to me for nothing.” “Enter the city,” said the wise man, “it is all yours.” Abbot John used to tell the above story, saying: This is the door of God by which our fathers rejoicing in many tribulations enter into the City of Heaven.///XLVIII: He said, again: Malice will never drive out malice. But if someone does evil to you, you should do good to him, so that by your good work you may destroy his malice.///LVI: One of the elders said: It is not because evil thoughts come to us that we are condemned, but only because we make use of the evil thoughts. It can happen that from these thoughts we suffer shipwreck, but it can also happen that because of them we may be crowned. ///LVII: Another elder said: It happens that one man eats more and yet remains hungry, and another man eats less and is satisfied. The greater reward belongs to the one who ate more and is still hungry than to him who ate less and is satisfied.///LXII: Yet another elder said: If you see a young monk by his own will climbing up into heaven, take him by the foot and throw him to the ground, because what he is doing is not good for him.///LXXII: Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not be totally changed into fire?///LXXIV: One of the Fathers said: Just as it is impossible for a man to see his face in troubled water, so too the soul, unless it be cleansed of alien thoughts, cannot pray to God in contemplation.///CXLIII: One of the elders said: Pray attentively and you will soon straighten out your thoughts.
From Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island (1957):
Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God because they induce a kind of contact with the Creator and Ruler of the Universe.”
From Thomas Merton, The Commonwealth Reader (1955):
The highest experience of the artist penetrates not only the sensible surface of things into their inmost reality, but even beyond that to God himself.”
From HEM Course Outline, What is Spirituality?":
The Character of the Holy Spirit’s Work in the New Testament — nan
2. The Holy Spirit will be available to all members of the faith community without ecclesiological mediation. John 1:12: “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God. . . . ” ///3. The Holy Spirit dwells within the faithful. 1 Corinthians 3:16: Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? ///4. The Holy Spirit will communicate the Word of God/Christ recitatively and prophetically. John 16:13-15: ” When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ” ///5. The Holy Spirit will establish vertical communion between the believer and the living God and Christ. John 14:23: ” Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them…. ” ///6. The community’s shared experience of the Holy Spirit will establish horizontal communion between and among its members. John 17:20-23: 20 “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one.” ///7. The Holy Spirit is a unitary phenomenon and limited to expressing God’s revelation through Christ. John 16:12-15: “14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ” ///8. We receive different spiritual gifts according to God’s providence, but are to respect and honor our different gifts as different members of one body. 1 Corinthians 12:1-31: “4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. . . . .
27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. ” ///9. The Litmus Test Discerning the Movement of the Holy Spirit is Love. 1 Corinthians 13:1: “1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” ///10. The essence of spiritual experience is a centered quietness that awaits God’s initiative. Psalm 46: 10 “Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.” 11 The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. [Selah].” 1 Corinthians 12:3:3: “Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says, “Let Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.”
From Martin Luther, Commentary on Romans (1552):
This epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest Gospel, and is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word, by heart, but occupy himself with it every day, as the daily bread of the soul. It can never be read or pondered too much, and the more it is dealt with the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes.” RefMgr field[22]: 1″
From Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians, ch. iii. verse 19, and ch. ii, verse 20, quoted in William James, The Varieties or Religious Experience at p. 200:
God is the God of the humble, the miserable, the oppressed, and the desperate, and of those that are brought even to nothing; and his nature is to give sight to the blind, to comfort the broken-hearted, to justify sinners, to save the very desperate and damned. Now that pernicious and pestilent opinion of man’s own righteousness, which will not be a sinner, unclean, miserable, and damnable, but righteous and holy, suffereth not God to come to his own natural and proper work. Therefore God must take his maul in hand (the law, I mean) to beat in pieces and bring to nothing this best with her vain confidence, that she may so learn at length by her own misery that she is utterly forlorn and damned. But here lieth the difficulty, that when a man is terrified and cast down, he is so little able to raise himself up again and say, ‘Now I am bruised and afflicted enough; now is the time of grace; now is the time to hear Christ.’ The foolishness of man’s heart is so great that then he rather seeketh to himself more laws to satisfy his conscience. ‘If I live,’ saith he, ‘I will amend my life: I will do this, I will do that.’ But here, except thou do the quite contrary, except thou send Moses away with his law, and in these terrors and this anguish lay hold upon Christ who died for thy sins, look for no salvation. Thy cowl, thy shaven crown, thy chastity, thy obedience, thy poverty, thy works, thy merits? What shall all these do? What shall the law of Moses avail? If I wretched and damnable sinner, through works or merits could have loved the Son of God, and so come to him, what needed he to deliver himself for me? If I, being a wretch and damned sinner, could be redeemed by any other price, what needed the Son of God to be given? But because there was no other price, therefore he delivered neither sheep, ox, gold, nor silver, but even God himself, entirely and wholly “for me,”
comfort and apply this to myself. And this manner of applying is the very true ///force and power of faith. For he died not to justify the righteous, but the un- ///righteous and to make them the children of God.”Luther///When a fellow monk, said Luther, “one day repeated the words of the Creed: ‘I believe in the forgiveness of sins,’ I saw the Scripture in an entirely ///new light; and straightway I felt as If I were born anew. It was as if I had found ///the door of paradise thrown wide open.”