Thomas Merton on the Psalms

A Bit About Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton was born in France in 1915, his father was an artist from New Zealand and his mother a Quaker and also an artist from New York. He was baptized in the Anglican church in accordance with his father's wishes, but in 1939 he chose to be confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church. A teacher at St. Bonaventure University in New York, Merton was increasingly feeling called to the religious life. And as the story goes, he used his Vulgate (the Roman Catholic Latin translation of the Bible) as a sort of oracle, flipping through the pages and placing his finger on a random verse that might offer some sign of his calling. And on one particular day, his finger landed on a verse from the Gospel According to Luke: "behold thou shall be silent." And that was when Thomas Merton looked to the Cistercian order for his vocation. In 1942 he was accepted as a novice Trappist monk at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky.  Trappists are of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (O.C.S.O.), which is an ascetic Roman Catholic order of cloistered contemplative monastics who follow the rule of St. Benedict.

Merton was a prolific writer and poet. His writings include such classics as The Seven Storey Mountain, New Seeds of Contemplation, and  Zen and the Birds of Appetite. Merton is the author of more than seventy books that include poetry, personal journals, collections of letters, social criticism, and writings on peace, justice, and ecumenism.

 Merton's own website (Merton.org) describes him as a "rambunctuous" youth, who pushed the boundaries and challenged the status quo from the get-go. All of his life he was a lover of jazz. After his back surgery in 1966, while he was recuperating in a hospital in Louisville, he fell in love with a student nurse, Margie Smith, about whom he wrote in his diary and in his poem "A Midsummer Diary for M." As far as we know, they never consumated the relationship, although Merton clearly struggled mightily, and after ending the relationship, he recommitted himself to his vows.^[27]  (Check this footnote for more on this issue.) And Merton spent much time and spiritual energy in the study and understanding of far eastern religions. Throughout his life, he studied Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism,and Janaism, in addition to his academic and monastic fare. 

Merton died in 1968 in Bangkok, Thailand at a conference where he and other Catholic monks were in dialogue with non-CHristian monks. His next stop was to be Japan for futher exploration of Zen Buddhism. But his life and work were cut short by either a heart attack (reported by the Thai authorities) or a bath tub electrocution (reported by the Americans). Either way, the world lost a great mind and mystic and model of spiritual formation.

Below are a few excerpts from Merton's book "Praying with the Psalms." A warning when reading the very deep and meaningful work of Thomas merton: his language is.....so not inclusive. And so as we are want to do at the Parish of St. Paul, these passages have been bracketted with more inclusive language, where ever possible.


From "Praying with the Psalms" by Thomas Merton, Liturgical press, Collegeville, Minnesota. 

From "Praying with the Psalms"

by Thomas Merton, O.C. S.O.

To put it very plainly, the Church loves the Psalms because in them she sings of her experience of God, of her union with the Incarnate Word, of her contemplation of God in the Mystery of Christ....If we really come to know and love the Psalms, we will enter into the Church's own experience of divine things. We will begin to know God as we ought. (pg.9)

To praise God! Do we know what it means to praise? To adore? To give glory?
Praise is cheap today. Everything is praised. Soap, beer, toothpaste, clothing, mouthwash, movie stars, all the latest gadgets which are supposed to make life more comfortable-everything is constantly being "praised."....

Are there any superlatives left for God? They have all been wasted on foods and quack medicines. There is no word left to express our adoration of of [the One] who is Holy, who alone is Lord.

So we go to [God] to ask help, and to get out of being punished, and to mumble what we need - a better job, more money, more of the things that are praised in the advertisements. And we wonder why our prayer is so often dead. - gaining its only life, borrowing its only urgency from the fact that we need these things so badly.

But we do not really think we need God. Least of all do we think we need to praise [God]. (pg. 10)

It is quite possible that our lack of interest in the Psalms conceals a secret lack of interest in God. For if we have no real interest in praising [God], it shows that we have never realized who [God] is. For when one becomes conscious of who God really is, and when one realizes that [God] who is Almighty, and infinitely Holy, has 'done great things to us," the only possible reaction is the cry of half-articulate exultation that bursts from the depths of our being in amazement at the tremendous, inexplicable goodness of God to [humanity].

The Psalms are all made up of such cries - cries of wonder, exultation, anguish or joy. The very concreteness of their passion makes some of them seem disjointed and senseless. Their spontaneity makes them songs without plan, because there are no blueprints for ecstasy. 

Yet at the same time, the Psalms are rugged and sober. Their emotions are controlled, and the very control increases their intensity. ...To say the Psalms are deep is not to say that they are esoteric. One does not have to be a very unusual person in order to appreciate them. One has to be a healthy, simple person with a lot of faith and enough freedom from the tastes and prejudices of our time to be able to appreciate the imagery of another...age.  (pp. 11-12)

Here is Today's Psalm

Psalm 75

To the leader: Do Not Destroy. A Psalm of Asaph. A Song.
¹ We give thanks to you, O God;
   we give thanks; your name is near.
People tell of your wondrous deeds. 

² At the set time that I appoint
   I will judge with equity. 
³ When the earth totters, with all its inhabitants,
   it is I who keep its pillars steady.
          Selah 
⁴ I say to the boastful, ‘Do not boast’,
   and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horn; 
⁵ do not lift up your horn on high,
   or speak with insolent neck.’ 

⁶ For not from the east or from the west
   and not from the wilderness comes lifting up; 
⁷ but it is God who executes judgement,
   putting down one and lifting up another. 
⁸ For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup
   with foaming wine, well mixed;
he will pour a draught from it,
   and all the wicked of the earth
   shall drain it down to the dregs. 
⁹ But I will rejoice^* for ever;
   I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. 

¹⁰ All the horns of the wicked I will cut off,
   but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted.

[Amen]