THOMAS MERTON

The ultimate thing is that we build community not on our love but on God’s love, because we do not really have that much love ourselves, and that is the real challenge of the religious life. It puts us in a position where sometimes natural community is very difficult. People are sent here and there, and often very incompatible people are thrown together. … It isn’t just a question of whether you are building community with people that you naturally like, it is also a question of building community with people that God has brought together.

Community tests our faith.

Plough Daily Dig

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton OCSO (1915 – 1968) was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist , and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and given the name “Father Louis.” He was a member of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.

Merton wrote more than fifty books in a period of twenty-seven years, mostly on spirituality, social justice, and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews. Among Merton’s most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore offerings of monasteries across the US. It is on the National Review’s list of the one hundred best nonfiction books of the century. [Source: Wikipedia]