The Trinitarian Spirituality of Thomas Merton

The God Who exists only in Three Persons is a circle of relations in which His infinite reality, Love, is ever identical and ever renewed, always perfect and always total, always beginning and never ending, absolute, everlasting and full.

In the Father the infinite Love of God is always beginning and in the Son it is always full and in the Holy Spirit it is perfect and it is renewed and never ceases to rest in its source. But if you follow Love forward and backward from Person to Person, you can never track it to a stop, you can never corner it and hold it down and fix it to one of the Persons as if He could appropriate to himself the fruit of the Love of the others. For the One Love of the Three Persons is an infinitely rich giving of Itself which never ends and is never taken, but is always perfectly given, only received in order to be perfectly shared 

 This kind of writing is why Thomas Merton is one of my best friends - a companion on the journey now for more than 40 years - an all too human person whose sanctity is most evident in his flaws and his honesty about himself - and whose theology is much more profound and visionary than is sometimes thought of a contemplative monk. Merton was a contemplative theologian, a deeply reflective and ruminative thinker whose writing is luminous with wonder and mellowed by the tension he recognised between the urge to adoration and that self-knowing that will always humble in the presence of Divine Love. The next two short paragraphs are a distillation of what can only be called a Trinitarian Spirituality - and I'll post them tomorrow.

Posting here is sporadic just now - priorities I'm afraid, but no lessening of the commitment and enjoyment of continuing the conversation. Thanks to those who still look in and send emails etc.

Comments

[Perpetua]

I too love Thomas Merton. I discovered him 35 years ago, when first exploring the riches of Christian spirituality and still come back to him for his wisdom and insight and amazing relevance to our post-modern age.