Thomas Merton (1915-1968)



Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

Introduction

Thomas Merton was born in France, 31 January 1915, at Prades. His father is from New Zealand, with its U.S. parent family in England. Both are painters. Thomas Merton's lose early: his mother died in 1921, his father ten years later. His childhood knows various travels between countries that parents like to paint: the United States, Bermuda, France, whose language he will remain familiar.

Merton was provisionally baptized a Catholic on 16 November 1938, following his conversion experience narrated in The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). Important early Catholic influences were neo-Scholastic philosophers J. Maritain (1882-1973) and É. Gilson. On 10 December 1941, he entered the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky where he was known as 'Louis' and spent twenty-seven years as a contemplative, spiritual writer, poet, essayist, social critic, and catalyst for inter-faith dialogue (Erickson, 1963).

His early spiritual writings such as Seeds of Contemplation and Thoughts in Solitude reflect the wisdom of the Desert Fathers, monastic formation and its disciplines, and emphasis upon silence, solitude, and the liberation of the 'true self'. In the 1940s and early 1950s he wrote significant religious poetry. Merton cultivated the apophatic mystical tradition, influenced by John of the Cross (1542-91) and Meister Eckhart (see Apophatic Theology, Mystical Theology). His theology was Augustinian, emphasizing the action of grace on the unaided will and the primacy of love of God and neighbour. Contemplative Prayer (1969) gathers Merton's most mature spiritual reflections, integrating the way of unknowing and darkness (spiritual dread) with a growing sense of the activist contemplatives responsibility to the Church and world.

His Life

In 1933-1934 he studied at Cambridge (England) Modern Languages ??(French, Italian). In 1935 he was a student at Columbia University (New York). He graduated in 1938 and that same year, converted to Catholicism. After hesitating to enter among the Franciscans, he became professor of English at St. Bonaventure's College (which corresponds to university level). In 1941, he joined the Abbey Trappist American Gethsemani (Kentucky). He made his solemn profession in 1947 and was ordained two years later. Meanwhile, the abbot asked him to write his autobiography. It will be starless Night (The seven storey mountain) a bestseller translated into many languages. Thomas Merton becomes a prolific writer, and will be recognized later as Catholic spiritual writers of the most influential of the twentieth century. He also wrote many books on spirituality, poems and also essays, including the problem of war and racism.

From 1951 to 1955, he was master students (young monks studying for the priesthood), from 1955 to 1965, master of novices. In 1965 he obtained his abbot's permission to live as a hermit on the monastery grounds. On 10 December 1968, while participating in a symposium on inter-religious dialogue in Bangkok (Thailand), he electrocutes himself with a failed fan as he left his bath, at the age of 53 years (Bressler, 2010).

Many books were published posthumously. It regrets the lack of French translations of some of his books or some books about ...