The School of Charity: Letters on Religious Renewal and Spiritual Direction by Thomas Merton & Patrick Hart

Author:Thomas Merton & Patrick Hart
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, Catholicism, Letters, Christianity
ISBN: 9781429966375
Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
Published: 1990-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

To Father Flavian Burns, O.C.S.O.

Father Flavian Burns was Prior at Gethsemani at this time. The Prior speaks in Chapter when the Abbot is absent; hence Merton’s comments on the hermit life in our Order.

March 1, 1964

I am in profound agreement with your talks on the hermit life, etc. However there is one small point where I differ from the approach taken by you and Dom André [Louf]. It is this.

It does not seem to me practical or in accord with the deepest monastic tradition in our present circumstances to say that the “solution” is to permit rather free transitus from one “monastic” community to another.

Certainly such transitus should be possible in the rare cases where it is really needed, and it is perfectly traditional.

However I think the more honest as well as more workable way would be to reduce the need for transitus; that is to say to create a situation where each monastic community would seek as far as possible to satisfy all the legitimate needs of all its members including those who seek the highest perfection.

This would mean that a Cistercian monastery should be able normally to provide the solitude, partial or complete, required by exceptional cases, which would certainly be very few. Reasons for saying this:

a) Importance of continuity in the monk’s vocation and in his monastic life, without serious break in the crucial period of his life. His community should be strong enough and big-hearted enough to provide him with the solitude he needs if he really needs it. He on the other hand should bear with the community patiently, until his need is clear to his Abbot and if possible to the brethren.

b) Most important reason is this: a man is not ready for solitary life until he has been able to renounce his own tendency to plan his life, and has completely committed himself to his community in a spirit of total faith. He must no longer insist on working out his own future according to his own attractions and desires. Yet he should be faithful to these desires in all their depth. Only deep faith can bridge this gap, and the faith will not be deep enough if it cannot be faith that God can and does act through the monk’s own community. (Obviously there will be case where this will not be possible at all.) If a monk always has at the back of his mind the proviso that he will one day take off and go somewhere better for a “higher life,” he will never in practice make this surrender and this act of faith, and consequently if he does move, he is likely to lose everything, which is quite frequent.

c) To me then the ideal would be for our own community to develop enough maturity and strength to handle this here, starting with temporary periods in solitude for those who really need it and have proved the seriousness of their need over a long period. And so on.

Naturally this is all ideal, and in practice some may have to go elsewhere perhaps (where????).

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