The Seven Storey Mountain: Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition

by Thomas Merton

  But what about the contemplative Orders? Their rules and usages at least grant them all they need to dispose themselves for contemplation and if their members do not reach it, it is not because of any difficulty inherent in their actual way of life. Granting that they are, or can be, as contemplative as they were meant to be by their founders: are they anything else?

  The fact is, there does not exist any such thing as a purely contemplative Order of men—an Order which does not have, somewhere in its constitution, the note of contemplata tradere. The Carthusians, with all their elaborate efforts to preserve the silence and solitude of the hermit’s life in their monasteries, definitely wrote into their original “Customs” the characteristic labor of copying manuscripts and writing books in order that they might preach to the world by their pen even though their tongues were silent.

  The Cistercians had no such legislation, and they even enacted statutes to limit the production of books and to forbid poetry altogether. Nevertheless they produced a school of mystical theologians which, as Dom Berlière says, represents the finest flower of Benedictine spirituality. I just quoted what Saint Bernard, the head of that school, had to say on the subject, and in any case even if the Cistercians never wrote anything to pass on the fruit of their contemplation to the Church at large, contemplata tradere would always be an essential element in Cistercian life to the extent that the abbot and those charged with the direction of souls would always be obliged to feed the rest of the monks with the good bread of mystical theology as it comes out in smoking hot loaves from the oven of contemplation. This was what Saint Bernard told the learned cleric of York, Henry Murdach, to lure him from his books into the woods where the beeches and elms taught the monks wisdom.

  And these “purely active” Orders, what about them? Do any such things exist? The Little Sisters of the Poor, the nursing sisterhoods cannot truly fulfil their vocations unless there is something of that contemplata tradere, the sharing of the fruits of contemplation. Even the active vocation is sterile without an interior life, and a deep interior life at that.

  The truth is, in any kind of a religious Order there is not only the possibility but even in some sense the obligation of leading, at least to some extent, the highest of all lives—contemplation, and the sharing of its fruits with others. Saint Thomas’s principle stands firm: the greatest perfection is contemplata tradere. But that does not oblige us to restrict this vocation, as he does, to the teaching Orders. They only happen to be the ones that seem to be best equipped to pass on the knowledge of God acquired by loving Him—if they have acquired that knowledge in contemplation. Yet others may perhaps be better placed for acquiring it.

  In any case, there are many different ways of sharing the fruits of contemplation with others. You don’t have to write books or make speeches. You don’t have to have direct contact with souls in the confessional. Prayer can do the work wonderfully well, and indeed the fire of contemplation has a tendency to spread of itself throughout the Church and vivify all the members of Christ in secret without any conscious act on the part of the contemplative. But if you argue that Saint Thomas’s context limits us at least to some sort of visible and natural communication with our fellow men (though it is hard to see why this should be so) nevertheless even in that event there exists a far more powerful means of sharing the mystical and experimental knowledge of God.

  Look in Saint Bonaventure’s Itinerarium and you will find one of the best descriptions ever written of this highest of all vocations. It is a description which the Seraphic Doctor himself learned on retreat and in solitude on Mount Alvernia. Praying in the same lonely spot where the great founder of his Order, Saint Francis of Assisi, had had the wounds of Christ burned into his hands and feet and side, Saint Bonaventure saw, by the light of a supernatural intuition, the full meaning of this tremendous event in the history of the Church. “There,” he says, “Saint Francis ‘passed over into God’ (in Deum transiit) in the ecstasy (excessus) of contemplation and thus he was set up as an example of perfect contemplation just as he had previously been an example of perfection in the active life in order that God, through him, might draw all truly spiritual men to this kind of ‘passing over’ (transitus) and ecstasy, less by word than by example.”

  Here is the clear and true meaning of contemplata tradere, expressed without equivocation by one who had lived that life to the full. It is the vocation to transforming union, to the height of the mystical life and of mystical experience, to the very transformation into Christ that Christ living in us and directing all our actions might Himself draw men to desire and seek that same exalted union because of the joy and the sanctity and the supernatural vitality radiated by our example—or rather because of the secret influence of Christ living within us in complete possession of our souls.

  And notice the tremendously significant fact that St. Bonaventure makes no divisions and distinctions: Christ imprinted His own image upon Saint Francis in order to draw not some men, not a few privileged monks, but all truly spiritual men to the perfection of contemplation which is nothing else but the perfection of love. Once they have reached these heights they will draw others to them in their turn. So any man may be called at least de jure, if not de facto, to become fused into one spirit with Christ in the furnace of contemplation and then go forth and cast upon the earth that same fire which Christ wills to see enkindled.

  This means, in practice, that there is only one vocation. Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married or single, no matter who you are or what you are, you are called to the summit of perfection: you are called to a deep interior life perhaps even to mystical prayer, and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others. And if you cannot do so by word, then by example.

  Yet if this sublime fire of infused love burns in your soul, it will inevitably send forth throughout the Church and the world an influence more tremendous than could be estimated by the radius reached by words or by example. Saint John of the Cross writes: “A very little of this pure love is more precious in the sight of God and of greater profit to the Church, even though the soul appear to be doing nothing, than are all other works put together.”

  Before we were born, God knew us. He knew that some of us would rebel against His love and His mercy, and that others would love Him from the moment that they could love anything, and never change that love. He knew that there would be joy in heaven among the angels of His house for the conversion of some of us, and He knew that He would bring us all here to Gethsemani together, one day, for His own purpose, for the praise of His love.

  The life of each one in this abbey is part of a mystery. We all add up to something far beyond ourselves. We cannot yet realize what it is. But we know, in the language of our theology, that we are all members of the Mystical Christ, and that we all grow together in Him for Whom all things were created.

  In one sense we are always travelling, and travelling as if we did not know where we were going.

  In another sense we have already arrived.

  We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light.

  But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!

  For now, oh my God, it is to You alone that I can talk, because nobody else will understand. I cannot bring any other man on this earth into the cloud where I dwell in Your light, that is, Your darkness, where I am lost and abashed. I cannot explain to any other man the anguish which is Your joy nor the loss which is the Possession of You, nor the distance from all things which is the arrival in You, nor the death which is the birth in You because I do not know anything about it myself and all I know is that I wish it were over—I wish it were begun.

  You have contradicted everything. You have left me in no-man’s land.

  You have got me wa
lking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again, “Solitude, solitude.” And You have turned around and thrown the whole world in my lap. You have told me, “Leave all things and follow me,” and then You have tied half of New York to my foot like a ball and chain. You have got me kneeling behind that pillar with my mind making a noise like a bank. Is that contemplation?

  Before I went to make my solemn vows, last spring, on the Feast of St. Joseph, in the thirty-third year of my age, being a cleric in minor orders—before I went to make my solemn vows, this is what it looked like to me. It seemed to me that You were almost asking me to give up all my aspirations for solitude and for a contemplative life. You were asking me for obedience to superiors who will, I am morally certain, either make me write or teach philosophy or take charge of a dozen material responsibilities around the monastery, and I may even end up as a retreat master preaching four sermons a day to the seculars who come to the house. And even if I have no special job at all, I will always be on the run from two in the morning to seven at night.

  Didn’t I spend a year writing the life of Mother Berchmans who was sent to a new Trappistine foundation in Japan, and who wanted to be a contemplative? And what happened to her? She had to be gatekeeper and guest-mistress and sacristan and cellaress and mistress of the lay sisters all at the same time. And when they relieved her of one or two of those jobs it was only in order to give her heavier ones, like that of Mistress of Novices.

  Martha, Martha, sollicita eris, et turbaberis erga plurima ...

  When I was beginning my retreat, before solemn profession, I tried to ask myself for a moment if those vows had any condition attached to them. If I was called to be a contemplative and they did not help me to be a contemplative, but hindered me, then what?

  But before I could even begin to pray, I had to drop that kind of thinking.

  By the time I made my vows, I decided that I was no longer sure what a contemplative was, or what the contemplative vocation was, or what my vocation was, and what our Cistercian vocation was. In fact I could not be sure I knew or understood much of anything except that I believed that You wanted me to take those particular vows in this particular house on that particular day for reasons best known to Yourself, and that what I was expected to do after that was follow along with the rest and do what I was told and things would begin to become clear.

  That morning when I was lying on my face on the floor in the middle of the church, with Father Abbot praying over me, I began to laugh, with my mouth in the dust, because without knowing how or why, I had actually done the right thing, and even an astounding thing. But what was astounding was not my work, but the work You worked in me.

  The months have gone by, and You have not lessened any of those desires, but You have given me peace, and I am beginning to see what it is all about. I am beginning to understand.

  Because You have called me here not to wear a label by which I can recognize myself and place myself in some kind of a category. You do not want me to be thinking about what I am, but about what You are. Or rather, You do not even want me to be thinking about anything much: for You would raise me above the level of thought. And if I am always trying to figure out what I am and where I am and why I am, how will that work be done?

  I do not make a big drama of this business. I do not say: “You have asked me for everything, and I have renounced all.” Because I no longer desire to see anything that implies a distance between You and me: and if I stand back and consider myself and You as if something had passed between us, from me to You, I will inevitably see the gap between us and remember the distance between us.

  My God, it is that gap and that distance which kill me.

  That is the only reason why I desire solitude—to be lost to all created things, to die to them and to the knowledge of them, for they remind me of my distance from You. They tell me something about You: that You are far from them, even though You are in them. You have made them and Your presence sustains their being, and they hide You from me. And I would live alone, and out of them. O beata solitudo!

  For I knew that it was only by leaving them that I could come to You: and that is why I have been so unhappy when You seemed to be condemning me to remain in them. Now my sorrow is over, and my joy is about to begin: the joy that rejoices in the deepest sorrows. For I am beginning to understand. You have taught me, and have consoled me, and I have begun again to hope and learn.

  I hear You saying to me:

  “I will give you what you desire. I will lead you into solitude. I will lead you by the way that you cannot possibly understand, because I want it to be the quickest way.

  “Therefore all the things around you will be armed against you, to deny you, to hurt you, to give you pain, and therefore to reduce you to solitude.

  “Because of their enmity, you will soon be left alone. They will cast you out and forsake you and reject you and you will be alone.

  “Everything that touches you shall burn you, and you will draw your hand away in pain, until you have withdrawn yourself from all things. Then you will be all alone.

  “Everything that can be desired will sear you, and brand you with a cautery, and you will fly from it in pain, to be alone. Every created joy will only come to you as pain, and you will die to all joy and be left alone. All the good things that other people love and desire and seek will come to you, but only as murderers to cut you off from the world and its occupations.

  “You will be praised, and it will be like burning at the stake. You will be loved, and it will murder your heart and drive you into the desert.

  “You will have gifts, and they will break you with their burden. You will have pleasures of prayer, and they will sicken you and you will fly from them.

  “And when you have been praised a little and loved a little I will take away all your gifts and all your love and all your praise and you will be utterly forgotten and abandoned and you will be nothing, a dead thing, a rejection. And in that day you shall begin to possess the solitude you have so long desired. And your solitude will bear immense fruit in the souls of men you will never see on earth.

  “Do not ask when it will be or where it will be or how it will be: On a mountain or in a prison, in a desert or in a concentration camp or in a hospital or at Gethsemani. It does not matter. So do not ask me, because I am not going to tell you. You will not know until you are in it.

  “But you shall taste the true solitude of my anguish and my poverty and I shall lead you into the high places of my joy and you shall die in Me and find all things in My mercy which has created you for this end and brought you from Prades to Bermuda to St. Antonin to Oakham to London to Cambridge to Rome to New York to Columbia to Corpus Christi to St. Bonaventure to the Cistercian Abbey of the poor men who labor in Gethsemani:

  “That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men.”

  SIT FINIS LIBRI, NON FINIS QUAERENDI

  INDEX

  Abbot, Father, [>], [>] ff.

  Adler, Alfred, [>]

  Adler, Mortimer, [>]

  Advent, [>]

  Albi, France, [>]

  Algeria, [>]

  Ameche, Don, [>]

  Anselm, St., [>], [>]

  Aquinas, St. Thomas, [>], [>] ff., [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>] ff.

  Armstrong, Louis, [>]

  Art and Scholasticism (Maritain), [>]

  Asceticism, [>]

  Assisi, St. Francis of, [>], [>], [>]

  Augustine, St., [>], [>], [>]

  Baker, Josephine, [>]

  Balzac, Honoré de, [>]

  Baudelaire, Charles, [>]

  Beard, Dan, [>], [>]

  Bede, the Venerable, [>]

  Beiderbecke, Bix, [>]

  Benedictines, [>]

  Bennett, Constance, [>]

  Berchmans, Mother, [>]

  Berlière, Dom, [>]

  Bermuda, [>] ff.

  Bernard, St., [>], [>], [>], [>]

  Ber
ry man, John, [>]

  Blake, William, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>]

  Bloy, Léon, [>]

  Bonaventure, St., [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>] ff., [>], [>] ff., [>] ff., [>]

  “Bonnemamam” (author’s grandmother), [>], [>] ff., [>] ff., [>]–[>]

  Bournemouth, England, [>], [>]

  Bramachari, Dr., [>] ff., [>], [>], [>]

  Breviaries, [>] ff.

  Buddhism, [>]

  Bullough, Professor, [>]

  Burroughs, Elizabeth, [>]

  Burroughs, Bryson, [>]

  Burton, Jinny, [>]

  Butler, Nicholas Murray, [>], [>]

  Byzantine mosaics, [>]

  Cabrini, Mother, [>]

  Caedmon, [>]

  Cambridge, [>], [>] ff., [>]

  Canterbury, [>]

  Capitalism, [>]

  Capuchins, Church of, [>]

  Carthusians, [>], [>]–[>], [>]

  Casa Italiana, [>], [>]

  Cassant, Father Joseph, [>]

  Céline, Louis F., [>]

  Cézanne, Paul, [>]

  Chagall, Marc, [>]

  Chaplin, Charles, [>], [>]

  Chavannes, Puvis de, [>]

  Chicago, [>]–[>], [>] ff.

  Christ, [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]

  Christian Scientists, [>]

  Chrystal. Capt. John, [>]

  Church of England, [>], [>]

  Cistercian abbey, [>]–[>]

  Cistercian Life, The, [>]

  Cistercians, [>], [>] ff., [>], [>] ff., [>]

  Clair, René, [>]

  Cobre, Our Lady of, [>], [>] ff.

  Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, [>]

  Columbia Review, The, [>]

  Columbia University, [>] ff., [>] ff., [>], [>], [>] ff., [>]

  Communism, [>] ff., [>] ff., [>] ff., [>] ff.

  Communist Manifesto, [>]

  Confessions (St. Augustine), [>]