Thomas Merton

Today is the 43rd anniversary of the death of Thomas Merton in Bangkok while at an interfaith monastic convocation, and it is ALSO the 70th anniversary of his entry into the monastic life when he arrived at the Abbey of Gethsemani on December 10, 1941.

Father Merton is remembered today as one of the most important Roman Catholic writers of the 20th century. It is fascinating that at the end of his life he was acutely interested in ecumenical work, reaching out to Protestants (Merton had been baptized in the Church of England) and finding common cause with monastic Buddhists.

The words I want to dwell upon today by Father Merton reflect upon a concern that is ongoing: the concern about the role and function of the Church in a "post-Christian" age which many believe has already overtaken Europe. In the text I include, Merton is discussing those like Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Anglican Bishop John A.T. Robinson who had been advocating consideration of a "religionless religion."

"I honestly think there is a presence of Christ to the unbeliever, especially in our day, and this presence, which is not formally "religious" and which escapes definition (hence the inadequacy of terms like "invisible Church" or "latent Church"), is perhaps the deepest most cogent mystery of our time. The Lord who speaks of freedom in the ground of our being still continues to speak to every man. The thing that Christians must understand about this is that there is no use whatever trying to "get these people into the Church" or to make "believers" out of them. There is perhaps no way of bringing them a specifically Christian comfort which would in any case only disturb or confuse them. What is needed is to love them with a love completely divested of all formally religious pre-suppositions, simply as our fellow men, men who seek truth and freedom as we do. This love is not simply an act of benevolent, condescending, and tolerant charity on our part. It can also be for us a means of knowing Christ better, by entering into the mystery of the hidden encounter which marks the lives of these others in a way that neither they nor we can understand. We cannot understand it, but by means of love we can experience its reality nonetheless." (from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)