A THOMAS MERTON READER

Edited by

Thomas

P.

McDonnell

Basically,

A Thomas Melton Reader

'

is

literary and philosophical journr thai seeks to carry its voyagers from ^ ty of to the City o God, F:turally to

Man

the author's

The
7

Mountant

and

<utnedy, it is of ascent: The divided .^ages Unreal ^lagnetic North, The Monasand Doctrines, Love, Vision, Mentors tery, and The Sacred Land. Included are several sections, hitherto unpublished, from the
ip
.

to

Dante

original Seven Storey Mountain manuscript. are, as well, additional unpublished material and an original preface, called

There
"First

cially for this

and Last Thoughts/' written volume by the author.

espe-

More than a representative selection of the writings of the respected and beloved American Trappist monk, this book is the essential synthesis of his thought and development from the early explorations of his mind and spirit to his significant and poignant commentaries on the present uneasy human situation. Through its selection and organization, accomplished with the consultation and endorsement of the author, the work demonstrates the compelling force of a great spiritual writer and reflects his uniquely creative achievement. Here is a drama of the human spirit that
attempts to portray something of the landscape of the soul a work to feed the heart and the mind, to be read and reread, and
to

be used and treasured.

7W

HARCOURT, BRACE & WORLD, Third Avenue, New York 17, N K.

INC.

tx:-03,!5 $5 .75 M5?t Merton s Thomas, 1?15Ed. A Thomas Merton reader. McDonnell. P. N.I., Thomas by Harcourt, Brace & World [19621
2M-2

$5/75
Merton, Thomas, ha. A Thomas Merton reader. N. x. ., McDonnell. by Thomas P. World L1962J & Harcoart, Brace
553P-

THOMAS MERTON READER

Edited fy

THOMAS

P.

MCDONNELL

Thomas Merton Reader

&

HARCOURT, BRACE

WORLD,

INC.,

NEW YORK

GOPYBIGHT 1938, 1961, 1962 BY THE ABBEY Off GETHSEMANI, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. FIRST EDITION IMPRIMI POTEST: ER. M. GABRIEL SORTAIS, o.c.s.o. NIHIL OBSTAT: JOHN A. GOODWINE, J.C.D., CENSOR LIBRORUM IMPRIMATUR: @( FRANCIS CARDINAL SPELLMAN, ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 62-16737 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The

Brace

The Seven Storey Mountain, Copyright, 1948, by Harcourt, The Waters of Siloe, Copyright, 1949, by Rev. M. Louis (Thomas Merton), The Ascent to Truth, Copyright, 1951, by Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, The Sign of Jonas, Copyright, 1953, by The Abbey of Our 1955, by the Abbey of Lady of Gethsemani, No Man Is an Island, Copyright, Our Lady of Gethsemani, is used by permission of Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. The material from Thirty Poems, Copyright 1944 by Our Lady of Gethsemani
material from

& World,

Inc.,

the Wilderness, Copyright 1953 by Our Lady of Gethsemani Monastery, The 1957 by The Abbey of Gethsemani, Inc., Copyright Strange Islands, Copyright 1952, 1954, 1955* 1956 by The Abbey of Gethsemani, Inc., Selected Poems, Copyright 1944, 1949 by Our Lady of Gethsemani Monastery, Copyright 1946, 1947, 1959 by New Directions, Copyright 1952, 1954, 1955, 1950, 1957, 1959 by The Abbey of Gethsemani, Inc., The Wisdom of the Desert, Copyright 1960 by The Abbey of Gethsemani, Inc., The Behavior of Titans, Copyright 1961 by The Abbey of Gethsemani, Inc., New Seeds of Contemplation, 1961 1961 by by The Abbey of Gethsemani, Inc., New Directions 17, Copyright New Directions, is used by permission of New Directions. "St, John of the Cross" is from Saints for Pvow, edited by Clare Boothc Luce, Copyright 1952, Sheed & Ward, Inc., New York; "The Letters of St. Bernard" from The Letters

Monastery, A Man in the Divided Sea, Copyright 1946 by New Directions, Figures for an Apocalypse, Copyright 1947 by New Directions, The Tears of the Blind Lions, Copyright 1949 by Our Lady of Gethsemani Monastery, Bread in

1960 The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, Minnesota; "NaKerygma" from Nativity Kerygma, Copyright 1958 by the Abbey o Gethsemani. "An Elegy for Ernest Hemingway appeared in The Commonweal; "Reviews of Nabokov and Ransom" in New York Herald Tribune Books; "Religion and the Bomb" in Jubilee; "Christian Culture Needs Oriental Wisdom" in The Catholic World; "Conquistador, Tourist, and Indian" in Good Work; "Chant to Be Used in Processions Around a Site with Furnaces" in The Catholic Worker; "Theology of Creativity" in The American Benedictine Review (Vol. XI, pages 197 to 2,13). The quotations from Dante on pages t, 79, 141, 407, and 485 are from The Divine Comedy, Rinehart Editions, translated by H. R. Huse, Copyright 1954, H. R. Huse, reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.; those on pages 2,41 and 335 are from Dante's Drama of the Mind, by Francis Fergusson, Copyright, 1953, by Princeton
right
tivity

Company; "Love

of St. Bernard of Clcdrvaux, Bruno Scott James, Copyright 1953, Henry Regnery in Meditation" from Spiritual Direction and Meditation, Copy-

University Press.

This

Boole Is Dedicated to All

My Friends
Who

To

the

Old Owes and

the

N^ Ones
and Those

To Those Who Are New To

Are Far Away

Those on Earth and Those in Heaven

I

To Those To To
Those Those

Know

and Those

Have

Trevor

Met

Who Agree and Those Who Disagree

I

Have Never Heard of

In the

Hope That

We May All Meet in the One Light

THOMAS MERTON

6403885

FIRST

AND LAST THOUGHTS: An AwtWs Preface

JL HIS BOOK is a selection from roughly twenty-five years of writing, most of which was done in a contemplative monastery. The texts, arranged as they are by Mr. Thomas P. McDonnell, the editor, in his carefully thought-out plan, cannot help but explain themselves. I have

had the satisfaction of sharing to some extent in the selection, cutting, and correcting here and there, and even adding a few lines on occasion, in order to help this book to be in some sense a summing up of twentyfive years of thought. In the course of this task I

have naturally

reflected

on the implica-

tions of such a collection,

and have attempted

to take stock of the past

purposes, the attempted articulations, the changes of perspective which it contains. It is doubtless fitting that the book ends, as it begins, with an excerpt from The Seven Storey Mountain. This is the early work

which

is

now,

as I hear, inflicted

on school children and

its

is

therefore
it

apparently considered most representative of

author. Doubtless

must be

so.

Much
in

that

is

spelled out in later books

it

The Seven

Storey Mountain. But

and articles is already implied cannot really be seen until it is

or perhaps more cryptic ones, like articulate statements and the Fat Man. There are essays and prose poems, for instance "Prometheus," "The Wisdom of the Desert/ "Herakleitos," and "The Good Samaritan/' which seem to me to be maturer efforts at saying what I mean.

found in more
Atlas

Then, too, a long string of selections from The Sign of Jonas communicates something that could never be said in any other way. Texts on poetry, war, love, art, the psalms, monastic life and contemplation
fill

in the

whole

picture.
I

Not everything

would have

liked to see in a Reader has finally

vii

vlii

First

and Last Thoughts

succeeded in getting there. Unavoidable limitations have prevented and this. But on the whole the hook seems to me to be representative, it made has kind whose those to all possible. I am indebted co-operation

Well, what
is to

is it

that I have
to

been trying
it to

a gross oversimplification

reduce

be found

(at least

by some men)

to say? Certainly it would the proposition that happiness in the contemplative life: or

be

that it has been unthat the contemplative necessary, and but to conI would This world. modern agree to, neglected in the
life is vitally

duly

sider this

my

be a

still

the easy reach of everybody. Not only am I templative prayer is within not trying to prove these propositions, but stated in this bald and unI do not even hold them. It is true that fifteen years qualified manner, excited about such theses, but I have come to see ago I was able to get a that controversy about speculative matters of this sort is not only believe to too are all waste of time but is seriously misleading. prone into a in our own programs and to follow the echo of our own slogans

that the contemplative

And it would message would be a misapprehension. to say I am simply trying to prove greater misapprehension life is "better than the active life/' and that contotal

We

realm of

illusion
I

Therefore

have

man for a contemplative or monastic movement, and I am

for a particular

unreality. tried to avoid writing simply as a propagandist lately cause or for a limited program. I am not merely a spokes-

and

not purely and

writer/' simply a "spiritual The earliest pieces of writing in this book are two book reviews done were for the New York Herald Tribune Books in May of 1938, These months about six written when I was a graduate student at Columbia, before my baptism into the Catholic Church. About three years later I entered the novitiate of the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani to become

Monk, There are a few poems popularly called a "Trappist" here written when I was living in Greenwich Village and later when I was teaching English at St. Bonaventure College. But the vast majority of these pages were written at Gethsemani, and of these a very fair work done in the last six years. proportion represents I would say that my life at Gethsemani has fallen roughly into four the novitiate. I was a novice in 1942-1944, Those were periods. First, hard years, before the days when radiators were much in favor during the winter, when the hours of communal prayer were much longer, when the fasts were much stricter. It was a period of training, and a
what
is

which happy, austere one, during to this period. poems belong

wrote

little.

The

best

Gethsemani

First

and Last Thoughts

ix

At the end of the novitiate my health hroke down and I was appointed to write and do translations of French books and articles. I was
and theology in preparation for ordination to the priesthood. This second period extends from 1944, my first vows, to ordination in 1949. At first the was done writing very bad. Two books were written which are not represented here, although they were unfortunately published. In 1946 I wrote The Seven Storey Mountain, in
also studying philosophy

1947 Seeds of Contemplation, and in 1948 The Waters of Siloe. After ordination, in 1949, there was another brief period of poor health and nervous exhaustion. I was almost incapable of writing for at least a year and a half after I became a priest. Then after a rest period in the hoswrote The Ascent to Truth and Bread in the Wilderness (both about 1951) and finished The Sign of Jonas, 1952. In 1951 I was appointed the Master of the Scholastics, that is, of the young monks
pital, I

of

studying for ordination in the monastery. This entailed a work preparing conferences and classes. Books like

fair

amount

The Living

Is an Island and The Silent Life belong of this period. Finally, a fourth stage. In 1955 I was made Master of the Choir Novices. This is an office involving considerable work and responsibility.

Bread and particularly

to the

No Man

end

No

sible to

writing of any account was done in 1956, but after that it was posproduce short books or collections of essays, and some poetry.

Disputed Questions,
Titans,

The Wisdom

of the Desert,

The

Behavior of

and New Seeds of Contemplation belong to this last period. So too do more recent essays on nuclear war, on Chinese thought, on liturgy, and on solitude. The books of the second period are the ones most widely known and read. The books and articles of the fourth period are, perhaps naturally, the ones that seem most significant to me. Maybe one reason for this is
that, to

me

at least,

they represent a successful attempt to escape the

limitations that I inevitably created for myself with The Seven Storey Mountain, a refusal to be content with the artificial public image which
this
I

autobiography created.

have had to accept the fact that my life is almost totally paradoxical. I have also had to learn gradually to get along without apologizing for the fact, even to myself. And perhaps this preface is an indication that

have not yet completely learned. No matter. It is in the paradox itself, the paradox which was and still is a source of insecurity, that I have come to find the greatest security. I have become convinced that the very
I

contradictions in

my

life

are in

some ways

signs of God's

mercy

to

me:

x
if

First

and Last Thoughts

only because someone so complicated and so prone to confusion and

self-defeat could hardly survive for long without special mercy. since this in no way depends on the approval of others, the awareness

And

of

it is

a kind of liberation.
I think I

Consequently
Paradoxically, I
fied.

have found peace because

of depression

can accept the situation with simplicity. I have always been dissatisto settle

My

moments
life,

new

beginnings. If I

were once
divisions

surface of

with

its

and despair turn out to be renewals, down and be satisfied with the and its cliches, it would be time to call

in the undertaker, except that in the monastery we do without the ministrations of an embalmer. So, then, this dissatisfaction which some-

times used to worry helped me in fact to

me and
move

has certainly, I know, worried others, has with the stream of life. freely and even gaily

(or spoken) protests have kept me from clinging to what done with. When a thought is done with, let go of it. When was already something has been written, publish it, and go on to something else. You may say the same thing again, some day, on a deeper level. No one need have a compulsion to be utterly and perfectly "original" in every word he writes. All that matters is that the old be recovered on a new plane and be, itself, a new reality. This, too, gets away from you. So let

My unspoken

it

my writing a monastic lesson could probably not have learned otherwise: to let go of my idea of myself, to take myself with more than one grain of salt. If the monastic
I
life is

get away. In other words, I have tried to learn in

the hardship has

a life of hardship and sacrifice, I would say that for me most of come in connection with writing. It is possible to doubt
I

whether

have become a

monk
I

not possible to doubt that

am

(a doubt I have to live with), but it is a writer, that I was born one and will

most probably die as one. Disconcerting, disedifying as it is, this seems to be my lot and my vocation. It is what God has given me in order that
I

might give

it

back to Him,
this is

In religious terms,

simply a matter of accepting

life,

and

everything in life as a gift, and clinging to none of it, as far as you are able. You give some of it to others, if you can. Yet one should be able to
share things with others without bothering too much about like it, either, or how they accept it. Assume they will accept

how
it,

they
they

if

need

it.

And

if

they don't need

their business.

Let

it, why should they accept it? That is me accept what is mine and give them all their share,

and go

my way.
grow
like this, in

All life tends to

mystery inscapcd with paradox and

First

and Last Thoughts

philosophy, and

yd

is

its very heart, on the divine mercy. Such more than philosophy because it consists my not in statements about a truth that cannot adequately be stated, but in and the of realization the life" that is in us who be'new grace, mercy, lieve, by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Without this gift we would have no philosophy, for we could never experience such simplicity in the midst of contradiction. Without the grace of God there could be no unity, no simplicity in our lives: only contradiction. We can overlay the contradiction with statements and explanations, we can produce an we can on life our intellectual illusory coherence, impose systems and we can enforce upon our minds a certain strained and artificial peace. But

contradiction, yet centered, in

it is

this is

not peace.

of the false peace that is imposed by means of an arbitrary system comes nothing but further conflict, resentment, hatred, war. We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full. We destroy them, or try to destroy them, with our obsessive and absurd systematizations. Whether we do this in the name of matter or in the name of spirit makes little difference in the end. There are atheists who fight God and atheists who claim to believe in Him: what they both have in common is the hatred of life, the fear of the unpredictable, the dread of grace, and the refusal of every
spiritual gift.

Out

to

Nor can I complacently say blame. The evil is in us all.

"they" and blame others as if I were not It is the blindness of a world that wants

to end itself. It is the blindness from which we must pray with tears and anguish that we may be delivered. It is the blindness with which we must never cease to struggle as long as we are in the world. Those who give up the struggle are themselves in turmoil, and impose their turmoil on the whole human race. Those who continue to struggle are at peace. If God wills, they can pacify the world. For he who accepts the struggle in the name of Christ is delivered from its power by the

victory of Christ.
first and last words in this book are, then, to summarize whatever "witness" these pages may contain. When a man enters a monastery he has to stand before the community, and formally responds to a ritual

My

"What do you ask?" His answer is not that he question: Quid yBtis? seeks a happy life, or escape from anxiety, or freedom from sin, or moral perfection, or the summit of contemplation. The answer is that
he seeks mercy. "The mercy
of

God and

of the Order."

Whatever

else

xii
it

First

and Last Thoughts

have found

may
I

do, this

book should bear witness

to find
it.

to the fact that I

what
me,

sought and continue

The Order

has been patient with

to

God

has been merciful to me, and more, countless readers have

given

me a gift of friendship and of love which is

me

precious beyond

estimation.

These readers sometimes write to me, and generally I am not able to But here at least let me assure them of my gratitude, my love, and reply.

my

prayers.

They

are in

my

silence, in

my

Mass, and in

my

solitude, I

hope we will be

together in Paradise.

CONTENTS
First

and Last Thoughts:

An

Author's Preface

vii

Pan One
1

THE UNREAL CITY

Prisoner's Base

Our Lady
ST.

of the

Museums
14

14

ANTONIN

At School in England

22

OAKHAM
CAMBRIDGE
4
5

22
26 28 32 32
33

Passage

Poems
LANDSCAPE: BEAST
SONG:

FROM

CROSSPORTION'S PASTORAL

LENT IN A YEAR OF WAR

34
34

THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT

THE NIGHT TRAIN

AUBADE: LAK
ERIE

35

36

ASH WEDNESDAY

37
37

AN ELEGY FOR ERNEST HEMINGWAY

LANDSCAPE
6
38

Children in the Market Place

40

THE

NEW

SOCIETY

40
45

FRIENDS AND COMRADES

COLUMBIA
7
8

47
53

Hell as Hatred
In the Face of Death

55

aiv

CONTENTS
9

Reviews of Nabokov and Ransom

Laughter in the Dark
58 59

58

The World's Body

10
11

The Problem
Our Lady
Epilogue
of

of Unbelief

62

Cobre

70
78

Part

Two
1

MAGNETIC NORTH
With
a Great Price

81

DOUBT AND ASCETICISM

IN A

82

NEW WORLD

84
-

2
3

Freedom
Prayer and the Subconscious

89

92
. .

4
5

"As a

Man

Is,

So

He

Prays.

."

94 96
102

Magnetic North

6
7

The The

Baroness Sleeping Volcano

104

Poems AUBADE

107

HARLEM

07

DIRGE FOR THE PROUD

WORLD

Io8
1

AN ARGUMENT
CRUSOE
1

OF THE PASSION OF CHRIST

09

10
III

THE BOMBARDED CITY

SONG
9
10
11

113
Is, Is

Everything That

Holy

115

No Man

Is

an Island

120
124 127
133

Sentences on
Sincerity

Hope

12
13

The Grove and Beyond

Epilogue:

"My

Soul

Remembered God"

139

Contents

xv

'Part

Three

THE MONASTERY
Prologue
143

To

the

Monastery

145
149

2
3

In the Monastic Community

To Become
Our Lady
Poems
FOR

Monk

155
158
161 171

4
5

Christmas Night
of Sorrows

MY

BROTHER: REPORTED MISSING

171

IN ACTION, 1943

THE TRAPPIST CEMETERY

GETHSEMANI
174
175

1/2

THE TRAPPIST ABBEY: MATINS

EVENING: ZERO WEATHER

AFTER THE NIGHT OFFICE

GETHSEMANI

ABBEY

176

THE READER
ST.

177

MALACHY

177
179
l8o

ELEGY FOR THE MONASTERY BARN

A PRACTICAL PROGRAM FOR MONKS

7
8
"If

Ever There

Was
of

a Country

."

182

The Foundation
Day unto Day

Gethsemani Abbey

184
198

Epilogue: Fire Watch, July 4, 1952

229

Part Four
1

MENTORS AND DOCTRINES

William Blake
Bramachari

243

2
3

247
253
2,53

Mentors

MARK VAN DOBEN

xri

CONTENTS
ETIENNE GILSON
257

FATHER MOORE, DAN WALSH, JACQUES

MARITAIN
4
Poets
T. S.

262

267
ELIOT

267

DYLAN THOMAS
ROBERT LOWELL

268
269
270

JORGE CARRERA ANDRADE

5

Herakleitos the Obscure

Letter to Surkov

273

6
7

285

Religion and the

Bomb
288
291

288

MAY, 1962

COLD WAR AND THEOLOGY

THE FIGHT FOR PEACE

CONCLUSIONS
8

293

297
for

War

and the Prayer

Peace

298

THE ROOT OF WAR

298 299
30!

MORAL CONFUSION

ON PRAYING FOR PEACE

PRAYER FOR PEACE
9
10
11
St.

303

John o

the Cross

306
315 319

The

Letters of

St Bernard

Christian Culture

Needs Oriental Wisdom

12

Conquistador, Tourist, and Indian

327

Pan

Five

LOVE
Prologue: Pure Love

337 340

The Ways

of

Love
Bones
of the Devil

2
3

Body

of Broken

346

The Moral Theology

352

Contents

arwi

4
5

Love Can Be Kept Only by Being Given Away

357

The Woman Clothed with

Poems

the

Sun

360
366

FREEDOM AS EXPERIENCE
CANA
EVENING
367
367
368

366

THE ANNUNCIATION
A PSALM
369
ST.

THE QUICKENING OF

JOHN

THE BAPTIST
7
8

370
373

Love in Meditation
Prometheus:

Meditation

377
377

A NOTE:

TWO

FACES OF PROMETHEUS 379

PROMETHEUS: A MEDITATION
9
10
1 1

The Good Samaritan

Tower
Chant
of Babel
to

383
391

Be Used

in Processions

Around a

Site

with Furnaces

404

Part Six

VISION
Epigraph
Prologue: Mysticism in the Nuclear

408

Age

409

Vision and Illusion

Asceticism and Sacrifice

416
422

2
3

Art and Spirituality POETRY, SYMBOLISM, AND TYPOLOGY

425

426

POETRY AND CONTEMPLATION:

A REAPPRAISAL
4

436
451

Poems

THE LANDFALL

451

mm
THE SOWING OF MEAHINGS
STRANGER
453
ST.

CONTENTS
452

A PRELUDE: FOR THE FEAST OF A RESPONSORY, 1948

THE CAPTIVES
SENESCENTE
5

AGNES

455

456

A PSALM
458

457

MUNDO

Seeds of Contemplation

459
It Pleases

6
7
8

The Wind Blows Where

False Mysticism

463

466

The Shadow

of

Thy Wings

472 476
482

Sharing the Fruits of Contemplation

Epilogue

Part Seven

THE SACRED LAND

Epigraph

486

Silence
Atlas and the Fat

487

2
3

Man

493
503

The Wisdom The Recovery

Poems

of the Desert of Paradise

4
5

509

516

IN THE RAIN

AND THE SUN

516

WISDOM
ELIAS

517

VARIATIONS

ON A THEME

518

"WHEN

IN THE SOUL OF THE SEEENE

,
.

DISCIPLE

,"

523

SPRING STORM

523

DRY PLACES

524
525

THE HEAVENLY CITY

6

Theology

of

Creativity

527

Contents
7
8

xix

Nativity

Kerygma
of

531
Life

The Wine

New

539 546
551

The General Dance

Epilogue: Meditatio Pauperis in Solitudine

PART ONE

The
Unreal

City

What negligence, what

Hun
to the

delay

is this?

mountain and get

rid of the slough

which keeps you from seeing God,

One:

PRISONER'S BASE

V-/N THE LAST DAY OF JANUARY 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French
mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of hell, full of men like myself, and God born to love Him, living instead in fear Him; yet hating loving

and hopeless

self-contradictory hungers,

Not many hundreds of miles away from the house where I was born, they were picking up the men who rotted in the rainy ditches among
the dead horses and the ruined seventy-fives, in a forest of trees without branches along the river Marne.
father and mother were captives in that world, knowing they did not belong with it or in it, and yet unable to get away from it. They were in the world and not of it not because they were saints, but in a

My

way: because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts above the level of the world without delivering him from it My father painted like C6zanne and understood the southern French landscape the way C6zanne did. His vision of the world was sane, full
different

man

of balance, full of veneration for structure, for the relations of masses and for all the circumstances that impress an individual identity on each

created thing. His vision was religious and clean, and therefore his a relipaintings were without decoration or superfluous comment, since

gious man respects the power of God's creation to bear witness for itself. father was a very good artist. I inherited from my father his way of looking at things and some of his integrity and from my mother some of her dissatisfaction with the

My

4
mess the world
ties for

The Unreal

City

is In, and some of her versatility. From both I got capaciwork and vision and enjoyment and expression that ought to have made me some kind of a king, if the standards the world lives by were the real ones. Not that we ever had any money: but any fool knows

need money to get enjoyment out of life. what most people take for granted were really true if all you needed to be happy was to grab everything and see everything and inbeen a vestigate every experience and then talk about it, I should have
that you don't
If

very happy person, a spiritual millionaire, from the cradle even until

now.
happiness were merely a matter of natural gifts, I would never have entered a Trappist monastery when I came to the age of a man,
If

II

MY FATHER AND MOTHER came from the ends of the earth, to Prades, and though they came to stay, they stayed there barely long enough for me to be born and get on my small feet, and then they left again. And they continued and I began a somewhat long journey; for all three of us, one way and another, it is now ended. And though my father came from the other side of the earth, beyond many oceans, all the pictures of Christchurch, New Zealand, where he was born, look like the suburbs of London, but perhaps a little cleaner. There is more sunlight in New Zealand, and I think the people are
healthier.

name was Owen Merton. Owen because his mother's had lived for a generation or two in Wales, though I believe family were originally Lowland Scotch. And my father's father was a they music master, and a pious man, who taught at Christ's College, Christchurch, on the South Island. My father had a lot of energy and independence. He told me how it was in the hill country and in the mountains of the South Island, out on the sheep farms and in the forests where he had been, and once, when one of the Antarctic expeditions came that way, my father nearly joined it, to go to the South Pole. He would have been frozen to death along with all the others, for that was the one from which no one returned. When he wanted to study art, there were many difficulties in his way, and it was not easy for him to convince his people that that was really his vocation. But eventually he went to London, and then to Paris, and in Paris he met my mother, and married her, and never went

My

father's

back

to

New

Zealand.

Prisoner's Ease

5
a picture of her as a rather with a and serious somewhat anxious and person And this corresponds with my memory of her
critical of

My mother was an American. I have seen

slight, thin, sober little

very sensitive face. worried, precise, quick,

me, her son. Yet in the family she has

lighthearted.

always been spoken of

as

gay and very

My

grandmother

kept great locks of Mother's red hair, after she died, and Mother's happy laughter as a boarding-school girl was what never ceased to echo in my
grandmother's memory. It seems to me, now, that Mother must have been a person full of insatiable dreams and of great ambition after perfection: perfection in
in interior decoration, in dancing, in housekeeping, in raising chilthat is I remember her mostly as worried, since the Maybe why of her first had been a great deception. son, imperfection myself,
art,

dren.

Ill

MY FATHER CAME TO THE PYRENEES because of a dream of his own: more single, more concrete and more practical than Mother's numerous and haunting ideals of perfection. Father wanted to get some place where he could settle in France, and raise a family, and paint, and live on practically nothing, because we had practically nothing to live on. Father and Mother had many friends at Prades, and when they had moved there, and had their furniture in their flat, and the canvasses piled up in the corner, and the whole place smelling of fresh oil paints and water color and cheap pipe tobacco and cooking, more friends came down from Paris. And Mother would paint in the hills, under a large canvas parasol, and Father would paint in the sun, and the friends would drink red wine and gaze out over the valley at Canigou, and at the monastery on the slopes of the mountain. There were many ruined monasteries in those mountains. My mind
goes back with great reverence to the thought of those clean, ancient stone cloisters, those low and mighty rounded arches hewn and set in
place by

monks who have perhaps prayed me where

St.

now am.

St.

Michael the Archangel, the great patron of monks, had churches in those mountains. Saint Martin-du-Canigou; Saint Michelde-Cuxa. Is it any wonder I should have a friendly feeling about those

Martin and

places'?

One

of them, stone by stone, followed

me

across the Atlantic a score

and got itself set up within convenient reach of me when I most needed to see what a cloister looked like, and what kind of to his rational nature, and place a man might live in, to live according
of years later,

6
not like a stray dog.
St.

The Unreal

City

Michel-de-Cuxa is all fixed up in a special and in an uptown park, in New York, overconsiderably tidy a way that you don't recall what kind in such the Hudson River, looking
little

museum

is, you are in. It is called The Cloisters. Synthetic as of its own reality to be a reproach to everything else preserves enough around it, except the trees and the Palisades. But when the friends of my father and mother came to Prades, they and they had brought the newspapers, rolled up in their coat pockets,

of a city

it

it still

many

the Allies overpostcards carrying patriotic cartoons, representing that is, my mother's father and the Germans. grandparents coming

My

mother in America were worried about her being in a land at wax, and it was evident that we could not stay much longer at Prades,

IV
THEN IN NOVEMBER
1918, about a

week

before the Armistice of that

was born. He was a child particular world war, my younger brother with a much serener nature than mine, with not so many obscure drives
and impulses. I remember that everyone was impressed by his constant and unruffled happiness. In the long evenings, when he was put to bed before the sun went down, instead of protesting and fighting, as I did when I had to go to bed, he would lie upstairs in his crib, and we would hear him singing a little tune. Every evening it was the same
tune, very simple, very primitive; a nice little tune, very suitable for the time of day and for the season. Downstairs, we would all fall more or
less silent, lulled

see the sunrays slanting across the fields

by the singing of the child in the crib, and we would and through the windows as
friend, called Jack,
I

the day ended,

who had an imaginary dog, an imaginary friend was had why that there were no other children to play with, and my brother John Paul was still a baby. When I tried to seek diversion watching the gentlemen who played pool at Mr. Duggan's saloon, I got into much trouble. On the other hand, I could go and play at Burroughs' place, in their garden and in the room full of old lumber over the studio* Betty
I

had an imaginary

called Doolitde,

The

chief reason

Burroughs knew

how

to join in

games in a way that did not imply

patronage, though she was practically grown up. But for friends of

my

own

age, I

had

to fall

back on
the
I

my

imagination, and

it

was perhaps not

at least
to cross

a good thing. Mother did not

to

mind

begin with, but once

company I kept in my imagination, went shopping with her, and refused

Prisoner's Base

Main

get run over by

affair in

Street, Flushing, for fear that the imaginary dog, Doolittle, might real cars. This I later learned from her record of the

her diary. I could read and write and draw. I drew a picture of the house, and everybody sitting under the pine trees, on a blanket, on the

By 1920
and

in the mail. He lived at Douglaston, which was But most of the time I drew away. pictures of boats. Ocean liners with many funnels and hundreds of portholes, and waves all around as jagged as a saw, and the air full of Vs" for the sea gulls. It seems strange that Father and Mother, who were concerned almost to the point of scrupulosity about keeping the minds of their sons uncontaminated by error and mediocrity and ugliness and sham, had not
grass,

sent

it

to

Pop

about

five miles

bothered to give us any formal religious training.

I

The only explanation the guess that Mother must have had strong views on the subject. Possibly she considered any organized religion below the standard of intellectual perfection she demanded of any child of hers.
have
is

We

never went

church in Flushing, In fact, I remember having an intense desire to go to church one day, but we did not go. It was Sunday. Perhaps it was an Easter Sunday, probably in 1920. From across the fields, and beyond the red farmhouse of our neighbor, I could see the spire of St. George's church, above the
to
trees.

The sound

of the churchbells

was playing in
birds singing

front of the house,

the birds began to

cried out to

came to us across the bright fields. I and stopped to listen. Suddenly, all sing in the trees above my head, and the sound of
lifted

and churchbells ringing

father:

up my

heart with joy. I

my

"Father,

all

the birds are in their church."

And

then

I said:

"Why
up and

don't
said:

we

go

to church?*

My

father looked
said

'We will."

"Now?"
"No,

But we will go some other Sunday." Mother did yet go somewhere, sometimes, on Sunday mornings, to worship God. I doubt that Father went with her; he probably stayed at home to take care of me and John Paul, for we never went But anyway, Mother went to the Quakers, and sat with them in their ancient meeting house. This was the only kind of religion for which she had any use, and I suppose it was taken for granted that, when we grew older, we might be allowed to tend in that direction too. Probably no influence would have been brought to bear on us to do so. We would have been left to work it out more or less for ourselves.
it is

too late.

And

The Unreal
Meanwhile,
at

City

home,

my

laid

down by some

progressive

education was progressing along the lines method that Mother had read about in

one of those magazines. She answered an advertisement that carried an oval portrait of some bearded scholar with a pince-nez, and received from Baltimore a set of books and some charts and even a small desk and blackboard. The idea was that the smart modern child was to be turned
loose

amid

this apparatus,

and allowed

to develop spontaneously into a

midget university before reaching the age of ten. The ghost of John Stuart Mill must have glided

up and down the

room with a sigh get what came of

of gratification as I opened the desk and began. I forit all, except that one night I was sent to bed early for "which" without the first "h": "w-i~c-h." I remember stubbornly spelling
I

brooding about this as an injustice. "What do they think After all, I was still only five years old.
Still, I

am, anyway?"

no grudge against the fancy method or the desk that Maybe that was where my geography book came from the favorite book of my childhood. I was so fond of playing prisoner's base all over those maps that I wanted to become a sailor, I was only too
retain
it.

went with

eager for the kind of footloose

and unstable

life I

was soon

to get into.

was a collecGreek Heroes. It was more than I could do to read the Victorian version of these Greek myths for myself, but Father read them aloud, and I learned of Theseus and the Minotaur, of the Medusa, of Perseus and Andromeda. Jason sailed to a far land, after the Golden Fleece. Theseus returned victorious, but forgot to change the black sails, and the King of Athens threw himself down from the rock, believing that his son was dead. In those days I learned the name Hesperides, and it was from these things that I unconsciously built up the vague fragments of a religion and of a philosophy, which remained hidden and implicit in my acts, and which, in due time, were to assert themselves in a deep and all-embracing attachment to my own judgment and my own will and a constant turning away from subjection, towards the freedom of my own ever-changing horizons, In a sense, this was intended as the fruit of my early training. Mother wanted me to be independent, and not to run with the herd. I was to be I was to have a definite character and ideals of my original, individual, own. I was not to be an article thrown together, on the common bour* geois pattern, on everybody else's assembly line. If we had continued as we had begun, and if John Paul and I had

My

second best book confirmed

me

in this desire. This

tion of stories called the

grown up

in tha

house, probably this Victorian-Greek complex

would

Prisoner's Base

have built itself up gradually, and we would have turned into goodmannered and earnest skeptics, polite, intelligent, and perhaps even in some sense useful. We might have become successful authors, or editors of magazines, professors at small and progressive colleges. The way would have been all smooth and perhaps I would never have ended up as a monk.

V
MOTHER'S DEATH had made one thing evident: Father now did not have to do anything but paint. He was not tied down to any one place. He could go wherever he needed to go, to find subjects and get ideas, and I was old to with him. enough go And so, after I had been a few months in the local school at Douglaston, and had already been moved up to the second grade, in the evilsmelling gray annex on top of the hill, Father came back to New York and announced that he and I were going somewhere new. It was with a kind of feeling of triumph that I watched the East River widen into Long Island Sound, and waited for the moment when the Fall River boat, in all her pride, would go sweeping past the mouth of Bayside Bay and I would view Douglaston, as I thought, from the superiority of the open water and pass it by, heading for a new horizon called Fall River and Cape Cod and Provincetown. We could not afford a cabin, but slept down below decks in the crowded steerage, if you could call it that, among the loud Italian families and the colored boys who spent the night shooting craps under the dim light, while the waters spoke loudly to us, above our heads, proclaiming that we were well below the waterline. And in the morning we got off the boat at Fall River, and walked up the street beside the textile mills, and found a lunch wagon crowded with men getting something to eat on the way to work; and we sat at the counter and ate ham and eggs. All day long after that we were in a train. Just before we crossed the
great black drawbridge over the Cape Cod Canal, Father got off at a station and went to a store across the street and bought me a bar of

Baker's chocolate, with a blue wrapper and a picture of a lady in an old-fashioned cap and apron, serving cups of chocolate. I was almost

completely overwhelmed with surprise and awe at the fact of such tremendous largesse. Candy had always been strictly rationed. Then came the long, long journey through the sand dunes, stopping at every station, while I sat, weary and entranced, with the taste of

io

The Unreal
the

City

chocolate thick and stale in

mind

my mouth, turning over and over in my where we were going: Sandwich, Falmouth, Truro, Provincetown. The name Truro especially fascinated me. I could not get it out of my mind: Truro. Truro. It was a name as lonely as the
names
of places

edge of the
as wires,

sea.

full of low sand dunes, and coarse grasses as sharp from the white sand. And the wind blew across the growing sand. And I saw the breakers of the gray sea come marching in towards the land, and I looked out at the ocean. Geography had begun to be-

That summer was

come a reality. Bermuda in those days had no big hotels and no golf courses to speak of. It was not famous for anything. It was simply a curious island, two or three days out of New York, in the Gulf Stream, where the British had a small naval base and where there were no automobiles and not

much

We

of anything else either. took a small boat called the Fort Victoria, with a red

and black

funnel, and surprisingly soon after we had left New York Harbor, the to leap out of the foam before her bows and skid flying fishes began

along over the surface of the warm waves. And although I was very eager for my first sight of the island, it came upon us suddenly before I was aware, and stood up before us in the purple waters, green and white.

You could

already see the small white houses,

made

of coral, cleaner

than sugar, shining in the sun, and all around us the waters paled over the shallows and became the color of emeralds where there was sand,
or lavender

way

in a zigzag between the buoys that

where there were rocks below the surface. We threaded our marked the path through the

labyrinthine reefs. The H.M.S. Calcutta lay at anchor off Ireland Island dockyard, Father pointed to Somerset where, among the dark green cedars,
the place
there.

and was

How quiet
padded

where we would live. Yet it was evening before we finally got and empty it was, in Somerset, in the gathering dusk!
softly

Our

feet

in the

creamy dust of the deserted road.

No

wind

paper leaves of the banana trees, or in the oleanders. Our voices seemed loud, as we spoke* It was a very friendly Island. Those who occasionally came by saluted us as if we were old acquaintances.
stirred the

The boardinghouse had a green verandah and many rocking chairs. The dark green paint needed renewing* The British officers, or whatever they were who lived in the place, sat and smoked their pipes, and
talked, if they talked at
all,

Father put

down

our bags.

about matters extremely profane. And here They ware expecting us* In the shadows, we

Prisoners Ease
sat

n
quickly adjusted myself to the thought that this

down

to dinner. I

was home.
almost impossible to make much sense out of the continual rearrangement of our lives and our plans from month to month in my childhood. Yet every new development came to me as a reasonable and
It is

worthy change. Sometimes I had to go to school, sometimes I did not. Sometimes Father and I were living together, sometimes I was with strangers and only saw him from time to time. People came into our lives and went out of our lives. We had now one set of friends, now
another. Things were always changing. I accepted it all. ever have occurred to me that nobody else lived like that?

Why

should

it

seemed as natural as the variations of the weather and the one thing I knew: for days on end I could run where I pleased, and do whatever I liked, and life was very pleasant. When Father left the boardinghouse, I remained there, and continued was near the school. He was living in some other some people he had met, and he spent his days at work, painting landscapes. In fact, after that winter in Bermuda he had finished enough work to have an exhibition, and this made him enough money to go back to Europe. But meanwhile, I was going to the local school for white children, which was next to a large public cricket field, and I was constantly being punished for my complete inability to grasp the principles of multiplication and division. It must have been very difficult for Father to try to make all these decisions. He wanted me to go to school, and he wanted me to be with him. When both these things ceased to be possible at the same time, he first decided in favor of the school: but then, after considering at length the nature of the place where I had to live, and the kind of talk I heard there, all day long, with my wide-open and impassive understanding, he took me out of the school, and brought me to live where he was. And I was very glad, because I was relieved of the burden of learning multiplication and long division. The only worry was that my former teacher passed along that road on her bicycle on her way home, and if I was playing by the road, I had to get out of sight for fear that she would send the truant officer
to live in
it,

To me, it seasons. And

because

it

part of Somerset, with

around and make me come back to school. One evening I did not see her coming, and I was a little late in diving into the bushes that filled a deserted quarry and, as I peeked out between the branches, I could see
her looking back over her shoulder as she slowly pedaled up the white
hill.

12

The Unreal
Day
after

City

day the sun shone on the blue waters of the

sea,

and on

the islands in the bay, and on the white sand at the head of the bay, and on the little white houses strung along the hillside. I remember one day head to worship one of the looking up into the sky, and taking it into head of Minerva with a one like the end which at was clouds,

my

helmet

like

shaped the head of the armed lady on the big British pennies.

VI
FATHER HELD
his most successful exhibition at the Leicester Galleries

he returned to early in 1925. that year, he came in a kind of triumph.

cessful artist.

When

New York, in the early summer of He was beginning to be a suc-

more or less he could write F.R.B.A. after his name which he never did and I think he was already in Who's Who, conalthough that was the kind of thing for which he had supreme

Long ago he had been

elected to one of those

meaningless British societies, so that

tempt.

But now, what was far more useful to an artist, he had gained the attention and respect of such an important and venerable critic as Roger what a good Fry, and the admiration of people who not only knew painting was, but had some money with which to buy one, As he landed in New York, he was a very different person more from the man who had taken me to Bermuda different than I realized two years before. All I noticed, at the moment, was the fact that he had a beard, to which I strenuously objected, being filled with the provincial snobbery so strong in children and adolescents.
to the
"I

"Are you going to shave it house in Douglaston.

off

now, or

later?" I inquired,

when we

got

am

not going to shave

it off

at all," said

my father.

'That's crazy/' I said. But he was not disturbed. He did shave it off, a couple of years later, by which time I had got used to it. However, he had something to tell me that upset my complacency
far

more than the beard. For by now, having become more or

less ac-

climatized in Douglaston, after the unusual experience of remaining some two years in the same place, I was glad to be there, and liked my
friends,

and

liked to go
I

swimming

in the bay. I

camera with which

took pictures,

which

my

had been given a small uncle caused to be de-

veloped for me at the Pennsylvania Drug Store, in the city, I possessed a baseball bat with the word "Spalding" burnt on it in large letters. I thought maybe I would like to become a boy scout and, indeed, I had
seen a great competition of boy scouts in the Flushing Armory, just next

Prisoners Base

13
I

Dan

door to the Quaker meeting house where Beard, with his beard.

had once got a glimpse of

My

father said:
I said,

"We

are going to France."

"France!"

in astonishment.

Why

should anybody want to go

to France? I thought, which shows that I was a very stupid and ignorant child. But he persuaded me that he meant what he said. And when all

my

objections were useless, I burst into tears. Father

was not

at all un-

sympathetic about it. He kindly told me that I would be glad to be in France, when I got there, and gave me many reasons why it was a good idea. And finally he admitted that we would not start right away.

compromise I was temporarily comforted, thinking perhaps the plan would be dropped after a while. But fortunately it was not. And on August the twenty-fifth of that year the game of Prisoner's Base
this

With

began again, and we sailed for France. Although I did not know it, and it would not have interested me then, it was the Feast of St. Louis of
France.

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Two:

OUR LADY OF THE MUSEUMS

o
.

ST.

ANTONIN

I WAS TIRED, and fell asleep long before we got to Paris. I woke up long enough to be impressed by the welter of lights in the wet streets, and the dark sweep of the Seine, as we crossed one of the countless bridges, while far away the fires on the Eiffel tower spelled
des Saint Peres, Gare d'Orleans filled and spelled me no certitude concerning unmeaning, the tall gray houses, and the wide shady awnings of the cafe's, and the trees, and the people, and the churches, and the flying taxis, and the green and white buses full of noise.

"C-I-T-RO-fi-N/' The words Montparnasse,

their

Rue

my mind with

I
city,

did not have time, at the age of ten, to

make anything out

of this

but already I knew I was going more, we were on a train.

to like

France; and then, once

That day, on that express, going into the south, into the Midi, I discovered France, I discovered that land which is really, as far as 1 can
if I belong to any at all, by no but birth. by geographical documentary flew over the brown Loire, by a long, long bridge at Orleans, and from then on I was home, although I had never seen it before, and shall never see it again. It was there, too, that Father told me about Joan of Arc, and I suppose the thought of her was with me, at least in the back
tell,

the one to which I do belong,

title

We

of my mind, all the day long. Maybe the thought of her, acting as a kind of implicit prayer by the veneration and love it kindled in rne, won me her intercession in heaven, so that through her I was able to get

some

sort of actual grace

template

God

without realizing

out of the sacrament of her land, and to conit in all the poplars along those streams,

Our Lady
in
all

of the

Museums

15

the low-roofed houses gathered about the village churches, in the woods and the farms and the bridged rivers. passed a place called Chateaudun. When the land became rockier, we came to with

We

Limoges,

a labyrinth of tunnels, ending in a burst of light and a high bridge and a panorama of the city crowding up the side of a steep hill to the feet of the time we were getting deeper into Aquitaine: toward the old provinces of Quercy and we were not sure where, Rouergue, although yet of our destination, I was to live and drink from the fountains of the Middle

the plain-towered cathedral

And

all

and deeper

Ages.

In the evening we came to a station called Brive. Brive-la-Gaillarde. The dusk was gathering. The country was hilly, and full of trees, yet

and you knew that the uplands were bare and wild. In the valleys was too dark for us to see Cahors. And then: Montauban. What a dead town! What darkness and silence, after the train. We came out of the station into an empty, dusty square, full of shadows, and a dim light, here and there. The hoofs of a cabhorse clopped away along
rocky,

were

castles. It

the empty street, taking some of the other people who had descended from the express off into the mysterious town. We picked up our bags

was there, one of those low, unwith a dim bulb burning in a downstairs defined, gray a a lot of iron tables and a few small with window, illuminating caf, calendars covered with fly specks and the big volumes of the Bottin
to a hotel that
little hotels,

and crossed the square

crowding the rickety desk of the sour-faced lady in black

over the four customers.

who

presided

And yet, instead of being dreary, it was pleasant. And although I had no conscious memory of anything like this, it was familiar, and I felt at home. Father threw open the wooden shutters of the room, and looked out into the quiet night, without stars, and said: "Do you smell the woodsmoke in the air? That is the smell of the
Midi.
1'

II

WHEN WE WOKE UP
lit air,

in the morning,
tiled roofs,
last

and saw the low

scene different from the

and looked out into the bright sunrealized that we had come upon a kind of landscape we had seen by the light

we

of the previous evening in the train. were at the borders of Languedoc. Everything was red. The town was built of brick. It stood on a low bluff, over the clay-colored eddies of

We

The Unreal

City

the river Tarn.

We

might almost have heen in Spain. But oh!

It

was

dead, that town!

Why were we

there? It

was not only

that Father

wanted

to continue

had come back to us that year with painting in the south of France. more than a heard. Whether it was his sickness or what, I do not know,
but something had made him certain that he could not leave the training and care of his sons to other people, and that he
to

He

had a

responsibility

home, somewhere, where he could at the same time carry on his work and have us living with him, growing up under his supervision. And, what is more, he had become definitely aware of

make some kind

of a

certain religious obligations for us as well as for himself. I am sure he had never ceased to be a religious man: but

now

a thing

which
ask

did not remember from

to

my

Montauban was no place for There was really nothing there worth painting. It was a good enough town, but it was dull. The only thing that interested Father was the Mus6e Ingres, filled with meticulous drawings by that painter, who had been born in Montauban: and that collection of cold and careful sketches was not enough to keep anyone at a high pitch of inspiration for much more than fifteen minutes. More characteristic of the town was a nightmarish bronze monument by Bourdelle, outside the museum, which seemed to represent a group of cliff dwellers battling in a mass of
us.

help us, to help him find us a place to live. to exhibition, After the first day, it became clear that

God

earlier years paint, to help

he

told

me

to pray, to

him have a

successful

molten chocolate.

However, when we happened to inquire at the Syndicat dlnitiative to live, we saw photographs of some little towns which, as we were told, were in a valley of a river called the Aveyron not very
about places
far

away

to the northeast of the city.

The

afternoon

we

took the peculiar, antiquated train out of

Mont-

auban into the country, we felt something like the three Magi after leaving Herod and Jerusalem when they caught sight once again of
their star.

locomotive had big wheels and a low, squat boiler, and an inordinately high smokestack, so that it seemed to have escaped from the museum, except that it was very sturdy and did its work well And the
three or four
little

The

coaches sped us quickly into a territory that

was

cer-

tainly sacramental. The last town that

ner of

all

had a brick campanile to its church, after the manLanguedoc, was Montricoux. Then the train entered the

Our Lady
Aveyron
then
I

of the

Museums

17

BruniqueL steep were thick with woods, small gnarled oaks, clinging to the rock. Along the river, the slender poplars rippled with the light of late afternoon, and green waters danced on the stones. The people who got on and off the train were peasants with black smocks, and on the roads we saw men walking beside teams of oxen, drawing their two-wheeled carts: and they guided the placid beasts with their long sticks. Father
hills

something. did not realize what we were getting into until the train swept around a big curve of the shallow river, and came to stop under the sunny plane trees along the platform of a tiny station, and we looked out the window, and saw that we had just passed along the bottom of a sheer cliff one or two hundred feet with a thirteenth-century high, casde on the top of it. That was All around us, the

we began

valley. After that, to see

we were more

or less in Rouergue.

And

told

me

that the people

d'oc.

were

all

talking, not French,

but the old

patois,

langue

next place was Penne. At the meeting of two valleys, a thin escarpment of rock soared up boldly over the river, bent and sharply
rising, like

The

an open wing. On the top were the ruins of another castle. Further down, straggling along the ridge, went the houses of the village and somewhere among them the small square tower of a church, an open iron belfry on top, with a visible bell.
its

valley seemed to get narrower and deeper as the train followed narrow single track between the river and the rocks. Sometimes there was enough space between us and the river to contain a small

The

hayfield. Occasionally a deserted dirt road or cattle track would cross our way, and there would be a house and a crossing gate and one of those furious French bells, throwing the sudden scare of its clangor

through the windows of the carriage as

The
on
to

valley widened a
hill

the foot of the

If

we passed by. contain the village of Cazals, hanging across the river, and then we were back in the
little to

gorge.

you went

to the

window and looked

up, you could see the

gray and yellow

sky.

cliffs

And now we

towering up so high they almost blocked out the could begin to distinguish caves high up on the rock.

up there and visit some of them. Passing through tunnel after tunnel, and over many bridges, through bursts of light and at last to the town of our greenery followed by deep shadow, we came
Later I would climb
destination.

was an old, old town. Its history went back to the Roman days which were the times of the martyred saint, its patron. Antoninus had
It

The Unreal
this valley,

City

brought Christianity to the Roman colony in had been martyred in another place, Pamiers,
the Pyrenees, near Prades,

and

later

he

down

in the foothills of

where I was born. Even in 1925, St. Antonin preserved the shape of a round, walled on three loourg: only the walls themselves were gone, and were replaced sides by a wide circular street lined with trees and spacious enough to be called a Boulevard, although you hardly ever saw anything on it but oxcarts and chickens. The town itself was a labyrinth of narrow streets, lined by old thirteenth-century houses, mostly falling into ruins. Nevmedieval town was there, but for the fact that the streets were no longer crowded and busy, and the houses and shops were no and there was longer occupied by prosperous merchants and artisans, the of Middle Ages. and noise color and the gaiety nothing left of be in the Middle Nevertheless, to walk through those streets was to
ertheless, the

Ages: for nothing had been touched by man, only by ruin and by the
passage of time.
It

of the tanners

seems that one of the busiest guilds of the town had been that and the old tanneries were still there, along a narrow

foul-smelling sewer of a stream that ran through a certain section of the town. But in those old days the whole place had been filled with the activity of all the work belonging to a free and prosperous commune.

And

as I say, the center of

it all

was the church.

Unfortunately, the very importance of the ancient shrine of St, Antonin had drawn down violence upon it in the days of the religious

The church that now stood on the ruins was entirely modern, and we could not judge what the old one had been like, or see, reflected in its work and construction, the attitude of the citizens who had built it. Even now, however, the church dominated the town, and each morning, noon, and evening sent forth the Angelus bells over the brown, ancient tiled roofs reminding people of the Mother of God who watched over them.
wars.

And

even now, although

never thought of

it

and was, indeed,

in-

capable of doing so, since I had no understanding of the concept of Mass, even now, several times each morning, under those high arches,

on the
secret,

altar

over die

relics of

the martyr, took place that tremendous,

so secret that it will never be thoroughly understood by a created intellect, and yet so obvious that its very obviousness blinds us by excess of clarity: the unbloody Sacrifice of God

and obvious immolation,

under the species of bread and wine.

Our Lady
Here, in
cliffs

of the
this

Museums

19

of the houses

and

amazing, ancient town, the very pattern of the place, streets and of nature itself, the circling hills, the
focused

and

trees, all

my
what

attention
it

upon the

one, important cento

tral fact of

the church and

contained. Here, everywhere I went,

was

forced,

by the

disposition of everything

around me,
street

be always

at least virtually conscious of the church.

less

inward

to the center of the

hills,

town, from the exterior

its

Every pointed more or town, to the church. Every view of the centered upon the long gray building with
the landscape in such a
Its

high

spire.
fitted into
its

The church had been

become the keystone
of

way

as to

intelligibility. presence imparted a special form, a particular significance to everything else that the eye beto the the held, hills, forests, the fields, the white cliff of the Rocher

d'Anglars and to the red bastion of the Roc Rouge, to the winding river, and the green valley of the Bonnette, the town and the bridge, and even to the white stucco villas of the modern bourgeois that dotted
the fields and orchards outside the precinct of the vanished ramparts: and the significance that was thus imparted was a supernatural one.

The whole
spire,

seemed

been made

landscape, unified by the church and its heavenward the meaning of all created things: we have for no other purpose than that men may use us in raising
to say: this is

themselves to God, and in proclaiming the glory of God. have been in all our each fashioned, perfection, according to his own nature, and all our natures ordered and harmonized together, that man's reason and
his love

We

might

fit

in this one last element, this God-given key to the

meaning

of the whole.
Ill

IN THOSE BAYS the whole south of France was infected with a furious

and

violent passion for rugby football, and played it with a bloodthirsty energy that sometimes ended in mortal injuries. In the really important

games, the referee usually had

to

be escorted from the grounds afterward

by a special bodyguard, and not infrequently had to make his escape over the fence and through the fields. The only sport that raised a more
universal

and more intense excitement than rugby, was long-distance bicycle racing. St. Antonin was off the circuit of the big road races, but our hills, and we occasionally there would be a race that came through would stand at the end of the long climb to the top of Rocher d'Anglars, and watch them coming slowly up the hill, with their noses almost

20

The Unreal

City

and scraping the front wheels of their bikes as they hent far down the And all knots. with their clenched into tremendous muscles toiled,
veins stood out on their foreheads.

One

of the

members

of the

rugby team was a small, rabbitlike man,

the son of the local hay and feed dealer, who owned a car and drove most of the team back and forth from the games. One night he nearly killed himself and about six of us when a rabbit got into the lights on the road ahead of us and kept running in front of the car. Immediately, this wild Frenchman jammed his foot down on the gas and started after the rabbit.
just a

few

road to

white tail bobbed up and down in the light, always ahead of the wheels, and whipping from one side of the the other, to throw the auto off his scent: only the auto didn't

The

feet

hunt that way. It just kept roaring after the rabbit, zigzagging from one side of the road to the other and nearly spilling us all into the ditch. Those of us who were piled up in the back seat began to get a little nervous, especially when we observed that we were coming to the top of the long steep hill that went winding down into the valley where St. Antonin was. If we kept after that rabbit, we would surely go over the bank, and then we wouldn't stop turning over until we landed in the river, a couple of hundred feet below. Somebody growled a modest complaint: "C'est assez, hem? Tu ne I'attraperas fas!" The son of the hay and feed dealer said nothing. He bent over the wheel with his eyes popping at the road, and the white tail in front of us kept darting away from the wheels of the car, zigzagging from the high bank on one side to the ditch on the other. And then we came over the hill. The darkness and emptiness of the valley was before us. The road began to descend. The complaints in the back seat increased, became a chorus. But the driver stepped on the gas even harder. The car careened wildly across the road; we had nearly caught the rabbit. But not quite. He was out
there ahead of us again. "We'll get him on the hill," exclaimed the driver, "Rabbits can't

run

downhill, their

hind legs are too long," The rabbit ahead of us was doing a fine job of running downhill, just about five feet ahead of our front wheels.

Then somebody began

to yell:

"Look

out, look out!'

We
the

left,

were coming to a fork in the road. The main road went on to and an older road sloped off at a steeper incline to the right.

Our Lady
wall.

of the

Museums

21

In between them was a wall

And

the rabbit headed straight for the

"Stop! Stop!" we implored. Nobody could tell which way the rabbit was going to go: and the wall was flying straight at us. "Hold on!" somebody shouted. The car gave a wild lurch, and if there had been any room in the back we would all have fallen on the floor. But we were not dead. The car was still on the main road, roaring down into the valley and, to our immense relief, there was no rabbit, out there in the lights. "Did you catch him?" I asked hopefully. "Maybe you caught him

back there?"

"Oh, no/' replied the driver

sadly, "he took the other road/'

was a huge, powerful man, but he did not play on the football team. He was too lazy and too dignified, although he would have been a decorative addition to the outfit. There
friend the teamster Pierrot

Our

were three or four others like him, big men with huge black mustaches and bristling eyebrows, as wild as the traditional representations of Gog and Magog. One of them used to play whole games wearing a gray, peaked streetcap. I suppose if we had ever played on a really hot day he would have come out on the field with a straw hat on. Anyway, this element of the team would have made a fine subject for DouanierRousseau, and Pierrot would have fitted in admirably. Only his sport was sitting at the table of a caf6 imbibing cognac. Sometimes, too, he made excursions to Toulouse, and once, while we were standing on the a blood-curdling description of a fight he had had bridge, he gave me
with an Arab, with a knife, in the big
city.

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Three:

AT SCHOOL

IN

ENGLAND

o OAKHAM
'AKHAM, OAKHAM! The gray murk of the winter evenings in
that garret where seven or eight of us moiled around in the gaslight, among the tuckboxes, noisy, greedy, foul-mouthed, fighting and shout-

There was one who had a ukulele which he did not know how to And Pop used to send me the brown rotogravure sections of the New York Sunday papers, and we would cut out the pictures of the actresses and paste them up on the walls, I toiled with Greek verbs. And we drank raisin wine and ate potato chips until we fell silent and sat apart, stupefied and nauseated. And under the gaslight I would write letters to Father in the hospital, letters on cream-colored notepaper, stamped with the school crest in blue. After three months it was better. I was moved up into the Upper Fifth, and changed to a new study downstairs, with more light, though just as crowded and just as much of a mess. And we had Cicero and European history all about the nineteenth century, with a certain amount of cold scorn poured on Pio Nono. In the English class we read The Tempest and the Nuns Priest's Tale and the Pardoner's Tale, and the school chaplain tried to teach us trigonometry. With me% he failed, Sometimes he would try to teach us something about religion. But in this he also failed. As long as I was among the fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds in Hodge Wing, I had to mind my behavior with the lords of the school or at least in their presence. We were disciplined by the constant fear of one of those pompous and ceremonious sessions of bullying, arranged with ritualistic when a dozen or so were summoned into formality, culprits one of the hollows around Brooke hill, or up the Braunston road, and
ing!

play.

>

At School in England
beaten with
sticks,

23
to

and made

selves upbraided for their moral I got into the sixth form,

sing foolish songs and to hear and social defects.

them-

When

more

directly

which I did after a year, I came under the influence and guidance of the new headmaster,

F. C. Doherty. He was a young man for a headmaster, about forty, tall, with a great head of black hair, a tremendous smoker of cigarettes and a lover of Plato. Because of the he used to give his to like cigarettes,
class in his

own

study,

when he

decently could, for there he could

smoke one
at all.

after another,

while in the classrooms he could not smoke

was a broad-minded man, and I never realized how much I owed until I left Oakham. If it had not been for him, I would probhave spent years in the fifth form trying to pass the School Cerably tificate in mathematics. He saw that I could far easier pass the Higher Certificate, specializing in French and Latin where, although the examination in these subjects would be very hard, there would be no maths. And the Higher Certificate meant far more than the other. It was he who began, from the start, to prepare me for the university, getting me to aim at a Cambridge scholarship. And it was he who let me follow the bent of my own mind, for modern languages and literature, although that meant that I spent much of my time studying alone in the library, since there was no real "modern" course at Oakham at
to

He

him

that time,

one hour a week devoted to religious instruction (outside of the daily chapel). The first one just
I

had

several different masters in the

plodded through the third Book of Kings. The second, a tough little Yorkshireman, who had the virtue of being very definite and outspoken in everything he said, once exposed to us Descartes' proof of his own

and God's existence. He told us that as far as he was concerned, that was the foundation of what religion meant to him. I accepted the Cogito
ergo

sum

with

less reserve

than

should have, although I might have

had enough sense

necessarily be

to realize that

illusory. If there are

any proof of what is self-evident must no self-evident first principles, as a

foundation for reasoning to conclusions that are not immediately apa philosophy"? If 'you have parent, how can you construct any kind of to prove even the basic axioms of your metaphysics, you will never have
a metaphysics, because you will never have any
strict

proof of anything,

for your first proof will involve you in an infinite regress, proving that you are proving what you are proving and so on, into the exterior dark-

24
ness
it

The Unreal

City

where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. If Descartes thought was necessary to prove his own existence, by the fact that he was in some subject, how thinking, and that his thought therefore existed did he prove that he was thinking in the first place? But as to the second step, that God must exist because Descartes had a clear idea of

him

that never convinced

me, then or
II

at

any other time, or

now either.

WAS NOW A HOUSE PREFECT

lot of slightly

and a

in Hodge Wing with a great big study armchairs full of cushions. On the wicker lopsided

and prints of Manet and some other impressionists in Rome. from museums Venuses Greco-Roman various of photographs And bookshelf was full of a wide variety of strange bright-colored
walls I

hung Medici

my

all of which were so inflammatory that there would never be any special need for the Church to put them on the Index, for they would all be damned ipso jure most of them by the natural law itself. I will not name the ones I remember, because some fool might immediately go and read them all: but I might mention that one of the pamphlets was Marx's Communist Manifesto not because I was seriously exercised about the injustices done to the working class, which were and are very real, but were too serious for my empty-headed

novels and pamphlets,

vanity
in

but simply because

I

thought

it fitted

in nicely with the d&cor

which
For

now moved

in

all

my

imaginings.

it had become evident to me that I was a great rebel. I fancied had suddenly risen above all the errors and stupidities and mistakes of modern society there are enough of them to rise above, I admit and that I had taken my place in the ranks of those who held up their heads and squared their shoulders and marched into the future. In the modern world, people are always holding up their heads and

that I

marching into the future, although they haven't the slightest idea what they think the "future" is or could possibly mean. The only future we seem to walk into, in actual fact, is full of bigger and more terrible wars,
wars well calculated to knock our upraised heads
shoulders.
off those

squared

in this study I edited the school magazine which had fallen my hands that autumn, and read T. S. Eliot, and even tried to write a poem myself about Elpenor, in Homer, getting drunk and falling off the roof of a palace. And his soul fled into the shades of hell.
into

Here

And

the rest of the time I played

politics

Duke

Ellington's records or got into

arguments about

and

religion.

At School

in

England

25

and absurd arguments! My advice to an ordinary rewere man, to desire this point, advice on ligious supposing anyone my would be to avoid all arguments about and religion, especially about the existence of God. However, to those who know some I would
All those vain

philosophy

recommend
an
First

the study of

Duns

Infinite Being, Book of the

which

Scotus' proofs for the actual existence of are given in the Second Distinction of the

Opus Oxoniense
is

in Latin that

is

hard enough

to

be rather generally admitted give you many that, for accuracy and depth and scope, this is the most perfect and complete and thorough proof for the existence of God that has ever been worked out by any man.
getting to
I

headaches. It

doubt
I

if it

tions before

me

would have done much good to bring these considerain those days, when I was just turning seventeen, and
all

thought
It

knew
I did

headmaster had worked hard to implant in our souls: but there was, and could be, no course in philosophy at Oakham.
attraction the
I

However, was an

about philosophy without ever having learned any. have a desire to learn. I was attracted to
philosophy.

was left to my own devices. I remember once mentioning

all this to

Tom, my
Street,

guardian.
I told

We were
of

walking out of his front door, into Harley

and

him

my

desire to study philosophy, and to know the philosophers. He, being a doctor, told me to leave philosophy alone: there

were

few

things,

he

told

went ahead and tried to read some philosophy. I never got very far with it. It was too difficult for me to master all by myself. People who are immersed in sensual appetites and desires are not very well prepared to handle abstract ideas. Even in the purely natural order, a certain amount of purity of heart is required before an intellect can get detached and clear to work out the problems sufficiently
I

Fortunately, this his advice. Anyway,

me, that were a greater waste of time. was one of the matters in which I decided

to ignore

of metaphysics. I say a certain amount, however, because I am sure that no one needs to be a saint to be a clever metaphysician. I dare say there are plenty of metaphysicians in hell.

However, the philosophers

For the most
part,
I

to

whom I

was

attracted

used

to take their

books out of

libraries,

were not the best. and return

them without ever having opened them.

less,

during the Easter vacation,

when

It was just as well. Neverthewas seventeen, I earnestly and

zealously set about trying to figure out Spinoza.

had gone to Germany, by myself as usual, for the vacation. In Cologne I had bought a big rucksack and slung it over my shoulders and
I

26

The Unreal

City

started up the Rhine Valley on foot, in a Hue jersey and an old pair of flannel bags, so that people in the inns along the road asked me if I was a Dutch sailor off one of the river barges. In the rucksack, which was

already heavy enough,

had a couple

of

immoral novels and the Every-

and the Rhine Valley! I cerLibrary edition of Spinoza. Spinoza of appropriateness. The two go very well toa sense had fine tainly too late. And the only thing gether. However I was about eighty years that was was that I was not an English or American student at

man

lacking

been perfect in Heidelberg: then the mixture would have

all its

mid-

nineteenth-century ingredients. I picked up more, on this journey, than a few intellectual errors, half understood. Before I got to Koblenz, I had trouble in one foot. Some

kind of an infection seemed

to

be developing under one of the toenails.

I

But

it

was not

walking

and especially painful, and after so, going unpleasant,

ignored

it.

However,
Goar,
I

it

made

on

as far as St.

gave up

in disgust. Besides, the weather had turned bad, and I had got lost in the forest, trying to follow the imaginary hiker's trail called the Rhein-

hohenweg. I went back

Koblenz, and sat in a room over a big beer hall called the Neuer Franziskaner and continued my desultory study of Spinoza
to

and

my modern

novelists.
I

Since I understood the latter

much

better

than the philosopher,

novels.

soon gave

him up and concentrated on the

o CAMBRIDGE
ANDREW WAS THE SON of a country parson in the Isle of Wight and he had been cricket captain at Oakham. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles and had a great chin that he held up in the air, and a lock of black hair fell down over his forehead, and he was one of die school intellectuals. He and I used to work, or rather sit, in the library at
Oakharn, with many books open before us, but talking about impertinent matters and drinking a foul purple concoction called Vimto out
of bottles

which we concealed under the

table or

behind the volumes

of the Dictionary of National Biography, He had discovered a black book called, as I think,

The Outline
just

of

Modern Knowledge, which was something

went

that

had

come

to the

library and was full of information about psychoanalysis. Indeed, it into some details of psychoanalytical fortunetelling by the inspection of feces which I never ran into else, and which I still

anywhere

At School in England
preserved enough sense to laugh
bridge, psychoanalysis life and even a sort of
altogether.
at,

27
at that time.

But

later, at

Cam-

was

to provide

me

with a kind of philosophy of

pseudo-religion

which was nearly the end of

lost interest in
it.

me

When
in the

By that time, Andrew himself had we went up to the university, to sit

for the scholarship

exam,

dank heavy-hanging mists of December, I spent most of the time between papers devouring D. H. Lawrence's Fantasia of the Unconwhich, even as psychoanalysis, is completely irresponsible and, says, a fantasia. Lawrence picked up a lot of terms like 'lumbar ganglion" and threw them all together and stewed them up with his
scious,
it

just as

of the sex instinct to produce the weird mixture which I read as reverently as if it were some kind of sacred revelation, sitting in the rooms of an undergraduate who liked Picasso, but who had gone down for the Christmas vacation. Andrew, for his part, was at St. Catherine's, terrified of a tutor

own worship

who had

a reputation for being a very fero-

week I sat under the high, silent rafters of the Hall, at Trinity College, and covered long sheets of foolscap with my opinions concerning Moliere and Racine and Balzac and Victor Hugo and Goethe and Schiller and all the rest, and a few days after it was all over, we looked in the Times and this time both Andrew and I had
cious person. All that

succeeded.

We were exhibitioners,
who

he

at St. Catherine's

and

I at Clare,

while his studymate, Dickens,

ham

besides myself

the only other person at Oakliked hot records, had another exhibition at

who was

St. John's.

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Four.

PASSAGE

i FINALLY LEFT for good, in the late November of and a sad was unquiet continent, full of forebodings. 1934, Of course, there were plenty of people who said: "There will not be /' But Hitler had now held power in Germany for some a war. time, and that summer all the New York evening papers had been sudmurder in Austria, and the denly filled with the news of Dollfuss' It was one of the massing of Italian troops on the Austrian borders. with at Reginald Marsh, and Coney Island, nights when I was down I walked in the whirl of lights and noise and drank glasses of thin, icy beer, and ate hotdogs full of mustard, and wondered if I would soon be in some army or other, or perhaps dead. It was the first time I had felt the cold steel of the war scare in my vitals. There was a lot more to come. It was only 1934. And now, in November, when I was leaving England forever the

IKE EUROPE

ship sailed quietly out of

Southampton Water by night

with the silence before a storm.

the land
It

I left

behind

me seemed

silent

was

a land

all shut up and muffled in layers of fog and darkness, and all the people were in the rooms behind the thick walls of their houses, waiting for the first growl of thunder as the Nazis began to warm up the motors of a hundred thousand planes. Perhaps they did not know they were waiting for all this. Perhaps they thought they had nothing better to occupy their minds than the wedding of Prince George and Princess Marina which had taken place the day before. Even I myself was more concerned with the thought of some people I was leaving than with the political atmosphere at that precise moment. And yet that atmosphere was something that would not allow itself to be altogether ignored.

28

Passage
I

29

had seen enough of the things, the acts and appetites, that were to and to bring down upon the world the tons of bombs that would someday begin to fall in millions. Did I know that my own sins were enough to have destroyed the whole of England and Germany? There
justify

has never yet been a bomb invented that is half so powerful as one mortal sin and yet there is no positive power in sin, only negation, only annihilation: and perhaps that is why it is so destructive, it is a nothingness, and where it is, there is nothing left a blank, a moral

vacuum.
It is only the infinite mercy and love of God that has prevented us from tearing ourselves to pieces and destroying His entire creation long ago. People seem to think that it is in some way a proof that no merciful God exists, if we have so many wars. On the contrary, consider how in spite of centuries of sin and greed and lust and cruelty and hatred and avarice and oppression and injustice, spawned and bred by the free wills of men, the human race can still recover, each time, and can still produce men and women who overcome evil with good, hatred with love, greed with charity, lust and cruelty with sanctity. How could all this be possible without the merciful love of God, pouring out His grace upon us? Can there be any doubt where wars come from and where peace comes from, when the children of this world, excluding God from their peace conferences, only manage to bring about greater and greater wars the more they talk about peace? We have only to open our eyes and look about us to see what our sins are doing to the world, and have done. But we cannot see. We are the ones to whom it is said by the prophets of God "Hearing hear, and understand not; and see the vision, and know it not." There is not a flower that opens, not a seed that falls into the ground, and not an ear of wheat that nods on the end of its stalk in the wind that does not preach and proclaim the greatness and the mercy of God
:

whole world. There is not an act of kindness or generosity, not an act of sacrifice done, or a word of peace and gentleness spoken, not a child's prayer uttered, that does not sing hymns to God before His throne, and in the eyes of men, and before their faces.
to the

How

does

it

happen that in the thousands

ers since Cain, our dark bloodthirsty ancestor, that

of generations of murdersome of us can still

The quietness and hiddenness and placidity of the truly good world all proclaim the glory of God. in the people All these things, all creatures, every graceful movement, every orbe saints?

30
dered act of the

The Unreal

City

human

will, all are sent to

But because
ther.

of our stubbornness they

come

to

us as prophets from God. us only to blind us fur-

"Blind the heart of this people and

make

their ears heavy,

their eyes: lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them."

and shut and

refuse to hear the million different voices through which God speaks to us, and every refusal hardens us more and more against His grace and yet He continues to speak to us: and we say He is without

We

mercy! "But the Lord dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance/'

Mother

of God,

how
to

often in the last centuries have you not

come

down

us in our mountains and groves and hills, and speaking was to come upon us ? and we have not heard you. How us what telling long shall we continue to be deaf to your voice, and run our heads into
to us,

the jaws of the hell that abhors us?

that night I left the island that was once your Engwent with me, although I could not know it, and could not make myself aware of it. And it was your love, your intercession for me, before God, that was preparing the seas before my ship, laying

Lady,

when on

land, your love

open the way for me to another country. I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got to New York. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing for me to be rny rescue and my shelter and my home. And when I thought there was no God and no love and no mercy, you were leading me all the while into the midst of His love and His mercy, and taking me, without my knowing anything about
it,

to the

house that would hide

me

in the secret of

His Face,

Glorious Mother of God, shall I ever again distrust you, or your God, before Whose throne you are irresistible in your intercession? Shall I

my eyes from your hands and from your face and from your Shall I ever look anywhere else but in the face of eyes? your love, to find out true counsel, and to know my way, in all the and all the moever turn

days

ments

of

my life?
me, Lady, deal also with all my millions of same misery that I knew then: lead them in themselves and guide them by your tremendous influence, O
dealt with

As you have
brothers
spite of

who

live in the

Passage

31
souls

Holy Queen of
Christ the

and refuge of

sinners,

and bring them

to

your

way you brought me.

lllos tuos misericordes

oculos ad nos

Jesum, "benedictum fructum ventris tui, ndbis ostende. Show us your Christ, Lady, after this our exile, yes: but show Him to us also now, show Him to us here, while we are still wanderers.

convene,

et

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Five:

POEMS

LANDSCAPE: BEAST
Where smoke melts The last men stand,
Yonder, by the eastward sea in a saucer of extinguished
in delegations,

cities,

Waiting to see the seven-headed business Promised us, from those unpublished deeps: Waiting to see those horns and diadems

And
And And

hear the seven voices of the final blasphemy.

westward, where the other waters are as slick as silk slide, in the gray evening, with uncertain lights, (Screened by the smoke of the extinguished studios) The last men wait to see the seven-headed thing.

They

stand around the radios

their regalia

Wearing

on

their thin excited breasts,

Waving the signals of their masonry. What will happen, when they see those heads, those horns Dishevel the flickering sea?

How will

they bare their foreheads and put forth their hands

And wince with the last indelible brand, And wear die dolor of that*animars number, And evermore be burned with her disgusting name?
Inland, in the lazy distance,

As loud

as horseflies,

A blue-green medium dragon,

32

where a dozen planes still play round the ruins of an average town,

swimming

in the river,
to

Emerges from the muddy waters, comes

rornp awhile

upon the

land.

Poems
She
rises

33

on the pathless
roll

And

goes to

But no man

shore, in the ashes of the ravaged country. turns to see and be surprised

Where

those gray flanks flash palely in the sun.

Who
Or

shall gather to see an ordinary dragon, in this wonder at those scales as usual as sin?

day of anger,

Meanwhile, upon the broken mountains of the south No one observes the angels passing to and fro: And no one sees the fire that shoots beneath the hoofs

Of

all

the white, impatient horses.

or fears the

And no one hears

music of those blazing swords.

lies

(Northward, northward, what

there to see?

Who

shall recount the terror of those ruined streets?

shall dare to look

And who

where

all

the birds with golden beaks

Stab at the blue eyes of the murdered saints?)

FIGURES FOR AN APOCALYPSE

SONG
from Crossyortion's Pastoral

The bottom of the sea has come And builded in my noiseless room The fishes' and the mermaids' home,
Whose it is most, most hell to be Out of the heavy-hanging sea

And in

the thin, thin changeable air

Or unroom sleep some other where;

But play
their coral violins

Where waters most lock music in:

The bottom of my room,
the sea.
Full of voiceless curtaindeep

There mermaid somnambules come

sleep

Where fluted half lights show the way,

34

The Unreal

City

And there, there lost orchestras play And down the many quarterlights come To the dim mirth of my aquadrome: The bottom of my sea, the room.
A

MAN

IN THE DIVIDED SEA

LENT IN A YEAR OF WAR

One of you is a major, made of cord and catskin,
But never dreams
his eyes

may come

to life

and thread

The

needle light of famine in a waterglass.

of you
is the paper Jack of Sprites will not cast his sentinel voice

One And

Spiraling

up

the dark ears of the

wind

Where the prisoner's yell is lost.

"What
if it

was our thumbs put out the sun

When

the Lance and Cross

You'll never rob us our

made their mistake? Eden of drumskin shelters,

You, with the bite of John the Baptist's halter,

Getting away in the basket of Paul, Loving the answer of death, the mother of Lent!"

Thus, in the evening of their sinless murders, Jack and the Major, sifting the stars for a sign See the north-south horizon parting like a string!

A MAN IN THE DIVIDED SBA

THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT

Through every precinct of the wintry city Squadroned iron resounds upon the streets;
Herod's police

Makes shudder the dark steps of the tenements At the business about to be done.

Poems
Neither look back upon Thy starry country, Nor hear what rumors crowd across the dark Where blood runs down those holy walls,

Nor frame a Toward that

childish blessing with Thy hand of fiery spiral exulting souls!

desert,

Go, Child of God, upon the singing Where, with eyes of flame,

The roaming

lion keeps thy road

from harm.
A MAN IN THE DIVIDED SEA

THE NIGHT TRAIN

In the unreason of a rainy midnight France blooms along the windows

Of my sleepy

And And

runs
is

to seed in a

bathysphere, luxuriance of curious lights.

straight

Escape

drawn

through

my

dream

shines to Paris, clean as a violin string,

spring tides of commotion,

While

(The third-class pianos of the Orient Express) Fill the hollow barrels of ears.

my

Cities that stood, by day, as gay as lancers Are lost, in the night, like old men dying. At a point where polished rails branch off forever

The steels lament,

like crazy ladies.

We wake, and weep the deaths of the cathedrals

That we have never
Because
seen,

the jugulars of the country in the wind, and vanish with a cry. Fly

we hear

At once the diplomats

start

up, as white as bread,

their

Buckle the careless cases of

minds

That
For,

just fell

open in the sleeper:

sieges

by the rockets of imaginary

They
Each

see to read big, terrible print, in the other's face,

36

The Unreal
spells the

City

That

undecoded names
recognize too late:
secret police,

Of the assassins they will The ones that seem to be

Now all in place,

all

armed, in the obvious ambush.

MAN

IN THE DIVIDED SEA

AUBADE: LAKE ERIE

sun, light-handed, sows this Indian water a With crop of cockles, The vines arrange their tender shadows

When

In the sweet leafage of an

artificial

France.

Awake, in the frames

of

windows, innocent children,

Loving the blue, sprayed leaves of childish life, Applaud the bearded corn, the bleeding grape,

And cry:
"Here
is

Walking Turning

the hay-colored sun, our marvelous cousin, in the barley,

And
Lift

the harrowed earth to growing bread, splicing the sweet, wounded vine.

up your

And
You
Here

hitchhiking heads no more fear the fever,

fugitives,
is

and

the fields, sleepers in

the hay-colored sun!"

their shining voices, clean as

And when

summer,

Play, like churchbells over the field,

hundred dusty Luthers rise from the dead, unheeding, Search the horizon for the gap-toothed grin of factories,
the
in the green wheat, wood winds of the western freight.

And grope,
Toward

MAN

IN

THE DIVIDED SB A

Poems

27

ASH WEDNESDAY
The naked traveler,
Stretching, against the iron dawn, the bowstrings of his eyes, Starves on the mad sierra.

But the

sleepers,

Prisoners in a lovely world of weeds, Make a small, red cry,

And change their dreams.

Proud
as the

mane of the whinnying air,

water

Yet humble

as the flakes of

the chips of the stone sun, the traveler Is nailed to the hill by the light of March's razor;

Or

And when

the desert barks, in a rage of love

crater.

For the noon of the eclipse, He lies with his throat cut, in a frozen

Then the sleepers,

Prisoners of a

Slain

by

the stillness of their

moon ward power of tides, own reflections,

And

Sit up, in their graves, with a white cry, die of terror at the traveler's murder.

MAN

IN

THE DIVIDED SEA

AN ELEGY FOR ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Now for the first time on
your name
is

the night of your death mentioned in convents, ne cadas in obscurum.

bell

Now

with a true

your story becomes

final.

Now men

in monasteries, men of requiems, familiar with the dead, include you in their offices.

You

at great stations

stand anonymous among thousands, waiting in the dark on the edge of countries known to

prayer alone, where fires are not merciless, and not without end.

we

hope,

The Unreal

City

fou pass briefly through our midst. Your books and ratings have not been consulted. Our prayers are

no defuncto N.

though among a crowd of prisoners >r displaced persons, they recognized a friend once jiown in a far country. For these the sun also rose fter a forgotten war upon an idiom you made great. They lave not forgotten you. In their silence you are still
fet

some look up,

as

amous, no

ritual shade.

iow

slowly this bell tolls in a monastery tower for a vhole age, and for the quick death of an unready dynasty, md for that brave illusion: the adventurous self!
or with

one shot the whole hunt

is

ended,

Commonweal

.ANDSCAPE

Personage

is

seen
a cushion

waning upon

tinted with cornflowers.

ii

Child appears

folding

up a pencil.

This

a picture the Child to the Personage) Says )f the vortex."

is

Draw
lays

it

your

own way,"

the Personage.
is

Music
lea

heard

'ure in the island

windows, music on the Child's

aterminable shore, his coral home.)

Poems
Behind a blue mountain
Covered with chickenfoot
trees,

The molten sun

appears,

A heavy, painted flower. A personage is seen

Leaning upon the mountain With the sun in one hand

And a pencil
"This
is

in the other.

a picture the (Says Personage to the Child) Of the beginning of the world."

"Or of its end!"

cries the

Child

Hiding himself in the cushions.

A Woman appears
Leaning upon the Chiles shoulder.

He looks up again.
"This
is

my Mother

(Says the Child to the Personage) Older than the moon."

(Grecian horses are heard Returning from the foam

Of

And

the pure island's windows, the Child's horizons.)

"My Mother is a world

(Says the Child to the Personage) Printed with gillyflowers."
"Paint her your

own way"

(Says the Personage to the Child).

And,

lifting

up

his pencil,

He crosses out the sun*

THE STRANGE ISLANDS

Six:

CHILDREN IN THE MARKET PLACE

<s>

THE NEW SOCIETY

JTERHAPS THE STYX, being only a river, does not seem so terribly wide. It is not its width that makes it difficult to cross, especially when you are trying to get out of hell, and not in. And so, this time, even though I got out of Europe, I still remained in hell. But it was not for
want of trying. It was a stormy crossing. When it was possible, I walked on the wide, smpty decks that streamed with spray. Or I would get up forward where could see the bows blast their way headfirst into the mountains of
[

Abater that

bore

down upon

us.

And

he ship reeled and soared into the inder us while every stanchion and When we got on to the Grand vas a fall of snow, and the snow lay

I would hang on to the rail while wet sky, riding the sea that swept bulkhead groaned and complained. Banks, die seas calmed and there on the quiet decks, and made them

vhite in the darkness of the evening. And because of the peacefulness >f the snow, I new ideas were breeding within rne imagined that

my

tn interior

was in the thick of a conversion. It was not the right was a conversion. Perhaps it was a lesser evil. I do lot doubt much that it was. But it was not, for all that, much of a ;ood. I was becoming a Communist. Stated like that, it sounds pretty much the same as if I said: "I was [rowing a mustache/' As a matter of fact, I was still unable to grow a
inversion, but
it

The

peace. truth is, I

Or I did not dare to try. And, I suppose, my Communism about as mature as my face as the sour, perplexed, English face a the photo on my quota card. However, as far as I know, this was bout as sincere and complete a step to moral conversion as I was then ble to make with my own lights and desires, such as they then were.
nustache.
vas

Children in the Market Place

It

41,

was some four years since I had first read the Communist Maniand I had never entirely forgotten about it. One of those Christmas vacations at Strasbourg I had read some books about Soviet Russia, how all the factories were working overtime, and all the ex-moujiks wore great big smiles on their faces, welcoming Russian aviators on their return from Polar flights, bearing the boughs of trees in their hands. Then I often went to Russian movies, which were pretty good from the technical point of view, although probably not as good as I
festo,

thought they were, in

Finally,
I
all

had in
the

my great anxiety to approve of them. my mind the myth that Soviet Russia
and the only place where true
art

was the

friend of

arts,

could find a

refuge in a world of bourgeois ugliness.

Where

hard
still,

to find out,

and how

managed

to cling to it for so

ever got that idea is long is harder

when you

consider

see, showing the Red on the walls of the world's

the photographs there were, for everyone to Square with gigantic pictures of Stalin hanging
all

not to mention the views ugliest buildings of the projected monster monument to Lenin, like a huge mountain of soap sculpture, and the Little Father of Communism standing on top
of it, and sticking out one of his hands. Then, when I went to New York in the summer, I found the New Masses lying around the studios of my friends and, as a matter of fact, a lot of the people I met were
either party
or close to being so. So now, when the time came for me to take spiritual stock of myself, whole spiritual conwas natural that I should do so by projecting

members

it

my

and the class struggle. In other words, the conclusion I came to was that it was not so much I myself that was to blame for my unhappiness, but the society in which
dition into the sphere of economic history
I lived.
I now was, the person that I had been that made of myself, and I saw clearly enough and had I Cambridge, that I was the product of my times, my society and my class. I was something that had been spawned by the selfishness and irresponsibility of the materialistic century in which I lived. However, what I did not see was that my own age and class only had an accidental part to play in this. They gave my egoism and pride and my other sins a peculiar character of weak and supercilious flippancy proper to this particular it was the same century: but that was only on the surface. Underneath,

considered the person that

at

old story of greed and lust and self-love, of the three concupiscences bred in the rich, rotted undergrowth of what is technically called "the
world/' in every age, in every
class.

42
It is true that

The Unreal

City

the materialistic society, the so-called culture that has

evolved under the tender mercies of capitalism, has produced what seems to be the ultimate limit of this worldliness. And nowhere, except
ever been perhaps in the analogous society of pagan Rome, has there such a flowering of cheap and petty and disgusting lusts and vanities as in the world of capitalism, where there is no evil that is not fostered

and encouraged for the sake of making money. We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep
it

at the

highest pitch of

artificial

to the limit

and

to create as

many

tension, to strain every human desire new desires and synthetic passions as

them with the products of our factories and studios and and all the rest. movie printing presses born the sworn enemy of everything I Being the son of an artist, was that could obviously be called bourgeois, and now I only had to dress up that aversion in economic terms and extend it to cover more ground than it had covered before namely, to include anything that could be classified as semifascist, like D. H. Lawrence and many of the artists who thought they were rebels without really being so and I had my
possible, in order to cater to

religion all ready for immediate use. was an easy and handy religion too easy in fact. It told me that all the evils in the world were the product of capitalism. Therefore, all that had to be done to get rid of the evils of the world was to get rid of capitalism. This would not be very hard, for capitalism contained the seeds of its own decay (and that indeed is a very obvious truth which nobody would trouble to deny, even some of the most stupid defenders of the system now in force: for our wars are altogether too eloquent in what they have to say on the subject). An active and enlightened miand this minority was understood to be made up of the most nority intelligent and vital elements of society, was to have the twofold task
It

new

making the oppressed class, the proletariat, conscious of their own power and destiny as future owners of all the means of production, and to "bore from within" in order to gain control of power by every possible means. Some violence, no doubt, would probably be necessary, but
of

only because of the inevitable reaction of capitalism by the use of fascist

methods
It

to

keep the proletariat in subjection.

was capitalism that was to blame for everything unpleasant, even the violence of the revolution itself. Now, of course, the revolution had
already taken the
Proletariat
first

successful step in Russia.

set

The

Dictatorship of the

was already

up

there. It

the rest of the world before

it

to spread through could be said that the revolution had

would have

Children in the Market Place

really

43

success. But once it had, once capitalism had been comthe or overthrown, semistate, pletely Dictatorship of the Proletariat, would itself only be a temporary matter. It would be a kind of guardian of the revolution, a tutor of the new classless society, during its miBut as soon as the citizens of the classless world had had new, nority.
all

been a

the greed educated out of them by enlightened methods, the last of the "state" would wither vestiges away, and there would be a new

world, a

property would be held in commeans of production and so on, and nobody would desire to seize them for himself: and so there
all

new

golden age, in which

mon,

at least all capital goods, all the land,

would be no more poverty, no more wars, no more misery, no more starvation, no more violence. Everybody would be happy. Nobody would be overworked. They would all amicably exchange wives whenever they felt like it, and their offspring would be brought up in big shiny incubators, not

by the

state

because there wouldn't be any

state,

but by that

beautiful surd, the lovely, delicious great, "Classless Society."

I

unknown
to

quantity of the

new

don't think that even I

was

gullible

enough

swallow

all

the busi-

ness about the ultimate bliss that would follow the withering away of the state a legend far more naive and far more oversimplified than the

happy hunting ground of the most primitive Indian. But I simply assumed that things would be worked out by the right men at the right time. For the moment, what was needed was to get rid of capitalism. The thing that made Communism seem so plausible to me was my own lack of logic which failed to distinguish between the reality of the evils which Communism was trying to overcome and the validity of its diagnosis and the chosen cure. For there can be no doubt that modern society is in a terrible condition, and that its wars and depressions and its slums and all its other
evils are principally the fruits of

must be reformed and

wrong, does that make am good? The chief weakness of Communism is that it is, itself, only another breed of the same materialism which is the source and root of all the evils which it so clearly sees, and it is evidently nothing but another product of the breakdown of the capitalist system. Indeed, it seems to be pieced together out of the ruins of the same ideology that once

an unjust social system, a system that else replaced. However, if you are or purified me right? If you are bad, does that prove that I

went

into the vast, amorphous, intellectual structure underlying capias I say,

talism in the nineteenth century.

However,

perhaps the hopefulness that suddenly began to

AA

The Unreal

City
to

swell in

my

breast as I stood

on the deck of

this ten-day liner

going

good feeling notions of Marxism, had made

in

New York, via Halifax, was largely subjective and imaginary. The chance association, in my mind, with fresh air and the sea and a healthy and a lot of resolutions, coinciding with a few superficial
me
like so

many

others

Communist

the result of the unpersonal conviction, certain and misdirected striving for moral reform, that I must now devote myself to the good of society, and apply my mind, at least to extent, to the tremendous problems of my time.
I

my own fancy. Added to this was my own

some

don't

know how much good

It

there

was

in this: but I think there

selfishness,

was some.

was,

suppose,

my acknowledgment of my

and

my
and

desire to

for it by developing some kind of social reparation at the time, in my first fervor, I felt And consciousness* political

make

myself willing to make

sacrifices for this

end,

wanted

to

devote my-

I wanted to do self to the causes of justice in the world. divert the gathering momentum something positive to interrupt and and I felt there that was dragging the whole world into another war

peace and

was something I could do, not alone, but as the member of an active and vocal group. It was a bright, icy-cold afternoon when, having passed Nantucket shoreline of Long Island shinLight, we first saw the long, low, yellow sun. But when we entered New York Haring palely in the December
bor the lights were already coming on, glittering like jewels in the hard,
clear buildings.

The

great,

and wise and innocent, shouted in the winter night as

Battery and started

debonair city that was both young and old, we passed the
I

up the North River. And

was

glad, very glad to

be

an immigrant once again. I carne down on to the dock with a great feeling of confidence and "New York, you are mine! I love you!" It is the glad possessivcness.

embrace she gives her

it is

lovers, the big,

wild

city;

but

guess ultimately

for their ruin. It certainly did not prove to be any good for me. mind in the ferment in which it was, I thought for a With

my

mo-

ment

School for Social Research, in the shiny, black building on Twelfth Street, but I was easily persuaded that I had better finish out a regular university course and get
of registering for courses at the

New

a degree.

And

therefore I entered

upon

all

the complicated preambles

to admission to

Columbia,

Children in the Market Place

45

o FRIENDS AND COMRADES

MY
lasted, in all,

ACTIVE PART in the world revolution was not very momentous. It about three months. I the Casa Italiana, I went picketed

Peace Strike, and I think I made some kind of a speech in the on classroom the second floor of the Business big School, where the N.S.L. had their meetings. Maybe it was a speech on Communism in England a topic about which I knew absolutely nothing; in that case, I was loyally living up to the tradition of Red oratory. I sold some
to the

pamphlets and magazines. I don't know what was in them, but I could gather their contents from the big black cartoons of capitalists drinking the blood of workers.

Reds had a party. And, of all places, in a Park Avenue This apartment. irony was the only amusing thing about it. And after all it was not so ironical. It was the home of some Barnard who girl
Finally, the

belonged

to the

Young Communist League and her

I

away

for the

weekend.

could get a

fair picture of

the furniture looked, and from the volumes of hauer and Oscar Wilde and Ibsen that filled the bookcases. And there was a big grand piano on which someone played Beethoven while the Reds sat around on the floor. Later we had a sort of boy-scout campfire

parents had gone them from the way Nietszche and Schopen-

group in the living room, singing heavy Communist songs, including that delicate antireligious classic, "There'll be pie in the sky when you
die."
little fellow with buck teeth and horn-rimmed glasses pointed two windows in a corner of one of the rooms. They commanded a whole sweep of Park Avenue in one direction and the crosstown street in another. "What a place for a machine-gun nest," he observed. The statement came from a middle-class adolescent. It was made in a Park Avenue apartment. He had evidently never even seen a machine gun, except in the movies. If there had been a revolution going on at the time, he would have probably been among the first to get his head

One

to

knocked
of us,

off

by the

revolutionists.

And
.

in any case he, like all the rest

he would just finished making the famous Oxford Pledge that . not fight in any war whatever. . One reason why I found the party so dull was that nobody was very

had

enthusiastic about getting something to drink except me. Finally one of the encouraged me, in a businesslike sort of a way, to go out and
girls

buy

bottles of rye at a liquor store

around the corner on Third Avenue,

46

The Unreal

City

and when I had drunk some of the contents she invited me into a room and signed me up as a prospective member of the Young Communist looked up from League. I took the party name of Frank Swift. When I the paper the girl had vanished like a not too inspiring dream, and I went home on the Long Island Railroad with the secret of a name which I have been too ashamed to reveal to anyone until this moment

when
I

am beyond
to

humiliation.

one meeting of the Young Communist League, in the one of of the students. It was a long discussion as to why apartment Comrade So-and-so did not come to any of the meetings. The answer was that his father was too bourgeois to allow it. So after that, I walked out into the empty street, and let the meeting end however it would. It was good to be in the fresh air. My footsteps rang out on the dark stones. At the end of the street, the pale amber light of a barroom
only went

The
the

beckoned lovingly to rne from under the steel girders of the elevated. lit a cigarette and tasted place was empty. I got a glass of beer and
first

sweet

moment

of silence

and

relief.

And

that

was the end of

my

days as a great revolutionary.

II

Long Island were green, and when the city got past Bayside and started across the meadows to Douglaston, you could see the pale, soft haze of summer beginning to
all

MAY CAME, and

from the

the trees on

train

after the winter,

hang over the bay, and count the boats that had been set and were riding jauntily at their moorings
of the little dock.

afloat

again

off the

end

in the lengthening evenings the dining room was still light with the rays of the sun when Pop came home for dinner, slamming the front door and whooping at the dog and smacking

And now

know

the surface of the hall table with the evening paper to let everybody that he had arrived.

Soon John Paul was home from his school in Pennsylvania, and my exams were over, and we had nothing to do but go swimming and hang around the house playing hot records. And in the evening we would wander off to some appalling movie where we nearly died of boredom. We did not have a car, and rny uncle would not let us touch the family
Buick. It

would not have done

me any

good anyway, because

never

learned to drive. So most of the time, we would get a ride to Great Neck and then walk back the two or three miles along the wide road

when

the

show was

over.
all

Why

did

we

ever go to

those movies?

That

is

another mystery,

Children in the Market Place

47

But
all

I think John Paul and I and our various friends must have seen the movies that were produced, without exception, from 1934 to 1937. And most of them were simply awful. What is more, they got

worse from week to week and from month to month, and day after day we hated them more. My ears are ringing with the false, gay music that used to announce the Fox movietone and the Paramount newsreels with the turning camera that slowly veered its aim at your face.
right

My

mind

still

echoes with the tones of Pete Smith and Fitzpatrick of

the Travel-talks saying,

"And now

farewell to beautiful

New

South

Wales."

And
I

yet I confess a secret loyalty to the

Chaplin,

W.

C. Fields, Harpo Marx, and

memory of my great heroes: many others whose names

have forgotten. But their pictures were rare, and for the rest, we found ourselves perversely admiring the villains and detesting the heroes. The truth is that the villains were almost the better actors. were

always were almost always in danger delighted with everything they did. of being thrown out of the theater for our uproarious laughter at scenes that were supposed to be most affecting, tender, and appealing to the

We

We

finer

for all my closest friends. We could not keep away from were hypnotized by those yellow flickering lights and the big posters of Don Ameche. Yet as soon as we got inside, the suffering of having to sit and look at such colossal stupidities became so acute

elements in the human soul the tears of Jackie Cooper, the brave smile of Alice Faye behind the bars of a jail. The movies soon turned into a kind of hell for me and my brother

and indeed
them.

We

that
I

we

sometimes actually
sit

could hardly

taking a few
in one's

physically sick. In the end, it got so that a show. It was like lighting through cigarettes and them and puffs throwing away, appalled by the vile taste
felt

mouth.

In 1935 and 1936, without becoming almost intolerable.

my

realizing

it,

life

was

slowly, once more,

<s>

COLUMBIA

OCTOBER is A FINE AND DANGEROUS SEASON in America. It is dry and cool and the land is wild with red and gold and crimson, and all the lassitudes of August have seeped out of your blood, and you are full
of ambition. It
is

a wonderful time to begin anything at

all.

You go

to

the catalogue looks wonderful. The names college, and every course in to all seem of the subjects lay open the way to a new world. Your arms

48
are full of

The Unreal

City

new, clean notebooks, waiting to be filled. You pass through the doors of the library, and the smell of thousands of well-kept books makes your head swim with a clean and subtle pleasure. You have a
hat, a

new

new

sweater perhaps, or a whole

feel

new

suit.

Even the

nickels

and the quarters in your pocket

glorious sun.

new, and the buildings shine in the

I

In this season of resolutions and ambitions, in 1935,

courses in Spanish and

signed

up

for

German and Geology and

and

constitutional

law and

besides. And I I forget what else The Review and the and yearbook Spectator and I continued to work for Jester as I had already done the spring before. And I found myself pledging one of the fraternities. The energy of that golden October and the stimulation of the cold, bright winter days when the wind swept down as sharp as knives from the shining Palisades kept driving me through the year in what seemed to be fine condition. I had never done so many different things at the same time or with such apparent success. I had discovered in myself something of a capacity for work and for activity and for enjoyment that I had never dreamed of. And everything began to come easy, as

French Renaissance
started to

literature

work

for

The

the saying goes. It was not that I was really studying hard or working hard: but all of a sudden I had fallen into a kind of a mysterious knack of keeping a hundred different interests going in the air at the same time. It was
a kind of a stupendous juggling act, a tour de force, and what surprised me most was that I managed to keep it up without collapsing. In the
first

place, I

average amount.

was carrying about eighteen points in my courses the I had found out the simplest way of fulfilling the

minimum

requirements for each one.

II

fourth floor of John Jay Hall was the place where all the offices of the student publications and the Glee Club and the Student Board and all the rest were to be found.
It

THEN THERE WAS THE "FOURTH FLOOR." The

was the

noisiest
I

exactly.

And

and jealousies was constantly seething with the exchange of insults from office to office. Constantly, all day long, from morning to night, people were writing articles and drawing cartoons calling each other fascists. Or else they were calling one another on the phone and assuring one another in the

and most agitated part of the campus. It was not gay, hardly ever saw, anywhere, antipathies and contentions at once so petty, so open, and so sharp. The whole floor

Children in the Market Place

coarsest terms of their
as vicious as
it

49
It

undying hatred.

was

all intellectual

and

verbal,

could be, but it never became concrete, never descended into physical rage. For this reason, I think that it was all more or less of a game which everybody played for purposes that were remotely

esthetic.

The campus was

tual ferment."

supposed to be, in that year, in a state of "intellecEverybody felt and even said that there were an unusual

number of brilliant and original minds in the college. I think that it was to some extent true. Ad Reinhardt was certainly the best artist that had ever drawn for Jester, perhaps for any other college magazine. His issues of Jester were real magazines. I think that in cover designs and he could have lessons to some of the art editors downlayouts given town. Everything he put out was original, and it was also funny, because for the first time in years Jester had some real writers contributing to it, and was not just an anthology of the same stale and obscene
jokes that have been circulating through the sluggish system of Ameri-

can college magazines for two generations. By now Reinhardt had graduated, and so had the editor of the 1935 Spectator, Jim Wechsler. first approach to the Fourth Floor had been rather circumspect,

My

went to my adviser, Professor McKee, and he gave me a letter of introducto Leonard was Robinson who editor of The Columbia Review, tion the literary magazine. I don't know what Robinson would have made of a letter of introduction. Anyway, I never got to meeting him after all. When I went to the Review office I gave the note to Bob Giroux, an associate editor, and he looked at it and scratched his head some bit and told me to write something if I got an idea. By 1936 Leonard Robinson had vanished. I always heard a lot about Robinson, and it all adds up to nothing very clear, so that I have always had the impression that he somehow lives in the trees. I pray that he
after the

manner

of Cambridge. I
to

and asked him

how

go about

it,

may go
As

to

heaven.

Smith and Robert Giroux were both was good. I don't know whether you would together, editing use the term "ferment" in their case, but Smith and Giroux were both good writers. Also, Giroux was a Catholic and a person strangely placid for the Fourth Floor. He had no part in its feuds and, as a matter of fact, you did not see him around there very much. John Berryman was more or less the star on Review that year. He was the most earnestlooking man on the campus. The place where I was busiest was the Jester office. Nobody really
for Review, Robert Paul
it

and

it

50

The Unreal

City

there, they just congregated about noontime and beat violently with the palms of their hands on the big empty filing cabinets, making a thunderous sound that echoed up and down the corridor, and was sometimes answered from the Review office across the hall. There I usu-

worked

ally

came and drew forth from the bulging leather bag of books that I hand. The copy and drawings which I put into the editor's editor that year was Herb Jacobson, and he printed all my worst carcarried,

toons very large in the most prominent parts of the magazine. I thought I had something to be proud of when I became art editor

end of that year. Robert Lax was to be editor and Ralph Toledano managing editor, and we got along well together. The next and well written year Jester was well put together because of Toledano because of Lax and sometimes popular with the masses because of me. When it was really funny, it was not popular at all. The only really funny issues were mostly the work of Lax and Bob Gibney, the fruit
of Jester at the of ideas that

came

to

them

at four o'clock in the

morning in

their

room

on the top

floor of

Furnald Hall.

The
tuition.

chief advantage of Jester

was

that

it

paid most of our

bills for

and wandered around the campus with little golden crowns dangling on our watch chains. Indeed, that was the only reason why I had a watch chain. I did not have a watch.
about
it all,

We were happy

Ill

Country team. The fact that was not me the coach is sufficient indication of one reason sorry to get why we were the worst college Cross Country team in the East that year. And so, in my afternoons, I would run around and around South Field on the cinder path. And when winter came, I would go round and round the board track until I had blisters all over the soles of my feet and was so lame I could hardly walk. Occasionally I would go up to Van Cortlandt Park and run along the sandy and rocky paths through the woods. When we raced any other college, I was never absolutely the last one home there were always two or three other Columbia men behind me. I was one of those who never came in until the crowd had lost interest and had begun to disperse. Perhaps I would have been more of a success as a long-distance runner if I had gone into training, and given up smoking and drinking, and kept regular hours. But no. Three or four nights a week my fraternity brothers and I would go flying down in the black and roaring subway to 52nd Street, where we would crawl around the tiny, noisy, and expensive nightclubs
i

ALSO HANDED IN

MY NAME

for the Cross

Children in the Market Place

51

that had flowered on the sites of the old speakeasies in the cellars of those dirty brownstone houses. There we would sit, for hours, packed in those dark rooms, shoulder to shoulder with a lot of surly strangers

whole place rocked and surged with storms of to dance. We jazz. just huddled there between the blue walls, shoulder to shoulder and elbow to elbow, crouching and deafened and taciturn. If you moved your arm to get your drink you nearly knocked the next man off his stool. And the waiters fought their way back and forth through the sea of unfriendly heads, taking away
their girls, while the

and

There was no room

the

money

of

all

the people.

was not that we got drunk. No, it was this strange business of in a room full of people and sitting drinking without much speech, and
It

letting yourself be deafened by the jazz that throbbed through the whole sea of bodies binding them all together in a kind of fluid medium. It was a strange, animal travesty of mysticism, sitting in those

booming

rooms, with the noise pouring through you, and the rhythm jumping and throbbing in the marrow of your bones. You couldn't call any of
that,

per

se,

a mortal
it

sin.

We just sat there, that was

all

all. If

we

got hangex-

overs the next day,

was more because

else.

of the smoking

and nervous

haustion than anything

How

often, after a night of this, I missed

the trains

home

to

Long

on a couch somewhere, at the Fraternity House, or in the apartment of somebody I knew around town. What was worst of all was going home on the subway, on the chance that one might catch a bus at Flushing! There is nothing so dismal as the Flushing bus station, in the gray, silent hour just before the coming of dawn. There were always at least one or two of those same characters whose prototypes I had seen dead in the morgue. And perhaps there would be a pair of drunken soldiers trying to get back to Fort Totten. Among all these I stood, weary and ready to fall, lighting the fortieth or fiftieth the one that took last shreds of the of the day lining off my cigarette
slept

Island and

went and

throat.

The

that invaded
laborers

thing that depressed me most of all was the shame and despair my whole nature when the sun came up, and all the

were going

to

work:

their eyes clear, and tion and sense of

some

my own

men healthy and awake and quiet, with rational purpose before them. This humiliamisery and of the fruitlessness of what I had

I could get to contrition. It was the reaction of nature. It proved nothing except that I was still, at least, morally alive: or rather that I had still some faint capacity for moral life in me. The

done was the nearest

52
term "morally alive" might obscure the fact that
I

The Unreal

City

was spiritually dead. I

had been
I

that long since!

at last

become a true child of the modern world, completely and useless concerns with myself, and almost intangled up that was really of even capable considering or understanding anything
had
in petty

important to

my own

true interests.

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Seven:

HELL AS HATRED

-LiEix

is

except the fact that they all hate one another and cannot get one another and from themselves.

where no one has anything in common with anybody else away from
thrown together in
their fire

They

are

all

and each one

tries to thrust

away from him with a huge, impotent hatred. And the reason why they want to be free of one another is not so much that they hate what they see in others, as that they know others hate what they see in them: and all recognize in one another what they detest in themselves,
the others

and impotence, agony, terror, and despair. known by its fruits. If you want to understand the and political history of modern man, study hell.
selfishness

The

tree is

social

And yet the world, with all its wars, is not yet hell. And history, however terrible, has another and a deeper meaning. For it is not the evil of history that is its significance and it is not by the evil of our time that
our time can be understood. In the furnace of war and hatred, the City of those who love one another is drawn and fused together in the heroism of charity under suffering, while the city of those who hate everything
is

scattered

direction, like sparks, smoke,

and dispersed and its and flame.

citizens are cast

out in every

OUR GOD also is a consuming fire. And if we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will be our everlasting refuse His love and remain in the coldness of sin and joy. But if we to Him and to other men then will His fire (by our own opposition choice rather than His) become our everlasting enemy, and Love, instead of being our joy, will become our torment and our destruction.
53

54

The Unreal

City

WHEN WE LOVE GOD'S WILL we find Him and own His joy in all things. But when we are against God, that is, when we love ourselves more than
become our enemies. They cannot help refusing us the lawless satisfaction our selfishness demands of them because the infinite unselfishness of God is the law of every created essence and is printed

Him,

all

things

in

everything that
resist it

He
If,

His unselfishness.

in

has made. His creatures can only be friends with men, they find selfishness, then they hate, fear

and

until they are

tamed and reduced

to passivity

by

it.

But

the Desert Fathers believed one of the marks of the saint was that he

could live at peace with lions and serpents, with nothing to fear from them.

THERE
Evil

is
is

NOTHING

interesting

about

sin, or

about

evil as evil.

not a positive entity but the absence of a perfection that ought to be there. Sin as such is essentially boring because it is the lack of something that could appeal to our wills and our minds.

What
that
is

attracts

men

to evil acts is

not the evil in them but the good

The

there, seen under a false aspect and with a distorted perspective. good seen from that angle is only the bait in a trap. When you
it,

reach out to take

the trap

is

sprung and you are

left

with disgust,

boredom.
their

and
is

hatred. Sinners are people

who
full

hate everything, because

of illusion, full of necessarily full betrayal, decepthe greatest sinners are the most boring people in the world because they are also the most bored and the ones who find life most
tion.

world

of

And

tedious.

When
violence
that

they try to cover the tedium of life by noise, excitement and the inevitable fruits of a life devoted to the love of values
exist

do not

scourges of the world

they become something more than boring: they are and of society. And being scourged is not merely

something dull or tedious. Yet when it is all over and they are dead, the record of their sins in history becomes exceedingly uninteresting and is inflicted on school
children as a penance which is all the more bitter because even an eightyear-old can readily see the uselessness of learning about people like
Hitler, Stalin,

and Napoleon.

NEW

SEEPS OP CONTEMPLATION

ik: IN

THE FACE OF DEATH

"It will
I

DENTIST tapped at the tooth, and looked serious. have to come out/' he said. was not sorry. The thing was hurting me, and I wanted
as soon as possible.
said: "I can't give

1 HE

to get rid

it

pain,

But Dr. McTaggart you know."

you anything

to

deaden the

"Why not?"
"There
I
is

a great deal of infection, and the matter has spread far

beyond the roots of the tooth/'

accepted his reasoning on trust and said: "Well, go ahead." I sat back in the chair, mute with misgivings, while he happily trotted over to his toolbox singing "It won't be a stylish marriage" and pulled out an ugly-looking forceps. "All ready?" he said, jacking back the chair, and brandishing the

And

instrument of
roots of

torture. I

nodded, feeling as
fast,

if I

had gone pale

to the

my

hair.

But the tooth came out

in one big, vivid flash of pain

and

left

me

spitting a lot of green and red business into the little blue whispering whirlpool by the side of the dentist's chair. "Oh, goodness," said Dr. McTaggart, "I don't like that very much,
I

must say." I walked wearily back

have

terrible after all to

to school, reflecting that it was not really so a tooth pulled out without novocain. However,

instead of getting better, I got worse. By evening, I was really ill, and that sleepless night was spent in a fog of sick confusedthat night ness and general pain. The next morning they took my temperature

and put

me

to

bed in the sickroom, where

eventually got to sleep.

55

5 <5

The Unreal

City

That did not make me any better. And I soon gathered in a vague and comway that our matron, Miss Harrison, was worried about me, municated her worries to the headmaster, in whose own house this particular

sickroom was.

the school doctor came around. And he went away again, reDr. McTaggart who, this time, did not sing. with turning And I heard them agreeing that I was getting to be too full of gandecided to lance a big hole in my gum, grene for my own good. They

Then

the pocket of infection there and so, they could not drain a little ether, they went ahead. I awoke with my having given me and get rid of it. doctors both mouth full of filth, urging me to hurry up closed and bed in back I When they had gone, lay my eyes and thought: "I have blood poisoning." mind went back to the sore foot I had developed in And then

and see

if

my

Germany. Well,
next time.

would

tell

them about

it

when

they

came back the

Sick, weary, half asleep, I felt the throbbing of the

wound

in

my

mouth. Blood poisoning. The room was very quiet. It was rather dark, too. And as I lay in bed, in my weariness and pain and disgust, I felt for a moment the shadow of another visitor pass into the room.
It
I

was death,
kept

that

came

to stand

by

my

bed.

of apathy than anything else. But eyes closed, more out one's eyes to see the visitor, to see anyway, there was no need to open death. Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center

my

of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.

And, with those eyes, those interior eyes, open upon that coldness, and looked at the visitor, death. lay half asleep What did I think? All I remember was that I was filled with a deep

much

and tremendous apathy. I felt so sick and disgusted that I did not very care whether I died or lived. Perhaps death did not come very
me, or give

close to

me

a good look at the nearness of his coldness

afraid.

and
on,

darkness, or I

would have been more

rate, J lay

But
I

at

any

there in a kind of torpor and said:

fell

"Come

don't care."

And

then I

asleep.

mercy it was that death did not take me at my when I was still only seventeen years old. What a that word, day, it would have been if the trapdoors that were prepared for me thing had yawned and opened their blackness and swallowed me down in the

What

a tremendous

In the Face of Death

57
a blessing beyond calculation you, that day, or the following night, or in the week
I tell
it is

middle of that
that I
or

sleep!

Oh,

woke up again, two that came after.

I

And
a
little

kind of pride and

life,

lay there with nothing in my heart but apathy spite in it: as if it was life's fault that I

discomfort, and for that I would show my and die, as if that were a revenge of some sort. Revenge upon what? What was life? Something existing apart from me, and separate from myself? Don't worry, I did not enter into any speculations. I only thought: "If I have to die what of it. What do I care? Let me die, then, and I'm finished." Religious people, those who have faith and love God and realize what life is and what death means, and know what it is to have an immortal soul, do not understand how it is with the ones who have no faith, and who have already thrown away their souls. They find it hard to conceive that anyone could enter into the presence of death without some kind of compunction. But they should realize that millions of men die the way I was then prepared to die, the way I then might have died. They might say to me: "Surely you thought of God, and you wanted
to

there was a had to suffer scorn and hatred of

pray to

Him

for mercy/'

remember, the thought of God, the thought of prayer my mind, either that day, or all the rest of the time that I was ill, or that whole year, for that matter. Or if the thought did come to me, it was only as an occasion for its denial and rejection. I remember that in that year, when we stood in the chapel and recited the Apostles' Creed, I used to keep my lips tight shut, with full deliberation and of set purpose, by way of declaring my own creed which
far as I

No. As

did not even enter

was: "I believe in nothing."

Actually, I

Or

had only exchanged a

at least I thought I believed in nothing. is certain faith, faith in God,

Who

Truth, for a vague uncertain faith in the opinions and authority of men and pamphlets and newspapers wavering and varying and conunderstand. tradictory opinions which I did not even clearly

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Nine:

REVIEWS OF NABOKOV AND RANSOM

LAUGHTER

IN

THE DARK*

Laughter in the Dark, written by a Russian emigre living in Paris, has already enjoyed some acclaim in Europe under the title of Camera Obscura and, indeed, it is a strange, exciting, and unusual book. It does not lack vitality, but, as the story closes, its vitality simply resolves itself into a kind of crazy hectic movement across a plane surface
like oil

Stated baldly, the plot

a

burning on the face of a pond. is both tragic and familiar.

It is

the story of

man, Albinus is his name, who was "rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved,
was not loved, and his life ended in disaster." The author, however, treats his theme more and more in the comic manner as his story goes on. The book begins well, and holds us as long as the author docs not commit himself to either a tragic or a comic tone of voice. Hence we watch the pathetic, rich little puritan Albinus being drawn out of his can understand how it haprespectable orbit by the girl, Margot. are not unable to appreWe are her and aware of fascination, pens.

We

ciate Albinus' discontent

with his comfortable

life

when

this is

pointed

follow the rapid movements of these two about the windy, rainy Berlin streets, we are never sure if we love or hate the lovers, or admire or despise them. Far from being a Fault, it is this am-

out to us.

And

as

we

biguity which keeps the book alive, and once the author resolves it, he robs his book of most of its reality. At the climax of the story the least convincing of the major characters is introduced: one worldly cynical

name of Rex. Here the author comes out openly for Albinus comedy. goes into decline and takes the whole book with him. From now on we are sure he is too much of a fool to be pitied, and
fellow by the
that

Margot

is

far too sluttish to

remain even a

little bit

fascinating.

58

Reviews of Nabokov and Ransom

59
strong a light

their transparencies

Uncompromising comedy has thrown too become too obvious.

on them, and

However, it is amusing enough to watch Rex, who is a very unpleasant character, use Horner's trick from Wycherly's comedy The Country Wife to replace Albinus in Margot's affection while Albinus continues
to support him. But Albinus finds out: Margot talks the for moment. Before much can else her, ing

him out

of shoot-

happen he

gets a broken

head in an automobile accident and o goes blind. She bundles him off to the Swiss Alps. Rex, who has announced he is going to America, follows them to Switzerland, where he continues to live with Margot in the same chalet with Albinus, without the blind man finding out. And, as if the dexterity required for this were not enough to keep Rex amused, he has to invent a lot of practical jokes to play on the poor fellow. It is here that the author has outdone himself, for Rex's jokes are at the same time stupid and frightening. But we are neither amused nor
because they carry little conviction. Rex is too artificial a character for his actions and ideas to have much force; they are uninhorrified, teresting,

and

so

is

he.

Mr. Nabokov lacks the

finesse of a

Huxley book cynic.

in describing an intellectual cad.

Rex
is

is little

Gide or a more than a story-

However, a word about the

1

style.

This

a rapid, colorful, lively,

and

frequently witty book. The author has a keen eye for movement and outline. In two words he can create the image of a girl getting out of

a wet coat or a goalkeeper in a hockey game. The economy and justness of his observation of externals are as striking as the speed and
facility
1

with which he

tells

his story.

Laughter in the Dark, by Vladimir Nabokov, Bobbs-Merrill Company, York, 1938.

New

New
May

York Herald Tribune Books

15,1938

-s>

THE WORLD'S BODY2

MR. RANSOM HAS WRITTEN a distinguished book about poetry a volume of essays that consider the subject from various standpoints, dealing

now

with the aesthetics of poetry, now the theory of criticism, as well itself. He has chosen examples for discussion from Mildifferent levels of conton, Shakespeare," and Donne, as well as from
as with poetry

60

The Unreal
St.

City

and Edna temporary poetry represented by T, S. Eliot

Millay.

Vincent

and Aristotle, and Turning to aesthetic theory, he examines Plato finds occasion to disagree with two significant moderns, I. A. Richards and But he has not attempted to give us any sysGeorge Santayana.
tematic theory of literary criticism. The book is simply intended as a collection of ideas that may serve as a basis for some such system. the word "reactionary," in a technical, His ideas are characterized

by

not

political,

sense.

Where

poetry

is

concerns us here

the

word implies

stress

concerned and that is all that on form and technique and

vague poetry man's fate and ends on a moral

a distaste for homiletics in poetry. Mr. Ransom dislikes, for instance, moods that associates romantic landscapes with the of
text.

One of his best arguments against the romantics develops out of his examination of Milton's "Lycidas," which is, of course, a pastoral poem.
The
pastoral type, with out of his own personality
its

and to put on a mask

forced the poet to step rigid conventions, for poetic purposes.

Mr. Ransom points out what a valuable technical resource this "anonymthis was one of the first things the romantics threw away. ity" was: and
Expanding
this idea into that of "aesthetic distance,"

the author de-

scribes it as a process in which the poet inhibits direct response to the to approach it in a roundabout way through convention object, in order

"technique of restraint" must be obvious: detachment, objectivity, control of the material, and so on. of poetry in deeper into the subject, he attempts a definition

and form. The advantages of

this

Going

terms of cognition: It is a kind of knowledge that cannot be gained by of experiany other means, for the poet is concerned with the aspects

poetry, a great

ence that can never be well described, but only reproduced or imitated. However, for long periods of time men have attempted to repeat, in the conclusions of science or philosophy, with the result that

number

of

poems

more. This Mr.

Ransom

calls the

are badly disguised sermons and not much "poetry of ideas," or "platonic poetry,"
to

and

it

forms a category large enough

at the

hold the traditional enemies,

Pope and Wordsworth,

is

same

time.

Besides this, there is pure, or "physical," poetry, of which imagism one type, but the works he finds most significant are those he classiin order metaphysical. He has stretched this term considerably include Milton and some of Shakespeare. This is, architecturally, the

fies as

to

finest

and soundest

poetry.
to the essay

This brings the reviewer

"Shakespeare at Sonnets," which

Reviews of Nabokov and Ransom

will certainly

61
It is

make many

of

Mr. Ransom's readers angry.

one of

the most stimulating essays in the book, not only because it is a bit but because it is one in which Mr. Ransom examines specific startling,

poems instead
his force.

can withstand any attack, he greatness

of poetry in the abstract. Recognizing that Shakespeare's sets upon the sonnets with all

begins bluntly by showing that they are badly constructed, And then, they are diffuse, self-indulgent emotionalism: not of only that, but he blames Shakespeare for pieces most of the bad romantic poetry that has been written since his time.

He

which may be true enough.

Naturally Shakespeare cannot too seriously be held responsible for his bad imitators. But there is more: as soon as he has finished Shakespeare
off as a romantic,

him
not

as a metaphysical, in order to demolish all over again for not being as good as Donne. This attack is unsets
its

he

him up

fortunate in

mean

that

it is

unnecessary and disproportionate violence, but that does uninteresting, or, especially, false. It is simply un-

is only saying, after all, that Donne is a better than Shakespeare, and he will easily find many who will lyric poet that. It is not necessary to try to demolish the sonwith on him agree

necessary;

Mr. Ransom

nets in order to prove it; and besides, he has pitted Shakespeare against Donne in the latter's own well-fortified territory.

Mr. Ransom gets from poetry, the less sure he is of himself. The closer he is to actual works of art, the more are his statements clear, succinct, and provocative.
It is clear that the further
a

The World's

Scribner's Sons, Body, by John Crowe Ransom, Charles

New York,

1938.

New
May

York Herald Tribune Books

8,

1938

TOT:

THE PROBLEM OF UNBELIEF

IT L

is

ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE

for a
is

man

to live

without some kind

of faith. Faith, in the broadest sense,

evidence of another.

The

essence of

all

the acceptance of truth on the faith is the submission of our

accept or natural faith is the acceptance of truths on the authority of other men. Supernatural faith is the belief in truths revealed by God, on the testireveals these mony of God, and because of the authority of God
a truth that is not intrinsically evident to

judgment

to the assertion of

someone

else,

on whose word

we

our

own

minds.

Human

Who

truths to us.

One

itself as

of the paradoxes of our age, which has so far not distinguished an Age of Faith, is that millions of men who have found it

impossible to believe in God have blindly submitted themselves in hufaith to every charlatan who has access to a printing press, a movie screen, or a microphone. Men who cannot believe in the revealed word of God swallow everything they read in the newspapers. Men who think it absurd that die Church should be able, by virtue of the guidance and protection of the Holy Ghost, to make infallible

man

pronounce-

ments

as to

what has

or has not been revealed

by God concerning doc-

most fantastic claims of political propaeven the ganda, though dishonesty of propagandists has become, by now, proverbial. The final irony of the situation is this: that most men have no intrine or morality, will believe the

no man has an
is

tellectual right to their theological unbelief. Strictly speaking, of course, intellectual right to unbelief because faith

eminently reasonable.

The

unintelligent.
sincerity,

But there do have arrived by their own research at the error that theological

theological intelligence has no right to be consciously nevertheless exist a few men who, in all

62

The Problem

of Unbelief

63

faith is unacceptable. to admit that they worked

We cannot accept their error, but at least we have

hard
to

reach

it.

Their ignorance

is

invincible.

They are in ''good faith" in having no faith, because they think they have evidence against the validity of faith as such. This supposes (at
least in theory) that if they saw the evidence in favor of faith, would instantly change their view.

they

But no, the paradox

is this.

While

few men hold,

as a result of rea-

others reject soning, that theological faith is unacceptable, millions of the notion of faith by an act not of reason but of blind faith. Here is

evidence of the supreme intellectual indigence of our civilization: our very refusal to believe is based on faith.

There is still a greater enormity in our unbelief. We disbelieve God on the testimony of man. We reject the word of God because we are told to do so by men who, in their turn, were told to do so by men. The only real reason why most unbelievers cannot accept the word of God is that they have already submitted to the fallible authority of men. Now, reason shows that the only one who can tell us anything about God is God Himself. Men know nothing of His inner life or of His
plans for them.

Men

can only

command

belief in their statements about

Him when
but His
of

it is

reasonable to hold that their statements are not theirs

things that are
2:4).

when they speak as His representatives. "The God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God" (I Cor.

God, being Pure Actuality, Pure

but is all Truth, Every truth, every being, Truths are only true in Him, and because of Him. The light of reason is a natural participation in His Truth. Reason itself draws its authority from Him. That is why reason, if it be allowed to light our way, will
to faith. bring us, without prejudice,

sees all truth Intelligence, not only a reflection of Him. is simply

But men without theological faith, reasoning from false premises which they receive, on faith, from the fallible authority of other men, use the God-given light of reason to argue against God, against faith
and even against reason
This issue
proposed
is

itself.

because faith has so often been generally misunderstood,

view, faith is

and even as contrary to it. According to this an entirely subjective experience which can neither be communicated nor explained. It is something emotional. It either hapas alien to reason

not. If it happens, you "have faith." The fact pens to you or it does that you "have faith" does not necessarily have any effect on your rea"faith" is an emotional thing beyond the pale of soning, because your

reason.

You cannot

explain

it

to yourself or to

anybody

else.

But

if

64
faith has

The Unreal
no
intellectual reference whatever,
it is

City

hardly possible to see

how

"having faith"

can contribute

your behavior. It does not seem to red hair or a wooden leg. It is just something that happened to you, but did not happen to your next-door neighbor.

much to your outlook on life or to be much more important than having

This false idea of faith is the last refuge of religious compromise rationalism. Fearing that domestic peace is no longer possible, faith barricades itself in the attic, and leaves the rest of the house to reason.
Actually, faith

with

and reason are meant to get along happily together. They were not meant to live alone, in divorce or in separation.
II

in modern times is clearly not a problem of faithlessness but of irrationality. Most men of our time do not have enough brains or training to be capable of a formal sin against the the-

THE "PROBLEM OF UNBELIEF"

faithlessness that is so prevalent in a country ological virtue of faith. The like America is not formal unbelief but crass ignorance. It is the con-

fusion of well-meaning people

their left

hands from
spirits of

their right.

who are lost in a fog, who do not know The agnosticism and atheism which

benight the
liberate,
to think. It is

and studied

in our time spring less from a formal, derejection of revealed truth than from an inability

men

because

men

are not able to think for themselves that they are

so often incapable either of belief or of unbelief. They are lucky if they rise high enough to be able to rehearse clearly in their minds the propositions that have been fed to them by the mass media. one can ex-

No

them falsity of the things they read in the papers when their best efforts are devoted to spelling out the words. If diey cannot keep pace with the thought of another, how can they think for themselves?
pect
to

have any means of judging the truth or

The
is

first

step in bringing

men
It is

to faith is

taken on the level not of

It

theology but of philosophy.

not a matter of faith but of reason.

impossible to ask anyone to believe in truths revealed by God unless he first understand that there is a God and that He can reveal Truth.

Even
tide,

in the case of intellectuals

who

really

the inability to accept the existence of

God

have some claim to that springs from power-

Not that they do not have brilliant or well-trained minds, but in their approach to ultimate metaphysical problems their minds axe all but paralyzed by a philosophical equipment that is worse than ineffectual: it leaves them in doubt as to the nature of being, of
lessness to think.

The Problem
truth,

of Unbelief
their

65

and even sometimes of

implemented

own

existence. It is not for these

intellectuals are not

that

we

raise the question of unbelief.

Even our

sufficiently

to sin against faith!

That is why it is a mistake to situate the problem of unbelief on the mere level of proofs for God's existence. On that level we are not dealing with faith, but with the rational preambles to faith. Pascal saw this clearly. He also saw the paradox that philosophers like Descartes, who had in fact reduced theology to the level of philosophy and tended to
shift the

had obscured and

of faith

God, whole issue. Pascal predicted correctly that the influence of Descartes on theology would be a watering down
falsified the

problem of

belief into the area of his "clear ideas" of

by specious philosophizing.
of unbelief cannot arise until a
is

The problem
to

man

has found his

way
well

God. True, since the existence of God

is

an

article of faith as
is

as a truth accessible to reason,

any denial of His existence

so

a sin against faith. But there

much

rational preambles to faith that it would the godlessness of most men presents a real
Ill

materially invincible ignorance of the be misleading to suppose that

problem of unbelief.

IT

HAS BEEN SAID

that the multitudes are faithless because of their faith

in a few.

With

the unbelief of these few

we

touch upon the real prob-

lem.

The
to

real

problem of unbelief

is,

to

my

mind, centered in those

who

some extent know God but cannot

believe in

Him. They

are often

involved in the most acute spiritual anguish because of this ambivalence. They recognize the existence and the value of faith. They often wish

appreciate of Catholicism entirely reasonable. They are not in the least perplexed at the thought that God speaks to men through Christ and that Christ

who they had some of it. They sincerely envy those who can believe, can accept the teaching authority of the Church and enter fully into Catholic life, with all its privileges and obligations. They are able to the happiness of truly religious men. They find the claims

has handed on His ruling, teaching, and sanctifying power to His Mystical Body, which prolongs His Incarnation and keeps Him visibly present in the world of men.
If

And

we

sometimes

fail to

meet
to

believe. yet they cannot this problem of unbelief in those

it is

who

would

"like to believe but cannot,"

generally because

apologists

men

be Apostles. not with Christ, the Bread of Life, but rather with apologetic

when we ought

We

are merely have been trained to feed

ar~

we

66
guments.

The Unreal

City

The reason for this is, perhaps, that we have been brought up on the technique of grappling with the Church's strongest and most vocal opponents: the atheists and skeptics. We imagine that our task is not to announce the word of God but "to convert atheists/' by main force of argument. Even when someone with a genuine desire to believe comes to a priest with difficulties and with questions drawn from
the enemies of the Church, the chances are that these questions are not at all. He thinks he needs them as a pretext for really his difficulties
talking
self to

To

he hopes to use them as an excuse for not committing himaction! moral any be unable to understand the mysteries of faith is by no means to
or
to believe

be unable

them.

And

I yet, as

have

said, faith is in

no way

the blind acceptance of a truth which we have no hope of understandthe full meaning of these ing. Although we can never comprehend
mysteries, yet faith is the key to a relative understanding of them. It is after the initial act of belief that the believer begins to see. Only then

can the intellectual

with in a way that
is

difficulties

presented by these mysteries be dealt

satisfactory.

in

some sense

IV
a problem that is essentially concerned not with credibility but with faith. Information, reasoning, sympathetic explanation of truths usually do not suffice. There is a subtle distinction between merely "making converts" and preaching the

THE MOTIVES of credibility always clarification alone will do nothing to solve

need

to

be made

clear.

But

their

word

God. Saint Paul has already anticipated the complaints of those they have dealt out all the arguments in the textbook of fundamental theology, find themselves in a blind alley and attribute
of

who, when

their lack of success to the fact that

to give the prospective "convert"

perhaps

God

has

somehow

failed

enough grace to believe. The man has accepted all their arguments. He knows that revelation is credible. He wants to believe in God, in Christ, in the Church. He even sees that he ought to believe in them. Pie has a fair idea of all there is to believe, and it all sounds rational. But after that he is inarticulate. He cannot go one step further and formally accept the faith. He cannot "believe." What shall he do? Fold his hands and wait for grace to descend on him from heaven? Saint Paul says:

The justice which is of faith, speaketh thus: Say not in thy heart, who shall ascend into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down. Or who shall descend into the deep, that
is

to bring

up Christ again from the dead. But

The Problem

of Unbelief

67

what saith the Scripture? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart. This is the word of faith, which we preach. (Rom. 1 0:6-8)
For Saint Paul, the problem of justification is not a matter of proving the truth of this or that doctrine, but of making Christ live in our hearts

An Apostle is one who engenders "new beings" the word of God. "For/' says Paul to the Corinthians, "if by ten have thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For you in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you" (I Cor. 4: 15).
by
faith

(Eph. 3:17).

in Christ,

The word

of faith

is

what begets

spiritual life in the believer.

The

word, says Saint Paul, is very near to us, once it has been "planted" like the mustard seed in our heart. This planting starts an interior activity

which

results in a

"new

birth," or the

fundamental

spiritual trans-

formation from which emerges a new interior self, a "new creature," united with Christ by faith. This supernatural transformation is precipitated by the "word of faith." Our spiritual generation as in Christ" depends entirely on our reaction to this "word."

"new men

The

prob-

lem

catechumen who wants to believe and cannot do so will be as soon as he finds out what to make of the "word" that has resolved been planted in him. Saint Paul sums up his solution in two statements:
of the
the heart we believe unto unto salvation. (Rom. 10:10)

With

justice:

with the mouth confession

is

made

Saint

Thomas Aquinas, commenting on

it is

the words "with the heart

we

believe unto justice," says:

we believe. For other things, which can be done by a man unwillingly. of God, worship But no one can believe unless he wills to do so (.Nemo credere fotest nisi voltf-ns). For the intellect of the believer is not determined to assent to truth
This means that
with the will that
pertain to the exterior

by the
of

force of

argument (ex necessitate

is

ratlonis")

as is the
life] is

mind

of one

who knows. That

knowing

why

justification

[i.e.

supernatural

not a matter

"but of believing, since justification takes place in

the will. 1

This movement of the will, by which the intellect accepts the truth of God on faith, is inevitably conditioned by the further action of the will which will be demanded as a consequence of faith. Faith will sooner or later have to be "confessed unto salvation." This means that the truth which we believe must take possession of our entire being, in such that faith will "work by charity" and our words and actions will a

way

that has taken place within us. outwardly express the change of life If necessary, we must even speak loud our faith into the face of death.

68

The Unreal
The man who
has no real intellectual
difficulties

City

about faith and yet face the prospect of this interior revolution. He earnestly desires peace: but not at the price of battle. wants Christ to be a sign for the salvation of his spirit with"cannot believe"
is

sometimes one

who cannot

He

out being a sign of contradiction. Convinced of the credibility of revelation, hungry for a life of faith, he needs only to make an act of will.

But that

act of will

is

so tremendous, so sweeping in its consequences!

is

No

This moral paralysis often obscures the intellectual issue. A person who has no real difficulties with Catholic truth can suddenly find himself beset with "problems" which are nothing but the transference of

wonder the poor man

paralyzed.

week ago, a month his moral impotence into an intellectual sphere, Catholic doctrine: the outlines of to able he was ago, grasp quite clearly but now, under "instruction" he becomes bewildered, he can no longer
His mind has been darkened by the hesitation of his subconsciously diverting himself from the truth which he
see.

will.
is

He

is

afraid to

embrace in

its

entirety.

V
IT is

NOT FOR ANYONE TO SAY how

or

when God

is to

dispense His gifts

of grace. But it seems to me probable that anyone who sees the credithe Catholic faith and feels at some time or other a definite bility of

embrace it, has already received sufficient grace to do so. There no need to wait about for a star to appear in the heavens or for an angel to tell him to get baptized or for him to see Our Lord surrounded
desire to
is

by

great light.

If

he does not know

for sure
it

whether he has the grace

to accept

the

anyway, and he will soon find out that he has been given not only sufficient but efficacious grace to do so. Let him make the act of will which he thinks is impossible: he will find out, after he has done it, that it was possible. In so doing he will commit
faith, let
start

him

accepting

himself to embrace
Christian faith.

all

the apparently severe moral consequences of

that, if
all

grace
to

to start
it

continue
It is

But he can be morally certain the journey, he will also receive and to reach the end.

he has enough

the grace he needs

when faith, by the action of the will in charity, takes full our being that the so-called "light of faith" becomes what of possession one might classify as an "experience." In the order of faith, light is only procured by the mediation of the will. The intellect cannot find the
only

way

alone because in this particular case

it is

determined by the

will.

The Problem

of Unbelief

69

Only after it has been led over the path by the will can it reflect back on its experience and realize what has happened. This same law applies all the way from the first act of faith to the
highest degree of mystical contemplation. The whole road is ordinarily traveled in darkness. receive enlightenment only in proportion as

We

we

give ourselves

mission and love.

We

more and more completely

do not
first see,

to

then

act:

only by the free submission of our judgment in advance to the light of understanding: credo ut

God by humble subwe act, then see. It is dark faith that we can intelligam. And that is
he will
believe, never

why
starts
1

the

man who wants on the journey.

to see before clearly,

Commentarium

in Eyistolam ad Romanos, cap, 10, lectio

ii.

THE ASCENT TO TRUTH

Eleven:

OUR LADY OF COBRE

1 TOLD MYSELF
make

that the reason

why

had come

to

Cuba was

to

a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Cobre. And I did, in fact, make a kind of a pilgrimage. But it was one of those medieval pilgrimages that

was nine-tenths vacation and one-tenth pilgrimage. God tolerated all this and accepted the pilgrimage on the best terms in which it could be

He certainly beset me with graces all the way around Cuba: graces of the kind that even a person without deep spircan appreciate as graces, and that is the kind of person I was ituality then and still am. Every step I took opened up a new world of joys, spiritual joys, and joys of the mind and imagination and senses in the natural order, but on the plane of innocence, and under the direction of grace. There was a partial natural explanation for this. I was learning a thing that could not be completely learned except in a culture that is at least outwardly Catholic. One needs the atmosphere of French or Spanish or Italian Catholicism before there is any possibility of a cominterpreted, because

plete and total experience of all the natural and sensible joys that overflow from the Sacramental life.

But here, at every turn, I found rny way into great, cool, dark churches, some of them with splendid altars shining with carven retables or rich with mahogany and silver, and wonderful red gardens of
flame flowered before the saints or the Blessed Sacrament.

Here in niches were those lovely, dressed-up images, those little carved Virgins full of miracle and pathos and clad in silks and black velvet, throned above the high altars. Here, in side chapels, were those
pietas fraught with fierce, Spanish drama, with thorns

and

nails

whose

very sight pierced the

70

mind and

heart,

and

all

around the church were

Our Lady

of Gdbre

71
saints;

many

altars to

white and black

in prayer, for it is not true that the not as true as Americans

and everywhere were Cubans Cubans neglect their religion or

complacently think, basing their judgments on young men who come north from the island and spend their days in arduous gambling in the dormitories of Jesuit
the lives of the rich, sallow

colleges.

But
aire.

was

living like a prince in that island, like a spiritual million-

Every morning, getting up about seven or half past, and walking warm sunny street, I could find my way quickly to any one of a dozen churches, new churches or as old as the seventeenth
out into the
century.

Almost

went in the door I could receive Communion, if I wished, for the priest came out with a ciborium loaded with Hosts before Mass and during it and after it and every fifteen or twenty minutes a new Mass was at a different altar. These were the starting
as soon as I

churches of the religious orders Carmelites, Franciscans, the American Augustinians at El Santo Cristo, or the Fathers of Mercy everywhere
I

of the Christ

turned, there was someone ready to feed me with the infinite strength loved me, and was beginning to show me with

Who

Who

an immense and subtle and generous lavishness me.

how much He

loved

And

making a thanksgiving; everything

hear another Mass,
or
if I

there were a thousand things to do, a thousand ways of easily lent itself to Communion: I could
I

could say the Rosary, do the Stations of the Cross, I was, everywhere I turned my eyes I saw saints in wood or plaster or those who seemed to be saints in flesh and blood and even those who were probably not saints were new enough and
just knelt

where

picturesque enough to stimulate my mind with many meanings and my heart with prayers. And as I left the church there was no lack of

beggars to give

me

the opportunity of almsgiving,

which

is

an easy and

simple

way

of wiping out sins.

Often

I left

one church and went

to hear another

Mass in another

church, especially if the day happened to be Sunday, and I would listen to the harmonious sermons of the Spanish priests, the very grammar of

which was
seems
to

and mysticism and courtesy. After Latin, it no language so fitted for prayer and for talk about God as Spanish: for it is a language at once strong and supple, it has of steel in it, which gives it the accuracy its sharpness, it has the quality that true mysticism needs, and yet it is soft, too, and gentle and pliant, which devotion needs, and it is courteous and suppliant and courtly, and it lends itself surprisingly little to sentimentality. It has some of the
full of dignity

me

there

is

72
intellectuality of

The Unreal
French but not the coldness that

City

intellectuality gets in

French; and it never overflows into the feminine melodies of Italian. Spanish is never a weak language, never sloppy, even on the lips of a

woman.

The

fact that while all this

bells

be Cubans ringing

was going on in the pulpit, there would and yelling lottery numbers outside in the

street seemed to make no difference. For a people that is supposed to be excitable, the Cubans have a phenomenal amount of patience with nerves and drive people crazy, like all the things that get on American for But noise. strident my own part, I did not mind any persistent and

any more than the natives did. When I was sated with prayers, I could go back into the walking among the lights and shadows, stopping to drink huge
of that

streets,

glasses

of iced fruit juices in the little bars, until I came home again Maritain or St. Teresa until it was time for lunch.

and read

And

so I

made my way

to

Matanzas and Camaguey and Santiago

riding in a wild bus through the olive-gray Cuban countryside, full of sugar-cane fields. All the way I said rosaries and looked out into the
great solitary ceiba trees, half expecting that the Mother of God would appear to me in one of them. There seemed to be no reason why she

things in heaven were just a little out of reach. So kept looking, looking, and half expecting. But I did not see Our Lady appear, beautiful, in any of the ceiba trees.

should not, for

all

At Matanzas I got mixed up in the faseo where the whole town walks around and around the square in the evening coolness, the men in one
direction

and the

girls

in the other direction,

and immediately

made

friends with about fifty-one different people of all ages. The evening ended up with me making a big speech in broken Spanish, surrounded

by men and boys in a motley crowd that included the town Reds and the town intellectuals and the graduates of the Marist Fathers' school and some law students from the University of Havana. It was all about faith and morals and made a big impression and, in return, their acceptance of it made a big impression on me, too, for many of them were glad that someone, a foreigner, should come and talk about these things, and I heard someone who had just arrived in the crowd say: "Es cat61ico, ese Americano?" "Man," said the other, "he and the tone in which he said
to bed, I
is

a Catholic and a very good Catholic,"

this

made me

so

happy

that,

when

went

lay in the bed and looked at the mosquito netting bright stars that shone in upon
I

could not sleep.

up through the

me

through the

Our Lady
wooden

of Cobre
glass

73

wide-open window that had no

and no frame, but only a heavy

La Soledad, Our Lady of Solitude, a litde dressed-up image up in a shadowy niche; you could hardly see her. La Soledad! One of my big devotions, and you never find her, never hear anything about her in this country, except that one of the old California missions

shutter against the rain. In Camagiiey I found a Church to

was dedicated

to her.

Finally my bus went roaring across the dry plain towards the blue wall of mountains: Oriente, the end of my pilgrimage.

When we had crossed over the divide and were going down through the green valleys towards the Caribbean Sea, I saw the yellow Basilica of Our Lady of Cobre, standing on a rising above the tin roofs of the

mining village in the depths of a deep bowl of green, backed by cliffs and sheer slopes robed in jungle. "There you are, Caridad del Cobre! It is you that I have come to see; you will ask Christ to make me His priest, and I will give you my heart, Lady. And if you will obtain for me this priesthood, I will remember you at my first Mass in such a way that the Mass will be for you and offered through your hands in gratitude to the Holy Trinity, Who has used your love to win me this great grace/* The bus tore down the mountainside to Santiago* The mining engineer who had got on at the top of the divide was talking all the way down in English he had learned in New York, telling me of the graft that had enriched the politicians of Cuba and of Oriente. In Santiago I ate dinner on the terrace of a big hotel in front of the cathedral. Across the square was the shell of a five-story building that looked as if it had been gutted by a bomb: but the ruin had happened in an earthquake not so very long before. It was long enough ago so that the posters on the fence that had been put up in front of it had time to get tattered, and I was thinking: perhaps it is now getting to be time for another eardiquake. And I looked up at the two towers of the cathedral, ready to sway and come booming down on my head. The bus that took me to Cobre the next morning was the most danthat are the terror of Cuba. I think it gerous of all the furious buses made most of die journey at eighty miles an hour on two wheels, and
several times I thought

way up
blur. If

to the shrine,

Our Lady

it was going to explode. I said rosaries all the while the trees went by in a big greenish-yellow had tried to appear to rne, I probably would never

even have got a glimpse of her. I walked up the path that wound around the

mound on which

the

74
Basilica stands. Entering the door, I shiny and the place was so clean. I

The Unreal

City

was surprised that the floor was so was in the back of the church, up in the apse, in a kind of oratory behind the high altar, and there, facing me, in a little shrine, was La Caridad, the little, cheerful, black Virgin, crowned with a crown and dressed in royal robes, who is the Queen of Cuba. There was nobody else in the place but a pious middle-aged lady attendant in a black dress who was eager to sell me a lot of medals, and so I knelt before La Caridad and made my prayer and made my promise. I sneaked down into the Basilica after that, and knelt where I could see La Caridad and where I could really be alone and pray, but the
pious lady, impatient to make her deal, or perhaps afraid that I might get up to some mischief in the Basilica, came down and peeked through
the door.

and resigned, I got up and came out and bought a medal and got some change for the beggars and went away, without having a chance to say all that I wanted to say to La Caridad or to hear much from her. Down in the village I bought a bottle of some kind of gaseosa and stood under the tin roof of the porch of the village store. Somewhere in one of the shacks, on a harmonium, was played: "Kyrie Eleison,
So, disappointed

Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison."

And I went back

But while
I

to

Santiago.

was sitting on the terrace of the hotel, eating lunch, La Caridad del Cobre had a word to say to me. She handed me an idea for a poern that formed so easily and smoothly and spontaneously in that mind all I had to do was finish my eating and go up to my room and type it out, almost without a correction. So the poem turned out to be both what she had to say to me and what I had to say to her. It was a song for La Caridad del Cobre, and it was, as far as I was concerned, something new, and the first real poem I had ever written, or the one I liked best. It pointed the way anyway to many other poems; it opened the gate, and set me traveling on a certain and direct track that was to last me several years.

The poem

said:

The white girls lift The black girls go

their heads like trees,

Reflected like flamingoes in the street.

The white girls sing as shrill as water, The black girls talk as quiet as clay.

Our Lady

of Cobre

75

The white girls open their arms like clouds, The black girls close their eyes like wings: Angels bow down like bells,
Angels look up like
toys,

Because the heavenly Stand in a ring:

stars

And

all

the pieces of the mosaic, earth,

fly

Get up and

away

like birds.

back to Havana, I found out something else, too, and something vastly more important. It was something that made me realize, all of a sudden, not merely intellectually, but experimentally, the real uselessness of what I had been half deliberately looking for: the
I

When

went

And this experience opened another door, not kind of writing but a way into a world infinitely new, a world that was out of this world of ours entirely and which transcended it infinitely, and which was not a world, but which was God Himself.
visions in the ceiba trees.

way

to a

Havana. It was a Sunday. I had some other church, I think at El Cristo, and now I had come here to hear another Mass. The building was crowded. Up in front, before the altar, there were rows and rows of children, crowded together. I forget whether they were First Communicants or not: but they were children around that age. I was far in the. back of
I

was
to

in the

Church

of St. Francis at

been

Communion

at

the church, but I could see the heads of all those children. It came time for the Consecration. The priest raised the Host, then he raised the chalice. When he put the chalice down on the altar, sudchildren,

denly a Friar in his brown robe and white cord stood up in front of the and all at once the voices of the children burst out:

"Creo en Di6s.
"I believe in

."

God

the Father Almighty, the creator of heaven and

earth.

."

Dios!" It was loud, and bright, cry, "Creo en and sudden and glad and triumphant; it was a good big shout, that came from all those Cuban children, a joyous affirmation of faith. Then, as sudden as the shout and as definite, and a thousand times more bright, there formed in my mind an awareness, an understanding, a realization of what had just taken place on the altar, at the Consecra-

The

Creed. But that

tion: a realization of

in a

way
it

that

God made present by made Him belong to me.

it

the words of Consecration

it was so intangible, and a light that was so bright

But what
yet
struck

a thing

was, this awareness:

me

like a thunderclap. It

was

j6
that
it

The Unreal
had no
it

City
inti-

relation to
like

any

visible light

and

so

profound and so

mate that

seemed

a neutralization of every lesser experience.

And yet the thing that struck in a certain sense "ordinary" it

most of all was that this light was was a light (and this most of all was what took my breath away) that was offered to all, to everybody, and there was nothing fancy or strange about it. It was the light of faith deepened and reduced to an extreme and sudden obviousness.
It

me

was

as if I

had been suddenly illuminated by being blinded by the

manifestation of God's presence. The reason why this light was blinding and neutralizing was that there was and could be simply nothing in it of sense or imagination.

When

is a I call it a metaphor which I am using, long after light that the fact. But at the moment, another overwhelming thing about this awareness was that it disarmed all images, all metaphors, and cut

through the whole skein of species and phantasms with which we in order to naturally do our thinking. It ignored all sense experience
strike directly at the heart of truth, as if a sudden and immediate conintellect and the Truth tact had been established between

my

Who

was now physically really and substantially before me on the altar. But this contact was not something speculative and abstract: it was concrete and experimental and belonged to the order of knowledge, yes, but more
still

to the order of love.

Another thing about it was that this light was something far above and beyond the level of any desire or any appetite I had ever yet been aware of. It was purified of all emotion and cleansed of everything that savored of sensible yearnings. It was love as clean and direct as vision:

and

it

And

flew straight to the possession of the Truth the first articulate thought that came to my
is

it

loved.

mind was:

"Heaven
It lasted

and

right here in front of me: Heaven, Heaven!" only a moment, but it left a breathless joy and a clean peace happiness that stayed for hours and it was something I have never

forgotten.

strange thing about this light was that although it seemed so "ordinary" in the sense I have mentioned, and so accessible, there was

The

no way of recapturing
ing
to
to reconstruct

it.

In

fact, I

did not even

it

know how
if I

to start tryto,

the experience or bring

back

wanted

except

make

acts of faith
I

and

love.

But

it

was easy
to

to see that there

was

nothing sudden obviousness: that was a

else,

could do to give any act of faith that peculiar quality of

gift

and had

come from somewhere

beyond and above myself.

Our Lady
to

of Cobre

77

However, let no one think that just because of this light that came me one day, at Mass, in the Church of St. Francis at Havana, I was
understanding things that
clearly, or that I

in the habit of

was

far ad-

vanced in prayer. No, my prayer continued to be largely vocal. the mental prayer I made was not systematic, but the more or less

And
spon-

taneous meditating and affective prayer that came and went, according to my reading, here and there. And most of the time my prayer was not so much prayer as a matter of with and desire,
anticipating,

hope

my

entrance into the Franciscan novitiate, and a certain amount of imagining as to what it was going to be like, so that often I was not
all

praying at

but only daydreaming.

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Epilogue

OF THE WORLD is either asleep or dead. The religious peofor the most part, asleep. The irreligious are dead. Those who ple are, are asleep are divided into two classes, like the Virgins in the parable,
in their lamps. waiting for the Bridegroom's coming. The wise have oil from themselves and from the cares are detached is That to say they

IVLOST

of the world, and they are full of charity. They are indeed waiting for the Bridegroom, and they desire nothing else but His corning, even

though they may fall asleep while waiting for Him to appear. But the others are not only asleep, they are full of other dreams and other desires. Their lamps are empty because they have burned themselves out
comes, vanity. it is too late for them to buy oil. They light their lamps only after has gone. So they fall asleep again, with useless lamps, and when they wake up they trim them to investigate, once again, the matters of a
in the

wisdom

of the flesh

and

in their

own

When He

He

dying world.

NO MAN

IS

AN ISLAND

PART TWO

Magnetic North

After

we had

reached the upper edge

cliff,

of the high

on the open
"which way

hillside,

"Master"

I said,

shall

we

take?"

And

he

to

me, "Let none of your steps

fall

back;

make your way behind

until

me up

the

mount

some guide appears

to us."

One:

WITH A GREAT

PRICE

NOW is THE TIME to tell a thing that I could not realize then, but which has become very clear to me: that God brought me and a half a dozen others together at Columbia, and made us friends, in such a way that our friendship would work powerfully to rescue us from
the confusion and the misery in which

we had come

to find ourselves,

partly through our own fault, and partly through a complex set of circumstances which might be grouped together under the heading of the "modern world," "modern society ." But the qualification "modern" is

unnecessary and perhaps unfair. The traditional Gospel term, "the world," will do well enough. All our salvation begins on the level of common and natural and ordinary things. (That is why the whole economy of the Sacraments, for instance, rests, in its material element, upon plain and ordinary
things like bread and wine and water and salt and oil.) And so it was with me. Books and ideas and poems and stories, pictures and music,
cities, places, philosophies were to be the materials on which would work. But these things are themselves not enough. The more fundamental instinct of fear for my own preservation came in, in a minor sort of a way, in this strange, half-imaginary sickness which

buildings,

grace

nobody could diagnose completely. The coming war, and all the uncertainties and confusions and fears that followed necessarily from that, and all the rest of the violence and injustice that were in the world, had a very important part to play. All these things were bound together and fused and vitalized and prepared for the action of grace, both in my own soul and in the souls of at least one or two of my friends, merely by our friendship and association toof our own ideas and miseries gether. And it fermented in our sharing
81

Magnetic North
fears

and headaches and perplexities and hangovers and all the rest.

and

difficulties

and

desires

and

<E>

DOUBT AND ASCETICISM

SEYMOUR AND LAX were rooming together in one of the dormitories, for Bob Gibney, with whom Lax had roomed the year hefore, had now
in Port Washington with much the same graduated and was sitting been sitting in Douglaston, facing a nothad I with which dispositions of his own blind alley. He occasionend the too-dissimilar blank wall,
ally

town to see Dona Eaton who had a place on ii2th more cheerful about her own quandary than Street, but no job, and was that could happen to her was that she worst the because the rest of

came

in to

us,

would at Panama.

last

run completely out of money and have

to

go

home

to

would call pious. In fact, he had an attiGibney was not what you tude that would be commonly called impious, only I believe God unsense of derstood well enough that his violence and sarcasms covered a that was real, though not human anguish deep metaphysical dismay ble enough to be of much use to his soul. What was materially impiety in him was directed more against common ideas and notions which he saw or considered to be totally inadequate, and maybe it subjectively
kind of oblique zeal for the purity of God, this rebellion represented a the commonplace and trite, against mediocrity, religiosity. against it must have been in the I During the year that had passed, suppose and Bob Gerdy had $11 been talkboth Gibney and Lax spring of 1937,
Catholics. Bob Gerdy was a very smart sophomore ing about becoming with the face of a child and a lot of curly hair on top of it, who took and had discovered courses on scholastic philosophy in life
seriously,

the graduate school, and had taken one of them. was interested in scholastic philosophy in
as

Gibney James Joyce was

much

the same

way

the

he respected its intellectuality, Thomists, but there was not enough that was

that of particularly his about affective

interest to bring

ing

about any kind of a conversion. For the three or four years that I knew Gibney, he was always holdout for some kind of a "sign," some land of a sensible and tangible

interior jolt

from God, to get him started, some mystical experience or he waited and waited for this to come along, he did while other. the action of grace. So that the all normally exclude and nullify things

And

in those days,

none of them became Catholics.

With

a Great Price

83

The most serious of them all, in this matter, was Lax: he was the one that had heen born with the deepest sense of Who God was. But he would not make a move without the others. And then there was myself. Having read The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy and having discovered that the Catholic conception of God was something tremendously solid, I had not progressed one step beyond
this recognition, except that

one day

had gone and looked up

St. Bernard's

De

Diligendo Deo

in the catalogue of the University Li-

brary. It

when

was one of the books Gilson had frequently mentioned; but found that there was no good copy of it, except in Latin, I did
it
it

not take

out.

was November 1937. One day, Lax and I were riding downtown on one of those buses you caught at the corner of noth Street and Broadway. We had skirted the southern edge of Harlem, passing along the top of Central Park, and the dirty lake full of rowboats. Now we were going down Fifth Avenue, under the trees. Lax was telling me about a book he had been reading, which was Aldous Huxley's Ends emd Means. He told me about it in a way that made me want to read
it too.

Now

So

went

to Scribner's bookstore

wrote an

article

about

it,

and bought it, and read it, and and gave the article to Barry Ulanov who

was editor of Review by that time. He accepted the article with a big Greek smile and printed it. The smile was on account of the conversion
represented, I mean the conversion in me, as well as in Huxley, although one of the points I tried to make was that perhaps Huxley's conversion should not have been taken as so much of a surprise. Huxley had been one of my favorite novelists in the days when I had been sixteen and seventeen and had built up a strange, ignorant philosophy of pleasure based on all the stories I was reading. And now everybody was talking about the way Huxley had changed. The chatter was all the more pleasant because of Huxley's agnostic old grandfather and his biologist brother. Now the man was preaching mystiit

cism.

Not only was there such a thing as a supernatural order, but as a matter of concrete experience, it was accessible, very close at hand, an extremely near, an immediate and most necessary source of moral vitality,

and one which could be reached most simply, most readily by

prayer, faith, detachment, love. The point of his title was this:

we

cannot use

evil

means

to attain

a good end. Huxley's chief argument was that

we were

using the

means

84
that precisely

Magnetic North

made good ends

impossible to attain: war, violence, re-

prisals, rapacity.

to

the fact that

And he traced our impossibility to use the proper means men were immersed in the material and animal urges
their nature

of

an element in

which was blind and crude and unspir-

itual.

The main problem is to fight our way free from subjection to this more or less inferior element, and to reassert the dominance of our mind and will: to vindicate for these faculties, for the spirit as a whole, the freedom of action which it must necessarily have if we are to live like
conclusion from
to pieces. And the big anything but wild beasts, tearing each other all this was: we must practice prayer and asceticism.

$>

IN A

NEW WORLD

BROADWAY WAS EMPTY.

of Barnard College

A solitary

and past

came speeding down in front the School of Journalism. Then, from the
trolley

bells began high, gray, expensive tower of the Rockefeller Church, huge to boom. It served very well for the eleven o'clock Mass at die little brick

Church of Corpus
Street.

Christi,

hidden behind Teachers College on I2ist

it was quite new. The in were the wide open People going

How bright the little

building seemed. Indeed,

bricks.

sun shone on the clean

door, into the cool darkness and, all at once, all the churches of Italy and France came back to me. The richness and fullness of the atmos-

phere of Catholicism that

and loving
enter into

as a child,
it

fully

for

I had not been able to avoid apprehending came back to me with a rush; but now I was to the first time. So far, I had known nothing but

the outward surface.

It

and

with big plain windows and white columns gay, clean church, and a well-lighted, simple sanctuary. Its style was a trifle pilasters

was

but much less perverted with incongruities than the average Catholic church in America. It had a kind of a seventeenth-century, oratorian character about it, though with a sort of American colonial
eclectic,

tinge of simplicity. The blend all this affected me, without

was

effective

and

original;
it,

but although

my

thinking about

the thing that im-

me most was that the place was full, absolutely full. It was full not only of old ladies and broken-down gentlemen with one foot in the and women and children young and old especially grave, but of men
pressed

With

a Great Price
all

85
ranks,

young: people of all classes, and workingmen and women and their

on a

solid

foundation of

families.

found a place that the back, and went to

I

it

hoped would be obscure, over on one side, in without genuflecting, and knelt down. As I

knelt, the first thing I noticed

was a young girl, very pretty too, perhaps up and praying quite seriously. I was very much impressed to see that someone who was young and beautiful could with such simplicity make prayer the real and serious and principal reason for going to church. She was clearly kneeling that because she meant it, not in order to show off, and she was prayfifteen or sixteen, kneeling straight

way

not the deep recollection of a ing with an absorption which, though was not thinking at all about that she to show serious was saint, enough
the other people who were there. What a revelation it was to discover so
conscious of

many ordinary people in a than of one another; not there more place together, to fulfill a but to to show off their hats or their clothes, pray, or at least who those not a human one. For even might have religious obligation,

God

been there for no better motive than that they were obliged to be, were at least free from any of the self-conscious and human constraint which are definitely is never absent from a Protestant church, where people as people, as neighbors, and always have at least half
gathered together

an eye

one another, if not all of both eyes. was Since summertime, the eleven o'clock Mass was a Low Mass; music. Before I knew it, the priest come but I had not expecting to hear at the altar altar two the with was in the sanctuary boys, and was busy but the people see not could with something or other which I very well, in the absorbed and was were praying by themselves, and I engrossed the of the and peoas a whole: the business at the altar presence
for
it

thing

ple.

And still

had not got

rid of

my

fear.

Seeing the latecomers hastily

before entering the pew, I realized my omission, and got genuflecting the idea that people had spotted me for a pagan and were just waiting me out or, at for me to miss a few more genuflections before throwing
looks of reproof. not know what for. The priest was at the stood Soon we all up. I did I afterwards learned, he was reading the as other end of the altar, and, I knew there was someone in the And then the next
least,

giving

me

Gospel.
It

thing

pulpit.

was a young priest, perhaps not much over thirty-three or thirty-four face was rather ascetic and thin, and its asceticism was years old. His

gg

Magnetic North

note of intellectuality by his horn-rimmed glasses, heightened with a the assistants, and he did not consider although he was only one of himself an intellectual, nor did anyone else apparently consider him so. But anyway, that was the impression he made on me; and his sermon, which was simple enough, did not belie it. this young It was not long, but to rne it was very interesting to hear man quiedy telling the people in language that was plain, yet tinged with scholastic terminology, about a point in Catholic doctrine. How

behind those words you felt the of a unified and continucenturies of but full force not only of Scripture a vital tradition: there it was above And all, ous and consistent tradition.
clear

and

solid the doctrine was: for

was nothing studied or antique about it These words, this terminology, the young priest this doctrine, and these convictions fell from the lips of life. What was his own of as something that were most intimately part that it was and it with all, more, I sensed that the people were familiar it was just as much of their life also: also, 'in due
integrated

food they

proportion, part into their spiritual organism as the air they breathed or the ate worked in to their blood and flesh.

Christ was the Son of God. That, in Him, saying? That a human the of Person the Second Holy Trinity, God, had assumed dwelt and Flesh taken had and and soul, nature, a human body

What was he

amongst
called

assumed to Himself a human nature. And His works were the works of God: His acts were the acts of God. He loved us: God, and walked among us: God, and died for us on the of Light, True God of True God. Cross, God of God,
Light

hypostatically was a Divine Person, having

and that this Man, Whom men Man and God: two natures both was the Christ, was God. He Who or united in one Person suppositum, one individual
us, full of grace

and

truth;

was not simply a man, a good man, a great man, the a wonderful healer, a saint: He was something that greatest prophet, words pale into irrelevance. He was God. But nevertrivial made all such
Jesus Christ
a spirit without a true body, God hiding also truly a Man, born of the Flesh of under a visionary body: He the Most Pure Virgin, formed of her Flesh by the Holy Spirit, And but as did not only as what He did, in that Flesh, on earth,
theless

He

was not merely

was

He

Man

God.

He

loved us as God,
did

He

suffered

and died

for us,
to

God,

us in the Scriptures and confirmed by the teaching of the Church and of the powerful from the First Apostles, from the first unanimity of Catholic tradition

And how

we know? Because it was revealed

With

a Great Price

87

Popes and the early Fathers, on down through the Doctors of the Church and the great scholastics, to our own day. De Fide Divina. If you
it, you would receive light to grasp it, to understand it in some measure. If you did not believe it, you would never understand; it would never be anything but scandal or folly. And no one can believe these things merely by wanting to, of his

believed

own

volition.

of the

mind and

Unless he receive grace, an actual light and impulsion will from God, he cannot even make an act of living
gives us faith,

faith. It is

God Who

and no one cometh

to Christ unless

the Father draweth him.

of the

The sermon was what I most needed to hear that day. When the Mass Catechumens was over, I, who was not even a catechumen, but a blind and deaf and dumb pagan as weak and only dirty as anything that ever came out of the darkness of Imperial Rome or Corinth or
Ephesus, was not able to understand anything
It all
else.

became completely mysterious when the attention was refocused on the altar. When the silence grew more and more profound, and little bells began to ring, I got scared again and, finally, genuflecting hastily on my left knee, I hurried out of the church in the middle of the most important part of the Mass. But it was just as well. In a way, I suppose I was responding to a kind of liturgical instinct that told me I did not
belong there for the celebration of the Mysteries as such. I had no idea what took place in them, but the fact was that Christ, God, would be visibly present on the altar in the Sacred Species. And although He was
there, yes, for love of

me, yet

might, and what was I?

sight?
It

He was there in His power and His What was on my soul? What was I in His

was liturgically fitting that I should kick myself out at the end Mass of the Catechumens, when the ordained ostiarii should have been there to do it. Anyway, it was done. Now I walked leisurely down Broadway in the sun, and my eyes looked about me at a new world. I could not understand what it was that had happened to make me so happy, why I was so much at peace, so content with life for I was not yet used to the clean savor that comes with an actual grace indeed, there was no impossibility in a person's hearing and believing such a sermon and being justified, that is, receiving sanctifying grace in his soul as a habit, and beginning, from that moment, to live the divine and supernatural life for good and all. But
of the
that
is

something

I will

not speculate about.

88
All I

Magnetic North

know is that I walked in a new world. Even the ugly buildings Columbia were transfigured in it, and everywhere was peace in these streets designed for violence and noise. Sitting outside the gloomy little Childs restaurant at mth Street, behind the dirty, boxed
of

bushes,

and eating

breakfast,

was

like sitting in the Elysian fields.

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Two:

FREEDOM

o CONSIDER PERSONS and events and situations only in the light upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration, centered as it is upon a lie. To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god. But this is impossible. Is there any more cogent
JL

their effect

my creaturehood than the insufficiency of my own will? For I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot make other people conform to my own whims and fancies. I cannot make even my own body obey me. When I give it pleasure, it deceives my expectation and makes me suffer pain. When I give myself what I conceive to be freeindication of

dom, I deceive myself and find that I am the prisoner of ness and selfishness and insufficiency.
It is true, the

my own

blind-

is

will is a great thing. But this freedom the If essence of freedom were merely the self-sufficiency. act of choice, then the mere fact of making choices would perfect our

freedom of

my

not absolute

freedom. But there are two

really

difficulties here. First of all, our choices must be free that is to say, they must perfect us in our own being. They must perfect us in our relation to other free beings. We must make
fulfill the deepest capacities of our real second difficulty: we too easily assume that we are our real selves, and that our choices are really the ones we want to make when, in fact, our acts of free choice are (though morally im-

the choices that enable us to

selves.

From

this flows the

putable,

no doubt)

largely dictated

by psychological compulsions,

flow-

ing from our inordinate ideas of our own importance. Our choices are too often dictated by our false selves. Hence I do not find in myself the power to be happy merely by doing what I like. On the contrary, if I do nothing except what pleases
89

po

Magnetic North
fancy
I will

my own
be
so if

be miserable almost

all

the time. This

its

would never
in the

my

will

had not been

created to use

own freedom

love of others.

My

free will consolidates

its

co-ordinating the very nature of

and perfects its own autonomy by freely action with the will of another. There is something in

my

dedicate myself
less free
I

to others. I

freedom that inclines me to love, to do good, to have an instinct that tells me that I am
for myself alone.

when

am

living

cannot be completely independent. is not fully depend on someone else for my fulfillment. My freedom free when left to itself. It becomes so when it is brought into the right
relation

The reason for this is that Since I am not self-sufficient I

with the freedom of another.

time,

At the same
freedom
is

my

instinct to

be independent

is

by no means

evil.

not perfected by subjection to a tyrant. Subjection is not My an end in itself. It is right that my nature should rebel against subjection.

Why

should

my

will

have been created

free, if I

were never

to

use

If

my my

freedom?
will
is

meant
it

does not
fact,

mean
is

there

only

to perfect its freedom in serving another will, that will find its perfection in serving every other will. In one will in whose service I can find perfection and free-

dom.
is

to

my freedom blindly to a being equal to or inferior to myself degrade myself and throw away my freedom. I can only become
give

To

the will of God. If I do, in fact, obey other perfectly free by serving it is not for their sake alone that I will do so, men and serve them

but because their will

is

the sacrament of the will of God. Obedience to

it is

man
flow

has no meaning unless

many

consequences.

Where

primarily obedience to God. From this there is no faith in God there can be
is

no

real order; therefore,

where there

no

faith

obedience

is

without

any

sense. It can only

If there is

actual fact,

be imposed on others as a matter of expediency. no God, no government is logical except tyranny. And in states that reject the idea of God tend either to tyranny or to
is

moral chaos. In either case, the end

a disorder.

disorder, because tyranny is itself

THE IMMATURE CONSCIENCE

is

not

its

own

master. It

is

merely the dele-

of another person, or of a group, or of a party, gate of the conscience or of a social class, or of a nation, or of a race. Therefore, it does not

make

real moral decisions of its

own,
of

it

others. It does not

make judgments

its

simply parrots the decisions of own, it merely "conforms" to

its

the party line. It does not really have motives or intentions of

own.

Freedom

pi
it

Or if

it

does,

intentions of another.
impossible. For something that
if I
is

wrecks them by twisting and rationalizing them to fit the That is not moral freedom. It makes true love

am

to love

truly

truly
I

my own
give
it

and freely, I to another. If

must be able

to give
first

my

heart does not

belong

to

me, how can

is

to another? It is

not mine to give!

FREE WILL air. There

are

not given to us merely as a firework to be shot off into the some men who seem to think their acts are freer in proif

portion as they are without purpose, as

a rational purpose imposed

some kind of limitation upon our liberty. That is like saying that one is richer if he throws money out the window than if he spends it. Since money is what it is, I do not that deny you may be worthy of all praise if with it. That would show you had you light your cigarettes
if

a deep, pure sense of the ontological value of the dollar. Nevertheless, that is all you can think of doing with money you will not long enjoy the advantages that it can still obtain.
It

the

may be true window than

that a rich

money

is what man rich. He is rich by virtue of what he has, and his riches are valuable to him for what he can do with them. As for freedom, according to this analogy, it grows no greater by being

a poor makes a

can better afford to throw money out but neither the spending nor the waste of man,

man

wasted, or spent, but it is given to us as a talent to be traded with until the coming of Christ, In this trading we part with what is ours only to recover it with interest. do not destroy it or throw it away. dedi-

We

We

cate

it

to

some purpose, and

this dedication

makes us
IS

freer than

we were

before.

NO MAN

AN ISLAND

Three:

PRAYER AND THE SUBCONSCIOUS

a great mistake to turn the interior life into a psychoexperiment and make our prayer the object of psychoanalysis. If it is true and valid prayer, it needs no such analysis. But note that I have said if: for if it is not true prayer, it might very well benefit from analylogical
sis.

IT WOULD BE

The

that false asceticism sometimes gets on religious souls, substitution of sentimentality for true religious feeling

disheartening prevalence of false mysticism, the deadening grip and the common
all

these things

seem to warrant a little investigation of the subconscious substrate of what passes for "religion."
subconscious mind plays a very important part in the interior even though it remains behind the scenes. Just as a good play depends on the scene, the lighting, and all the rest, so too our interior life owes much of its character to the setting and lighting and background and atmosphere which are provided, without any deliberate action of our own, by our subconscious mind. In fact, it sometimes happens that the whole tone and atmosphere of
life,

The

or

a person's life of prayer a certain emphasis on solitude or on sacrifice on asceticism or on apostolic radiation is provided by elements in the

mind is a storehouse of images and symbols, I might almost say of "experiences*' which provides us with more than half the material of what we actually experience as "life." Without our knowing it, we see reality through glasses colored by the
subconscious mind. For the subconscious
subconscious

memory

of previous experiences.

important that our subconscious mind should enable us to live as our true selves. Indeed, it often happens that a man's true self is literally buried in the subconscious, and never has a chance to
It is, therefore,

Prayer and the Subconscious

itself

93

remaining do not say that we should try, without training or experience, to our own subconscious But we explore depths. ought at least to admit that and that are and we exist, they they important, ought to have the humilto admit we do not know all about ourselves, that we are not ity
I

express except in symbolic protest against the tyranny of a malformed conscience that insists on immature.

at

running our own

lives.

We ought to stop

experts

taking our conscious plans

and

decisions with such infinite seriousness. It

may

well be that

we

are

not the martyrs or the mystics or the apostles or the leaders or the lovers of God that we imagine ourselves to be. Our subconscious mind may be
trying to
tell

us this in

many ways

and we have trained

ourselves, with

the most egregious self-righteousness to turn a deaf ear.

NO MAN

IS

AN ISLAND

Four:

"AS

A MAN

IS,

SO HE PRAYS.

."

jf\s A

MAN is,

so

he

prays.

We make ourselves what we are by

the

never prays is one who has tried to run away from himself because he has run away from God. But unreal though he be, he is more real than the man who prays to God with a

way we

address God.

The man who

false

and lying
sinner

heart.
is

The

who

afraid to pray to

God, who

tries to

deny God in

his

who stands The former is more honest than he thinks, for he acknowledges the truth of his own state, confesses that he and God are not at peace with one another. The latter is not only a liar himself, but tries to make God a liar also, by calling upon Him to approve of his own lie. Such was the Pharisee in the parable, the holy man who practiced many virtues, but who lied before God because he thought his piety made him better than other men. He despised sinners, and worshiped a false god who despised them
like himself.

heart, is, perhaps, closer to confessing God than the sinner before God, proud of his sin because he thinks it is a virtue.

PRAYER

is

INSPIRED BY GOD in the depth of our

own

nothingness. It

is

the

of trust, of gratitude, of adoration, or of sorrow that places us before God, seeing both Him and ourselves in the light of His infinite
truth, and moves us to ask Him for the mercy, the spiritual strength, the material help that we all need. The man whose prayer is so pure that he never asks God for anything does not know who God is, and does not

movement

know who he

is

himself: for

he does not know

his

own need

of God.

All true prayer somehow confesses our absolute dependence on the Lord of life and death. It is, therefore, a deep and vital contact with Him

Whom we know not only as Lord but as Father. It is when we pray truly
94

"As a
that

Man

Is,

So

He

Prays.

."

95
to a

we

which
tend

really are. is one of its

Our being

is

brought
activities.

high perfection by

this,

most perfect

When we

to fall back into nothingness. True, we the main reason for our existence is the knowledge and love of God,

cease to pray, we exist. But since to continue

when our conscious contact with Him is

severed

we sleep or we die.
IS

NO MAN

AN ISLAND

Fwc

MAGNETIC NORTH

classes were beginning at the university. The pleasin the winds ant fall yellowing leaves of the poplars in front of played the college dormitories and many young men came out of the subways and walked earnestly and rapidly about the campus with little blue

V-/NCE AGAIN,

catalogues
desire to

of courses

under

their arms,

and

their hearts

warm with
I

the

buy had something new

books.

But now, in
to

this season of

new

beginnings,

really

begin.
that the
to
I

A year ago the conviction had developed in my mind

a

one who

was going to give me the best advice about where and how was Dan Walsh. I had come to this conclusion before priest
or sat

become
on

had ever
St.

met him,

and
this

listened to his

happy and ingenuous

lectures

Thomas. So on
its fruit.

September day, in 1939, the conviction

was

to bear

not on the Columbia campus that day. I went into one of the phone booths at Livingston Hall and called him up. was a man He with rich friends, and that night he had been invited

Dan was

dinner with some people on Park Avenue, although there was cerof Park Avenue about him and his tainly nothing simplicity. But we
to

arranged
standing
ing
for

to

meet downtown, and

at

about ten o'clock that evening

elevator.

was

in the
to

lobby of one of those big, shiny, stuffy apartments, waitout into the cool night, Dan turned to me and time I met you I thought you had a vocation

him

come down out of the

As soon
said:

as

we walked

"You know, the

priesthood."

first

to the
I

was astonished and ashamed. Did

feel like a

that really give impression? It

I

made me
96

whited sepulcher, considering what

knew was

Magnetic North
inside me.

97

On the whole, perhaps it would have been more reassuring if he had been surprised. He was not surprised, he was very pleased. And he was glad to talk about my vocation, and about the priesthood and about religious orders. They were things to which he had given a certain amount of thought, and on the whole I think that my selection of an adviser was a very happy one. It was a good inspiration and, in fact, it was to turn out much
better than I realized at
first.

The

quietest place

we

men's bar at the Biltmore, a big room

could think of in that neighborhood was the full of comfortable chairs, hushed

and paneled and half empty. We sat down in one of the far corners, and it was there, two being gathered together in His Name and in His that Christ impressed the first definite form and direction upon charity,

my vocation.
It

was very simply done. We just talked about gious orders, and Dan suggested various priests
finally
I

several different reliI

might consult and

but he said he did not know seem to any Jesuits, and for my own part, the mere fact that he did not did have any particular reaction, positive or negative, to that order, away with the weak and vague preference which I had hitherto given it in my own mind. I had instinctively turned that way first of all, because I had
Jesuits,
life of Gerard Manley Hopkins and studied his poems, but had never been any real attraction calling me to that kind of a life. It was geared to a pitch of active intensity and military routine which were alien to my own needs. I doubt if they would have kept me in their but if they had, they would probably have found me a great novitiate misfit. What I needed was the solitude to expand in breadth and depth and to be simplified out under the gaze of God more or less the way a its leaves in the sun. That meant that I needed a Rule plant spreads out that was almost entirely aimed at detaching me from the world and

promised to give spoke to Dan Walsh about the

me

a note of introduction to one of them.

read the
there

not a Rule made to fit me to fight for God in the uniting me with God, out all that in one day. find not did I But world. In itself, the vocation attracted me: a Benedictines. the of Dan

spoke

liturgical life actual fact it

some big abbey in the depths of the country. But in down to a desk in an exmight just mean being nailed
in

for the rest of my life or, worse still, being a parish pensive prep school less a such attached to prep school, and living in more or priest remotely had which center and claustral the liturgical separation from

permanent
first

attracted

me.

gg

Magnetic North

mentioned St Bonaventure's, it turned out that he had and knew the place fairly well; in fact they had given there friends many that summer. Yes, I liked the an him some sort of honorary degree there informal and the atmosphere and was Franciscans. Their life

"What do you
I

think of the Franciscans?" said Dan.

As soon as

of St. Bonaventure's

was pleasant and happy and peaceful. One thing that attracted me to them was a sort of freedom from spiritual restraint, from systems and routine. No matter how much the original Rule of St. I think his spirit and his inspiration are still the Francis has
changed, fundamental thing in Franciscan
life.

very simple

And

it is

an inspiration rooted in

the prudence and wisdom which are revealed joy, because it is guided by ones the glad wisdom of those who have had the grace only to the little and the madness to throw away everything in one uncompromising rush,

and

to

walk around barefooted in the simple confidence that

if

they

get into trouble,

God

will

come and get them out

is

This

is

not something that

again. confined to the Franciscans: it

if it is

of

it

is

at the

heart of every religious vocation, and mean much. But the Franciscans, or at least St. Francis, reduced
its

not, the vocation does not

it

to

same time invested made it doubly attractive to me. which thirteenth-century lyricism However, the lyricism must be carefully distinguished from the real substance of the Franciscan vocation, which is that tremendous and of body and spirit which makes the Friar litheroic
logical limits,

and

at the

it

with a kind of simple

poverty, poverty
if

after all, erally a tramp. For,

"mendicant"

is

only a fancy word for

be a tramp in this full and complete to be a little unhappy and disuse and satisfied. As soon as he acquires a lot of special articles for his comfort and becomes sedate and respectable and spiritually sedentary and pleasant time, but there will be he will, no doubt, have an
tramp, and
a Franciscan cannot

and

total mystical sense,

he

is

bound

easy

heart the nostalgia for that uncompromising always gnawing in his destitution which alone can give him joy because it flings him headlong
into the

arms of God.

Without poverty, Franciscan lyricism sounds tinny and sentimental and raw and false. Its tone is sour, and all its harmonies are somewhat
strained.
I

am

afraid that at that time,

it

was the

attracted lyricism that

me

more than the poverty, but really I don't think I was in a position to know any better. It was too soon for me to be able to make the distinction.

However,

their Rule, as far

remember admitting that one of the advantages of as I was concerned, was that it was easy.

Magnetic North
After
all,

99

was

whole, and this

presented
in
stride.

new

really rather frightened of all religious rules as a step, into the monastery, was not something that

me, all at once, as something that I would just take the contrary, my mind was full of misgivings ahout my and enclosure and all the fasting long prayers and community life and monastic obedience and poverty, and there were plenty of strange specitself to

On

all ready to come in, me how I would would show did, they in a insane and how health would crack go monastery, up, and my my heart would give out, and I would collapse and go to pieces and be cast back into the world a hopeless moral and physical wreck. All this, of course, was based on the assumption that I was in weak health, for that was something I still believed. Perhaps it was to some extent true, I don't know. But the fear of collapse had done nothing, in the past years, to prevent me from staying up all night and wandering around the city in search of very unhealthy entertainments. Nevertheless, as soon as there was question of a little fasting or going without meat or living within the walls of a monastery, I instantly began

ters

dancing about in the doors of

let

my

imagination,

if I

would

them

in.

And

if I

to fear death.

eventually found out was that as soon as I started to fast and deny myself pleasures and devote time to prayer and meditation and to the various exercises that belong to the religious life, I quickly got

What I

over

all

my

bad health, and became sound

ar*d strong

and immensely

happy.

That

thing but the

particular night I was convinced that I could not follow anyeasiest of religious rules.

began to talk about the one religious order that filled the most with him enthusiasm, I was able to share his admiration but I had no desire to join it. It was the Order of Cistercians, the Cistercians of the Strict Observance.

When Dan

The
it

very

title

made me

shiver,

and

so

did their

commoner name: The

six years before

Trappists.

seemed much longer than that when had barely glanced at the walls of the Trappist monastery of Tre Fontane, outside Rome, the fancy of becoming a Trappist had entered my adolescent mind: but if it had been anything but a pure daydream, it would not have got inside my head at all. Now, when I was actually
Once,

and

and
pists

of entering a monastery, the very idea of Trapseriously thinking

almost reduced

me

to a jelly.

"Last summer,"

said

Dan,

"I

made

a retreat at a Trappist

monastery

ioo
in Kentucky. It
is

Magnetic North
called

Our Lady

of

GethsemanL Did you ever hear

of it?"

And he began

to tell

me

about the place

how he had been

staying

with some friends, and they had driven him over to the monastery. It was the first time they had ever been there. Although they lived in

Kentucky, they hardly knew the Trappists existed. His hostess had been very piqued at the signs about women keeping out of the enclosure under pain of excommunication, and she had watched with awe as the

heavy door closed upon him, engulfing him in that

building.

terrible,

silent

(From where

I sit

and write

at this

moment,

look out the window,

with the four banana trees and the Our around red flowers and Lady's statue. I can see the door big yellow
across the quiet guesthouse garden,

where Dan entered and where I entered. Beyond the Porter's Lodge is a low green hill where there was wheat this summer. And out there,
yonder, I can hear the racket of the diesel tractor:
I

don't

know what

they are plowing.)

stayed in the Trappist monastery a week. He told me of the monks. He told me of their silence. He said they never of the conversed, and the impression I got was that they never spoke at all, to

Dan had
life

anybody. "Don't they even go

to confession?" I asked.

they can talk to the abbot. The retreat master talked to the He said that it was a good thing guests. He was Father James. the monks didn't have to talk with all the mixture of men they have

"Of

course.

And

lawyers and farmers and soldiers and together, go everywhere together and do everything together. They stand in choir together, and go out to work together and sit together in the same place when they read and study.
there, they get

along better without

all live

it:

and schoolboys, they

It's

a good thing they don't talk." "Oh, so they sing in choir?"

"Sure," said

They
I

Dan, "they sing the Canonical hours are in choir several hours a day."
relieved to think that the

and High Mass.

was

monks

got to choir
silence

vocal cords. I
altogether.

was

afraid that so

much

and exercised their would wither them up

"And they work

in the fields," said

own
eat,

living

by farming and
their

raising stock.

Dan. "They have to make their They grow most of what they
their

and bake

own
a

bread,

and make

own

shoes,

."

"I

suppose they

fast

lot," I said.

Magnetic North
"Oh,
yes,

101

they fast more than half the year, and they never eat meat

or fish, unless they get sick.

They

don't even have eggs.

They

just live

on vegetables and cheese and things like that. They gave me a cheese when I was there, and I took it back to my friends' house. When we got there, they handed it to the colored butler. They said to him, *Do you know what that is? That's monks' cheese.' He couldn't figure it out, and he looked at it for a while, and then he got an idea. So he looked up with a big smile and said: 'Oh, I know what you all mean: " monks! Them's like goats.' But I was thinking about all that fasting. The life took my breath away, but it did not attract me. It sounded cold and terrible. The monastery

now
filled

existed in

my mind

as a big gray prison with barred win-

dows,

with dour and emaciated characters with their hoods pulled

down
Some

over their faces.

of

are very healthy," said Dan, "and they are big strong men. them are giants." (Since I came to the monastery I have tried to pick out Dan's one or two easily enough. But I think he "giants." I can account for must have seen the rest of them in the dark or perhaps they are to be

'They

explained by the fact that Dan himself is not very tall.) I sat in silence. In my heart, there was a kind of mixture of exhilaration

and

depression

dejection, exhilaration at the thought of such generosity, and because it seemed such a drastic and cruel and excessive re-

jection of the rights of nature.

Dan
"Oh,
I can't

said:

"Do you think you would

It

like that

no," I said, "not a chance! That's not for

it.

kind of a life?" me! I'd never be able

to stand

would

kill

me

in a week. Besides, I have to have meat.

it for my health." get along without meat, I need know "it's a "Well," said Dan, yourself so well." good thing you that he to was me occurred it For a moment being ironical, but there

was not
far too

what

shadow of irony in his voice, and there never was. He was I knew good and too kind and too simple for irony. He thought was talking about, and took my word for it.
a

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Six:

THE BARONESS

JLHE BARONESS was born a Russian. She had been a young girl at She had seen half her family shot, she had seen priests fall under the bullets of the Reds, and she had had to escape from Russia the way it is done in the movies, but with all the misery and hardship which the movies do not show, and none of the
the time of the October Revolution.

glamour which is their specialty. She had ended up in New York, without a cent, working in a laundry. She had been brought up a Roman Catholic, and the experiences
she had gone through, instead of destroying her faith, intensified and deepened it until the Holy Ghost planted fortitude in the midst of her soul like an unshakable rock. I never saw anyone so calm, so certain, so peaceful in her absolute confidence in God. Catherine de Hueck is a person in every way big, and the bigness is not merely physical: it comes from the Holy Ghost dwelling constantly within her, and moving her in all that she does. When she was working in that laundry, down somewhere near Fourteenth Street, and sitting on the curbstone eating her lunch with the other girls who worked there, the sense of her own particular vocation dawned upon her. It was the call to an apostolate, not new, but so old that it is as traditional as that of the first Christians: an apostolate of a laywoman in the world, among workers, herself a worker, and poor; an apostolate of personal contacts, of word and above all of example. There was to be nothing special about it, nothing that savored of a religious order, no special rule, no distinctive habit. She, and those who joined there was no choice on that score, for they her, would simply be poor were that already but they would embrace their poverty, and the life of the proletariat in all its misery and insecurity and dead, drab mo-

The

Baroness

103
live

notony.

and work in the slums, lose themselves, in the huge anonymous mass of the forgotten and the derelict, for the only

They would

purpose of living the complete, integral Christian life in that environment loving those around them, sacrificing themselves for those around them, and spreading the Gospel and the truth of Christ most of all by being saints, by living in union with Him, by being full of His Holy Ghost, His charity.

As she spoke
clerics,

of these things, in that hall,

and

to all these

nuns and

she could not help but move them all deeply, because what they were hearing it was too patent to be missed was nothing but the pure Franciscan ideal, the pure essence of the Franciscan apostolate of
poverty, without the vows taken by the Friars Minor. And, for the honor of those who heard her, most of them had the sense and the
to recognize this fact, and to see that she was, in a sense, a better Franciscan than they were. She was, as a matter of fact, in the Third Order, and that made me feel own quite proud of shirt; it reminded me that the scapular, which was hiding under

courage

much

my

my

thing was not altogether without meaning or without possibilities! So the Baroness had gone to Harlem. She stepped out of the subway

with a typewriter and a few dollars and some clothes in a bag. When she went to one of the tenements, and asked to look at a room, the man
said to her:

"Ma'am, you
"Yes, I do,"
sian."

all

don't

she

want to live here!" said, and added, by way

of explanation: 'Tin Rus-

"Russian!" said the man. "That's different.

Walk

right in."
.

In other words, he thought she was a Communist. That was the way Friendship House had begun. Now they were occupying four or five stores on both sides of 13 5th Street, and maintained a library and recreation rooms and a clothing room. The Baroness had an apartment of her own, and those of her helpers who lived there all the time also had a place on 13 5th Street. There were more girls than men staying with her in Harlem. THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN
.
.

Seven:

THE SLEEPING VOLCANO

IT WAS A HOT DAY, a rainy day, in the middle of August when I came out of the subway into the heat of Harlem. There were not many the street until I people on the streets that afternoon. I walked along came to the middle of the block, and saw one or two stores marked "Friendship House" and "Bl. Martin de Porres Center" or some such title in big blue letters. There did not seem to be anyone around. The biggest of the stores was the library, and there I found half a dozen young Negroes, boys and girls, high school students, sitting at a table. Some of them wore glasses, and it seemed they were having some
kind of an organized intellectual discussion, because when I came in they got a little embarrassed about it. I asked them if the Baroness was there, and they said no, she had gone downtown because it was her birthday, and I asked who I should see, so they told me Mary Jerdo. She was around somewhere. If I waited she would probably show up
in a

few minutes.

I stood there, and took down off the shelf Father Bruno's Life of John of the Cross and looked at the pictures. The young Negroes tried to pick up their discussion where they had left off, but they did not succeed. The stranger made them nervous. One of the girls opened her mouth and pronounced three or four abstract words, and then broke off into a giggle. Then another one opened ?" And this solemn her mouth and said "Yes, but don't you think

So

St.

question also collapsed in embarrassed tittering. One of die young men got off a whole paragraph or so, full of big words, and everybody roared with laughter. So I turned around and started to laugh too, and immediately the

whole thing became a game.

104

The

Sleeping Volcano

105

They began saying big words just because it was funny. They uttered the most profoundly dull and ponderous statements, and laughed at them, and at the fact that such strange things had come out of their Mary Jerdo came along, and showed me the different departments of Friendship House, and explained what they were. The embarrassment of those young Negroes was something that gave me a picture of Harlern: the details of the picture were to be filled in
mouths. But soon they calmed down, and then
later,

but the essentials were already there.

in this huge, dark, steaming slum, hundreds of thousands of Negroes are herded together like cattle, most of them with nothing to

Here

and nothing to do. All the senses and imagination and sensibilities and emotions and sorrows and desires and hopes and ideas of a race with vivid feelings and deep emotional reactions are forced in upon themselves, bound inward by an iron ring of frustration: the prejudice that hems them in with its four insurmountable walls. In this huge
eat

cauldron, inestimable natural

are stamped
vice

gifts,

down and

left to boil

wisdom, love, music, science, poetry with the dregs of an elementally

corrupted nature, and thousands

by

upon thousands of souls are destroyed and misery and degradation, obliterated, wiped out, washed from

the register of the living, dehumanized. What has not been devoured, in your dark furnace, Harlem, by

marihuana, by

gin, by insanity, hysteria, syphilis? Those who manage somehow to swim to the top of the seething cauldron, and remain on its surface, through some special spiritual quality or other, or because they have been able to get away from Harlem, and

go

to

some

these are not college or school,

all at

once annihilated: but

with the dubious privilege of living out the only thing Harlem possesses in the way of an ideal. They are left with the sorry task of contemplating and imitating what passes for culture in the world of the white people.
they are
left

of the whole thing is this: Harlem itself, terrifying paradox of our soin individual it, is a living condemnation and every Negro indictment a divine of there is called "culture/' Harlem against by way

Now the

York City and the people who live downtown and make their and all its prostitution, and money downtown. The brothels of Harlem, the rest are the mirror of the polite divorces and its dope rings, and all the manifold cultured adulteries of Park Avenue: they are God's com-

New

mentary on the whole of our

society.

106

Magnetic North

Harlem is, in a sense, what God thinks of Hollywood. And Hollywood is all Harlem has, in its despair, to grasp at, by way of a surrogate
for heaven.

The most terrible thing about it all is that there is not a Negro in the whole place who does not realize, somewhere in the depths of his nature, that the culture of the white men is not worth the dirt in Harlem's gutters. They sense that the whole thing is rotten, that it is a fake, that it is spurious, empty, a shadow of nothingness. And yet they are condemned to reach out for it, and to seem to desire it, and to pretend they like it, as if the whole thing were some kind of bitter cosmic conspiracy: as if they were thus being forced to work out, in their own lives, a clear representation of the misery which has corrupted the ontological roots
of the white man's

own

existence.

The

little

children of

Harlem

are growing up,

crowded together

like

sardines in the rooms of tenements full of vice, where evil takes place hourly and inescapably before their eyes, so that there is not an excess

of passion, not a perversion of natural appetite with which they are not familiar before the age of six or seven: and this by way of an accusation
of the polite

and expensive and

this

furtive sensualities

and

lusts of the rich

whose

sins

have bred

abominable slum.

The

effect resembles

and

even magnifies the cause, and Harlem is the portrait of those through whose fault such things come into existence. What was heard in secret
in the bedrooms and apartments of the rich and of the cultured and the educated and the white is preached from the housetops of Harlem and there declared, for what it is, in all its horror, somewhat as it is seen in

the eyes of God, naked and frightful. No, there is not a Negro in the whole place who can fail to know, in the marrow of his own bones, that the white man's culture is not worth
the jetsam in the

Harlem

River.

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Eight

POEMS

AUBADE HARLEM
(For Baroness C. de Hueck)

The

Across the cages of the keyless aviaries, lines and wires, the gallows of the broken Crucify; against the fearful light,
dresses of the little children.

kites,

The ragged

The

sterile jungles of the waterpipes and ladders, bleeding sun, a bird of prey, will terrify the poor, Who will forget the unbelievable moon.

Soon, in the

But in the

cells

and wards of whiter

Where

the glass

dawn

is

buildings, brighter than the knives of surgeons,

Paler than alcohol or ether,

Grayer than guns and shinier than money,

The white men's

Cry in the

wives, like Pilate's,

peril of their frozen

dreams:

"Daylight has driven iron spikes,

Into the flesh of Jesus' hands and feet: Four flowers of blood have nailed Him to the walls of Harlem."

Along the white walls

of the clinics

and the

hospitals

Pilate vanishes with a cry:

They have cut down two hundred Judases, Hanged by the neck in the opera houses and museums.

The

Across the cages of the keyless aviaries, lines and wires, the gallows of the broken Crucify, against the fearful light,
dresses of the
little

kites,

The ragged

children.

A MAN IN THE DIVIDED SEA

io8

Magnetic Nor

DIRGE FOR THE PROUD

Where
is

WORLD

the marvelous thief

Who
And

stole

whole harvests from the angry sun

lies
is

sacked, with his bright sight, the land?

Where he And wind

dead, the quiet earth unpacks waving in the earth's revenge:

him

Fields of barley, oats,

and

rye.

Where is the millionaire

squandered the bright spring? lies played in the summer evening sky Like cheap guitars? Who spent the golden fortunes of the fall

Who

Whose

And

died as bare as a tree?

lies

His heart
Filled

open

like a treasury,

up with

grass,

and generous

flowers.

Where is the crazy gambler Amid the nickels of whose blood have
Heavy
half dollars of his last of life?
is

fallen

Where

he gone?

The burning bees come walk, as bright as jewels Upon that flowering, dark sun The bullet wound in his unmoving lung.
:

Oh
Pay

you who hate the gambler or

visits to

his

enemy,

Remember how the bees

the patient dead

And borrow honey from their charitable blood. You who have judged the gambler or his enemy
Remember
this,

before the proud world's funeral.

MAN

IN

THE DIVIDED SEA

Poems

AN ARGUMENT OF THE PASSION OF CHRIST

And what
one of you,
"by

taking thought, can add to his stature one cubit?

ST.

MATTHEW,

VI.

27

The

furious prisoner of the womb, Rebellious, in the jaws of life,

Learns, from the mother's conscious flesh, The secret laws of blood and strife.

The demon
Arrayed in

raging at the breast,

cries,

and crowned with

tears,

Has sucked

The

the magics of the east, doubts of the philosophers.

straits

In the red

of his arteries,

Love runs,

and ravening; feeds upon itself Nothingness And swells up to a mighty king!
lost

Wit walks
Love

will hide,

out, in envy's mask; and be a lecher.

Adultery, by taking thought, Adds a cubit to his stature,

Until we scan the wastes of death, And wind blows through our cage of
sockets of the skull, Sight leaves the mad runs And love among the stones!

bones;

II

The worm that watched within the womb Was standing guard at Jesus' tomb, And my first angry, infant breath Stood wakeful, lest He rise from death.

My adolescence, like
Fled

the wolf,

to the edges of the gulf

And searched To hide from

the ruins of the night Calvary's iron light:

IIO

Magnetic North

But in the burning jaws of day I saw the barren Judas Tree;
For, to the caverns of

my pride

Judas had come, and there was paid!

Ill

Seeds of the three hours* agony

Fell

on good earth, and grew from me, And, cherished by my sleepless cares Flowered with God's Blood, and Mary's

tears.

My

curious love found

its

reward

When

Love was scourged in Pilate's yard: Here was the work my hands had made:

A thorny crown,
The growth
Lay on His
cross,

to

cut His head.

of thoughts that

made me
weight;

great

and were

its

And my desires lay, turned to stones, And where He fell, cut to the bone. The sharpnesses of my delight Were spikes run through His hands and And from the sweetness of my will
Their sponge drew vinegar and
gall.

feet,

MAN

IN TH

DIVIDED SEA

CRUSOE
And
Sometimes the sun beats up the rocks of capes robs the green world with a clangor of banks.
the citizens

Then

out to stone the sky; and with their guns to shoot the highpowered spheres to pieces: At dawn, the laws, in the yards of all the prisons, the breeder of life. Propose to hang the robber,

Come Mean

What if no more men will learn to turn again And run to the rainy world's boundaries?

Poems

What if no more men

will learn to atone

By hard, horseplay of shipwreck in the drench of Magellan, And still steer by the stars' Lent?
unending

What

if

the last

man
and run

Will no more

learn,

The stern, foundering ocean, north of the line, Where crew and cargo drown in the thrash of the wreck, The day he's driven to his Penal Island, His own rich acre of island, like the wiseguy Crusoe!
A

MAN

IN THE DIVIDED SEA

THE BOMBARDED CITY

Now let no man
The
abide

In the lunar wood

place of blood.

Let no man abide here, Not even in a dream,

Not

in the lunar forest of this undersea.

Oh

you who can

a living

shadow show

Grieving in the broken street, Fear, fear the drowners,

Fear the dead!

But

if you swagger like the warring Leader Fear far more

What

curse rides

down

the

starlit air,

Curse of the Curse of the

little

children killed! children killed!

little

Then
In

let

no

living

man, or dead, abide

lunar wood, not even in a dream. No,

this

For when the houses lean along the night Like broken tombs,

And

shout, with silent windows,

Naked and windy as the mouths They still pour down

of masks,

IJ2

Magnetic North
shells,

(As conch

from

their curling sleep, the sea)

The

air raid's perished roar.

But do not look aside at what you hear. Fear where you tread, And be aware of danger growing like a nightshade

Through the openings

of the stone.

But mostly fear the forum, Where, in the midst, an arch and pediment,
the guilty Warlord, Space out, in honor of

A starlit area
Much
like the

white geometry of peace:

O dread
For even

that silent place! when field flowers shall spring

Out

of the Leader's lips,

and open

eyes,

And even

while the quiet root

Shall ravel his murdering brain, Let no one, even on that holiday,
curse. Forget the never-sleeping in his groin, the even when And grass grows

And And
As

his goldenrod works in

rib,

in his teeth the ragweed grins, furious as ambition's diligence: in wind,

And when,

His greedy belly waves, kneedeep in weeds, O dread the childish voices even then,
Still

And
Nor

scratching near fear the following feet

are laid

him

like a leaf,

That
That

down

like little blades,

face the curses of the innocent

mew behind you like a

will flee the

silver hinge.

For even in the dream of peace

All

men

weedy

street,

The forum fallen down, The cursed arenas full of blood,

Hearing the wind creep in the crannied stone: Oh, no man can remain, Hearing those souls weep in the hollow ruin.

Poems
For there no
life is

113
possible,
soldiers, blind, destroyed,

Because the eyes of

Lurk

like

Medusas of

despair,

Lay for the living in the lunar Ready to stare outside

door,

And And

freeze the

little

leaping nerves
sight.

Behind the emperor's

there no life
is

possible

Because a weeping childvoice, thin

Unbodied
Rings

as the sky, like an echo in the

empty window:
scalpels,

And thence its sound

Flies out to feel,

with fingers sharp as

The

little

bones inside the

politician's ear.

Oh

let

no man abide

In the lunar wood,

The
Not

Let no

place of blood. man abide there, no, even in a dream.

MAN

IN

THE DIVIDED SEA

SONG
Come where
Copy
the grieving rivers of the night the speeches of the sea:

And

hear

how

this

devouring weather

Steals our music.

Under a

tent of branches
trees.

Let grow our harps in windy

But, in the flowering of our windless morning

We should be slow-paced watchmen,

Crossing,

on our

ecliptics,

with a cry of planets,

Homesick, at the sharp rim Of our Jerusalem, the day.

ii4

Magnetic North
armies of the sky

Then weep where the splendid Copy the prisoner's visions:

Yet keep the arrows of your eyes unquivered. Light more watch fires:

And

Because the thieving steal our lives.

stars

may come
A

MAN

IN

THE DIVIDED SEA

EVERYTHING THAT

IS, IS

HOLY

JL/ETAGHMENT FROM THINGS does uot mean

diction

setting

up a

contra-

between "things*' and "God" as if God were another "thing" and as if His creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God. This is an entirely new perspective which many sincerely moral and ascetic minds fail utterly to see. There is no evil in anything created by nor can of His become an to our union with obstacle God, anything Him. The obstacle is in our "self/* that is to say in the tenacious need
to

maintain our separate, external,

things to this outward

and

egotistic will. It is when we refer all false "self that we alienate ourselves from

reality and from God. It is then the false self that is our god, and we love everything for the sake of this self. use all things, so to speak, for the worship of this idol which is our imaginary self. In so doing we pervert and corrupt things, or rather we turn our relationship to them

We

into a corrupt
evil,

and

sinful relationship.

We

do not thereby make them

we use them to increase our attachment to our illusory self. Those who try to escape from this situation by treating the good things of God as if they were evils are only confirming themselves in a terrible illusion. They are like Adam blaming Eve and Eve blaming the serpent in Eden. "Woman has tempted me. Wine has tempted me.
but

Food has tempted me. Woman is pernicious, wine is poison, food is death. I must hate and revile them. By hating them I will please ." These are the God. thoughts and attitudes of a baby, of a savage, and of an idolater who seeks by magic incantations and spells to protect his egotistic self and placate the insatiable little god in his own heart.
.

To

take such an idol for

God

is

the worst kind of self-deception. It 115

n6
turns a

Magnetic North

man

the truth,

into a fanatic, no longer capable of sustained contact with no longer capable of genuine love.
to believe in their

In trying
look
IT is

ego as something "holy" these fanatics

upon everything

else as unholy.

NOT TRUE
its

created things,

with

sights

that the saints and the great contemplatives never loved and had no understanding or appreciation of the world, and sounds and the people living in it. They loved every-

God was compatible with a hatred spoke of Him on every side? were supposed to be absorbed in God and they had no eyes to see anything but Him. Do you think they walked around with faces like stones and did not listen to the voices of men speaking
for things that reflected You will say that they

thing and everyone. Do you think that their love of

Him and

to

them

or understand the joys

and sorrows

of those

who were around

them? It was because the saints were absorbed in God that they were truly capable of seeing and appreciating created things and it was because
they loved

Him

alone that they alone loved everybody.

to think that a saint

SOME MEN seem

terest in

cannot possibly take a natural

that

in-

any form of spontaneity or enjoyment is a sinful gratification of "fallen nature/* That to be "supernatural" means obstructing all spontaneity with cliches and arbitrary references to God. The purpose of these cliches is, so to speak, to hold
anything created.

They imagine

everything at arm's length, to frustrate spontaneous reactions, to exor-

Or perhaps to cultivate such feelings! One wonsuch morality is not after all a love of guilt! They suppose that the life of a saint can never be anything but a perpetual duel with guilt, and that a saint cannot even drink a glass of cold water without making an act of contrition for slaking his thirst, as if that
cise feelings of guilt.

ders sometimes

if

were a mortal

sin.

As

if

ness, to the pleasant, himself to be pleased

were an

for the saints every response to beauty, to goodoffense. As if the saint could never allow

with anything but his prayers and his interior acts

A is capable of loving created things and enjoying the use of them and dealing with them in a perfectly simple, natural manner, making no formal references to God, drawing no attention to his own piety, and acting without any artificial rigidity at all. His gentleness and
his sweetness are not pressed through his pores by the crushing restraint of a spiritual straitjacket. They come from his direct docility to the light

of piety. saint

Everything That
of truth

Is,

Is

Holy

117

and to the will of God. Hence a saint is capable of talking about the world without any explicit reference to God, in such a way that his statement gives greater glory to God and arouses a love of God
than the observations of someone
to

make an medium that they make you think there is something the matter with religion. The saint knows that the world and everything made by God is good,
the

greater holy, who has to strain himself arbitrary connection between creatures and God through of hackneyed analogies and metaphors that are so feeble
less

while those

who

holy, or else they don't bother about the question one because they are only interested in themselves.

are not saints either think that created things are unway or another

The

eyes of the saint

make

all

beauty holy and the hands of the

saint consecrate everything they touch to the glory of God, and the saint is never offended by anything and judges no man's sin because

he does not know sin. own mission on earth

He knows
is

the mercy of God.

to bring that

mercy

to all
all
all
is

He knows that his men.

Him. They

WHEN WE
sons of

ARE ONE with God's

love,

we own

things in

are ours to offer

Him

in Christ His Son. For

are Christ's

God and we

and Christ

things belong to the God's. Resting in His

glory above all pleasure and pain, joy or sorrow, and every otter good or evil, we love in all things His will rather than the things themselves, and that is the way we make creation a sacrifice in praise of God.

This

is

the end for which

all

things were

made by God.

false self,

THE ONLY TRUE JOY on earth is to escape from the prison of our own and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and

sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own In His love we possess all things and enjoy fruition of them, findin them all. And thus as we go about the world, everything ing
souls.

Him

everything we see and hear and touch, far from defiling, and us plants in us something more of contemplation and of purifies heaven.

we meet and

Short of this perfection, created things do not bring us joy but pain. Until we love God perfecdy, everything in the world will be able to

hurt us.
flict

And

the greatest misfortune

to realize

is to

be dead

to the

pain they in-

on

us,

and not

what

it is.

For until

we

love

God

The
to

things

He has created

perfecdy His world is full of contradiction. attract us to Him and yet keep us away from
find stop us dead. find Him in them at all.

Him. They draw us on and they

some extent and then we don't

We

Him

in

them

Jz g

Magnetic North

some joy in them, the joy Just when we think we have discovered us the are when and turns into sorrow; beginning to please they just into pain. pleasure turns In all created things we, who do not yet perfectly love God, can find that reflects the fulfillment of heaven and something that
something
reflects

the anguish of hell. and something of the pain of

We find something of the joy of blessedness

loss,

which

is

damnation.

The
flects

fulfillment

we

find in creatures belongs to the reality of the

created being, a reality that

desire
is

God, The anguish we which looks for a greater

belongs to God find in them belongs to the disorder of our of our desire than in the
is

from

God and

and

re-

reality

object

ways trying But to worship our

ship of nothing

fulfillment than any created thing is capable actually there: a greater alof giving. Instead of worshiping God through His creation we are to worship ourselves by means of creatures.
false selves is to

worship nothing.

And

the wor-

is hell.

THE "FALSE
neither evil
reality
is

must not be identified with the body. The body is nor unreal. It has a reality that is given it by God, and this
SELF'*

reality,

therefore holy. Hence we say rightly, though symbolically, that the body is the "temple of God/' meaning that His truth, His perfect no one, is enshrined there in the mystery of our own being. Let

then, dare to hate or to despise the

body

that has

been entrusted

to

him

by God, and
his

let

no one dare

to

misuse

this

body. Let

him not

desecrate

natural unity by dividing himself, soul against body, as if the evil. Soul and body together subsist in the were soul good and the body are separated from one inner the hidden, person. If the two reality of is no there a is no longer a living, subsistanother, there person, longer The "marriage" of God. of likeness and the image ing reality made in makes man the that the of one is things body and soul in one person can man no has God separate without joined image of God; and what

own

danger
It is

to his sanity.
if it
1

the soul as equally false to treat ' the body as if it were the "whole self.
take fall into the sin of angelism.

were the "whole self and Those who make the first mis-

low the

level assigned

by God

to

Those who make the second live behuman nature. (It would be an easy

clich6 to say they live like beasts: but this is not always true, by any means.) There are many respectable and even conventionally moral

people for
its

whom

there

is

no other

relationship with "things."

than their body and themselves to a life reduced have They

reality in life

Everything That

Is, Is

Holy
is

jjp

lived within the limits of their five senses. Their self

consequently

an

illusion based

body becomes

on sense experience and nothing else. For these the source of falsity and deception, but that is not the body's

fault. It is the fault of the

person himself, who consents to the illusion, who finds security in self-deception and will not answer the secret voice of God calling him to take a risk and venture faith outside the re-

by

assuring

and

protective limits of his five senses.

NEW

SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION

Ten:

NO MAN

IS

AN ISLAND

-TkLTHOtiGH ALL MEN have a common goal, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and can help one another to find out the meaning of life, no trembling. doubt. But in the last analysis the individual person is responsible for

We

living his
his

own

life

and

this responsibility to

somebody

for "finding himself/' If he persists in shifting else, he fails to find out the meaning of

own existence. You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can
only discover from within. That brings us to a second problem. Although in the end we alone are capable of experiencing who we are, we are instinctively gifted in learn to live by living watching how others experience themselves.

We

together with others, and by living like them. advantages as well as blessings.

a process

which has

dis-

greatest of disadvantages is that we are too prone to welcome everybody else's wrong solution to the problems of life. There is a natural laziness that moves us to accept the easiest solutions the ones

The

have common currency among our friends. That is why an optiview of life is not necessarily always a virtuous thing. In a time like ours, only the coarse grained still have enough resistance to preserve their fair-weather principles unclouded by anxiety. Such optimism may be comfortable: but is it safe? In a world where every lie has currency, is not anxiety the more real and the more human reaction? Now anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. It is the fruit of unanswered questions. But questions cannot go unanswered unless they
that
mistic

No Man
first

Is

an Island

121
is

be asked.

And

there

a far worse anxiety, a far worse insecurity,

which comes from being afraid to ask the right questions because they might turn out to have no answer. One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient and purely evasive answer to a question we
are afraid to ask.

There is the laziness that pretends the name of by despair, and that teaches us to ignore both the question and the answer. And there is the despair which dresses
are other diseases also.
to dignify itself

But there

philosophy and amuses itself with clever answers none of which have anything to do with the problems of life. Finally there is the worst and most insidious despair, which can mask as mysticism or prophecy, and which intones a prophetic
itself

up

as science or

to clever questions

I think, is likely to be a monk's so I it at the of professional hazard, purify myself beginning, like Amos who complained, "I am not a prophet, nor I the son of a prophet, but
I

answer to a prophetic question. That,

am am a herdsman, plucking wild figs" (Amos, 7: 14). The prophetic illusion which is quite common in our time

is at

the

opposite extreme from the gregarious illusion, which is more common still in every time. The false prophet will accept any answer, provided that it is his own, provided it is not the answer of the herd. The sheep
mentality,

on the other hand,

provided only that

own

flock,

it is

accepts any answer that circulates in its not the answer of a prophet who has

not been dead for at least five hundred years.

man looks for in life is his own salvation and the salvamen he lives with. By salvation I mean first of all the full discovery of who he himself really is. Then I mean something of the fulfillment of his own God-given powers, in the love of others and of God. I

What

every

tion of the

mean
that

he cannot find himself in himself alone, but and through others. Ultimately, these propositions are summed up in two lines of the Gospel: "If any man would save his life, he must lose it," and, "Love one another as I have loved
also the discovery that

he must find himself

in

you." It

is also

contained in another saying from St. Paul:

'We

are all

members one of another."

I speak of is not merely a subjective, psychological thing a self-realization in the order of nature. It is an objective and mystical the finding of ourselves in Christ, in the Spirit, or, if you prereality
fer,

The salvation

in the supernatural order. This includes and sublimates and perfects the natural self-realization which it to some extent presupposes, and

usually effects, and always transcends. Therefore this discovery of our-

122
selves is always a losing of ourselves
life is

Magnetic North
a death

and

a resurrection,

"Your

discovery of ourselves in God, and of God in ourselves, by a charity that also finds all other men in God with ourselves is, therefore, not the discovery of ourselves but of Christ.
First of all, it is the realization that "I live

hidden with Christ in God."

The

now not I but

Christ liveth in

me," and secondly it is the penetration of that tremendous mystery which and darkly in his great Epistles: the mysSt. Paul sketched out boldly
tery of the recapitulation, the

summing up

of

all

in Christ. It is to see

the world in Christ, its beginning and its end. To see all things coming becomes incarnate and descends into forth from God in the Logos

Who

the lowest depths of His own creation and gathers all to Himself in order to restore it finally to the Father at the end of time. To find "ourselves" then
is

to find

find the

power

of

God

not only our poor, limited, perplexed souls, but to that raised Christ from the dead and "built us

Him unto a habitation of God in the Spirit" (Eph. 2,122). This discovery of Christ is never genuine if it is nothing but a flight from ourselves. On the contrary, it cannot be an escape. It must be a fulfillment I cannot discover God in myself and myself in Him unless I have the courage to face myself exactly as I am, with all my limitations,
together in

and to accept others as they answer is not religious if it

superstition.

are,
is

with

all their limitations.

The

religious

not fully

real.

Evasion

is

the answer of

This matter of "salvation"

thing. doxes.

is,

when

seen intuitively, a very simple

But when we

We become ourselves by dying

we
can go out
to others

analyze

it, it

turns into a complex tangle of parato ourselves.

We gain

only what

give up, and if we give up everything we gain everything. not find ourselves within ourselves, but only in others, yet at the

we

We cansame

time before

we must

first

find ourselves.

We

must forget ourselves in order to become truly conscious of who we are. But the truth of who we are will never become clear as long as we assume that each one of us, individually, is the center of the universe. We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully
convinced of
of
this fact that

also love others.

first
all,

What

do

we begin to love mean by loving

ourselves properly and thus ourselves properly? I mean,

good, not because of what

to give to others.

desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great it gives us, but because of what it enables us

The modern world

is

beginning

to discover,

more and

more, that the quality and vitality of a man's life depend on his own secret will to go on living. There is a dark force for destruction within us,

which someone has

called the "death instinct." It

is

a terribly powerful

No Man
itself. It is

Is

an Island

123

thing, this force generated by our own frustrated self-love battling with the power of a self-love that has turned into self-hatred and
itself,

which, in adoring
It is therefore

adores the monster

by which

it is

consumed.

we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be "as gods." We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these
of supreme importance that
limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. are not all

We

same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another. Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and "one body/* will we

weak

in the

begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my

own.
is

The way

to

them was prepared by

for I

others.

The

fruit of

my

labors

not

my

own:

am

preparing the

way

for the achievements of

another.

Nor are my

failures

my own. They may spring from the failure

of another, but they are also compensated for by another's achievement. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the

sum

total of

gration of failures of
all,

my own achievements. It is seen only in the complete intemy achievements and failures with the achievements and my own generation, and society, and time. It is seen, above
NO MAN
IS

in

my integration in the mystery of Christ.

AN ISLAND

Eleven:

SENTENCES

ON HOPE

when our hope

until we live in pure hope. For no trusts exclusively in human and visipure, longer ble means, nor rests in any visible end. He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him to the possession of things that are
is
it

WE ARE NOT PERFECTLY FREE

beyond imagination. When we do not desire the things of this world for their own sake, we become able to see them as they are. We see at once their goodness and their purpose, and we become able to appreciate them as we never have before. As soon as we are free of them, they begin to please us. As soon as we cease to rely on them alone, they are able to serve us. Since we depend neither on the pleasure nor on the assistance we get from them, they offer us both pleasure and assistance, at the command of God. For Jesus has said: "Seek first the kingdom of God, and His justice and all these things [that is all that you need for your life on earth] will be
given to you besides" (Matt. 6:33). Supernatural hope is the virtue that strips us of all things in order to do not hope for what we have. give us possession of all things.

We

Therefore, to live in hope is to live in poverty, having nothing. if we abandon ourselves to economy of Divine Providence,

And yet, we have

everything we hope for. By faith we know God without seeing Him. By hope we possess God without feeling His presence. If we hope in God, by hope we already possess Him, since hope is a confidence which He
creates in our souls as secret evidence that
us.

He

has taken possession of

to

So the soul that hopes in

God already belongs

Him, and

to

the same as to possess Him, since He gives Himself comto those who give themselves to Him. The pletely only thing faith and not do us is the clear vision of Him we possess. are hope give
to

Him

belong

is

Whom

We

124

Sentences on
united to

Hope
in darkness, because

125

Him

we have

to

hope. Spes quae videtur

non

est spes. 1

Hope deprives us of everything that is not God, in order that all things may serve their true purpose as means to bring us to God. Hope is proportionate to detachment. It brings our souls into the state
of the most perfect detachment. In doing ting them in their right order.
so, it restores all

values by set-

Hope

empties our hands in order that

we

may work with them. It shows us that we have something to work for, and teaches us how to work for it. Without hope, our faith gives us only an acquaintance with God. Without love and hope, faith only knows Him as a stranger. For hope casts us into the arms of His mercy and of His providence. If we hope in Him, we will not only come to know that He is merciful but we
will experience

His mercy in our own

lives.

HOPE is THE LIVING HEART of asceticism. It teaches us to deny ourselves and leave the world not because either we or the world are evil, but because unless a supernatural hope raises us above the things of time, we are in no condition to make a perfect use either of our own or of the
world's true goodness. But we possess ourselves and all things in hope, for in hope we have them not as they are in themselves but as they are
in Christ: full of promise. All things are at once good and imperfect. The goodness bears witness to the goodness of God. But the imperfection of all things reminds us to leave them in order to live in hope. are themselves insufficient. must go beyond them to Him in they have their true being.

We

They

Whom

leave the good things of this world not because they are not good, but because they are only good for us insofar as they form part of a promise. They, in turn, depend on our hope and on our detachment
for the fulfillment of their

We

own

destiny. If

ourselves together with them. If

we

we misuse them, we ruin use them as children of God's

promises,

we bring them, together with ourselves, to God. "For the expectation of the creature waiteth for the revelation of the sons of God. Because the creature also itself shall be delivered
.
.

from the servitude of corruption into the

children of

liberty of the glory of the

God" (Rom.

8: 19-2,1).

our hope, therefore, depends the liberty of the whole universe. is the pledge of a new heaven and a new earth, in which all things will be what they were meant to be. They will rise, together with us, in Christ. The beasts and the trees will one day share

Upon

Because our hope

126

Magnetic North
will see

new creation and we know that they are very good.

with us a

them

as

God

sees

them and

Meanwhile, if we embrace them for themselves, we discover both them and ourselves as evil. This is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil disgust with the things we have misused and hatred
of ourselves for misusing them. But the goodness of creation enters into the

framework of holy hope.

All created things proclaim God's fidelity to His promises, and urge us, for our sake and for their own, to deny ourselves and to live in hope

and
is

to look for the

An
THOSE

asceticism that
less

judgment and the general resurrection. is not entirely suspended from this divine promise

something

than Christian.

WHO ABANDON everything in order to seek God know well that He is the God of the poor. It is the same thing to say that He is the God to say that He is a jealous of the poor and that He is a jealous God
God and a God of infinite mercy. There are not two Gods, one jealous, Whom we must fear, and one merciful, in Whom we must place our hope. Our hope does not consist in pitting one of these gods against the other, bribing one to pacify the other. The Lord of all justice is jealous
of His prerogative as the Father of mercy, and the supreme expression of His justice is to forgive those whom, no one else would ever have forgiven.

why He is, above all, the God of those who can hope where no hope. The penitent thief who died with Christ was able to see God where the doctors of the law had just proved impossible Jesus'
That
is

there

is

claim to divinity.

ONLY THE MAN who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a comlife that is withplacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. out problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges

on
1

despair.

"For

seeth,

we are saved by hope. But hope that " why doth he hope fort (Rom, 8 24)
5

is

seen,

is

not hope. For what a

IS

man

NO MAN

AN ISLAND

Twdv,:

SINCERITY

w. MAKE
'E

OURSELVES REAL by

telling the truth.

Man

can hardly

forget that he needs to know the truth, for the instinct to know is too strong in us to be destroyed. But he can forget how badly he also needs to tell the truth. cannot know truth unless we ourselves are con-

We

formed to it. We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we can know a truth that is outside us. But we make ourselves true inside by manifesting the
truth as
IF

we see it,

STILL ADMIBE SINCERITY today, they admire it, perhaps, not for it protects, but simply because it is an attractive quality for a person to have. They like to be sincere not because they love the truth, but because, if they are thought to be sincere, people will love
the sake of the truth that

MEN

them.

WE

ARE TOO MUCH like Pilate. We are always asking, 'What is truth?" and then crucifying the truth that stands before our eyes. But since we have asked the question, let us answer it. If I ask, "What is truth?'* I either expect an answer or I do not. Pilate did not. Yet his belief that the question did not require an answer was itself his answer. He thought the question could not be answered. In other words, he thought it was true to say that the question 'What is truth?" had no satisfactory answer. If, in thinking that, he thought there was no truth, he clearly disproved his own proposition by his very thought of it. So, even in his denial, Pilate confessed his need for the truth. No man can avoid doing the same in one way or another, because our need for truth is inescapable. What, then, is truth?
127

128

Magnetic North

Truth, in things, is their reality. In our minds, it is the conformity of our knowledge with the things known. In our words, it is the conformity of our words to what we think. In our conduct, it is the conformity of

our acts to what we are supposed to be.

CURIOUS that our whole world is consumed with the desire to know what things are, and actually does find out a tremendous amount about and still does not their physical constitution, and verifies its findings
IT is

know whether or not there is such

Objective truth
is

a reality that

a thing as truth! is found both within and outside ourthis truth,

selves, to which our minds can be conformed. We must know and we must manifest it by our words and acts.

We

some things we

are not required to manifest everything we are obliged to keep hidden from

know, for there men. But there

others

are

are

other things that

we must make known, even though

may

already

a definite homage to the reality around us, and we are certain at times, to say what things are and to give them their obliged, to names and open our thought about them to the men we live right

know them. We owe

lay

with.
fact that men are constantly talking shows that they need the and that they depend on their mutual witness in order to get the truth formed and confirmed in their own minds. But the fact that men spend so much time talking about nothing or that they have heard from one another or telling each other the lies their time in scandal and detraction and calumny and wasting scurrility and ridicule shows that our minds are deformed with a kind of contempt for reality. Instead of conforming ourselves to what is, we twist everyin our words and thoughts, to fit our own deformity. thing around,

The

truth,

deformity is in the will. Although we still may speak we are more and more losing our desire to live according to the truth. Our wills are not true, because they refuse to accept the laws of our own being: they fail to work along the lines demanded by our own reality. Our wills are plunged in false values, and they have dragged

The

seat of this

the truth,

our minds along with them, and our restless tongues bear constant witness to the disorganization inside our souls "the tongue no man can tame, an unquiet evil, full of deadly poison. By it we bless God and the Father, and we curse men who are made in the likeness of God.
. .
.

Doth a fountain send

(James 3:8-11)-

forth out of the

same hole sweet and

bitter water?"

Sincerity

129

Sincerity in the fullest sense must be more than a temperamental disposition to be frank. It is a simplicity of spirit which is preserved by the will to be true. It implies an obligation to manifest the truth and to de-

fend it

And

this in turn
it,

recognizes that

we
is to

are free to respect the

truth or not to respect

and that the truth

some extent

at

our

mercy. But
defile

this is

a terrible responsibility, since in defiling the truth

is

own we

our

own souls.
a divine
are
gift,

Sincerity in the fullest sense

a clarity of

spirit that

comes only with

grace. Unless

we

made "new men/'

created ac-

cording to God "in justice and the holiness of truth," we cannot avoid some of the lying and double-dealing which have become instinctive in

our natures, corrupted, as

ror"

St.

Paul

says,

"according to the desire of erto

(Eph. 4:22).
sincere

The

man,

therefore,

is

one who has the grace

know

that

he

may be instinctively insincere, and that even his natural sincerity become a camouflage for irresponsibility and moral cowardice: as
were enough
to

may
if it

recognize the truth,

and do nothing about it!

HOW is

truthfulness? Life has

IT that our comfortable society has lost its sense of the value of become so easy that we think we can get along

liar no longer needs to feel that his lies may in starvation. If living were a little more precarious, and if a person who could not be trusted found it more difficult to get along with other men, we would not deceive ourselves and one another so

without telling the truth.

involve

him

carelessly.

But the whole world has learned to deride veracity or to ignore it. Half the civilized world makes a living by telling lies. Advertising, propaganda, and all the other forms of publicity that have taken the place of truth have taught men to take it for granted that they can tell other people whatever they like provided that it sounds plausible and
evokes some kind of shallow emotional response.

Americans have always felt that they were protected against the advertheir own sophistication. If we only knew how naive tising business by
our sophistication really
is!

It protects
at.

us against nothing.

We love

the

would rather buy a bad toothpaste laugh things pretend that is well advertised than a good one that is not advertised at all. Most Americans wouldn't be seen dead in a car their neighbors had never
to

we

We

heard

of.

it

in a world that is ruled by a falsity that Sincerity becomes impossible thinks it is clever enough to detect. Propaganda is constantly held up

130
to

Magnetic North
it

end we

contempt, but in contemning it we come to love will not be able to get along without it.

after

all.

In the

This duplicity is one of the great characteristics of a state of sin, in which a person is held captive by the love for what he knows he ought to
hate.

YOUR IDEA OF ME

is

fabricated with materials

you have borrowed from

other people and from yourself. What you think of me depends on what you think of yourself. Perhaps you create your idea of me out of
material that
self.

you would

like to eliminate

Perhaps your idea of

me

is

a reflection of

from your own idea of yourwhat other people think

is

of you. Or perhaps what you think of think of you.

IT

me

simply what you think I

TAKES

other men.
fear.

MORE COURAGE than we imagine to be perfectly simple with Our frankness is often spoiled by a hidden barbarity, born of
because
it is

afraid. True candor can an anticipated attack. Anydefended with perfect simplicity. thing it may have to defend can be are so often insincere, and their inmen of The arguments religious their anger. Why do we get angry about sincerity is proportionate to do not believe it. Or else what we what we believe? Because we really pretend to be defending as the "truth" is really our own self-esteem. A

False sincerity has much to say, afford to be silent. It does not need to face

man
it

clearly,

of sincerity is less interested in defending the truth than in stating for he thinks that if the truth be clearly seen it can very well
itself.

take care of

FEAR

is

perhaps the greatest enemy of candor.

How many men

fear to

follow their conscience because they would rather conform to the opinion of other men than to the truth they know in their hearts!
constantly changing my mind to conform with the shadow of what I think others expect of me? Others have no right to demand that I be anything else than what I ought to be in the sight of

How

can

be sincere

if I

am

God.
one

No

greater thing could possibly

be asked of a

man

than

this!

This
I

just

expectation, which

am bound
to fulfill.

to fulfill, is precisely

the one

they usually do not expect

me

They want me

to

be what

am

in their sight: that is, an extension of themselves. They do not realize that if I am fully myself, my life will become the completion and the fulfillment of their own, but that if I merely live as their shadow, I will
serve only to

remind them of

their

own unfulfillment.

Sincerity
If I

I^ 1

allow myself to degenerate into the being I

am

other men,

God will have to say

imagined

to

be by

to

me,
is

"I

know you

not!"
to

THE DELICATE SINCERITY

of grace

never safe in a soul given

human

violence. Passion always troubles the clear depths of sincerity, except when it is perfectly in order. And passion is almost never perfectly in order, even in the souls of the saints.

But the clean waters

ruffles their surface.

of a lake are not

made

dirty

by the wind that

Sincerity can suffer something of the violence of passion without too much harm, as long as the violence is suffered and

not accepted. Violence is fatal

completely fatal lity and calm.

to

sincerity

when we

when we yield it our consent, and it is find peace in passion rather than in tranquil-

that is, Spiritual violence is most dangerous when it is most spiritual it is least felt in the emotions. It seizes the of the will withdepths out any surface upheaval and carries the whole soul into captivity with-

when

The emotions may remain at peace, may even taste a of their own in this base rapture. But the deep peace of the delight soul is destroyed, because the image of truth has been shattered by rebellion. Such is the violence, for of unresisted example, pride.
out a struggle.

There Heaven.

is

It is

only one kind of violence that captures the Kingdom of the seeming violence of grace, which is really order and

peace. It establishes peace in the soul's depth even in the midst of passion. It is called "violent" by reason of the energy with which it resists passion and sets order in the house of the soul. This violence is the voice and the power of God Himself, speaking in our soul. It is the authority of the God of peace, speaking within us, in the sanctuary, in

His holy place.

The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.

IN THE END, the problem of sincerity is a problem of love. A sincere man is not so much one who sees the truth and manifests it as he sees it, but

one

who

abstraction. It lives

loves the truth with a pure love. But truth is more than an and is embodied in men and things that are real. And

the secret of sincerity is, therefore, not to be sought in a philosophical love for abstract truth but in a love for real people and real things a love for God apprehended in the reality around us.
to

The saint must see the truth as something to serve, not as something own and manipulate according to his own good pleasure. The selfishitself to

ness of an age that has devoted

the mere cult of pleasure has

132
tainted the

Magnetic North

or less lies against

whole human race with an error that makes all our God. An age like ours cannot be sincere.
to

acts

more

OUR ABILITY
is

be sincere with ourselves, with God, and with other

men

our capacity for sincere love. And the sincerity of our love depends in large measure upon our capacity to believe ourselves loved. Most of the moral and mental and even religious complexities of our time go back to our desperate fear that we are not and can
really proportionate to

never be really loved by anyone.

When we
gods,
it is

consider that most

men want

to

be loved as

if

they were

hardly surprising that they should despair of receiving the love they think they deserve. Even the biggest of fools must be dimly aware that he is not worthy of adoration, and no matter what he may believe

about his right to be adored, he will not be long in finding out that he can never fool anyone enough to make her adore him. And yet our idea of ourselves is so fantastically unreal that we rebel against this lack of
"love" as

though

we were

the victims of an injustice.

Our whole

life is

then constructed on a basis of duplicity. assume that others are refor kind and we proceed the of we want ourselves, ceiving appreciation

We

on the assumption that since we are not lovable as we are, we must become lovable under false pretenses, making ourselves appear something
better than

we are.

Perhaps the reason

why

so

few men believe in God

is

that they have

is

ceased to believe that even a

God can

love them.

The man who

not

afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God's love precisely because

of his shortcomings, can begin to be sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in his illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfail-

ing mercy of God.

NO MAN

IS

AN ISLAND

Thirteen:

THE GROVE AND BEYOND

IT WAS
Finally,

the end of November. All the days were short and dark. on the Thursday of that week, in the evening, I suddenly found

myself

filled

with a vivid conviction:

sud-

"The time has come for me to go and be a Trappist." Where had the thought come from? All I knew was that it was denly there. And it was something powerful, irresistible, clear.
I

picked up a little book called The Cistercian Life, which I had bought at Gethsemani, and turned over the pages, as if they had something more to tell me. They seemed to me to be all written in words of
flame and
I
fire.

went to supper, and came back and looked at the book again. My mind was literally full of this conviction. And yet, in the way, stood hesitation: that old business. But now there could be no delaying. I must finish with that, once and for all, and get an answer. I must talk to somebody who would settle it. It could be done in five minutes. And now was the time. Now. Whom should I ask? Father Philotheus was probably in his room downstairs. I went downstairs, and out into the court. Yes, there was a light in Father Philotheus' room. All right. Go in and see what he has to
say.

But instead
grove.
It

of that, I bolted out into the darkness

and made

for the

was a Thursday night. The Alumni Hall was beginning to fill. They were going to have a movie. But I hardly noticed it: it did not occur to me that perhaps Father Philotheus might go to the movie with the rest In the silence of the grove my feet were loud on the gravel I
133

134

Magnetic North

walked and prayed. It was very, very dark by the shrine of the Little Flower. 'Tor Heaven's sake, help me!" I said.
I am back toward the buildings. "All right really goFather. What do in and there ask him. Here's the situation, go be think? Should I a and you Trappist?" go There was still a light in Father Philotheus' room. I walked bravely
I started

Now

ing to

when I got within about six feet of his door it was someone had stopped me and held me where I was with physical hands. Something jammed in my will. I couldn't walk a step further, even though I wanted to. I made a kind of a push at the obstacle, which was perhaps a devil, and then turned around and ran out of the
into the hall, but

almost as

if

place once more.

And

My
wet
I

feet

again I headed for the grove. The Alumni Hall was nearly full. were loud on the gravel. I was in the silence of the grove, among

trees.

don't think there

was ever a moment

in

my

life

when my

soul felt

so special an anguish. I had been praying all the time, so I cannot that I began to pray when I arrived there where the shrine say
so

urgent and

was: but things became more definite.

"Please help me. What am I going to do? I can't go on like this. You can see that! Look at the state I am in. What ought I to do? Show me
the way." As if I needed more information or some kind of a sign! But I said this time to the Little Flower: "You show me what to do."

And I added, "If I get into the monastery, I will be your monk. Now show me what to do." It was getting to be precariously near the wrong way to pray making indefinite promises that I did not quite understand and asking for some
sort of a sign.

Suddenly, as soon as I had made that prayer, I became aware of the wood, the trees, the dark hills, the wet night wind, and then, clearer than any of these obvious realities, in my imagination, I started to hear the the great bell of Gethsemani ringing in the night the bell in the big
gray tower, ringing and ringing, as

The
that

impression
it

made me

was only in my Trappist Abbey ringing in the dark. Yet, as I afterwards calculated, it was just about that time that the bell is rung every night for the Salve Regina, toward the end of Compline. The bell seemed to be telling me where I belonged as if it were calling

were just behind the first hill. I had to think twice to realize that I was hearing the bell of the imagination
if it

breathless,

and

me home.

The Grove and Beyond

i^r

This fancy put such determination into me that I immediately started back for the monastery going the long way around, past the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes and the far end of the football field. And with
every
step I took

more and more firmly made up that now I would have done with all these doubts and hesitations and questions and all the rest, and get this thing settled, and go to the Trappists where
I belonged.

my mind became

came into the courtyard, I saw that the light in Father room was out. In fact, practically all the lights were out. Everybody had gone to the movies. My heart sank. Yet there was one hope. I went right on through the door and into the corridor, and turned to the Friars' common room. I had never even gone near that door before. I had never dared. But now I went up and knocked on the glass panel and opened the door and looked inside. There was nobody there except one Friar alone, Father Philotheus. I asked if I could speak with him and we went to his room. That was the end of all my anxiety, all my hesitation. As soon as I proposed all my hesitations and questions to him, Father Philotheus said that he could see no reason why I shouldn't want to enter a monastery and become a priest It may seem irrational, but at that moment, it was as if scales fell off my own eyes, and looking back on all my worries and questions, I could see clearly how empty and futile they had been. Yes, it was obvious that I was called to the monastic life: and all my doubts about it had been mostly shadows. Where had they gained such a deceptive appearance of substance and reality? Accident and circumstances had all contributed to exaggerate and distort things in my mind. But now everything was straight again. And already I was full of peace and assurance the consciousness that everything was right, and that a straight road had opened out, clear and smooth, ahead of me. Fatter Philotheus had only one question: "Are you sure you want to be a Trappist?" he asked me. "Father/ 1 answered, "I want to give God everything/' I could see by the expression on his face that he was satisfied. I went upstairs like somebody who had been called back from the dead. Never had I experienced the calm, untroubled peace and certainty that now filled my heart. There was only one more question: would the Trappists agree with Father Philotheus, and accept my application? Without any delay, I wrote to the abbot of Gethsemani, asking permission to come and make a retreat at Christmastime. I tried to frame my reI

When

Philotheus'

136

Magnetic North

quest in words that hinted I was coming as a postulant, without giving them an opportunity to refuse me before I had at least put one foot inside the door. I sealed the envelope and took it downstairs and dropped it in the mailbox, and walked outside, once more, into the darkness, towards
the grove.
II

SUNDAY, December the seventh, was the second Sunday in Advent. During High Mass the Seminarians were singing the Rorate Coeli, and I came out into the unusually warm sun with the beautiful Gregorian plaint in my ears. I went over to the kitchen, and got one of the Sisters to make me some cheese sandwiches and put them in a shoebox, and started out for Two Mile Valley. I climbed up the hillside, on the eastern slope of the valley, and reached the rim of the thick woods, and sat down in a windless, sunny place where there were a lot of brown dried ferns. Down the hill by the road was a little country schoolhouse. Further out, at the mouth of the little valley, near the Alleghany, were a couple of small farms. The air was warm and quiet, you could hear nothing but the pounding and coughing of a distant oil pump, back in the woods. Who would think there was a war anywhere in the world? It was so peaceful here, and undisturbed. I watched some rabbits come out and
begin to play

among the

ferns.

This was probably the last time I would see this place. Where would I be in a week from that day? It was in the hands of God. There was I could do but leave nothing myself to His mercy. But surely, by this I should have been able to realize that He is much more anxious time,
to take care of us,
It is

and capable of doing

so,

than

we

could be ourselves.

only when we refuse His help,

resist

His

will, that

we have

conflict,

trouble, disorder, unhappiness, ruin. I started back in the afternoon towards the College. It was two or two and a half miles to the railway trestle over the river, then a half a

mile home. I walked slowly along the tracks towards the red brick buildings of the College. The sky was getting cloudy, and it was not long before sunset. When I got to the campus, and was walking down the cement path towards the dormitory, I met two of the other lay professors.

They were
proached

talking animatedly about something or other,

and

as I ap-

they cried:

"Did you hear what happened? Did you hear the radio?" America was in the war.

The Grove and Beyond

III

137

MY
for

TKAIN was in the evening.

It

me at the College.

was already dark when the

taxi called

going, Prof?" said somebody, as I passed out of the buildwith suitcase. ing my The cab door slammed on my tig general good-by, and we drove away. I did not turn to see the collection of heads that watched the parting cab from the shelter of the arched door.

'Where you

When we got to town,

of
I

there

was

still

time for

me

to

go

to the

church

Our Lady of the Angels, where I used to go to confession and where often made the Stations of the Cross, when I was in Olean. The place

was empty. There were one or two little candles burning out in front of the statue of St. Joseph, and the red sancturary light flickered in the
quiet shadows. I knelt there for ten or twelve minutes in the silence without even attempting to grasp or comprehend the immense, deep sense of peace and gratitude that filled my heart and went out from there to Christ in His Tabernacle.

At the station, the Buffalo train came in through the freezing, sleety rain, and I got on, and my last tie with the world I had known snapped and broke. It was nothing less than a civil, moral death.

IV
from the world to a new life, was like element as if I were in the stratosphere. And yet I was on the familiar earth, and the cold winter rain streaked the windows of the train as we traveled through the dark hills. And now the sun was up. It was shining on bare, rocky valleys, poor farm land, thin, spare fields, with brush and a few trees and willows growing along the creeks, and gray cabins, from time to time, along the line. Outside one of the cabins a man was splitting a log with an axe and I thought: that is what I will be doing, if God wills it, pretty soon. It was a strange thing. Mile after mile my desire to be in the monasin that one idea. tery increased beyond belief. I was altogether absorbed And yet, paradoxically, mile after mile my indifference increased, and
THIS JOURNEY,
this transition

Eying through some strange

new

What if they did not receive me? Then I would go after all But surely that would be a disaster? Not at all. If, army. it be and the had would to I was drafted, this, monastery rejected by be quite clear that it was God's will. I had done everything that was

my

interior peace.

to the

138
in

Magnetic North

my power; the rest was in His hands. And for all the tremendous and increasing intensity of my desire to be in the cloister, the thought that I might find myself, instead, in an army camp no longer troubled
in the least.
I

me

was

free. I

had recovered

my

liberty. I

belonged to God, not

to

myself: and to belong to Him is to be free, free of all the anxieties and worries and sorrows that belong to this earth, and the love of the things that are in it. What was the difference between one place and another, one habit and another, if your life belonged to God, and if you placed
yourself completely in His hands? The only thing that mattered was the fact of the sacrifice, the essential dedication of one's self, one's will.

The

rest

was only accidental

V
i STEPPED on to the platform of Louisville station in the glory of that freedom, and walked out into the streets with a sense of triumph, remembering the time I had come this way before, the previous Easter.

I was so happy and exultant that I didn't look where I was going and walked into the Jim Crow waiting room: whose shadows, full of Netense with resentment. I hastened out again groes, became somewhat

apologetically.

dated

The Bardstown bus was seat, and we rode out

half full,

somewhat dilapiinto the wintry country, the last lap of

I

and

found a

my

journey into the desert.

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Epilogue:

"MY SOUL REMEMBERED GOD'

IN THE DAY
to

Him in

of my trouble I sought God with my hands lifted up the night, and I was not deceived. soul remembered God,

My

and was exercised, and my spirit swooned away. And I said, Now I have begun: this is the change of the right hand of the Most High" (Psalm 76:3, 4, 1 1). We could not seek God unless He were seeking us. We may begin to seek Him in desolation, feeling nothing but His absence. But the mere fact that we seek Him proves that we have already found Him. For if we continue in our prayer, we "remember" Him, that is to say, we become conscious, once again, of Who He really is. And we see that He has found us. When this consciousness is the work of grace, it is always fresh and new. It is more than the recovery of a past experience. It is a new experience, and it makes us new men. This newness is the "delight" and the "exercise" which are the living evidence of contact with the Spirit of the Lord. It makes us "swoon" in our spirit in a passage from death to life. Thus our eyes are opened.

and was

delighted,

We see all things in a new light.

And we

realize that this is a

new

be-

ginning, a change that could only be brought about by the intervention of His Spirit in our lives the "change of the right hand of the Most

High."

THE LORD
people.

is

my rock

and

my

fortress

and

He dwells

in the midst of His

Come, Him.

let

us enter the House of the Almighty and stand

like eagles in the
cliff, let

to praise

Let us sleep Lord our God!

us

rest in the

power of the
139

140

Magnetic North

Let us hide ourselves in the great mountain of His might, dwells concealed in the midst of a forsaken people.

Who

Even His thunder

is

the refuge of the poor!

NO MAN

IS

AN ISLAND

PART THREE

The
Monastery

He

began, "The holy rule of the mountain

is

permits nothing that

or that
is

disorderly

contrary to
free

custom.
variations;
itself
. .

This place

is

from

only what heaven takes into

can cause change, nothing

else.

."

Prologue

JLHE AVERAGE CISTERCIAN MONASTERY is a quiet, out~of-the-way place usually somewhere in France occupied by a community of seventy or eighty men who lead a silent energetic life consecrated entirely to God. It is a life of prayer and of penance, of liturgy, study, and manual labor. The monks are supposed to exercise no exterior ministry no preaching, teaching, or the rest. The only teaching done by the monks
is

itself

confined to classes of theology and philosophy within the monastery classes attended by the young monks preparing for the priestlife is physically

hood.

The
is

interior peace. In any case, and finds that they are not so

hard, but the compensation for this hardship one soon becomes used to the hardships

hard after

all.

Seven hours of sleep are

normally enough. The monks' diet is extremely plain, but is ordinarily enough to keep a man healthy for long years, and monks traditionally die of old age. One soon gets used to sleeping on straw and boards. Most

monks would
ple pallets.

find

it difficult to

sleep
is

on a

soft mattress after their sim-

The

life is

usually quiet

There

no conversation. The monks

talk

to their superiors or spiritual directors when necessary. In the average that seeps into the monastery, Cistercian silence is an all-pervading thing
live there. very stones of the place and saturates the men who Farm labor is the monks' support, and the ordinary thing is for all the monks to work outdoors for five or six hours a day. When they are not working, or praying in choir, the monks devote their time to readThe whole day is supposed evening, meditation, contemplative prayer. in which the monk remains united a become to prayer prolonged tually with God through all his occupations. This is the real purpose of the

143

144
monastic
life:

The Monastery
a

more

or less habitual state o

simple prayer and union

with

varies in intensity at different times of the day, which finds a particular and proper rhythm in the life of each individual, and

God which

which brings the soul of the monk at intimate influence of God's action.
But now,
dred

all

times under the direct and

several hunlet us suppose that within four or five years, decide that they want lives of silence, prayer, labor, penance, and constant union with God in solitude. And suppose they all decide

men

same monastery. Although they do not all enter exacdy at the same moment, they come in great numbers, continually, and the and then to two monastery of seventy grows to a hundred and seventy
to enter the

hundred and seventy. Thus two hundred and seventy lovers of silence and solitude are all packed into a building that was built for seventy. Priests are needed to and spiritual direction. It takes at least eight give them their formation the for train a man to priesthood, unless he has been in a seminary years
foundations
before coming to the monastery. Meanwhile, to relieve the pressure, four are made. But these new monthat is, new monasteries
asteries are staffed

with the most capable of the priests in the Mother

Community. Consequently there are very few priests left at the Mother House to shoulder the burden of governing and caring for a community of two hundred and seventy. Hence they have a lot of extra work to do! Meanwhile, new buildings have to be put up, and the farm has to be completely reorganized and expanded, so that all these new arrivals may be fed and housed. Since all this work has to be done in a hurry, many machines are needed. When you have a great crowd of postulants, much work, new buildings, and a small mechanized army of builders
all

working

at

high pressure, the silence

is

not always absolutely perfect.

The young monk who makes his vows at Gethsemani in this unusual moment of crisis and transition is therefore exposing himself to something far
is

more than the ordinary

vicissitudes of a Trappist monastery.

He walking into a furnace of ambivalence which nobody in the monastery can fully account for and which is designed, I think, to serve as
a sign

and a portent

to

modern America.

has suddenly happened at Gethsemani came about without anybody's foreseeing it and without anyone making any
logical

The phenomenon which

attempt to control
control,

beyond

sometimes find

was apparently beyond foreseeing and no one in the monastery who does not himself fearful when he considers its possible issue.
it.

It

and there

is

THE SIGN OF JONAS

One:

TO THE MONASTERY

Vv HEN

FINALLY got

off in

Bardstown,

was standing
if

across the

the town were asleep. But presently I saw a man in the gas station. I went over and asked where I could get someone to drive me to GethsemanL So he put on his hat and started his car and we left town on a straight road through level country, full of empty fields. It was not the kind of landcould not get my bearings scape that belonged to Gethsemani, and I until some low, jagged, wooded hills appeared ahead of us, to the left of the road, and we made a turn that took us into rolling, wooded land. Then I saw that high familiar spire.

road from a gas station.

The

street

appeared

to

be empty, as

I rang the bell at the gate. It let fall a dull, unresonant note inside man got in his car and went away. Nobody came. the empty court. I could hear somebody moving around inside the Gatehouse. I did not and Brother Matthew looked ring again. Presently, the window opened,

My

out between the bars, with his clear eyes and graying beard. "Hullo, Brother," I said. He recognized me, glanced at the suitcase, and said: "This time have

you come

to stay?" "Yes, Brother, if you'll pray for me," I said. Brother nodded, and raised his hand to close the

window.

"That's

what

I've

been doing," he
II

said,

"praying for you."

so BKOTHER MATTHEW locked the

in the four walls of

gate behind

me and

was enclosed

it

freedom. And it was appropriate that the beginning of freedom should be as was. For I entered a garden that was dead and stripped and bare.
145

my new

144
monastic
life:

The Monastery
a more or
less

habitual state of simple prayer

and union

with

varies in intensity at different times of the day, which finds a particular and proper rhythm in the life of each individual, and

God which

which brings the soul of the monk at intimate influence of God's action.

all

times under the direct and

dred

let us suppose that within four or five years, several hundecide that they want lives of silence, prayer, labor, penance, and constant union with God in solitude. And suppose they all decide

But now,

men

same monastery. Although they do not all enter exactly at the same moment, they come in great numbers, continually, and the monastery of seventy grows to a hundred and seventy and then to two
to enter the

hundred and seventy. Thus two hundred and seventy lovers of silence and solitude are all packed into a building that was built for seventy. Priests are needed to direction. It takes at least eight give them their formation and spiritual he has been in a seminary unless train a man for the to years priesthood,
foundations
before coming to the monastery. Meanwhile, to relieve the pressure, four are made. But these new monthat is, new monasteries
asteries are staffed

with the most capable of the

priests in the

Mother

Community. Consequently there are very few priests left at the Mother House to shoulder the burden of governing and caring for a community
hundred and seventy. Hence they have a lot of extra work to do! Meanwhile, new buildings have to be put up, and the farm has to be completely reorganized and expanded, so that all these new arrivals may be fed and housed. Since all this work has to be done in a hurry, many machines are needed. When you have a great crowd of postulants, much work, new buildings, and a small mechanized army of builders
of two
all

working at high pressure, the silence

is

not always absolutely perfect.

The young monk who makes his vows at Gethsemani in this unusual moment of crisis and transition is therefore exposing himself to something far
is

more than the ordinary

vicissitudes of a Trappist monastery.

He walking into a furnace of ambivalence which nobody in the monastery can fully account for and which is designed, I think, to serve as
a sign

and a portent

to

modern America.

has suddenly happened at Gethsemani came about without anybody's foreseeing it and without anyone making any
logical

The phenomenon which

attempt
to control

beyond

control,

sometimes find

was apparently beyond foreseeing and no one in the monastery who does not himself fearful when he considers its possible issue.
it.

It

and there

is

THE SIGN OF JONAS

One

TO THE MONASTERY

VYHEN i FINALLY got off in Bardstown, I was standing across the

road from a gas station.

The
I

street

appeared to be empty, as

if

the town

saw a man in the gas station. I went over presently asleep. I where could and asked get someone to drive me to Gethsemani. So he put on his hat and started his car and we left town on a straight road
were

But

through level country,

until

full of

empty

fields. It

was not the kind

of land-

and I could not get scape that belonged to Gethsemani,

my

bearings

some low, jagged, wooded hills appeared ahead of us, to the left of the road, and we made a turn that took us into rolling, wooded land. Then I saw that high familiar spire*
I

rang the

bell at the

gate.

It let fall

a dull, unresonant note inside

man got in his car and went away. Nobody came. the empty court. could hear somebody moving around inside the Gatehouse. I did not

My

the window opened, and Brother Matthew looked ring again. Presently, out between the bars, with his clear eyes and graying beard.

"Hullo, Brother,"

I said.

He recognized me,
you come
to

time have glanced at the suitcase, and said: "This

stay?" "Yes, Brother, if you'll pray for me," I said. Brother nodded, and raised his hand to close the

window.

"That's what Fve been doing," he

II

said,

"praying for you."

so BROTHER

MATTHEW

in the four walls of

my

locked the gate behind new freedom.

me and

was enclosed

And
it

that the beginning of freedom should be as was. For I entered a garden that was dead and stripped and bare.
it

was appropriate

145

146

The flowers that had been there last April were all iidden behind low clouds and an icy wind was blowing over the gray
grass

The Monastery gone. The sun was

and the concrete walks. my freedom had already begun, for I minded none of these I did not come to Gethsemani for the flowers, or for the climate things. I admit that the Kentucky winters were a disappointment. although Still, I had not had time to plan on any kind of a climate. I had been
In a sense

busy with the crucially important problem of finding out God's will. that problem was still not entirely settled. There still remained the final answer: would I be accepted into this monastery? Would they take me into the novitiate, to become a Cistertoo

And

cian?

Father Joachim, the guest master, came out the door of the monastery and crossed the garden with his hands under his scapular and his eyes fixed on the cement walk. He only raised them when he was near me, and then he grinned. "Oh, it's you," he said.

did not give him a chance to ask if I had come to Father, this time I want to be a novice if I can."
I

stay.

I said: 'Tes,.

put me, and hastened

If I

went into the house. The place seemed very just smiled. the down in the room that had been assigned to suitcase empty. I
to the church.

He

We

expected any grand welcome from Christ and His angels, I did not get it not in the sensible order. The huge nave was like a tomb, and the building was as cold as ice. However, I did not mind. Nor was
I

of a prayer. I just knelt there

upset by the fact that nothing special came into my head in the way more or less dumb, and listened to the
at the

saw down

sawmill

fill

the air with long strident complaints and

the sound of labor.

That evening at supper I found that there was another postulant an ancient, toothless, gray-haired man hunched up in a huge sweater. He was a farmer from the neighborhood who had lived in the shadow
of the abbey for years and had finally made up his mind to enter it as a lay brother. However, he did not stay. The next day I found out there was still a third postulant. He ar-

He was a fat bewildered youth from Buffalo. Like was he applying for the choir. Father Joachim put the two of myself, us to work together washing dishes and waxing floors, in silence. We were both absorbed in our own many thoughts, and I dare say he was no more tempted to start a conversation than I was.
rived that morning.

To

the Monastery

147
I was secretly congratulating myself and done with provided always I was

In fact every minute of the day

that conversations were over

accepted.
I

me

to

could not be quite sure whether someone would call me and tell go down for an interview with the Father Abbot, or whether I
to

was expected

go down

to

him on my own

the problem was settled for

me

initiative, but that part of toward the end of the morning work.

I went back to my room and started puzzling my head over the copy of the Spiritual Directory that Father Joachim had brought me. Instead of settling down quietly and reading the chapter that directly concerned me, the one that said what postulants were supposed to do while they

were waiting in the Guesthouse, I started leafing through the two thin volumes to see if I could not discover something absolutely clear and definite as to what the Cistercian vocation was all about,
It is easy enough to say, "Trappists are called to lead lives of prayer and penance," because after all there is a sense in which everybody is called to lead that kind of a life. It is also easy enough to say that Cis-

tercians are called to devote themselves entirely to contemplation without any regard for the works of the active life: but that does not say

anything precise about the object of our

life

and

it

certainly does not

distinguish the Trappists from any of the other so-called "contemplative orders/' Then the question always arises: 'What do you mean by

contemplation, anyway?" From the Spiritiud Directory I learned that "the Holy Mass, the Divine Office, Prayer and pious reading which form the exercises of the

contemplative

life

occupy the major part of our day."

It was a frigid and unsatisfying sentence. The phrase "pious reading" was a gloomy one, and somehow the thought that the contemplative life was something that was divided up into "exercises" was of a sort that would have ordinarily depressed me. But I think I had come to the

monastery fully resigned to the prospect of meeting that kind of lanthat I was reguage for the rest of my life. In fact, it is a good thing
for it is one of the tiresome minor details of all religious one must receive a large proportion of spiritual nourishthat today ment dished up in the unseasoned jargon of transliterated French.

signed to

it,

life

had no way of saying what the contemplative life meant to me then. it seemed to me that it should mean something more than spending so many hours a day in a church and so many more hours somewhere
I

But

else,

without having

to

go

to the bother of

preaching sermons or teach-

or visiting the sick. ing school or writing books

148

The Monastery
few
lines further

on in the Directory there were some cautious

words about mystical contemplation which, I was told, was "not required" but which God sometimes 'Vouchsafed." That word "vouchsafe"! It

almost sounded as

if

crinoline.
tells

In

fact, to

my way

the grace came to you dressed up in a of interpreting it, when a spiritual book
is

you

that "infused contemplation

sometimes vouchsafed" the idea

is all

you are supposed to get is this: "infused contemplation the saints, but as for you: hands off!"
Ill

right for

DOM

beFREDERIC was deep in a pile of letters which covered the fore him, along with a mountain of other papers and documents. Yet you could see that this tremendous volume of work did not succeed in

desk

submerging him. He had it all under control. Since I have been in the monastery I have often had occasion to wonder by what miracle he

manages
In any
ease

to

keep

all

that

under control But he does.

case, that day Father

facility

Abbot turned
else

to us

and

as if

the

first

words of advice

he had nothing to two postulants leaving the world

whatever
said, "will

with just as much to do but to give

to

become

Trappists.

"Each one of you," he

make

the

community

either better

or worse. Everything you do will have an influence upon others. It can be a good influence or a bad one. It all depends on you. Our Lord will

never refuse you grace.

I forget

."

whether he quoted Father Faber. Reverend Father likes to Father Faber, and after all it would be extraordinary if he failed to quote do so on that day. But I have forgotten.
kissed his ring as he blessed us both, and went out again. parting shaft had been that we should be joyful but not dissipated, that the Names of Jesus and should always be on our

We

His and

Mary

lips.

At the other end of the long dark hall we went into a room where three monks were sitting at typewriters, and we handed over our fountain pens and wrist watches and our loose cash to the Treasurer, and signed documents promising that if we left the monastery we would not sue the monks for back wages for our hours of manual labor*

And

then

we

passed through the door into the cloister.

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Two: IN

THE MONASTIC COMMUNITY

V-/NE OR TWO of the novices came up and smiled and clasped their hands together and made the kind of a sign a prize fighter makes when he has just won a bout, to acknowledge the applause of his fans. It is the unofficial sign used at Gethsemani for "Congratulations" and you won't find it in the List of Signs in the Book of Usages. So I smiled, and made one of the only signs I had found out how to make, which was "Thank you." It is easy to make and remember. You just kiss your hand. It goes back to the days when people used to kiss one another's hands out of politeness, and we make the same sign when we want to
say "Please."
so I too sank into the obscurity, the anonymity of this big Trappist family, hidden behind the walls of a monastery of which, until a couple of years before, I had never even heard.

And

With the white woollen habit on me, I had ceased to be a stranger or at least a complete stranger. And that is the first thing you have to cease to be when you enter a Cistercian community. For there is no cohesion more close and more intense than that of a house full of TrapCistercian monastery is, in a very real sense, a family. to pists. live in it according to the Cistercian Rule and vocation, that is, according to God's will, you simply have to become one flesh, one undivided

And

organism with

all

the rest of the people there.

no escaping the fact that monks have to live together as brothers. It is forced upon them by the rule. It is one of the most essential elements in Benedictine asceticism, and the Cistercian Fathers of the twelfth century, especially St. Bernard and St. Ailred of Rievaulx, seized upon it and emphasized it still more. In fact, so marked is the There
is

importance given to brotherly love in our monastic ideal that

it

occupies
149

The Monastery a crucial position in the structure of Cistercian mystical theology. The ascent of the individual soul to personal mystical union with God is made to depend, in our life, upon our ability to love one another.
150
get up at two o'clock in the morning, and jostle one another in the dark trying to get a little water on our faces to wake ourselves up, and we hasten to choir bumping into one another all down the dark
cloister.

We

Then

for the next

two hours
it.

who
cold,

sings faster, or slower, or lower than

to catch
all

we have we

to

stand next to someone

do.

Or perhaps he has

prayer. Just as you some fruit out of your prayer, your neighbor nudges you and you have to stand up and turn on the that he can consult a book. light for him so In the canonical office you have someone next to you who turns the a line, and have to bend pages of the book too fast, and you miss half down and make the little satisfaction. In the Scriptorium, you find a book in the Common Box that begins to interest you intensely: and then someone else gets interested in it too, and every time you want it, you find he has got there first. Out at work you may be put to saw a log with someone who just puts his head down and closes his eyes in prayer and doesn't care how he pulls his end of the saw, so that it continually jams in the log and you have to do five times as much work as usual, with practically no result. Then you go to the refectory, and your bowl of potatoes is missing, and your
together, to

and we begin We kneel down,

make our mental

are getting settled, and beginning to get

it. The Usages forbid you to ask for it yourself, you go hungry. All this becomes far more interesting when it happens that the same person is the one who coughs down your neck in choir, and takes the book you want in the Scriptorium, and fails to get your portion for you at table: he may even make matters worse by proclaiming you in chapter for not turning on the light promptly when it is needed at medita-

neighbors do not notice

so

and

tion.
it is precisely all this that is given us by God to make us hermits, living at peace with Him within ourselves, even though we are constantly surrounded by all the others in the commu-

And

yet

solitaries,

nity.

brings with it more than this negative peace. It not merely a question of being able to live in the same house with people who might be naturally quite uncongenial to us: the fact is that

BUT CISTERCIAN LIFE

is

the

monks

really

do love one another. They

really

do enter into a kind

In the Monastic Community

of close

151

In

and intimate cohesion that binds them together as true brothers. many of them do not actually realize it explicitly, most Cistercians derive a profound consolation from the mere fact of being with the other monks. They seem not to pay any attention to one another, and yet there is a profound happiness in just being there together, sitting in the same room and reading or writing, in the presence
fact,

although

of

God Who is the only possible reason for their unity. In a way, even the weaknesses and imperfections which
to
fit

we

all

have

manage
strange.

in harmoniously to this picture, so that one even comes to like the habits of others that first appeared to be annoying and

THE CISTERCIANS HAVE CARRIED communism

to its ultimate limit.

They

not only hold their farm and monastery and all the things in it as common property, no one having a legitimate personal claim to anything
all their failings

so small as a handkerchief or a pin or a piece of paper, but they share and all their weaknesses and all their sicknesses of soul

and body. Alter dterms onera

portate: there are no people in the world be such experts at bearing one another's burdens as Cistercian monks. Watch a group of monks at work together and see with what efficiency they take care of one another's blunders; if they are good monks, they will do so without a sign, without a change of exthat you will ask yourself if the mistake pression, and so expeditiously

who

get to

really

happened

after all.

beauty of the process is in the lack of wasted motion and the absence of fake politeness. They are kind, indulgent, and gentle about make a big artificial fuss over it, but it is rare that you will see anybody

The

the troubles of others. Those

who

like to

have a great deal of attention

if they come looking for it in a Cispaid to their woes are out of luck tercian monastery. They must learn to be content with unfailing but

unobtrusive assistance, kind, generous and complete, but totally unadorned by flattery or any of the artificialities of the world.
II

NOW THAT I had become a child of this Trappist family, I looked around the room to see my home, and my brothers sitting in it. It was a fairly with six large windows opening out in three directions. On large room,
one side was a three-sided court dominated by the apse of the church and the steeple and some tall cedar trees. From this side the sun slanted into the novices' Scriptorium, bathing the two big tables with warmth

and light The novices in

their

white cloaks

sat

mostly along the walls,

152

The Monastery
seats

on the low

under which were their private boxes.

few were

at

the tables, writing diligent and mysterious notes on hits of scrap paper on dissected pieces of used envelopes and the blank backs of written
pages, letters they had received, and so on. They were a varied assortment, these novices.
tall

Some were young and and thin, others were middle-aged. Most of them were young. All of them looked intensely happy, although their noses were red with colds, and the knuckles of the fingers which held their books were cracked wide open and bleeding with the cold. It was wonderful, the silence, and peace, and happiness that pervaded this sunny room, where so many men were together without speaking.
Far from there being any sense of restraint, of awkwardness, of strain, you felt flooded with a deep sense of ease and quiet and restful wellno kind of tension between those who sat being. There was absolutely
all absorbed in their books or their together in silence: they were their writing. And their very activities were marked by a or thoughts kind of restful quality: they were not imprisoned by any fierce con-

some storm of hurry and anxa the with on rested Their quiet, detached attention; or page iety. eyes else they looked away from the book, in thought; or they entered into themselves, or wrote something down.
centration, not driven before the face of
diligent, yet peaceful: busy, yet at ease, at rest They were together, yet they were alone. They were silent, yet full of occupation:

They were

occupied, but without a trace of confusion. They were recollected, without any evidence of special concentration or of strain or at least that

was the norm.

THERE MIGHT BE two anomalies, in the midst of such peace and modand unaffected recollection: on the one hand, your attention might esty be struck by someone who appeared to be working too hard to be a saint as if it all depended on him. On the other hand, there might be one or two who were perhaps not working hard enough, as if nothing depended on them. The former would hide himself in a corner in such

way that it made him completely obvious. And the others would have way of standing around and making signs that still smacked of "the world" a way of holding their head up, and staring around with their
a a

mouth open, and perhaps laughing out loud. But most of these faces had lost all the toughness and tenseness and bitterness of the world, as well as the world's flabbiness and sensuality and conceit. The corners of these mouths were not drawn down by

In the Monastic Community

sarcasm or obscure, nervous antagonisms and not plowed with angry or anxious lines. These
fears.

153

These brows were were eyes perfectly clear.

did not evade your gaze, or reply to it with anything but the of lakes: were skies, unfathomable in their simplicity, they and flickered with none of those lights that make men and

They

candor of

unhappy

afraid.
all the usual types you You could pick out the any ones who had probably been high school football players, those who had worked delivering groceries, or perhaps had worked in or

And

would

yet these were perfecdy ordinary men find on the street of American town.

garages

soda fountains.
of the Marines

One

of them, I

knew, had come

to the

monastery out

he was

my

"guardian angel," appointed to teach

me

the big choirbooks, and to keep me from wandering into the of where novices were not allowed to go. One or parts monastery two others had been soldiers. Some of them had been to and
to

how

work

colleges

the secular priesthood, but now the accidents of their past were being effectively ironed out of them, and they were becoming simple Cistercians, dwelling in the ample folds of
universities.

Some had come from

their white

and hooded

cloaks.

was of any value. No natural gift was lost, was quality destroyed, nothing they had brought with them that could count as a talent would have to be buried here. No, everything they had was sublimated and fused into the big, vital unity of a life concentrated on the highest, the only good, in Whom all other goods are eminently contained and ultimately perfected.
Yet nothing was
lost that

no natural

REALIZED

all this

in

my own

case,

with a kind of surprise

realized

that all the things I might have given up I had really retained, in so far as they were implicit in a higher good: and the wonder of it was,
that in this form they continued to give get out of them in the world.
I could

me

a joy that I could

no longer

around in the countries of the world as I pleased; but a far vaster supernatural geography was to be opened up to me, in not so many days, that would make the whole world look cheap and small. I had left all my friends and the ruins that remained of my family; but I already knew that in Christ I had them all, and loved them all far more perfectly and effectively than I could by any
travel

no longer

human
sense.

affection.

And

not rooted out of me, and

My human

the point is: human affection was not destroyed-, it did not have to be, except in a metaphorical affection for all the people I ever loved has lost none

154
of
its

The Monastery
reality in the monastery,

but

it is

reality, in the unity of a vaster hensible love, the love of God, in

vital

submerged in a higher and more and deeper and more incompreWhom I love them, and in Whom,
united to them than I could be

paradoxically, I
if I

am much more

closely

had stayed
I?

in the world, preferring their

company

to His.

writing. the question. Everything else I had given up I it. Was in the retained, implicit higher good for which I had renounced or its this one thing would also folto follow me in proper form,

And I had given up

Or had

That was

going

low the same way

all
I

as the rest?

Would
all

give

the joy of the work which, had ever had short of prayer

in

all,

up writing and find again was probably the greatest joy

directly?

and serving God

As

far as I
I

But

was concerned, that was my intention. was still wondering if God had asked it of me.

would

see.

Unpublished, from the Original Manuscript of

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Three:

TO BECOME A MONK

1 HTURGICALLY SPEAKING, you could hardly become a monk than Advent. You begin a new

find a better time to

life,

everything that the Church gives you to sing, every prayer that you say in and with Christ in His Mystical Body is a cry of ardent desire for grace, for help, for the coining of the Messiah, the Redeemer. It is a desire all the more powerful, in the spiritual order, because the
is dead. Life has ebbed to its dregs. The trees are bare. The birds to The stripped forget sing. grass is brown and gray. You go out to the fields with mattocks to dig up the briars. The sun gives its light, as it were, in faint intermittent explosions, "squibs," not

new world

you enter

into a

at the

beginning of a

new

liturgical year.

And

world around you

rays, according to

John Donne's conceit in

his Nocturnal

on

St.

Lucy's

Day.

But the cold stones of the abbey church ring with a chant that glows with living flame, with clean, profound desire. It is an austere warmth, the warmth of Gregorian chant. It is deep beyond ordinary emotion, and that is one reason why you never get tired of it. It never wears you out by making a lot of cheap demands on your sensibilities. Instead of drawing you out into the open field of feelings where your enemies, the devil,

and your own imagination and the inherent vulgarity of your own corrupted nature can get at you with their blades and cut you to pieces, it draws you within, where you are lulled in peace and recollection and where you find God. Every day, from now on, the office would ring with the deep impassioned cries of the old prophets calling out to God to send the Redeemer. Veni, Domine, noli tardare: relaxa facinora plebis tuae. And the monks took up the cry with the same strong voices, and armed with the con155

156
fidence of grace

The Monastery

and God's own presence within them, they argued with and chided Him as His old prophets had done before. What is the matter with You, Domine? Where is our Redeemer? Where is the Christ You have promised us? Are You sleeping? Have You forgotten us, that we should still be buried in our miseries and in the shadow of war and sorrow? Now I saw the monastery from within, from the church floor, so to speak, not from the visitor's gallery. I saw it from the novitiate wing, not from the shiny and well-heated Guesthouse. Now I was face to face with monks that belonged not to some dream, not to some medieval novel, but to cold and inescapable reality. The community which I had seen functioning as a unity, in all the power of that impressive and formal liturgical anonymity which clothes a body of men obscurely in the very personality of Christ Himself, now appeared to me broken up into its constituent parts, and all the details, good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, were there for me to observe at close range. By this time God had given rne enough sense to realize at least obmost important aspects of any religious scurely that this is one of the vocation: the first and most elementary test of one's call to the religious life whether as a Jesuit, Franciscan, Cistercian, or Carthusian is the willingness to accept life in a community in which everybody is more

Him

or less imperfect.

The
fects

imperfections are

much

smaller

and more

trivial

than the de-

and vices of people outside in the world: and yet somehow you tend to notice them more and feel them more, because they get to be
so greatly magnified
state,

by the

responsibilities

and

ideals of the religious

through which you cannot help looking at them. People even lose their vocations because they find out that a
fifty

man

can spend forty or

bad temper. Anyway, about me to see what it was really like. What was important was not the thick, unheated walls, but the things that went on within them. The house was full of people, men hidden in white cowls and brown capes, some with beards, the lay brothers, others with no beards but monastic crowns. There were young men and old men, and the old ones were in the minority. At a rough guess, with all the novices we have in the house now I think the average age of the community cannot be

or sixty years in a monastery and still have a now that I was a part of Gethsemani I looked

much

There was,

over thirty. I could see, something of a difference between the com-

To Become a Monk

157

munity proper and the novices. The monks and the professed brothers were more deeply absorbed in things that the novices had not yet discovered. And yet looking around at the novices there was a greater outward appearance of piety in them but you could sense that it was
nearer the surface.
general rule, that the greatest saints are seldom most evident in their expression when they are at prayer, and the holiest men in a monastery are almost never kneeling the ones who get that exalted look, on feast days, in the choir. The
It

can be

said, as a

the ones whose piety

is

people who gaze up at Our Lady's statue with glistening eyes are very often the ones with the worst tempers.

With
and
it

the novices, their sensible piety

was innocent and spontaneous,

perfectly proper to their state. As a matter of fact I liked the once. It was pervaded with enthusiasm and vitality and good at novitiate

was

humor.
I liked the way they kidded one another in sign language, and I liked the quiet storms of amusement that suddenly blew up from nowhere and rocked the whole Scriptorium from time to time. Practically all the

novices seemed to be very enlightened and sincere about their duties in the religious life; they had been quick in catching on to the rules and were keeping them with spontaneous ease rather than hair-splitting exactitude.

And

the ingenuous

good humor that welled up from time

to

time in the middle of

of children

all this

made

their faces all shine like the faces

even though some of them were no longer young.

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Four:

CHRISTMAS NIGHT

\^i HRIST ALWAYS SEEKS the straw o the most desolate cribs to make Bethlehem. In all the other Christmases of my life, I had got a lot of presents and a big dinner. This Christmas I was to get no presents, and not much of a dinner: but I would have, indeed, Christ Himself,
his

God, the Savior of the world.

live in the world: let me tell you that there is no comparing two kinds of Christmas. What an atmosphere of expectation and joy there is in a Cistercian monastery when the monks get up, not at two in the morning, but at nine in the evening. They have gone to bed at five. Now, at this unaccustomed hour, when the winter night has not yet begun to get that paralyzing desolate coldness of the small hours, the church is full of unaccustomed lights. There is the crib, all lit up with a soft glow, and

You who

these

in the high darkness of the sanctuary the forest of cedar branches that has grown up around the altar sparldes with tinsel here and there. It is then that the night office begins, begins at once with a solemn and stately invitatory that nevertheless rocks the church with cadences of superlative joy; from then on it is as though the angels themselves were singing their Gloria in Excelsis and showering upon the earth

the stars that seem to have become close and warm, and promises of peace, peace! Peace on earth to men of messages As the will. Midnight Mass begins, the whole place glows with good after that it is indescribable, building up to the climax and happiness,

from the near

their

stars,

of unworldly interior peace at Communion. It is good that somewhere in the world there are that Christ
is

men who

realize

born. There were only a

few shepherds

at the first Bethle-

158

Christmas Night

159

hem, and
the
first

it is

the same now.

The

ox and the

ass

understood more of

Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem.

today.

And

it is

the

same way

The

emptiness that had opened out within me, that had been prefilled.

my own silence and darkness, was in a new world. now became suddenly I seemed to be the same person, and I was the same person, I was ever been, and yet I was still myself, I was more myself than I had It was as if the floor had fallen out of my soul and I was free nothing. to go in and out of infinity. The deeps that were suddenly there could not be measured, and it was useless even to think of fathoming them. And they were not a place, not to an extent, they were a Presence. And in the midst of me they formed a citadel And I knew at once that there was nothing that could ever penetrate into the heart of that peace, there was a whole nothing from outside myself could ever get in, and from it: the excluded was irrevocably sphere of my own activity that
Advent and laid open by pared during

And

the discoursing mind. I could enter in, I was free to come and go, and yet as soon as I attempted to make words or thoughts about it, I was excluded or excluded to the extent that I attended to the words and thoughts.
five senses, the imagination,

Yet I could rest in this dark unfathomable peace without trouble and without worry even while the imagination and the mind itself were in active outside of it, They could stand and chatter at the door, some

way

in their idleness, waiting for the return of the will, their queen, upon whose orders they depended. They stood like a couple of chauffeurs at

the door of a mansion which

it

was not

their business to enter.

its

And

was not all excluded, only in certain of operations. But yet the mind in so far as it was able to rest serene, in itself, the mind too could enter of this infinite simplicity that had come and into the
to

harmony peace be born within me. But what are all these words? Shadows,

illusions.

The

soul has not

divisions into parts, into sections, into places. It merely operates this kind of operation can way or that, and the experience of this or that

be translated by the imagination into terms of place and space, light and darkness: but as soon as it gets into those terms, the whole thing
loses its true

meaning.

Within the simplicity of that armed and walled and undivided interior peace was the sweetness of an infinite love. Yet this sweetness, to as soon as it was grasped, or held, lost its savor. You must not try

160

The Monastery

reach out and possess it altogether. You must not touch it, or try to take it. You must not try to make it sweeter, or to keep it from going

away.

BUT ALL THIS

is abstract There was a far greater reality in all this, the sense of the presence of a Person; not exteriorized in space, not standing opposite one, or inside one, or outside one, not standing here or there or anywhere, but living in the midst. You are aware that you are

alive:

but where do you

feel

your

life? Is it

here? Is

it

here? It

is

inside

you rather than outside you: but where? I suppose ing it is in your heart, but it is all over you.
It is

you can get to think-

life of one's body, and hard to track it down, even easier to realize the life of your soul when it is made known to you, and even harder to track it down and place it. And the hardest thing about it is that that life is a Person, Christ.

easy to realize the

it.

to place

It is

Vivo,

jam non

ego, vivit vero in -me Christus.

that Christ is born within you, infinite liberty: that you That there are enemies which can never touch you, if this liberty loves you, and lives within you! That there are no more limitations! That you can love! That you are standing on the threshold of infinite possibilities! That the way lies open to escape from all these useless words! That the darkness has been washed out of your spiritual eyes and that you can open them and begin to see: but above all, that you can know by more perfect knowledge than vision, by the embrace of this liberty, and by the touch of infinite freedom in the midst of your spirit, and above all by rest, peace! This is the true contemplative voare free
I

YOU KNOW

cation, the kernel of

it,

the innermost meaning of our

life:

heaven on
experience.

earth, the love, the connatural knowledge of

frui Deo, God: God as

Unpublished, from the Original Manuscript of

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Five;

OUR LADY OF SORROWS

IN ow,

at the

beginning of July,

we were

in the midst of the har-

big threshing machine was drawn up at the east end of the cow barn, and wagons loaded with sheaves were constantly coming in, from all directions, from the various fields. You could see the cellarer standing on top of the threshing machine, outlined against the sky, giving directions, and a group of lay-brother novices were busily filling the sacks and tying them up and loading trucks as fast as the clean new grain poured out of the machine. Some of the choir novices were taking the grain down to the mill and the
sacks

vest, getting in

the wheat.

The

and

spilling the
fields.

wheat out on the granary

floor:

unloading but most of us

were out in the

That year we had a phenomenal harvest, but it was always threatened with ruin by showers of rain. So practically every day the novices went out to the fields and dismantled the shocks and spread the damp sheaves around on the ground, in the sun, to dry before they began to get full of mildew; then we would put them back together again and go home and there would be another shower of rain. But in the end it was a
good harvest, anyway. How sweet it is, out in the fields, at the end of the long summer afternoons! The sun is no longer raging at you, and the woods are beginning to throw long blue shadows over the stubble fields where the golden shocks are standing. The sky is cool, and you can see the pale

moon smiling over the monastery in the distance. Perhaps a clean smell of pine comes down to you, out of the woods, on the breeze, and mingles with the richness of the fields and of the harvest. And when
half

the undermaster claps his hands for the end of work, and you drop your arms and take off your hat to wipe the sweat out of your eyes, in

j62

The Monastery

the stillness you realize how the whole valley is alive with the singing of crickets, a constant universal treble going up to God out of the fields, like the incense of an evening prayer to the pure sky: laus yerrising

ennis!

And you take your rosary out of your pocket, and get in your place in the long file, and start swinging homeward along the road with your boots ringing on the asphalt and deep, deep peace in your heart! And over and over again, the name of the Queen of on
your lips, silently, of grace, the Heaven, the Queen also of this valley: "Hail Mary, full all this Whom for her of Name the And Son, ." Thee. Lord is with and inwas this all Whom for first the planned was made in place, be His to was creation of whole framed, the for Whom King.

tended, dom. "Blessed

is

the fruit of

Thy womb,

Jesus!"

and over, fills our own hearts very thought, over the world what knows who with more grace, and grace overflows into the monks when in the those rosaries, from that valley, from evenings work! home from are
"Full of grace!"

The

swinging

It

the feast of the beginning of all true poetry, when the Mother of God and announced the fulfillment of all prophecies, sang her Magnificat, and proclaimed the Christ in her and became the Queen of Prophets

was a few days

after the Feast of the Visitation,

which

is,

for me,

flights

few days after that feast, I got news from John Paul. For the last few months he had been at a camp in the plains of the Canadian west, in Manitoba. Day after day he had been making long and doing bombing practice, and now he had his sergeant's stripes
and of poets
a

to be sent overseas. wrote that he was coming to Gethsemani before he sailed. But he did not say when.

and was ready

He

II

THE Feast of St. Stephen Harding, the founder of the Cistercian Order, went by, and every day I was waiting to be called to Reverend Father's room, and told that John Paul had come. we went out with By now the corn was high, and every afternoon the our war make to enemies, morning glories, in the cornhoes, against fields. And every afternoon, I would disappear into those rows of green banners, and lose sight of everybody else, wondering how anybody would be able to find me if he were sent out there to bring me in with the news that my brother had come. Often you did not even hear the

Our Lady

of Sorrows

163

for the end of work, and frequently one or two of the more recsignal ollected novices would get left in the cornfield, hoeing away diligently

in

some remote corner, after everybody else had gone home. But I have discovered from experience that the rule, in these things, is that what you are expecting always comes when you are not actually that we were working close to the expecting it So it was one afternoon

monastery, within the enclosure, weeding a patch of turnips, that someone made me a sign to come into the house. I had so far forgotten the
that object of rny expectations what it was.
it

took

me

moment

or two before I

guessed

I changed out of workclothes and went straight to Reverend Father's room and knocked on the door. He flashed the ''Please wait" sign that is worked from a button at his desk, and so there was nothing for it but to sit down and wait, which I did, for the next half hour. discovered that I was there, and sent for Finally Reverend Father came along the hall with Brother Alexander. my brother, who presently and He was looking very well, standing very straight, and his shoulders, now completely square. were which were always broad, in his alone As soon as we were room, I began to ask him if he didn't want to get baptized. '1 sort of hoped I could be/' he said. "Tell me/' I said, "how much instruction have you had, anyway?" "Not much/' he said. After I had questioned him some more, it turned out that "not much"

was a euphemism for "none at all/' "But you can't be baptized without knowing what
said.
I

it is all

about/* I

went back to the novitiate before vespers feeling miserable. hasn't had any instruction/' I said gloomily to Father Master. "But he wants to be baptized, doesn't he?" "He says he does." Then I said: "Don't you think I could give him enough instruction in the next few days to prepare him? And Father James could talk to a chance. And of course he can go to all the conferhim when he

"He

gets

ences of the retreat/'

of the weekend retreats was just beginning. "Take him some books," said Father Master, "and talk to him, and to Reverend Father." tell him everything you can. And I'll go and speak with a whole armroom Paul's to hurried I next So the John up day Box and soon Common Novitiate the from ful of volumes

One

purloined

164

The Monastery
full of all kinds of

he had a room
for

him

to read. If

he had wanted

books that different people had selected to read them all, he would have had

to stay in the

monastery for six months. There was an orange pamphlet with an American flag on the cover, called 'The Truth About Catho-

TestaImitation of Christ and a ment. Then my contribution was the Catechism of the Council of Trent, and Father Robert's suggestion was The Faith of Millions and Father James had come through with the Story of a Soul, the autobiography
lics."

There were,

of course,

The

New

of the Little Flower.

But in any
is this Little

case,

John Paul looked them

all

over.

He

said:

"Who
all

Flower, anyway?"

And he

read the Story of a Soul

in

one gulp.

Meanwhile, I spent practically the whole of the morning and afternoon work periods talking my head off about everything I could think of that had something to do with the faith. It was much harder work than rny fellow novices were doing out there in the cornfield and much more exhausting. You might have expected two brothers, at such a time as this, to be
a sense, talking about the "old days." In

we

were.

Our own

lives,

our

memories, our family, the house that had served us as a home, the things we had done in order to have what we thought was a good time all this was indeed the background of our conversation, and, in an indirect sort of way, entered very definitely into the subject matter.
It

was

so clearly present that there

was no

necessity to allude to

it,

this sorry,

complicated past, with

all its

confusions and misunderstand-

ings and mistakes. It was as real and vivid and present as the memory of an automobile accident in the casualty ward where the victims are

being brought back to

life.

there any possibility of happiness without faith? Without some principle that transcended everything we had ever known? The house
in Douglaston, which my grandparents had built, and which they maintained for twenty-five years with the icebox constantly full and the carpets all clean and fifteen different magazines on the living-room table

Was

and a Buick in the garage and a parrot on the back porch screaming against the neighbor's radio, was the symbol of a life that had brought them nothing but confusions and anxieties and misunderstandings and fits of irritation. It was a house in which Bonnemaman had sat for hours every day in front of a mirror, rubbing cold cream into her cheeks as if she were going to the opera but she never went to the opera, ex-

Our Lady

of Sorrows

165

cept, perhaps, the ones she saw before her in her dreams as she sat there, in peaceless isolation, among the pots of ointment. all this we had reacted with Against everything our own generation could give us, and we had ended up doing, in the movies, and in the

cheap, amber-lit

little

bars of

Long

Island, or the noisier ones, fixed

with chromium, in the city, all that she had been doing at home. never went to our own particular kind of either. operas If a man tried to live without grace, not all his works were evil, that was true, certainly. He could do a lot of good things. He could drive a
car.

We

up

That

is

a good thing.

He

could read a book.

all

could draw pictures.

take photographs,

He

could do

the things

He could swim. He my brother had done

at various times: collect stamps, postcards, butterflies, study chemistry,

a plane, learn Russian. All these fly things were good and could be done without grace. But there was absolutely no need to stop and ask him, now, whether, without the grace of God, any of those pursuits had come anywhere near making him happy. I spoke about faith. By the gift of faith, you touch God, you enter into contact with His very substance and reality, in darkness: because nothing accessible, nothing comprehensible to our senses and reason can grasp His essence as it is in itself. But faith transcends all these limitations, and does so without labor: for it is God Who reveals Himself to us, and all that is required of us is the humility to accept His reveand it on the conditions under which it comes to us lation, accept the from lips of men.
in themselves

When that contact is established, God gives us sanctifying grace:

own
life,

His

the power to love Him, the power to overcome all the weaknesses and limitations of our blind souls and to serve Him and control

our crazy and rebellious flesh. "Once you have grace/' I said cannot help doing the things you

to

know you

him, "you are free. Without it, you should not do, and that you

know you
free.

When
you

don't really want to do. But once you have grace, you are you are baptized, there is no power in existence that can

force

to

commit a

sin

nothing that will be able to drive you to

it

against your own conscience. And if you merely will it, you will be free forever, because the strength will be given you, as much as you need, and as often as you ask, and as soon as you ask, and generally

long before you ask for

it,

too."

By

Saturday afternoon I had told John Paul everything I knew. I

Z 66

The Monastery
to the Sacramentals

had got

and Indulgences and then gone back and

given him an explanation

the Church:
I

The

of that notion, so mysterious to some outside Sacred Heart. After that I stopped. I was exhausted.

the long interval before High Mass, I asked Father Master if I could go over to the Guesthouse. "Reverend Father told me your brother might be going over to New

had nothing left to give him. And he sat calmly in his chair and said: "Go on, tell me some more/' The next day was Sunday, the Feast of St. Anne. After Chapter, in

Haven
I

to get baptized."

went to the novitiate chapel and prayed. But after dinner I found out that it was true. John Paul was sitting so comin his room, quiet and happy. It was years since I had seen him
pletely serene.
I realized, obscurely, that

in those last four days the work of bad of my example had been washed away eighteen or twenty years evil that had been done by my The and made good by God's love. and exulting in my own stupidity had been boasting and showing off own soul, at the same time as it had been washed out atoned for in

Then

my

of his,

and

was

full of
to

I taught

him how

peace and gratitude. use a Missal and how to receive

Communion,
at

had been arranged that his First Communion would be erend Father's private Mass the following day.
for
it

Rev-

that John through Chapter, the obscure worry the to down Paul would get lost and not be able to find his way chapel of Victories had been haunting me. As soon as Chapter of Our

The next morning,

Lady

all

was over

I hurried to the

church ahead of Reverend Father, and en-

tered the big

empty

building,

and knelt down.

John Paul was nowhere in sight. I turned around. At the end of the long nave, with its empty choir Paul was kneeling all alone, stalls, high up in the empty Tribune, John in uniform. He seemed to be an immense distance away, and between the secular church where he was, and the choir where I was, was a
locked door, and I couldn't call out to him to tell him how to come down the long way around through the Guesthouse. And he didn't understand my sign. At that moment there flashed into my mind all the scores of times
in our forgotten childhood stones from the place where

now,

all

of

had chased John Paul away with and I were building a hut. And my was all over it was a sudden, here again, a situation that

when

friends

Our Lady

of Sorrows

167

externally of the same pattern: John Paul, standing, confused happy, at a distance which he was not able to
bridge.

and un-

Sometimes the same image haunts me now that he is dead, as though he were standing helpless in Purgatory, depending more or less on me to get him out of there, waiting for my prayers. But I hope he is out of it by now! Father Master went off to get him, and I started lighting the candles on the altar of Our Lady of Victories and by the time the Mass started
I

could

see,

out of the corner of

my

eye, that

one of the benches.

And

so

we

received

Communion

he was kneeling there at together, and the

work was done.

next day, he was gone. I went to see him off at the gate, after visitor Chapter* gave him a ride to Bardstown, As the car was turning around to start down the avenue John Paul turned around and waved,

The

was only then that his expression showed some possibility that he be might realizing, as I did, that we would never see each other on earth

and

it

again.

The

fall

came, and the Great Tricenary in September

when

all

the

young monks have

to recite ten psalters for the dead. It is a season of

bright, dry days, with plenty of sun, and cool air, and the forest is turning rusty and blood color

and high cirrus clouds, and bronze along the

Then, morning and afternoon, we go out to cut corn. St. had long been finished the green stalks had gone into Now we were working through the vast, stony fields in the middle and lower bottoms, hacking our way through the dry corn with each blow of the knife cracking like a rifle shot. It was as if those glades had turned into shooting galleries and we were all firing away with
jagged
hills.

Joseph's field the silo.

twenty-twos.

And

behind

us, in the

wide avenues that opened in our wake, the

giant shocks grew up, and the two novices that came last garrotted with a big rope and tied them secure with twine.

them

nearly finished, and the fat turkeys were gobbling loudly in their pen, running from one wire fence to the other in dark herds, under the gloomy sky, I got

Around November when the cornhusking was

when

news from John Paul in England. First he had been stationed at Bournemouth, from which he sent me a postcard that showed some boardinghouses I recognized, along the West Cliff. It was only ten years since we had spent a summer there: but the memory of it was like
something unbelievable, like another
thing as the transmigration of souls!
life

as if there

were some such

68

The Monastery
little

After that he was sent somewhere in Oxfordshire. His letters arrived

with

he wrote:
stores/' it

"I

rectangles neatly cut out of them, here and there, tut when and the bookand seeing the enjoy going into

was easy enough for me to insert "Oxford" in the first hole and "Colleges" in the other, since the postmark read "Banbury." Here he was still in training. I could not tell how soon he would get into
the actual fighting over Germany.

Meanwhile, he wrote that he had met a girl, whom he described, and soon turned out that they were going to get married. I was glad on account of the marriage, but there was something altogether pathetic about the precariousness of it: what chance was there that they would ever be able to have a home and live in it, the way human beings were
it

do? 1943 began, and the weeks hastened on toward Lent. Lent means, among other things, no more letters. The monks neither receive mail nor write it in Lent and Advent, and the last news I had,

supposed

to

And so

that John Paul was planning to get marend of February. I would have to wait until Easter to find out whether or not he actually did. I had fasted a little during my first Lent, the year before, but it had been broken up by nearly two weeks in the infirmary. This was my first chance to go through the whole fast without any mitigation. In those days, since I still had the world's ideas about food and nourishment and health, I thought the fast we have in Trappist monasteries in Lent was severe. We eat nothing until noon, when we get the regular two bowls, one of soup and the other of vegetables, and as much bread as we like, but then in the evening there is a light collation a piece of bread and a dish of something like applesauce two ounces of it. the came to its climax in Holy Week, of Finally long liturgy penance with the terrible cry of the Lamentations once more echoing in the dark

before

Ash Wednesday, was

ried about the

Good Friday

choir of the abbey church, followed by the four hours' thunder of the Psalter in the Chapter Room, and the hush of the monks
cloisters in

going about the

bare

feet,

and the long sad chant that

ac-

companies the adoration of the Cross! What a relief it was to hear the bells once

what

relief to

Easter, that

wake up from the year, was as late as

more on Holy Saturday, of death with a triple "alleluia." sleep it could the twenty-fifth possibly be

and there were enough flowers to fill the church with the a wild and rich and intoxicating smell of the Kentucky spring heady smell of flowers, sweet and full. We came from our light, five hours'
of April

Our Lady

of Sorrows

jp
warm
night
air

England There had been a letter from John Paul among the two or three that I found under the napkin in the refectory at noon on Holy Saturday. I read it on Easter it said that he had been married more and Monday, or less according to plan, and had gone with his wife to the English Lakes for a week or so, and that after that he had been stationed at a new base, which put him into the fighting. He had been once or twice to bomb something somewhere: but he
did not even give the censor a chance to cut anything out. You could see at once that there was a tremendous change in his attitude toward the war and his part in it. He did not want to talk about it. He had

began that Easter invitatory that short of in its exultation. nothing gorgeous It was into the midst of all this that news from came.

sleep into a church that was full of this rich luxury of odors, and soon

and swimming

in
is

nothing to say. And from the way he said that he didn't want to talk about it, you could see that the experience was terrific. John Paul had at last come face to face with the world that he and
I

had helped

to

make!
afternoon
could.
I sat

On
cheer

Easter

Monday
a

down

to write

him

a letter

and

him up
letter

little, if I

The

was

finished,

and

it

in choir for the Conventual Mass, made me the sign for "Abbot"
I

was Easter Tuesday, and we were when Father Master came in and
difficulty in

went out

to

Reverend Father's room. There was no

cloister,

guessing what it was. I passed the pieta at the corner of the

and buried

my

will

and

my

natural affections and

all

the rest in the

wounded

side of the

dead Christ. Reverend Father flashed the sign

to

and received

gram
I

his blessing that Sergeant J. P.

and

kissed his ring

Merton,

my

and I knelt by his desk and he read me the telebrother, had been reported missin,

come

ing in action

on April

17.

have never understood why it took them so long to get the telegram through. April 17 was already ten days ago the end of Passion Week.

Dom Frederic had perhaps held it up until

Some more
days went
after a

after Easter.

came, and finally, few weeks, I learned that John Paul was definitely dead. The story was simply this. On the night of Friday the sixteenth, which had been the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, he and his crew had taken off in their bomber with Mannheim as their objective. I never
by, letters of confirmation

17

The Monastery

discovered whether they crashed on the way out or the way home, but the plane came down in the North Sea. John Paul was severely injured in the crash, but he managed to keep himself afloat, and even tried to

had managed in. and him pulled dinghy He was very badly hurt: maybe his neck was broken. He lay in the bottom of the dinghy in delirium. He was terribly thirsty. He kept asking for water. But they didn't have any. The water tank had broken in the crash, and the water was
support the
pilot, to float their rubber

who was

already dead. His companions

all

It

gone. did not

Who Something and died for him many centuries ago, and had been offered again that very day, too, on many altars. His companions had more of it to suffer, but they were finally picked up and brought to safety. But that was some five days later. On the fourth day they had buried John Paul in the sea.
THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

had three hours of it, and then he died. last too long. loved him, of the three hours of the thirst of Christ

He

Six:

POEMS

FOR MY BROTHER: REPORTED MISSING IN ACTION,

if I do not sleep for your tomb; are flowers eyes And if I cannot eat my bread,

1943

Sweet brother,

My

My fasts shall live like willows where you

If in the heat I find

died.

no water

for

my

thirst,

My

thirst shall

turn to springs for you, poor traveler.

Where, in what desolate and smoky country, Lies your poor body, lost and dead? And in what landscape of disaster Has your unhappy spirit lost its road?

And
Or

my labor find a resting place my sorrows lay your head, Or rather take my life and blood
Come, in
in

And buy
take

yourself a better bed my breath and take my death

And buy

yourself a better

rest.

When
And
Your

all

the

men

of

war are shot

into dust,
still

flags

have fallen

and mine shall tell men Christ died on each, for both of us.
cross

For in the wreckage of your April Christ

lies slain,

And Christ weeps in the ruins of my The money of Whose tears shall fall
Into your

spring:

weak and
back

friendless

hand,
land:
171

And buy you

to

your

own

*7 2

The Monastery
silence of

The

Whose

tears shall fall

Like bells upon your alien tomb. Hear them and come: they call you home.

THIRTY POEMS

THE TRAPPIST CEMETERY GETHSEMANI

Brothers, the curving grasses

and

their daughters

Will never print your praises: The trees our sisters, in their summer

dresses,

Guard your fame

The

in these green cradles: simple crosses are content to hide your characters.

Oh
The

do not fear
birds that bicker in the lonely belfry

Will ever give away your legends. Yet when the sun, exulting like a dying martyr, Canonizes, with his splendid fire, the somber hills,

Your graves

all

smile like

little

children,

And
That

your wise crosses trust the mothering night

folds

them

in the Sanctuary's wings.

You need not hear

Where
With

cities pass

the momentary rumors of the road and vanish in a single car

Filling the cut beside the mill roar and radio,

air into

Hurling the

the wayside branches

Leaving the leaves alive with panic.

See, the kind universe,

Wheeling in love about the abbey steeple, Lights up your sleepy nursery with stars.
#

God, in your bodily life, Untied the snares of anger and desire, Hid your flesh from envy by these country altars, Beneath these holy eaves where even sparrows have

their houses.

But oh, how

like the swallows

and the chimney

swifts

Do

your free souls in glory play!

Poems

173
flight,

And

with a cleaner

Keener, more graceful circles, Rarer and finer arcs Than all these innocent attacks that skim our steeple!

How
Do

like these children of the

summer evening

your rejoicing spirits Deride the dry earth with their aviation!

But now the treble harps of night To praise your holy sleep, And all the frogs along the creek

begin

to

play in the deep wood,

Chant

in the

moony

waters to the

Queen

of Peace.

And we, the mariners, and travelers, The wide-eyed immigrants,

Praying and sweating in our steerage cabins, Lie still and count with love the measured bells

That

tell

the deep-sea leagues until your harbor.

Already on

this working earth you knew what nameless love Adorns the heart with peace by night,

Hearing, adoring all the dark arrivals of eternity. Oh, here on earth you knew what secret thirst

Arming

the

mind with

instinct,

Answers the challenges of God with

garrisons

Of unified desire

And

facing

Him

in

His

new wars

Is slain at last

in an exchange of lives.

Teach

us, Cistercian Fathers,

how

to

wear

Silence, our humble armor. Pray us a torrent of the seven

spirits

That

wine and stamina: Because your work is not yet done. But look: the valleys shine with promises,
are our

And

every burning morning

is

a prophecy of Christ

Coming to raise and Even our sorry flesh*

vindicate

Then will your graves, Gethsemani, give up Return them to their souls to learn

their angels,

The

songs and attitudes of glory.

174

The Monastery

Then

will creation rise again like gold Clean, from the furnace of your litanies:

The beasts and trees shall share your resurrection, And a new world he horn from these green tombs.
A

MAN

IN THE DIVIDED SEA

THE TRAPPIST
(Our Lady

ABBEY:

MATINS

of Gethsemani, Kentucky^)

When

the full fields begin to smell of sunrise

And the valleys sing in their sleep, The pilgrim moon pours over the solemn darkness
Her
waterfalls of silence,

And then departs, up the long avenue of trees.

The
stars hide, in the glade, their light, like tears,

And tremble where some train runs, lost,

Baying in eastward mysteries of distance,

Where fire flares, somewhere, over a

sink of

cities.

Now kindle in the windows of this ladyhouse, Your childish, clear awakeness: Burn in the country night Your wise and sleepless lamp. For, from the frowning tower, the windy belfry, Sudden the bells come, bridegrooms, And fill the echoing dark with love and fear.
in the windows of Gethsemani, my soul, For the past years, with smoky torches, come, Bringing betrayal from the burning world

my

soul,

Wake

my

sister,

And bloodying the glade with pitch flame.

Wake

in the cloisters of the lonely night,

my

soul,

my

sister,

Where the apostles gather, who were, one time, scattered, And mourn God's blood in the place of His betrayal, And weep with Peter at the triple cockcrow,
A

MAN

IN THE DIVIDED SEA

Poems

175

EVENING: ZERO WEATHER

Now
With

the lone world

Is streaky as a wall of marble veins of clear and frozen snow.

is

There

No

no bird song there, no hare's track badger working in the russet grass:

All the bare fields are silent as eternity.

And the whole herd is home in the long barn. The brothers come, with hoods about their faces,
Following their plumes of breath Lugging the gleaming buckets one by one.

This was a day when shovels would have struck

Full flakes of
fire

out of the land like rock:

And ground cries out like iron beneath our boots

When

all

the

monks come in with

eyes as clean as the cold sky

And axes under their arms,

Still paying out Ave Marias With rosaries between their bleeding fingers.

We shake the chips out of our robes outside the door

And go
hide in cowls as deep as clouds, Bowing our shoulders in the church's shadow, lean and whipped, To wait upon your Vespers, Mother of God!
to

And we have eyes no more for the dark pillars or the freezing windows,
Ears for the rumorous cloister or the chimes of time above our heads: For we are sunken in the summer of our adoration,

And plunge, down, down into the fathoms of our secret joy
That swims with indefinable fire.

And we will never see the copper sunset

on the frozen Bill Linger a moment, like an echo, Then suddenly die an hour before the Angehis.
For we have found our Christ, our August Here in the zero days before Lent

We are already binding up our sheaves of harvest

with exultation Beating the lazy liturgy, going up Even on the eve of our Ash Wednesday, And entering our blazing heaven by the doors of the Assumption!
FIGURES FOR AN APOCALYPSE

ij6

The Monastery

AFTER THE NIGHT OFFICE GETHSEMANI ABBEY

It is

not yet the gray and frosty time

When barns ride out of the night like ships:

We do not see the Brothers, bearing lanterns,

Sink in the quiet mist,

As various

as the spirits

who, with lamps, are sent

To

search our souls' Jerusalems Until our houses are at rest

And minds enfold the Word, our Guest.

and canticles anticipate Each day the singing bells that wake the sun, But now our psalmody is done.
Praises

Our hasting souls outstrip the day: Now, before dawn, they have their noon. The Truth that transubstantiates the body's Has made our minds His temple tent:

night

Open

the secret eye of faith

And drink these deeps of invisible light.

The weak walls Of the world fall

And heaven, in floods, comes pouring in:

Sink from your shallows,
soul, into eternity,

And slake your wonder at that deep-lake spring. We touch the rays we cannot see,

We feel the light that seems to sing.

Go back to bed, red sun, you are too late, And hide behind Mount Olivet
For like the flying moon, held prisoner, Within the branches of a juniper, So in the cages of our consciousness

The Dove of God is prisoner yet:

Unruly sun, go back to bed. But now the lances of the morning
Fire all their gold against the steeple and the water tower. Returning to the windows of our deep abode of peace,

Emerging

at

our conscious doors

We find our souls all soaked in grace, like Gedeon's fleece,

A MAN IN THE DIVIDED SEA

Poems

THE READER
Lord, when the clock strikes Telling tie time with cold tin And I sit hooded in this lectern

Waiting
I see

for the

monks

to

come,

the red cheeses, and bowls All smile with milk in ranks upon their tables.

Light
(I

fills

my proper globe
light to read

have won
a

by

With

little,

tinkling chain)

And the monks come down

With robes
I

the cloister

as voluble as water.

do not see them but I hear their waves.

winter, and my hands prepare To turn the pages of the saints: And to the trees Thy moon has frozen on the windows My tongue shall sing Thy Scripture.
It is

Then the monks pause upon

the step

(With me here in this lectern And Thee there on Thy crucifix) And gather little pearls of water on their fingers' ends Smaller than this my psalm.
THE TEARS OF THE BLIND LIONS

ST.

MALACHY

In November, in the days to remember the dead

When air smells cold as earth,

St. Malachy, who is very old, gets up, Parts the thin curtains of trees and dawns

upon our land.

is

His coat is

With
(Is
it

all

filled with drops of rain, and he the seas of Poseidon.

a"

bearded

a crozier, or

trident in his

hand?)

He weeps against the gothic window, and the empty cloister

Mourns like an ocean shell.

178

The Monastery
faintly to the old stranger

Two bells in the steeple

Talk
"I

And the
"For
I

tower considers his waters.

(his cavern speaks!)

have been sent

to see my festival," am the saint of the day.

Shall I shake the drops from my locks and stand in your transept, Or, leaving you, rest in the silence of my history?"

So the

And

rang and we opened the antiphoners the wrens and larks flew up out of the pages.
bells

Our thoughts became lambs. Our hearts swam like seas. One monk believed that we should sing to him
Some stone-age hymn Or something in the giant language. So we played to him in the plainsong
Oceans of Scripture sang upon bony

of the giant Gregory;

Eire.

Then

the last salvage of flowers (Fostered under glass after the gardens foundered)
their little

Held up

lamps on Malachy's

altar

To peer into his wooden eyes before the Mass began.

Rain sighed down the sides of the stone church. Storms sailed by all day in battle fleets.

At five

o'clock,

Sighed and

arose

when we tried to see the sun, the speechless visitor and shook the humus from his feet
the ground.

And with his trident stirred our trees And left downwood, shaking some drops upon

Thus copper flames fall, tongues of fire fall The leaves in hundreds fall upon his passing While night sends down her dreadnought darkness

Upon

this

spurious Pentecost

And the Melchisedec of our year's end

Who came without a parent, leaves without a trace,

And rain comes rattling down upon our forest
Like the doors of a country jail.

THE TEARS OF THE BLIND LIONS

Poems

ELEGY FOR THE MONASTERY BARN

As though an aged person were
to

wear

Too gay a dress

And walk about the neighborhood

Announcing the hour of her death, So now, one summer day's end, At suppertime, when wheels are still, The long barn suddenly puts on the traitor, beauty,

And hails us with a dangerous cry,

For: "Look!" she calls to the country,

"Look how fast I dress myself in

fire!"

Had we half guessed how long her spacious shadows

Harbored a woman's vanity We would be less surprised to see her now So loved, and so attended, and so feared* She, in whose airless heart

We burst our veins to

Now stands apart.

fill

her full of hay,

She will not have us near her. Terribly, Sweet Christ, how terribly her beauty burns us now!

And yet she has another legacy,

More delicate,
to leave us,

and more rare.

Who knew her solitude? Who heard the peace downstairs

While flames ran whispering among the rafters?

Who felt the silence, there,

The long, hushed gallery
Clean and resigned and waiting for the
Look!
Fifty invisible cattle, the past years Assume their solemn places one by one.
fire?

They have all come back to speak their summary:

This is the little minute of

Here is

their

meaning found. Here

as in a

their destiny. is their end.

Laved in the flame

In their
first-last

Sacrament

The brilliant walls are holy

hour of joy.

i8o

The Monastery

Fly from within the barn! Fly from the silence

Of this creature sanctified by fire! Let no man stay inside to look upon the Lord! Let no man wait within and see the Holy One sitting in the presence of disaster
Thinking upon
this

barn His gentle doom!

THE STRANGE ISLANDS

A PRACTICAL PROGRAM FOR MONKS

Each one
shall sit at table

with his

own

repentance. Each one's

affair,

portant

and provide

own cup and spoon, and with own business shall be his most his own remedies.

his

im-

They have neglected bowl and plate. Have you a wooden fork?
Yes, each
2,

monk has a wooden fork

as well as a potato.

Each one

shall wipe away tears with his own saint, when three bells hold in store a hot afternoon. Each one is supposed to mind his

own heart,
Time
3
to

with

its

conscience, night

and morning.

Another turn on the wheel: ho hum!

go
to

And observe the Abbot!

bed in a straw blanket.

Plenty of bread for everyone between prayers and the psalter: will you recite another? Merci, and Miserere. Always mind both the dock and the Abbot until eternity. Miserere.

4
Details of the

Rule are all liquid and solid. What canon was the first to announce regimentation before us? Mind the step on the way down!

Yes, I dare say you are right, Father. I believe you; I believe you. I believe it is easier when they have ice water and even a lemon.

Each one can

sit

at table with his

own

lemon, and mind his conscience.

Poems
5

181

Can we

agree that the part about the lemon

is

regular?

In any case, it is better to have sheep than peacocks, and cows rather than a chained leopard says Modest, in one of his proverbs. The monastery, being owner of a communal rowboat, is the antechamber of heaven.
Surely that ought to be enough.

Each one can have some rain

We

after Vespers on a hot afternoon, but ne quid nimis, or the purpose of the Order will be forgotten. shall send you hyacinths and a sweet millennium.
is

Everything the monastery provides

nothing.

very pleasant to see and to

sell for

What

is

baked smells

fine.

There

is

a sign of

God on

every leaf that

nobody
even

sees in the garden.

is

when no one is
shall fold his

In Kentucky there

on purpose, looking. Just put the apples in the basket. also room for a little cheese.
fruit trees are there

The

Each one
7 Rain

own napkin, and neglect the others.

is always very silent in the night, under such gentle cathedrals. Yes, I have taken care of the lamp. Miserere. Have you a patron saint, and an angel?

Thank

you.

Even though the nights

are never dangerous, I have one of

everything.

SELECTED POEMS

Seven:

"IF

EVER THERE

WAS A COUNTRY

."

JLF EVER THEKE WAS A COUNTRY where men loved comfort, pleasure, and material security, good health and conversation about the weather and the World Series and the Rose Bowl; if ever there was a land where silence made men nervous and prayer drove them crazy and penance scared them to death, it is America. Yet, quite suddenly, Americans the healthiest, most normal, most energetic, and most optimistic of the younger generation of Americans have taken it into their heads to run off to Trappist monasteries and get their heads shaved and put on robes and scapulars and work in the fields and pray half the night and sleep on straw and, in a word, become monks. When you ask them why they have done such things, they may give

you a very

clear

answer

or,

in either case the answer will

perhaps, only a rather confused answer; but amount to this: the Trappists are the most

resembled the
there
is

austere order they could find, and Trappist life was that which least life men lead in the towns and cities of our world. And

something in their hearts that tells them they cannot be happy where people are looking for nothing but their own and pleasure advantage and comfort and success. have not come to the monastery to escape from the realities of They life but to find those realities: they have felt the terrible insufficiency of
in an atmosphere
is entirely dedicated to the pursuit of shadows. the use of living for things that you cannot hold on to, values that crumble in your hands as soon as you possess them, pleasures that

life

in a civilization that

What is

turn sour before you have begun to taste them, and a peace that

is

con-

have not become Trappists merely out of stantly turning into war? a hope for peace in the next world: something has told them, with unshakable conviction, that the next world begins in this world and that

Men

"If

Ever There

Was

a Country

"
.

183

heaven can be
give

theirs

their lives to the

That activity is what it gets but on what

throwing
Is it
itself

now, very truly, even though imperfectly, if they one activity which is the beatitude of heaven. love: the clean, unselfish love that does not live on
it

gives; a love that increases

self-sacrifice

out for others, that grows by

by pouring itself and becomes mighty by

away.

any wonder that Trappist monasteries are places full of peace and contentment and joy? These men, who have none of the pleasures of
the world, have
silence
is

all

more eloquent than

the happiness that the world is unable to find. Their all the speeches of politicians and the noise

of all the radios in America. Their smiles have

more joy

in

them than

has the laughter of thousands.

When

how or to the sky, they see a beauty which in the fields and the forests, they seem to be tired work find. they and alone, but their hearts are at rest, and they are absorbed in a com-

they raise their eyes to the hills to other people do not know

When

panionship that is tremendous, because it is three Persons in one infinite Nature, the One Who spoke the universe and draws it all back into
all love; the One from things came and to are all the beauty and substance in return: and things is real. actuality of everything in the world that

Himself by His
all

Whom

Whom

Whom

and

THE WATERS OF SILOB

Eight

THE FOUNDATION OF GETHSEMANI ABBEY

THE FALL
austere

of

and

restless history of

Napoleon it quickly became evident that the the Val Sainte congregation would soon

be a closed chapter in the annals of the Cistercian Order. By a queer the safest places in Europe for paradox, after 1815 France became one of monks, after having been for ten years the most dangerous. As a result, the scattered and more or less flourishing monasteries that had been founded in Belgium, Germany, Spain, and Italy by Dom Augustin de Lestrange closed their doors under stress of persecution, and the monks withdrew once more to their native country.

When Dom Augustin

died in

82,7,

the most prosperous and fervent

of the Trappist monasteries was Our Lady of Melleray, near Nantes. Melleray reopened its doors as a monastery to receive the monks that had

been forced to leave the monastery of Lulworth in England. They brought to France not only the austerity of the contemplative life and the ancient liturgical chant but also some English methods of farming that started what amounted to an agricultural revolution in the Vendee. The peasants of the region were astonished to find that a system of crop rotation would save them the trouble of leaving land fallow for eight or nine years. They soon bought the improved plows manufactured by the

monks on

the English pattern, and the first threshing machine ever seen in that part of France attracted a curious crowd of farmers to the

monastery.
seventy-five was under the direcan abbot whose wisdom and experience in temporal and spiritual matters were equaled only by his generosity and spirit of faith. Dom Antoine de Beauregard, a gifted and noble cleric who had fled to England to escape the Revolution, had become a monk at Lulworth. Here he
tion of

The community of one hundred and

184

The Foundation

of Gethsemani

Abbey

185

had lived through poverty and hardships not altogether unlike those which his Cistercian brothers had had to suffer in Kentucky and Illinois.
After

Dom

Augustin's death
till

Dom

Antoine of Melleray became the

Visitor General of the Congregation,

and

his

wisdom has

left its

stamp

upon

the order even

today.

Dom Augustin himself had

foreseen that

the excessively strict regulations of La Val Sainte would not long survive his death, and practically all his innovations had been under fire for

some

time.

Antoine thought there could be nothing better for his monks than to keep the Rule of St. Benedict as it had been written and as it had been interpreted by St. Alberic and St. Stephen Harding at Citeaux. In that way he steered a middle course between the exaggerations of Dom
Augustin and the somewhat abstract and academic reform of De Ranee, for whom work had never been a material necessity but only a penance and a humiliation. In other words, it would seem that this was a solution

Dom

came somewhere near the healthy and harmonious and well-balfirst Cistercians. For them, the monk was a man who labored because he was poor and was poor because he loved God, and who lived apart from the world to praise God and to contemplate Him and to taste the inexpressible joys of His love in silence and in peace. At the same time, this solution, which looked so good in theory, did not seem to work out altogether in practice. There were some Trappists who found that even the usages of Citeaux were too difficult and imthat

anced ideal of the

posed too severe a burden. In 1 834 the Trappists were divided into two congregations, one keeping the usages of Citeaux and the other those of De Ranee. Each had its

own
still

vicar general, and both were subject to the Abbot General of the Cistercians of the Common Observance for the Common Observance

survived as an ill-defined conglomeration of fragments. This was not

a satisfactory arrangement,

and

it is

quite likely that this division, this

unsetded and equivocal state of the reform, inhibited the spontaneous and healthy regrowth of a spirituality that was truly Cistercian and con-

and which the strictness and fervor of the monks themselves us to expect. have led might Meanwhile, things were by no means settled in France. The 1830 revolution had brought trouble to La Trappe and to Melleray, as well as to other houses of the order. Melleray, being a large and prosperous house, was singled out for special attention. Six hundred soldiers camped
templative,
in the monastery,

the rights guaranteed

and only the firmness of Dom Antoine in insisting on him by the laws of the time saved the monastery

86

The Monastery

from complete suppression. As it was, however, most of the community was turned out of doors. The result was not altogether an unhappy one. There had been many English and Irish monks in the house, and these were no sooner deported
than they settled in Ireland to build Mount Melleray Abbey in county Waterford, a house which has ever since been renowned for its prosperity

and vigor.

the troubles of 1 830 had blown over, Melleray was once again crowded with postulants and novices, and the places that had been left vacant by the deportees were rapidly filled. By the year 1847 the house was full to overflowing. That gave Dom Maxime, who was then abbot, two good reasons for somewhere outside of France. He wanted deciding to make a foundation to make room for postulants, and he foresaw another revolution.

When

And

so

it

happened that once again the eyes of a Trappist superior

to the shores of America. God's Providence definitely dethat a monastery of Cistercian monks was to be built, first of all, signed in Kentucky. And it was to Kentucky that the prior of Melleray, Father Paulinus, went looking for land on which to build one.

were turned

It is
all to

not altogether curious that the monks should have looked first of Kentucky in their second attempt to settle in the United States.

a hard time Dom Urban's colony had had, and they the heard of eccentricities of the climate. But probably the had sanctity of the first Bishop of Bardstown, who had recently transferred his

They knew what

cathedral to Louisville,

was the

real

explanation

why God

brought

Trappists to that diocese.

Bishop Flaget had come to America in 1792, as a refugee with Father Badin, the first priest to settle permanently in Kentucky. The bishop was

he probably saw something of Dom Urban and his Kentucky but at Baltimore, where they were received Monsignor Flaget's community. In 1808 Bishop Carroll, finding the burden of the entire United States too heavy for his own shoulders, asked Pope Pius VII to give him some more bishops. Accordingly, four new dioceses were erected that and Bardstown, Kentucky. And year: Boston, New York, Philadelphia so Monsignor Flaget became Bishop of Bardstown and head of a diocese
a Sulpician, and Trappists, not in by the fathers of
that included Kentucky, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Iowa, and about half of Arkansas. It was a task that called for more than human courage and energy.

The new

bishop did not arrive in Kentucky until

Dom

Urban and

The foundation
his Trappists
diocese,

of

Gethsemani Abbey

187

had already moved west to Illinois. They still were in his no doubt, when Bishop Flaget came down the Ohio River on a

flatboat in 1811, accompanied by the priests who were to form the nucleus of his diocesan seminary. But by the time he had had a chance to visit the western reaches of his territory, the bishop found the Traphad taken and at were home in France. flight pists

Yet, the memory of the monks and their holiness and their poverty had not died in Kentucky. There were still a few men who had been to the monks* school, and these were among the most solid and hard-workand and faithful Christians in the bishop's flock. The intelligent ing

echoes of the sweet, solemn cadences of Gregorian chant in the monks' log-cabin chapel, in the woods of Nelson County and Casey Creek, still lived in the memories of Kentucky Catholics.
to

white-haired, leonine, beaming with the simplicity and overflowing benevolence of the saints, received the emissary from the French Trappists with open arms and tears of joy. He

The arrival of Father Paulinus many prayers. The eighty-six-year-old bishop,

in Louisville in 1847 was the answer

sent

him at once into the country that had once seen the labors of Dom Urban Guillet's men, and his coadjutor, Monsignor Martin Spalding,

became the Trappist's guide and adviser. It was not long before they found a good-sized farm with some buildings on it and plenty of woodland. It was within sight of Rohan's Knob, in whose shadow the Trappists had first settled thirty-two years before in their temporary home on Pottinger's Creek. Gethsemani, as the farm was called, belonged to some religious of a congregation founded by Father Nerinckx the Sisters of Loretto. The sisters had opened a small orphan asylum in the middle of a valley in Nelson County. But the enterprise proved inconvenient, and they were looking for a less isolated
site.

of woodland, with a

So, Father Paulinus struck a bargain for the fourteen hundred acres few cornfields and some log cabins in bad repair,

and Gethsemani was sold to the Trappists for five thousand dollars. It was in October 1848 that the colony was organized to leave the abbey of Melleray. At its head, Dom Maxime placed Father Eutropius Proust, a thirty-nine-year-old priest from the strongly Catholic Vendee district who had not yet been four years in the monastery. He had made profession in 1846, and the next year he had taken over Father Paulinus's office as prior when the latter went on his expedition to Kentucky. He was a thin, wiry, intense little man, this Father Eutropius. He had a

88

The Monastery

ideals, his heart

quick intelligence and a vivid, dramatic imagination. He was full of burned with faith and zeal. And he had more courage
a

among Trappists. He needed and courage he could muster, to carry out the difficult and complicated mission that was entrusted to him. He was to lead forty-four men monks, brothers, novices, postulants, and familiars through a France that was once more simmering to the boiling with revolution; he was to put them on a boat and take them to point America fighting his way step by step through a most intricate network of obstacles and reverses. Most of the monks who sailed for the United States under Father Eutropius were perfectly chosen for the foundation. But for one or two a Basque, and the Italian Father exceptions like Father Paulinus, Benezet the colonists sent to Gethsemani were Bretons and Vendeens. That meant, first of all, that they were physically hardy, endowed with plenty of strength and endurance racial characteristics of these sturdy and intrepid farmers and mariners. Of course, they were not prepared for the Kentucky climate, with its unmitigated summer heat and its sudden temperamental changes of warm and cold in the other seasons of the year. But on the whole they would be well equipped to stand up
than physical strength

common

trait

all

the faith and ardor and enthusiasm

under the
served

vicissitudes of the

new

foundation. Father Euthymius,

who

and

years as subprior, died in 1880 at the age of seventy-two, Father Emmanuel, tie cellarer, lived until 1885 and the age of

many

seventy-four.

Potiron,

Some of the lay brothers did even better. Brother Charles who reputedly died in an aura of sanctity and mysticism, lived to

be seventy-seven, and Brother Theodoret was buried in January 1893, two months short of his eightieth birthday. Finally, Brother Antonine,

when he sailed from France with the rest of the and who was so tempted against his vocation that he more than once left the monastery and returned to begin over again, outlasted them all and saw the golden jubilee of Gethsemani in 1898.
only eighteen
Trappists as a novice,

who was

He died in 1902, in his seventy-third year. On October 26, 1848, the monks of Melleray
night office, at
those

got

up

as usual for the

who

two o'clock in the morning. It was over at about four, and had been designated for the American foundation went to the

dormitory and changed into secular clothing, afterward putting on their cowls over the unfamiliar garb. Then they descended to the cloister with
the two blankets that were their individual baggage

and bedding

for the

long journey.

Dom Maxime

addressed them for the last time, in terms of which

we

The Foundation

of

Gethsemani Abbey

may

find an echo in the act of foundation of the abbey. "Our dearly beloved brothers/' he wrote, "will infallibly succeed if they always keep the spirit of their vocation, which will lead them in to the
particular

study and practice of the virtues of charity, obedience, poverty, mortification, patience, humility. Let our beloved brothers never forget to apply themselves to prayer ... let them maintain close union among themselves. Then the world and the devil will be able to do nothing
.
.
.

against them, for, let them be fully persuaded of this truth: a house divided against itself will fall into ruins. Let them have a cordial and
respectful love for their superior and console him in his cares for them him into the by obedience and fraternal union, and let them never

put

position where the duty of issuing his commands may become a matter of difficulty and embarrassment for him. Let them, in the consideration

of their
this

own

frailties,

remain humble in

spirit

and in

their hearts.

Do

and you

shall live,

my

dearly beloved brothers.

Amen! Amen!"

After that, the whole community, those traveling and those staying in France, issued from the monastery gate in procession, chanting the litany of Loretto. It was a bleak autumn morning and rain was falling steadily.

with which

Father Eutropius, armed with a wooden cross that was a copy of the one Dom Augustin de Lestrange had once led his band of

to La Val Sainte, walked forward full of emowet world of bare trees and stubble fields and puddles and deep mud. The procession continued its solemn progress, chanting in the rain for about a kilometer. At the edge of a wood they came to a small wayside cross. Here they stopped. The monks who were leaving took off their rain-soaked cowls and handed them to the ones who were staying. They all embraced one another in silence, and the two groups parted, one to return to the abbey and the other a strange band of workingmen with shaven heads and ill-fitting suits to begin a long day's tramp to the Loire, where they were to take a riverboat from Ancenis to

refugees from

La Trappe

tion into a gray,

Tours.

The first day's journey ended dramatically at Ancenis, where the news of the monks* embarkation had attracted a large crowd of curious and
devout Vendeens.

The

Trappists chanted Compline and sang their

ancient, heartrending Salve Regina in the parish church, which was crowded to the doors. But when it came time to find their way through

the crowds to the boat, they became separated in the darkness, and their superior had a hard time gathering them together again. When they were all finally safe on board, three real misfortunes were discovered.

Their baggage had not been put on board at Nantes, as had been

jpo

The Monastery

been mislaid somewhere between Melleray planned; their provisions had and the boat landing, and finally, a brother who had been sent to Nantes
to

borrow eight thousand francs had returned empty-handed. was a wild journey from Ancenis to Le Havre. They changed from boat to train at Tours, changed trains at Orleans and again in Paris.
It

was marked by excitement and confusion. weird group of rough-looking men with shaven heads collected around their emaciated leader in station waiting rooms, crowds of curious people flocked from all sides, full of questions and comment.
Each stage of
their journey

Whenever

this

Since they could not get anything out of the monks, who refused to made their own peculiar surmises. Usually speak to them, the bystanders he Father it ended with Eutropius making a little speech. "Messieurs," dedicated men to are These or be alarmed not "do would
say,

surprised.

to live in poverty God, Trappist rnonks who have renounced everything a distant land to to are and silence and labor and going prayer. They

build a monastery. They are going to carry the Name and the worship 1 of God to the forests of North America, among the tigers and panthers

and wolves of Kentucky.

."

were on the scene before he had uttered Invariably the gendarmes All France was on the alert for riots in sentences. more than four or five
But the Trappists did not get into any trouble. What was more important, at each new stage of the journey Father an untiring persistence born of faith married to natural Eutropius, with and cajoled his way into the offices of the highest railtenacity, pushed reductions for the travelto way officials he could find, in order beg huge of the way to Le Havre most went monks. Thanks to his efforts, they
1848.

ing

and paying only half the third-class fare. monks it was the first time they had ever ridden in a train or had, indeed, even seen one. For most of them it was also their last experience of the ferocious chemin de fer.
riding second-class For many of the

At Le Havre, three days before the departure of the boat, the brothers who had been told to bring the fifteen thousand pounds of baggage from Nantes to the port of embarkation arrived without any of it. They intheir superior the "written promise" which a nice nocently presented to that they would certainly gentleman at Tours had given them, stating have their baggage with diem at Le Havre that same evening. Father his hands in a paroxysm of woe and took the first threw
Eutropius
train

up

back

to Paris.

arrived at the capital at five the next hours before their ship was due to forty-eight

He

morning little more than weigh anchor. He inquired

The Foundation
at three stations

of

Gethsemani Abbey

ipi

without finding a trace of the monks' equipment which included everything from plows and bake ovens to folio graduals

and antiphoners and straw mattresses. ment that would easily be overlooked.
Finally he found

It

was not the kind

of consign-

it all safe at the Gare d'lvry. But his troubles had had to move this mountain across Paris to the Gare de only begun. This would cost much more than he could afford. Soon Batignolles. Father Eutropius was once again seated in the office of the highest and most influential official he could find.

He

The
this.

He

that I

Trappist abbot has left us a written account, in English, of all says (with a pardonable disregard for syntax) "On telling him was a Trappist he appeared and wished to know
:

totally surprised,

the

life

...

of a Trappist. I gave him a short resume of our manner of to him of our spoke spiritual exercises, of our different

life.

employ-

listened to

ments, and the happiness experienced in the quiet of solitude. He me with great attention and when I had finished speaking he cried out: 'Ah, Monsieur! That life is beautiful compared with that of

the great part of men in the world where we see only sensuality, pride, and self-love. I assure you that if I were not married I would embrace "2 your kind of life and accompany you to America!'

Father Eutropius Proust was a good talker! However, this particular official could do nothing to reduce the cost
of transporting the monks' baggage across Paris. He sent Father Eutropius off with a letter to another official who gave him just as little satisfaction. to

By that time it was getting late. In fact, move his baggage from the station where
to

it

it

would soon be too was languishing.

late

He

obtain special permission to do so. managed Seven o'clock in the evening found Father Eutropius hard at with three teamsters, loading up wagons at the Gare dlvry.

work

was the problem of the octroi, the city customs. If they would be stopped and all their baggage held for It examination. was now past nine. up Father Eutropius promised his teamsters a good tip if they would go
there

Then

went through

Paris, they

around the
For a

city walls.

They

agreed.

however, the Trappist superior was tortured with misgivings about the wisdom of such a course. The teamsters pulled up at the first bistro along their way and stopped in for a couple of
terrible half hour,

drinks to give them strength for their journey. At ten o'clock he was wringing his hands in the street, standing in

192
the lurid glare that issued from the bar

The Monastery
and illuminated the heavy
and
left

wagons and idle horses. But in the end everything

early train for

arrived safely at Batignolles

on the
and

Le Havre. November
2,

At one
their

in the afternoon of

1848, the forty Trappists

books and plows and supplies for the long Atlantic crossing were safe on board the Brunswick, an eight-hundred-ton sailing vessel tinder
the

command of Captain Thomas of New Orleans. The ship was crowded. It was the year of the gold rush, and America

was more than ever fabulous in the imagination of immigrants. But on this journey the Erunsrmck was bearing a company unusual even in
those years. Besides the Trappists themselves, who barricaded themselves off in the steerage and settled in a provisional shipboard monastery to

which nobody

else

had

access without their permission,

and besides

of the ordinary kind, there was a party of sixty German immigrants destined for one of the strange comchildren and eighty men, women, munist "utopias" that were springing up in such profusion in those
years.

848 was the year when the Oneida community was founded. Seven years before, Brook Farm had entered upon the same path of social experimentation. There were not a few Fourieristic phalanxes in the
1

and it was more than twenty years since the English Robert Owen, had inaugurated his community at New HarSocialist, a dream of harmony that had been shipwrecked within mony, Indiana
United
States,

two years upon the rocks of the same old discord, By 1848 there was ample evidence that the only ones among these communist groups that stood a fair chance of survival were those that

had some kind of

religious basis.

The

Shakers were

still

flourishing.

The

Ephrata community, founded in Pennsylvania by a German Protestant hermit more than a century before, was still thriving and continued to

do so for

at the end of 1848 with the of Gethsemani founders was to be the longest-lived of destined Trappist the explicidy nonreligious communist "utopias" planted on American
soil

many years to come. The group that sailed from Le Havre

in those optimistic days. They were Etienne Cabet's "Icarians."

The

first

thing that

Dom

Eutropius remarked about them was that they were under the direction of a delegate who took the place of Cabet himself, and "to whom the

name

was charged with judging the of representative was given. differences that might arise among them, an office of which there was

He

The Foundation
great

of Gethsemani
3

Abbey

193

need during the voyage." In fact, the Icarians were so divided by and jealousies that quarrels and dissensions arising from petty
greeds

monks considered themselves fortunate to be separated, by the improvised enclosure, from all communion with their noise.
die

One

of the

many

rest of that ship's strange

things that distinguished the Trappists from the company was the relative efficiency with

which they were prepared to meet die emergencies of the voyage. The other passengers, Icarians included, were fasting on hardtack, while the monks had set up their ovens and were drawing out smoking loaves of
fresh bread each morning. Caldrons of soup simmered on the ranges of the monks' kitchen, and under the circumstances the lean Trappist fare

luxury indeed in those days before the phenomenal modern ocean liner. In a short time the monks found themselves feeding most of the other at all who were sick or weak or needed some special least, passengers attention. The chief beneficiaries of this charity were some mothers with infants to nurse and an old immigrant who had been left by his companions to starve when he became too weak to prepare his own meals. The monks had no trouble with the Icarians, whose only hostile act was a decree of their "assembly" forbidding any of their number to hear Mass in the monks' chapel. The Trappists were glad to do some cooking for them on their range, baking pastry, apples, potatoes, and so on for anyone who brought them to the door of the steerage "monastery." It would seem that Providence threw these two groups, Trappists and

began

to look like

menus

of the

comparison between them. they had not a little in common. The ideal of Cistercian monasticism is a communal ideal which goes back explicitly to the life of the first Christians, who were of "one heart and one mind" and "had
Icarians, together just to invite a

After

all,

all

community bound for was as and "communistic" as were the just Kentucky strictly truly Icarians, who were heading for Texas. The monks owned all their property in common. They were, in fact, vowed to the most uncompromising
poverty, forbidden to possess anything whatever as individuals, not even the most insignificant of consumer's goods. Everything they used or consumed came to them from the abbot or through his permission as

4 things in common." As a social and economic unit, the Trappist

representative of the Christ, the Life and unifying Principle of the monastic community. But in the moral order the monks were bound to a far stricter and more radical communism than the Icarians had ever

dreamed of. The monk's body and

his very soul belong to his

community,

jpx
insofar as

The Monastery

earth

is Christ on it is a part of the living, mystical organism the Church. The monk cannot claim proprietorship over the or desire that interferes with the life smallest internal act of

Who

of the

community

judgment which is love, the charity of

Christ.

He

does not

even claim for himself such acts as do not interfere with the organic to consecrate and dedicate them to functioning of the group; he prefers Christ in the Christ His in Christ living brethren, living in the abbot,

monk's

own

heart of the soul, Christ in the Tabernacle, the visible

monastic community.

brand of communism was nothing but a working comhuman appetites. Like all other materialistic promise between conflicting human passions and Cabet's communists, disciples simply accepted

The

Icarians'

of course and attempted to neutralize their evil social greeds as a matter of mathematieffects by rationing out satisfactions to each one on a basis

But the common life of a Cistercian monk is based on far wiser asthat reject such absurdities from the very start. sumptions, on tenets There is no such thing as mathematical equality in a Cistercian not strive to raise himself to the level of monastery: each one does
everybody else by cutting all the others lives on an ideal of contrary, the monk
servant of
all

cal equality.

down

to his

own

level.

On

the

self-sacrifice in

which he

is

the

and gives up everything he has, becoming like Christ, his of God and Master, obedient unto the death of the Cross for the glory self-immolation of an ideal in It is, fact, for the good of his community. which the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the World Revolution, also demands in practice. But the monk sacrifices himself for eternal values and for a reward which he begins to enjoy in the midst of his very act of
sacrifice; his

reward consists in the supernatural, divinizing

selflessness

which
It

liberates

him

forever

from

the limitations of a

narrow and

worldly egoism.

was

this

above peace and purity of heart which,

their respective

all,

essential

difference between the monks and the communists

marked the who were

to traveling together Brunswick in 1848.

harmony and happiness one another's throats? There is no explanation to be found in the natural order. After all, the two groups were made up of the same kind of material. Both monks and Cabetians had been recruited from various levels of society, and in about the same proportions. In both groups there was a small percentage of professional men and a larger group of farmers and

promised lands on board the How was it that the monks lived together in such and peace, while the Icarians were always at

The Foundation
artisans.

of

Gethsemani Abbey

195

Moreover, most of the Icarians had been brought up in the

culture. The differatmosphere of what was still a more or less Catholic ence, then, was to be found not on this superficial level but deeper

down: the monks had Christ living and working in them by faith, by monks were united by the Holy Spirit in the peace of God, charity. The which tames and dominates and sublimates man's nature and ordains it to the highest possible ends. But the Icarians were united only by the frail bonds of an "armed neutrality" of insatiable animal appetites. to and took the Leaning over the rail of the Brunswick as she hove board in the vast estuary of the Mississippi, Father Eutropius on pilot was astonished by the sight of a strange commotion in the waters a battle of different kinds of fish. Those that belonged to the sea were with those of the river. It was a presage of the violence that was
fighting
to

come.

On

reaching

New

had was not exactly the paradise flowing with milk and honey that they had been led to imagine. In fact, it was a dry and treeless their number had waste, full of bitter hardship, in which many of there were not a now succumbed to sickness and thirst and hunger. And few of them in New Orleans, begging and in rags. The reaction of the but it brought with it tragedies oroup on board ship was characteristic, that horrified the monks. There was a special meeting of the "assembly/* It was decided that they should divide up whatever money they had left, so as to be ready to face emergencies. This was done, but not before one of their number had made a gallant attempt to get away with the whole
tian colony that

GabeOrleans, the Icarians received bad news. that found had that Texas to year preceded them

the country

for himself. Another wrote a letter of delirious invective against Cabet and then blew out his brains. A third fell overboard and nearly drowned. He was rescued in time, however, and Father Eutropius had an interview with him afterward. The blood nearly froze in the Trapveins as the man calmly related how, feeling himself on the point pist's of drowning, he had already unclasped his knife to plunge it into his own heart, when a sailor jumped into the river and saved him.

sum

The monk was left with plenty of food for

thought by

this insight into

the communist mentality. One brighter touch was added to the dismal picture when one of the if he could Icarians presented himself before Father Eutropius and asked The be admitted to the Trappist community. young superior was not out that the disilluit turned unfriendly to this request. Unfortunately, sioned Icarian had a wife.

196

The Monastery

Cabet eventually reorganized his Utopia at Nauvoo, Illinois, on the vacated by the Mormons, who had left for Utah in 1847. The journey was to end as it had begun in a torrent of rain. The monks, huddled together in three wagons, learned that Kentucky can be very bleak and mournful and cold in December. It was the twentieth day
site

of the last

month

of the year.

They peered through

the icy rain at the

sycamores and the ruined cornfields. Hour followed hour. They climbed hills, and drove through flooded bottom lands in water up to their axles. They had long since been soaked to the skin. They took their dinner of bread and cheese and fruit in their swamped wagons. That was in the middle of the afternoon. By then they should have been near Bardstown. But there was still a long way to go. Darkness fell. Still no sign
of a town.

At eight o'clock one of the wagons broke down. The monks alighted and rearranged themselves. The weakest of their number moved into the two remaining wagons. The rest walked into Bardstown at eleven o'clock that night, up to their knees in mud. They were to spend the night at St. Joseph's College as guests of the Jesuit fathers. They found the college building in the Stygian darkness
of the rainy night.
trying to

man, Father Eutropius

answer.

Taking with him Brother Hilarion, a Kilkenny Irishmade a tour around the walls of the building the find door. Having found it, they knocked, but received no

The monks were in no mood to waste time. They gathered together and took a deep breath, and forty-three powerful voices roared the one
word: "T-r-r-ra-PEEST!"

window in the building flew open on the inand their students and their neighbors and probably the whole of Bardstown besides were now informed that the silent monks had arrived. The Jesuits soon built a big fire and prepared a hot meal for the travelers, but they had no beds to offer them. The monks were content to roll their blankets around them and sleep on the floor. The next day the winter solstice and the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle they started out in the not-too-early morning, after Mass and Communion, to cover the few miles that remained. For most of them it was to be the end of all journeys. Within a year one of them would already be buried at Gethsemani. Most of the others would find their rest there also, one by one, in years to come. They were tired of traveling by now!
It

seemed

as if every

stant.

The

Jesuits

The Foundation
But
if

of Gethsemani

Abbey

197

that their journey was ended, they could see by the of the land around them that their labors were just about to poverty

they knew

pale winter sun reached its zenith, and shone feebly on the low, wooded hills dominating the brown fields of the plateau* The sight of a forest cheered them after so much relatively bare landscape. Their satisfaction grew to joy when a Negro who was driving one of the
begin.

The

wagons

told

them

that the forest belonged to them.

That was Geth-

semani, their land, their

new home.

slowly advanced, among cedars and hickory trees, oak and and walnut, and an occasional sycamore with mottled branches maple as dead men's bones. And now pale they were among the hills. As the track they followed reached a summit in the undulating land, they perceived that they were entering into a different kind of landscape. Ahead of them was a broad valley, bounded in the distance by another line of blue, wooded hills. The cold air was sweet with the scent of

They

pines.

brown shelves of shale again and came to open

knoll, a
fields,

sharp descent brought them down to a creek which splashed over in a covert of dark cedars. Then they climbed fields. They saw ahead of them, on a bare, even

group of log cabins standing amid

cornfields.

In one of the

The

the stalks stood brown and dry, the ears still clinging to them. wind stirred sadly in the dry stalks and dry shucks. Kentucky

mule came up to the fence and semaphored his surprise at them with of Our Lady of Gethbig brown ears. It was their home, the orphanage semani, standing in what the monks now call St. Joseph's field, facing south and west, dominating the wide, blue valley. It was a beautiful site, vast and silent and full of peace, and the monks let their eyes rove over the undulating woods and fields toward
Hope. The view was almost beautiful enough to make them overlook the dilapidated cabins that they would have to live in. But in any case, their long journey was at an end and thanked the Living God, Whose they were glad and their tired hearts inscrutable will had destined them to this place from all eternity.
the distant village of
1
a

New

There were still plenty of wildcats in Kentucky in 1 848. Gethsemani Abley, a Narrative of the Late Abbot Eutropius, O.C.R., 1899,
Oj7. cit.,p.4i-

p.

348
*

Acts 11:44. Cf. Gilson, Mystical Theology of

St.

Bernard, p. 75.

THE WATERS OF SILOE

DAY UNTO DAY

YESTEBDAY MORNING i MADE MY WILL. You always make a will before solemn vows, getting rid of everything, as if you were about to die. It sounds more dramatic than it really is. As a matter of fact, as soon as I had renounced all earthly things, I was called into Father Abbot's room and he presented me with a contract with Harcourt, Brace for the publication of The Seven Storey Mountain. So after making my will I put my living signature on this contract. The royalties of the dead author
will

go

to the monastery.

Meanwhile,
all

business letters
these

and making

I spent the afternoon writing kinds of mistakes.

This morning, before the Blessed Sacrament, it seemed to me that vows will mean the renunciation of the pure contemplative life. If wants me to be here at Gethsemani, as my superiors insist He does Jesus (.Qui vos audit m& audit), then perhaps He does not want me to be a
pure contemplative after
all. I

suppose

it all

depends what you mean by

a pure contemplative. I soon came to the conclusion that I could not think straight about the problem anyway. Perhaps this is not the most perfect vocation in the

Church, per
is

se.

Well, what about

it? It

seems

to

be

my

vocation.

That

the thing that matters. What is the use of having some other vocation that is better in itself but is not your own vocation? But how can it be

have such a strong desire for some other vocation? Don't that sacrifice. How do I know? I don't know. That is what I am told. Do I have to believe them? I do not have to, I suppose. But something tells me that there is no other way for me. My conscience is on the side of my superiors and anyway, when I have a moment of lucid thought on die subject, experience reminds me that these feelings will go away just as they have gone away before. No

my vocation
ask me.

if I

Our Lord wants

198

Day unto Day

ipp

doubt they will come back again and go away again many times before used to I them. forgetting get
thurifer at the Solemn Abbatial Mass of reposition. On top of other I could not a decent fire troubles, my get going. The grains of incense we use are so large and so coarse that as soon as they are put on the of charcoal melt into a solid mass that off no smoke they top
I

was

all

gives

and only puts out the

was working and blowing on the charcoal the all Canon and through got my hands covered with coal and when it was all over I forgot to empty out the censer and put it away.
fire.

RECOLLECTION. That means we are supposed to be thinkabout ourselves. It seems "as ing though a year had passed since my solemn profession. But it is only a month. The more I think of my vows the happier I am. For there is only one thing left to live for: the love of
IT is

A DAY OF

God. There
wish
I

is only one unhappiness: not to love God. That is why I did not find my soul so full of movement, and shadows and

crosscurrents of dry

wind

that stir

up

the dust of

Everywhere

I turn I find the stuff I write sticking to

is

my human desires. me like flypaper.

vitality

THE CISTERCIAN LIFE

ENERGETIC. There are tides of

running

through the whole community that generate energy even in people who are lazy. And here at Gethsemani we are at the same time Cistercians and
Americans.
the
It is in
us.

some

runs away with

field.

We go out to work like a college football team taking

respects

a dangerous combination. Our energy

is God's will. Anymakes you suffer is God's will. If it makes you sweat, it is God's will. But we have serious doubts about the things which demand no expense of physical energy. Are they really the will of God? Hardly! They require no steam. We seem to think that God will not be satisfied

Trappists believe that everything that costs them

thing that

with a monastery that does not behave in every way like a munitions factory under wartime conditions of production.
If

we want
is
is

something,

we

want

God's will just as long as

easy
is

easily persuade ourselves that what it turns out to be difficult to obtain.

will. If I

we

What

my own

will:

to desire

to sacrifice myself something hard to to do God's will. No other standard applies. And because we make fetishes out of difficulties we sometimes work ourselves into the most

what is hard is God's it means that I want get,

happen

fantastically stupid situations, and use ourselves up not for God but for ourselves. think we have done great things because we are worn

We

out. If

we have

rushed into the

fields or into

the woods and done a

2oo

The Monastery

do not mind ruining all our great deal of damage, we are satisfied. as as a we make machinery, deafening noise and stir up a great long of cloud dust. Something has been achieved.

We

ALL DAY

HAVE BEEN WAITING

for

You with my

poison of unsuppressed activity. ... I have waited for Your peace to stanch and cleanse them, my Lord.

faculties bleeding the Your silence and

You
You.

will heal

my

soul

when

it

I pleases You, because

have trusted in

no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me. You have made my soul for Your peace and Your silence, but it is lacerated by the noise of my activity and my desires. My mind is cruciI will

fied all

And

day by its own hunger for experience, for do not possess my house in silence.

ideas, for satisfaction.

was created for Your peace and You will not despise my longing Your deep silence. O my Lord, You will not leave me forever in this sorrow, because I have trusted in You and I will wait upon Your good pleasure in peace and without complaining any more. This, for Your glory. I am content that these pages show me to be what I am noisy, full of the racket of my imperfections and passions, and the wide open wounds left by my sins. Full of my own emptiness. Yet, ruined as my
But
I

for the holiness of

house

is,

You

live there!

is clear,

ALL THE HILLS AND WOODS are red and brown and copper, and the sky with one or two very small clouds. A buzzard conies by and investigates me, but I am not dead yet. This whole landscape of woods

and hills is getting to be saturated with my prayers and with the Psalms and with the books I read out here under the trees, looking over the wall, not at the world but at our forest, our solitude. Everything I see has become incomparably rich for me, in the years since I made my simple vows and emerged from the novitiate. This morning I was out there again reciting the n8th Psalm and the Gradual Psalms by heart, looking at the hills. I am finishing my Psalters for the dead, and this is the last time round for this year. I am finishing early. Five days more to go. We have a month in which to say
the Psalter ten times over.

When

am

a priest

cause the priests

And I like it. It means a great deal to me. no longer be obliged to say the Psalters, besay some Masses instead. But I sometimes think I
I will

Day unto Day

20 r

would like to go on saying a few Psalters during the Tricenary anyway. But I will probably no longer have the time.

WHAT is THE USE

I

of

my complaining about not being a contemplative,

do not take the opportunities I get for contemplation? I suppose I take them, but in the wrong way. I spend the time looking for something to
something to satisfy my raffish spiritual apinstead of shutting up and emptying my mind and leaving the petite door for the to enter from the inside, all the doors inner open Holy Spirit
being barred and
i

read about contemplation

all

my

blinds down,

SPEND THE ANNIVERSARY of my solemn profession in the infirmary a to piece of great kindness on the part of Saint Joseph as I am beginning realize. It has all the earmarks of a plot arranged for no other purpose than to give me a litde recollection on this feast and make it a very

happy one.

As soon as I get into a cell by myself I am a different person! Prayer becomes what it ought to be* Everything is very quiet. The door is closed but I have the windows open. It is warm gray clouds fly all Reverend Father sold all the ducks night and all day the frogs sing.
(Father Simon Stylites kept proclaiming the Chapter of faults because the ducks quacked

Duck
all

Brothers in the
it is

night) and

an

improvement.

no typewriter, no Plenty of time. Plenty of time. No manuscripts, no breaking your rushing back and forth to church, no Scriptorium, neck to get things done before the next thing happens. I went down to Chapter because Reverend Father wants you to go to
Chapter
if

your temperature

is less

than 100.

Mine

was. Father Apolli-

naris preached vehemently

on the sufferings of Saint Joseph his mental that Mary was with child. I should not he discovered when sufferings have made funny faces when Fr. Apollinaris said Abraham was born out why he 1959 years after the creation of the world, nor can I figure that this event should be commemorated next year 1949. But imagined them. and he his head come into he says things like that; they says Then I came back to the cell. On the table were bread and butter and a can of coffee, and before I said the Largitor Father Gerard came
barley in with the bottle of

Mass wine in which much was

left

because Father

could not say Mass. And he said "This is a feast day" and poured out half a tumbler of wine. He was not aware of any anniversary of mine, but it was then that I realized what was going on and that Saint

Odo

2O2
Joseph had arranged all this as a way of giving of God's love, and that I might have joy.

The Monastery

me some

manifestations

for last

it was good and it gave me back my appetite, was hateful and I could not eat it. Then I moved the table to the window and ate looking out of the window as the Carthusians do. The clouds flew, and the huts of the ducks were empty and the frogs sang in the beautiful green pond.

So

drank the wine and

night butter

NOW

IT is EVENING. The frogs still sing. After the showers of rain around dinnertime the sky cleared. All afternoon I sat on the bed rerediscovering God, redisdiscovering the meaning of contemplation covering myself and the office, and Scripture and everything.
It

my

life,

has been one of the most wonderful days and yet I am not attached to that part of
all

I
it

have ever known in

either.

Any
way

pleasure
freeI

or the contentment I

may have got out of silence and solitude and

But
I

dom from
to

care does not matter.

know

that

is

the

ought

be

living:

with

my mind

and senses

silent,

contact with the world of

and war and community troubles severed not solicitous for anything high or low or far or near. Not pushing myself around with my own fancies or desires or projects and not letting myself get hurbusiness
ried off

my

feet

by the excessive current of natural

activity that flows

through the universe with full force.

of the feast, we had an unusually long inwas a fast day, and so we weren't long in refectory in the evening and got out early. Since the sun was higher than it usually is in that interval I saw the country in a light that we usually

LAST EVENING, on the

vigil

terval after collation. It

low-slanting rays picked out the foliage of the trees a and highlighted new wheatfield against the dark curtain of woods on the knobs, that were in shadow. It was very beautiful. Deep peace. Sheep on the slopes behind the sheep barn. The new trellises in the
see.

do not

The

novitiate garden leaning and sagging under a hill of roses, cardinal the in walnut and of all around tree, singing suddenly piles fragrant logs

the
I

woodshed waiting
looked at
all this

to

be cut in bad weather.

For

me

in great tranquillity, with my soul and spirit quiet. to be seems landscape important for contemplation; anyway, I
it.

have no scruples about loving

Didn't Saint John of the Cross hide himself in a room up in a church tower where there was one small window through which he could look
out at the country?

"

Day unto Day

THE LAST TWO EMBER DAYS were
like

203

great feasts. Friday was in fact the Stigmatization of Saint Francis, and I sat with my empty stomach and prayed behind the church while the wind moved the trees

a feast

and nobody in the world was in sight and the clouds crossed the sky with motion that was imperceptible and those red wasps clambered all over one another on the wall of the church. I don't know what this
business
is

that they go in for every

autumn up under

the eaves of the

side chapels, but every once in a while a gust of wind would blow a bunch of them off into the bushes and they would struggle back up

the wall

over again. think about Saint Francis and about poverty as I reread the seventh chapter of Saint Bonaventure's Itinerarmm.
all

and start and night Day

best thing of all is that at last I can get out to work. The Tri~ has after we our faces shaved with electric cenary begun. Saturday got shavers, we went out and picked up apples in the orchard, walking around bent double under the low branches like the woman in the
day's Gospel. Today we shoveled dirt into ditches that the rain washed out of the sheep pasture, and out of the corner of my eye I could see there was much corn waiting to be cut in the bottom lands.
I

The

know why I

in a journal

will never really be able to write anything about prayer because anything you write, even a journal, is at least

implicitly somebody else's business. happens to me in the first person singular. is really me is nobody else's business.

When

say prayer I

mean what
to

What really

happens

what

In the novitiate they practice the Gradual for the Feast of Saint Matthew, very loud.

LOVE SAILS

ME AROUND THE
am

HOUSE.

walk two

four steps in the

consolation. I

air. It is love. It is

steps on the ground consolation. I don't care if

I love

and
it is

not attached to consolation.

God. Love

carries

me

all

around. I don't want to do anything but love.

And when

the

bell rings it is like pulling teeth to make myself shift because of that love, secret love, hidden love, obscure love, down inside me and outside

me where

I don't care to talk

about

it.

Anyway

I don't

have the time

or the energy to discuss such matters. I have only time for eternity, which is to say for love, love, love. Maybe Saint Teresa would like to

have
(I

me

snap out of
it is

it

but

it is

pure, I

tell

you; I

am

not attached to

it

hope) and

love

center of

my

heart.

and it gives me soft punches all the time in the Love is pushing me around the monastery, love is

The Monastery
lacking

me

all

around

like a

gong

I tell

you, love

is

the only thing that

makes That was the way

it

possible for

me to continue
it

to tick.
trees yesterday

with

all

that blue sky.

I

men and
breath.
I

say

morning were rumbling like old to sing under his thought it was Father Subprior starting but because he old is Father that not because Subprior

was up in the apple

The

bulls in their pens

hidden in the leaves. happened to be working near, But O love, why can't you leave me alone? which
question meaning: That was the way
for heaven's sakes don't.
it

is

a rhetorical

was all week. In choir the less I worried about the singing the more I was possessed by love. There is a lesson in that about being poor. You have got to be all the time cooperating with love in this house, and love sets a fast pace even at the beginning and if

And yet any speed is too slow you don't keep up you'll get dropped. and no speed is too fast for you if you will only let love drag for love that you will have to sail the whole way. But off your feet after you our instinct is to get off and start walking. I want to be solitary; I had a tough time after I want to be
.
.
.

poor;

up

I think I was twisting and turning too much, as usual. 1 me. Aruit tamquam testa virtus mea. 1 am all dried burns business This with desire and I can only think of one thing staying in the fire that

Communion and

burns me.

SOONER OR LATER THE WORLD MUST BURN, and

all

things in

it

all

the

with books, the cloister together with the brothel, Fra Angelico together because I don't seven seen for I haven't the Lucky Strike ads which years remember seeing one in Louisville. Sooner or later it will all be consumed by fire and nobody will be left for by that time the last man
in the universe will have discovered the

capable of destroying the universe and will have been unable to resist the temptation to throw
the thing and get it over with. And here I sit writing a diary. But love laughs at the end of the world because love

bomb

is

the door to

of eternity, playing on the doorstep eternity and before anything can happen love will have drawn him over the sill and closed the door and he won't bother about the world burning be-

and he who loves God

is

nothing but love. time we tried a schola of eight, singing during the Today see where it would one day help a great deal. can whole Mass, and I That was one of the ideas Reverend Father brought back from Citeaux,
cause lie will
for the
first

know

Day unto Day

In Chapter

205

lie told us about how it was at Lisieux, and La Grande du Salut where they run a power station. At La Port and Trappe, Father our Bernard, the sculptor, has discovered a system for Trappe of pious subjects, four at a time, all different sizes, and making plaques

the notion

made me

quiver.

But sooner or later the world must burn and The Seven Storey Mountain and Figures for an Apocalypse. And I have several times one of the ten most thought how at the Last Day I am likely to be
in the history of the world, but it will be abjectly humiliated sinners like an arrow to take it will fill me with love, and I will and fly my joy, be first. And pershall last the the far in back where seat a back very

haps

Saint Francis will pray for me, and Saint John of the Cross, and Saint Mary Magdalen, 111 slide down off my high horse now and the least in everything, but not out of injured begin being the last and this morning in the eight-cylinder schola we had, that vanity as I was
if

in terra sang so fast vir erat

Hus nomine
I
fill

Jofc,

Now it is
about

a tossup whether
less.

should ask Reverend Father

to give

me

another and fatter book to

my

writing

In

fact, I

with Journal, for have begun to

we have been
tell

talking

him

all

about

my

things

Carthusian temptations to become a can't be fixed up right here.

cloister

and he

says

he

doesn't see

why

But nos qui vivimus benedicamus Domino by love, love, love, in the and in the choir and out there in the presence of the forest and the hills where all the colors are changing, and under the steeple whose

been painted with yellow traffic paint by Brother topmost cross has who Processus swung up there for days in the sky with his angel holdto him, (He upset a bucket of paint and I could see it flying ing on the end of a rope, and the paint turned to spray before upside down on it was halfway down, and a drop fell on our Psalter and there were the stones and the bushes of the cemetery little yellow spots all over where today I saw a hawk.)

MY COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE WOBLD in the Mountain and in some poems

are perhaps a weakness. Not that there isn't plenty to complain about, reaction is too natural. It is impure. The world I am sore at on but

my

paper
is

is

psychological

own imagination. The business is a perhaps a figment of my ten. And yet there game I have been playing since I was

be disgusted with in the world. plenty to

YESTERDAY AFTERNOON I WENT OUT TO THE WOODS, There was a wall of black sky beyond the knobs, to the west, and you could hear thunder

206
growling
there

The Monastery

all the time in the distance. It was very hot and damp but was good wind coming from the direction of the storm. (Before None, during the meridienne in the dormitory, I dreamed of going out: and in the dream I crossed the field where the platform still remains, from the centenary, and walked up toward Aidan Nally's.

Before

walks and

got to Nally's, in the dream, the wagon road developed sideI came not to solitude but to Jamaica High School, which

we used to pass going up a hill on the way to the movies at Loew's Valencia in the old days.) But when I woke up and really went out it was nothing at all like the dream.
and
of
First I stopped under an oak tree sat there looking out at the wide
flat

on

top of the hill behind Nally's sweep of the valley and the miles

woods over toward the

straight line of the horizon

where Rohan's

knob
of
all

is.

ran over the bent, brown grasses and moved the shoulders the green trees, and I looked at the dark mass of woods beyond the distillery, on those hills down to the south of us and realized that

The wind

it is

when

am

with people that

am

lonely,

and when

am

alone I

am no

longer lonely.

Gerhsemani looked beautiful from the hill. It made much more sense in its surroundings. We do not realize our own setting as we ought to: it is important to know where you are put, on the face of the earth. Physically, the monastery is in a great solitude. There is nothing to complain about from the point of view of geography. One or two houses a mile and a half away and then woods and pastures and bottoms and

and hills for miles and miles. had a vague idea there was a nice place beyond the field we call Hick's House although there has been no house there for years. I went
cornfields
I

beyond St. Malachy's field at the foot of the knob woods begin. It is a sort of cova where Our Lady might appear. From there we started walking to get to the forest fire we went out to fight on All Saints Day two and a half years ago. It was quiet as the Garden of Eden. I sat on a high bank, under young pines, and looked out over this glen. Right under me was a dry creek, with clean pools lying like glass between the shale pavement of the stream, and the shale was as white and crumpled as sea biscuit. Down in the glen were the songs of marvelous birds. I saw the gold-orange flame of an oriole in a tree. Orioles are too shy to come near the monasa cardinal whistling somewhere, but the best tery. There was song was that of two birds that sounded as wonderful as nightingales and their
to the calf pasture

where the

real

Day unto Day

song echoed through the wood. never heard such birds before.
I

207
could not

tell what they were. I had echo made the place sound more remote, and self-contained, more perfectly enclosed, and more like Eden.

The

HERE

SIT

SURROUNDED BY

BEES.

The

bees are happy and therefore they

are silent.

They

are

among which
as cool as I

I sit. I

working am on the

in the delicate white flowers of the

east side of the

weeds
not

house where

am

thought was going to be, and I sit on top of the bank that looks down over the beehives and the pond where the ducks used to be and Rohan's knob in the distance. And that big wobbly stepladder I
I

nearly fell off, cleaning the church once, stands abandoned out there next to one of the cherry trees, and the branches of a little plum tree before me, right by the road, sag with blue plums.

m THE CHAPTER ROOM they are finishing Seeds of Contemplation, reading a couple of pages each evening before Compline. It began when I was on retreat for ordination. I do not know what the general feeling about it has been in the house as far as I know it is not unfavorable.

Father Macarius told me: "Those

it."

Once

or twice I felt as

if

think they are intellectuals, like everyone were a bit exasperated at pas-

who

sages that were at the same time excessively negative obscure.

I

and

subtle

and

am

enough about the business

tact

glad the book has been written and read. Surely I have said of darkness and about the "experimental con-

with

God

something

in obscurity*' to be able to shut up about it and go on to else for a change. Otherwise it will just get to be mechanical

grinding out the same old song over and over again. But if it had not been read aloud at me I might have forgotten how often I had said all those things, and gone on saying them again as if they were discoveries.

For I am aware that this often happens in our life. Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in your life as you sometimes think. When you reread your journal you find out that your latest discovery is something you already found out five years ago. Still, it is
true that one penetrates deeper and deeper same experiences.
into the

same ideas and the

WE HAVE A NEW MECHANICAL MONSTER on

cavator which
is

enormous and rushes

at the earth

the place called a D-4 Traxwith a wide-open

maw
it is

and devours everything in sight. It roars terribly, especially when hungry. It has been given to the lay-brother novices. They feed it every day and you can't hear yourself think in the monastery while the

208
brute
is

The Monastery
at table. It
is

yellow and has a face like a drawbridge and is it comes from the Whayne supply I know from secret information, but as in Louisville, really, company it was born on a raft in Memphis, Tennessee. There, the hippopotamus abounds: which this instrument greatly resembles.

marked

all

over with signs saying

Also

we have bought

fans.

They

are exhaust fans.

You make a

hole

and they draw all the hot air in the building and what knows out of the dormitory. Nobody happens after that. My guess is that the hot air that went out through the fan is then replaced by the hot air that comes in through the windows. The fans are not yet running because the lay-brother novices have not yet made the holes in the building. However, they have begun. They have a scaffold up on the roof of the infirmary and they have been blasting at the gable of that wing with jackhammers, and two frail novices who are very
put the fans there

young were posted down on the ground floor near the doorways with which read "Falling Bricks." At first one of them was at the precise spot where all the falling bricks would land on standing his head. He was saying the rosary in an attitude of perfect abandonment. Afterwards he got a stool and moved inside the cloister and propped up the sign in his lap and took to reading the immortal masterpiece of Father Garrigou-Lagrange, Christian Perfection and Conartistic signs

templation.
SKY, summer having abruptly the Book of Job. It is not warm enough to sit for long in the shade of the cedars. The woods are crisply outlined in the sun and the clamor of distant crows is sharp in the air that no longer

THIS MORNING,
ended, I

UNDER A COBALT BLUE

am beginning

sizzles

with

locusts.

And

Job moves

me

deeply. This year

more than ever

it

has a special

poignancy.
I now know that all my own poems about the world's suffering have been inadequate: they have not solved anything, they have only camouflaged the problem. And it seems to me that the urge to write a real

poem about
all,

suffering

and

sin is only another temptation because, after

really understand. Sometimes I feel that I would like to stop writing, precisely as a gesture of defiance. In any case, I hope to stop publishing for a time,
I

do not

impossible for me to stop writing altocontinue gether. Perhaps writing on my deathbed, and even take some asbestos paper with me in order to go on writing in purgatory.
for I believe it has

now become

I shall

Day unto Day

Except that I hope Our sins that will make

2op

Lady

will arrange

some miraculous victory over

my

purgatory unnecessary.

me that writing, far from being an obstacle to in spiritual perfection my own life, has become one of the conditions on which my perfection will depend. If I am to be a saint and there
yet
it

And

seems

to

is

I can think of desiring to be it seems that I must there by writing books in a Trappist monastery. If I am to be a get

nothing else that

saint, I

have not only to be a monk, which is what all monks must do saints, but I must also put down on paper what I have become. It may sound simple, but it is not an easy vocation. To be as good a monk as I can, and to remain and to write
to

become

myself,

put myself down on paper, in such a situation, with the most complete simplicity and integrity, masking nothing, confusing no issues: this is very hard, because I am all mixed up in illusions and attachments. These, too, will have to be down. But without exagput
about
it:

to

need for breast beating and geration, repetition, useless emphasis. lamentation before the eyes of anyone but You, God, who see the

No

depths of

my

fatuity.

To

be frank without being boring.

it

It is

a kind of

crucifixion.

Not
it

honesty that

a very dramatic or painful one. But is beyond my nature. It must come

all this

requires so

much

somehow from the

Holy Ghost.
could well be a complete and holy transand parency: living, praying, writing in the light of the Holy Spirit, losing myself entirely by becoming public property just as Jesus is public property in the Mass. Perhaps this is an important aspect of my priesthood my living of my Mass: to become as plain as a Host in the hands of everybody. Perhaps it is this, after all, that is to be my way
of the results of
into solitude.

One

One of
of God.

the strangest ways so far devised, but

it is

the

way

of the

Word

Yet after all, this only teaches ever be public property!

me that nothing vital

about myself can

THEBE HAS BEEN A LEGAL CHANGE OF SEASONS, and the monastic fast has begun today. It is cool again, and the leaves of the sycamores are already beginning to turn yellow and brown. We brought down our mattresses and blankets from our dormitory cells and spread them out in the bright September sun. My mind is full of Saint Francis on Mount Alvernia. A moment ago, someone was playing the harmonium in the novitiate. Our psalms sound very wistful and strange on a harmonium: plaintive, sentimental, and thin, as if they were filled with an immense nostalgia

2io
for the

The Monastery

heaven of the books of meditations. It reminded me of the night Father Alberic died, three years ago. I watched by the body in the midand could not dle of the night, and then went back to the dormitory
get to sleep, even when I stayed to catch up my two hours while the others went down to church for the Night Office. Finally they sang

Matins and Lauds of the Dead, for Father Alberic, and I could hear the the organ garbled music coming into the dormitory through the back of
pipes
that great, big, dusty closet full of muffled chords!

The

poign-

ancy of that music was very affecting. It seemed to sum up all the sufferFather Alberic, ings of the long life that was now over. Poor little gray
in the infirmary! writing the history of the order on scraps of paper up All the relief, all the mystery, all the unexpected joy of his meeting with God could be guessed at in those strange harmonies. And so, this morn-

sound of this harmonium in the novitiate (it has begun to play in with the last days of a two weeks' battle, and I feel a chimes again) wistful and chastened sobriety filling my heart, as if I were one of the the world come back to eight human survivors of the deluge, watching
ing, the

view from the summit of Mount Ararat! In the tempest, I have discovered once again, but this time with a peculiarly piercing sharpness, that I cannot possess created things, I cannot touch them, I cannot get into them. They are not my end, I cannot find any rest in them. We who are supposed to be Christians know that
experience this with deeper and deeper intensity, as we go on in life. renounce the pursuit of creatures as ends on certain sacramental occasions.
truth,

well enough, abstractly. Or rather, we say have to discover it over and over again.

we

believe

it.

We

Actually

we

have

to

We

by bit, to our familiarity with them, living as if we had in this world a lasting city. But creatures remain untouchable, inviolable. If God wants you to
return, bit
. . .

And we

little, He allows you to learn just how inviolable they are. As soon as you try to possess their goodness for its own sake, all that is sweet in them becomes bitter to you, all that is beautiful, ugly. Everything you love sickens you. And at the same time your need to love

suffer a

is

something, somebody, increases a hundred times over. And God, the only one who can be loved for His own sake alone, remains in-

Who

visible
exists.

and unimaginable and untouchable, beyond everything

flowers

else that

You

and

trees,

you

hills

and streams, you

fields, flocks,

and

wild birds, you books, you poems, and you people, I am unutterably alone in the midst of you. The irrational hunger that sometimes gets

Day unto Day

into the depths of will, tries to swing my deepest self away from God and direct it to your love, I try to touch you with the deep fire that is in the center of heart, but I cannot touch without defil-

my

my

you

ing both you and myself, and I am abashed, solitary and helpless, surrounded by a beauty that can never belong to me. But tliis sadness generates within me an unspeakable reverence for the holiness of created things, for are they pure and perfect and they to and God are mirrors of His belong they beauty. He is mirrored in all things like in clean water: but if I sunlight try to drink the light that is in the water I only shatter the reflection.

And

so I live alone

and chaste in the midst

of the holy beauty of all

created things, knowing that nothing I can see or hear or touch will ever belong to me, ashamed of my absurd need to give myself away to any one of them or to all of them. The siUy, hopeless passion to give

myself away to any beauty eats out my heart but I cannot avoid it. It is in the hearts of us

It is
all,

with

it,

suffer

where

all

patience, until things will belong to us in their highest causes.

its

demands with

an unworthy desire, and we have to bear we die and go to heaven

ONE OF THE MANY NICE THINGS about being hebdomadary

is that you get the Scriptorium all to yourself during a good part of the wonderful interval after the Night Office. All the other priests are saying Mass and

the young professed are going to Communion. I listen to the clock tick. Downstairs the thermostat has just stopped humming. God is In this

room. So

much

so that

it is difficult

to read or write. Nevertheless Til

get busy on Isaias which is Your word, O my God, and may Your fire grow in me and may I find You in Your beautiful fire. It is very quiet, O my God, Your moon shines on our hills. Your moonlight shines in my wide open soul when everything is silent Adolezco yeno y tnuero.

WALKING BACK FROM THE BARNS in the warm sun on the muddy road between the orchard and the vegetable garden with the Spiritual Canticle under my arm, and saying those wonderful words! I found a fine place to read and pray, on the top floor of that bam building where the rabbits used to be. Up under the roof is a place reached by various ladders. Some stovepipes and old buckets are there and many of the little boxes in which the novices gather strawberries in the early summertime. There is a chair and there is a beautiful small rectangular window which faces south over the valley the outside orchard, Saint the quietest and most hidden Joseph's field, the distant line of hills. It is and most isolated place I have found in the whole enclosure but not

212
necessarily the coming in the

The Monastery

warmest However, it was good yesterday with the sun window: Vacio, hambriento, solo, llagado y doliente de amor, suspense en el aire. Almost all activity makes me ill, but as soon as I am alone and silent again I sink into deep peace, recollection, and
NOTEBOOKS have so much power in them that they make me wonder why no one writes like that in monasteries. Not that there have not been better books written in monasteries, and books more serene. But monks do not seem to be able to write so well and it is as if our our contact with the naked professional spirituality sometimes veiled realities inside us. It is a common failing of monks to lose themselves to let themselves be cast in a in a collective, professional personality mold. Yet this mold does not seem to do away with what is useless or even unpleasant about some personalities. We cling to our eccentricities and our selfishness, but we do so in a way that is no longer interesting because it is after all mechanical and vulgar.
RTLKE'S
i

happiness.

HAVE FALLEN

into the great indignity I have written against

is

am

contemplative a sin and the punishment

use and be a saint by
it,

who

ready to collapse from overwork. This, I think, is of sin but now I have got to turn it to

good

somehow.
Like Ezechias

Teaching wears

me

out.

treasures to the Babylonians. monks are Babylonians in their

my

Not own

I am in a big hurry to show all that the novices and the young

right

And might what can I share with them? There is so little one can communicate. I talk my head off and they seem to be listening to somebody who wasn't there, to stories I never told them. They have received messages I never intended them to hear. While I talk they sit there perhaps imagining they like what I say and all the while they are building up myths of their own upon a few fragments of words that came out of me. I am astonished at their constructions. But in the end I think I am astonished that I am able to say anything at all that passes from me to some other mind except God's.

my
or

treasures they

just as well be.

but relatively to me and yet what can I show them,

the indignity of thinking such an endeavor is other really important. day while the new high altar was being consecrated I found myself being stripped of one illusion after another.
terrible

The

thing

is

The

There
so

I stood

and
I

sat

with rny eyes closed and wondered

why

I read

much, why

write so

much, why

I talk so

much, and why

I get so

excited about the things that only affect the surface of

my

life

came

Day unto Day

here eight years ago and already
eight years I

213

knew

better

when

I arrived.

But

foi

have obeyed the other law in my members and so I am worn out with activity exhausting myself with proclaiming that the to do is rest. In omnibus thing requiem
cjuaesivi
.
.

YESTEKDAY, THE FEAST OF SAINT THOMAS, was, as I think, an important day. It was warm and overclouded and windy but tranquil. I had a kind of sense that the day was building up to some kind of deep decision. wordless decision, a giving of the There depths and substance of

is

a conversion of the deep will to barely in a gesture or

God
is

myself. that cannot be effected in

is

words

ceremony. There

will

and a

gift of

my

substance that

a conversion of the deep too mysterious for liturgy, and

too private. It is something to be done in a lucid secrecy that implies first of all the denial of communication to others except perhaps as a

neutral thing.
I shall remember the time and place of this liberty and this neutrality which cannot be written down. These clouds low on the horizon, the

outcrops of hard yellow rock in the road, the open gate, the perspective of fenceposts leading up the rise to the sky, and the big cedars tumbled

and tousled by the wind. Standing on rock. Present. The reality of the present and of solitude divorced from past and future. To be collected and gathered up in clarity and silence and to belong to God and to be nobody else's business. I wish I could recover the liberty of that interior decision which was very simple and which seems to me to have been a kind of blank check and a promise. TO BELONG TO GOD
I

have

to

belong

to myself. I

have

to

be alone

at

None of me belongs to anybody but God. Absolute loneliness of the imagination, the memory, the will. My love
for everybody is equal, neutral, and clean. and free as the sky because I love everybody

least interiorly alone. This I cannot belong to people.

means the constant renewal

of a decision.

No

exclusiveness. Simple

and

am

possessed

by no-

body, not held, not bound. In order to be not remembered or even wanted I have to be a person that nobody knows. They can have Thomas

Merton, He's dead. Father Louis

he's half

dead

too.

For

my

part

my
not

name

is

that sky, those fenceposts,

and those cedar

trees. I shall

even reflect on who I am and I shall not say my identity is nobody's business because that implies a truculence I don't intend. It has no
meaning.

Now my whole life is

this

to

the fields where I walk and I

own

keep unencumbered. The wind owns nothing and am owned by nothing

214

The Monastery
I shall

and

never even be forgotten because no one will ever discover

me. This

is to

me

a source of
this

immense

confidence.

My

Mass

this

morn-

ing was transfigured by

independence.

THEY ABE PULLING DOWN

to
it,

the horsebarn.

in the rain, after dinner.

shall fall.

house upon house

its

The Traxcavator was tethered The barn was already half in ruins. And The roof was down in a hoisted heap

red old wings clumsily over the wreckage of the stables. spreading The other half of the barn was tied to the monster and ready to fall. The
stone pillars were already crooked and awry. When 1 was at work I could hear the engine roar but did not hear the fall of the old building.

SEE NO FACE, I treasure no experience, no memory. Anything I write down here is only for personal guidance because of my constant gravitation away from solitude. It will remind me how to go home. Not to be like the man who looked in the glass and straightway forgot what manner of man he was: yet I shall not remember myself in such a way
r

that I

remember the person

I

am

not.

rediscover solitude, prayer in choir becomes difficult again. But the other day Tuesday at the Night Office Psalm 54 had tremendous

As

meaning

for me. I felt as

is

written. It

more

my own

if I were chanting something than any of my own poems:

myself had

Cor meum conturbatum est in me, et formido mortis cedidit super me. Timor et tremor venerunt super me, et contexerunt me tenebrae: Et dixi: quis dabit mihi pennas sicut columbae et volabo, et requiescam?
Ecce, elongavi fugiens, et mansi in solitudine.

Expectabo
tate.

eum

qui salvum

me

fecit

a pusillanimitate spiritus, et tempes-

driving me into solitude. Love has put drops of terror veins and my they grow cold in me, suddenly, and make me faint with fear because my heart and my imagination wander away from God
It is fear that is

in

private idolatry. It is my iniquity that makes me physiand turn to jelly because of the contradiction between my nature and my God. I am exhausted by fear. So that yesterday, for example, I thought I would fall with the ciborium, distributing Communion to the brothers. But last night in the middle of the night I was awake for an hour and a half and die last line I have quoted there was verified. All five lines are truer of my life than anything I have ever written, and this gives me great confidence in the liturgy. This is the secret of the psalms. Our identity is hidden in them. In them we find
into their

own

cally faint

Day unto Day

ourselves,
self to
i

215

and God. In these fragments he has revealed not only Himus but ourselves in Him. Mittit crystallum suum sicut Iwccellas.
was
incident that happened New Year's Eve, sitting by the ruins of the old horsebarn, look-

WANTED TO WRITE DOWN an

down

in the afternoon. I

ing

at the bleak pasture, the cedars, the enclosure wall, the

woods,

and then that little heavenly vista of far hills in the southeast It was were in the outside orchard. I saw them going into the gray. Hunters woods. White pants and brown pants. They were not very serious hunters because they were talking all the time; their talk echoed all through the wood. Their dog was far ahead of them, barking and barking. Soon they just stopped in the middle of the road and talked. But die dog ranged from one end of the wood to the other, barking. It was easy to see that the whole hunt was a lie. The dog was after nothing. Neither were the hunters. Suddenly White Pants climbed up on the enclosure wall. He stood on top of it, with his gun. It was all an act: "Well, I am standing on
the wall. I
will rout

am

preparing to shoot

all

the rabbits as they go by.

My dog

them out and they

will all

come running
point

wall in an orderly procession.

From my

past this point in the of vantage I will easily

be able

pick them off, one by one." The whole universe knew that as soon as he fired the gun he would fall off the wall backwards inside the enclosure, perhaps into the dirty old bathtub full of rain water and is placed there as a horsetrough. spring water and green weeds which a monk. have to would become he Then Meanwhile I was in an equivocal position. I began to wonder if perof White Pants on top of haps I was expected to resent the presence
to

supposed to act like a responsible member wave my arms and shout "Hey!" and make guttural society, stand up, sounds signifying, "Get down off the wall!" Naturally he knew I could not talk to him. But we came to an understanding. I allowed him to
the enclosure wall.

Was

of

gather,

ever, to

howby my immobility, that I was invisible. I permitted him, deduce from the fact that I looked in his direction, that I entertained toward him and the universe he represented an abstract, disembodied, and purely official good will. So there we stayed. He sat on and I sat on a board reading, meditating on top of the wall, hunting, had some book or what eternal truths, you will. I believe I must have Both were simply had a he as or other with me, just gun. quite clearly
factors in a disguise. I don't

know who he
it

was. I

am

not quite sure

knew who

I was. In neither case did

matter.

The Monastery
Soon the dog came inside the enclosure, through a hole under the tail with mongrel optiwall, and ran about barking and wagging his end of the pasture to the other from ran colts mism. Then the three
investigate the dog.

White Pants spoke to his companion, "Call that himself up and walked off stiffly, eastward, along dog." Then he picked the top of the wall. I do not know what became of him. If I had watched
I

might have ascertained. Not a shot was fired. I did not turn a page of the hook I may or may not have had with me. Not a drop of rain fell Not a bird sang. Ours wisdom. is a comfortable world, without either science or
i

WENT TO THE GARPEN-HOUSE

the ladder, observing all and broken strawberry boxes my way through the litter of old stovepipes a sack, stained with either is chair the On to the chair by the window. or the blood of slaughtered. I opened the
paint, creosote,

the hoes

ATTIC, as usual, after dinner. Climbed up and shovels lying on the floor. I made

something

out one day when I let it slam; I can still see the fragments of glass on the red roof of the shed below). but tall streamers of Today it was wonderful. Clouds, sky overcast, down in a fan over the bare hills. sunlight coming aware of great excitement. The pasture was full became I Suddenly There was an eagle flying over the woods. The crows of birds
small

window (a pane

fell

starlings.

were

all

Even

and were soaring, very high, keeping out of the way. frightened, more distant still were the buzzards, flying and circling, observing

a distance. And the starlings filled every large and everything from small tree, and shone in the light and sang. The eagle attacked a tree full of starlings but before he was near them the whole cloud of them

him and he came nowhere near them. Then were there he went away and they alighted on the ground. They
left

the tree and avoided

all

five minutes. Then, like lightning, moving about and singing for about the cloud of birds, and they opened into it happened. I saw a scare go
split second, wings and began to rise off the ground and, from behind the house and from over my roof a hawk came down like a bullet, and shot straight into the middle of the starlings just as they off the ground. They rose into the air and there was a were

their

in that

getting

slight

bird he
It

on the ground as the hawk got his talons into the one had nailed. was a terrible and yet beautiful thing, that lightning flight, straight
scuffle

as

an arrow, that killed the slowest

starling.

Then

every

tree,

I do not every field was cleared.

know where

all

the

Day unto Day

starlings went. Florida, maybe. their wood. Their guttural

217

The

crows were

still

in sight, but over

cursing had nothing more to do with this affair. The vultures, lovers of dead things, circled over the bottoms where perhaps there was dead. The hawk, all alone, in the
pasture, possessed his prey. stayed in the field like a

something He did not

fly

away with
bird,

it

like a thief.

He
else

king with the killed

came near him.

I tried to

He

and nothing

took his time.

pray, afterward. But the hawk was eating the bird. And I thought of that flight, coining down like a bullet from the sky behind me and over my roof, the sure aim with which he hit this one bird,
as

though he had picked it out a mile away. For a moment I envied the lords of the Middle Ages who had their falcons and I thought of the Arabs with their fast horses, hawking on the desert's edge, and I
understood the
terrible fact that

also
I

some men love war. But in the end,

be studied by saints and contemplatives; because he knows his business. I wish I knew my business as well as he does his.
is to

think that

hawk

I wonder if my admiration for you gives me an affinity for you, artist! wonder if there will ever be something connatural between us, between your flight and my heart stirred in hiding, to serve Christ, as you, soldier, serve your nature. And God's love a thousand times more terrible! Now I am going back to the attic and the shovels and the broken window and the trains in the valley and the prayer of Jesus.
I

The

song of

my

Beloved beside the stream.

skies

The
tell

clerestories.

His

have sanctified

my

eyes,

His woods are

our secret.

birds descanting in their clearer than

the King's falace. But the air and I will never

THE FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT,

sanctified the desert
all

as I

and in the

now know, is a great feast. Christ has desert I discovered it. The woods have
it is

become young

in the discipline of spring: but

the discipline of

expectancy only. Which one cut more keenly? The February sunlight, or the air? There are no buds. Buds are not guessed at or thought of,
is

But the wilderness shines with promise. The land dressed in simplicity and strength. Everything foretells the coming of the holy spring. I had never before spoken so freely or so intimately with woods, hills, birds, water, and sky. On this great day, however, they understood their position and they remained mute in the presence
this early in Lent.

of the Beloved.

Only His

light

and

sister,

the light and water.

was obvious and eloquent. My brother The stump and the stone. The tables
little

of rock.

The

blue, naked sky. Tractor tracks, a

waterfall.

And

2i8
Mediterranean solitude. I thought of Italy after

The Monastery

my Beloved had
house
is

spoken

and was gone.

i

WAS IN THE CELLARER'S NEW

OFFICES.

The

little

very pleasant,

with Venetian blinds and two small rooms paneled with cedar, which smells overpowering. There is a nook for the cheese salesman, and a door leads into a fair-sized warehouse, then there is a small garage to
hide the jeep in, and a larger place where trucks can drive in and unload the riches of Araby and Ophir.

But
the

my

chief joy

is

little

broken

window

to escape to the attic of the garden house and that looks out over the valley. There in the

silence I love the green grass.

have become part of

willows and
in our

The tortured gestures of the apple trees at the shining water under the prayer. I look listen to the sweet songs of all the living things that are

my

woods and fields. So much do I love this solitude that when I walk out along the road to the old barns that stand alone, far from the new buildings, delight begins to overpower me from head to foot and in the marrow of my bones. peace smiles even
i.

is

so

EXTERIOR SILENCE its special necessity in our world in which there much noise and inane speech. As protest and reparation against the

"sin" of noise.

BabeL Silence not a virtue, noise not a sin. True. But the turmoil and confusion and constant noise of modern society are the expression of the ambiance of its greatest sins its godlessness, its despair. A world of
propaganda, of endless argument, vituperation, criticism, or simply of chatter, is a world without anything to live for. Advertising radio,
television, etc.

Catholics

who

associate themselves

with that kind of noise,

who

enter

into the Babel of tongues, become to some extent exiles from the city babble. All of God. (Mass becomes racket and confusion. Tension

prayer becomes exterior and interior noise

of rosary.
.
.

soulless

and hasty

repetition

Hence: though it is true that we must know how to bear with noise, have interior life, by exception here and there in midst of confusion (Saint Thomas's principles for activity), yet to resign oneself to a situation in which a community is constantly overwhelmed with activity, noise of machines, etc,, is an abuse. What to do? Those who love God should attempt to preserve or create an atmosphere in which He can be found. Christians should have
to

quiet homes.

Throw

out television,

if

necessary

not everybody, but

Day unto Day those who take

219
this sort of thing seriously.

Radios useless. Stay away

from the movies I was going to say "as a penance" but it would seem to me to be rather a pleasure than a penance, to stay away from the movies. Maybe even form small agrarian communities in the country where there would be no radios, etc. Let those who can stand a little silence find other people who like silence, and create silence and peace for one another. Bring up their kids not to yell so much. Children are naturally quiet if they are left alone and not given the needle from the cradle upward, in order that and they may develop into citizens of a state in which everybody yells
is

yelled

at.

Provide people with places where they can go to be quiet relax minds and hearts in the presence of God chapels in the country, or in

Reading rooms, hermitages. Retreat houses without a constant ballyhoo of noisy "exercises" they even yell the stations of the either. far too and not from Gethsemani Cross, and discipline to give up renunciation mean For many it would great is what they need. Afraid that these sources of noise: but they know think would to do it because their neighbors they were bats.

town

also.

But
2.

at least monasteries

should be

silent!

THE END

Interior Silence

of judgments, passions, desires.

Saint Gregory the Great Elizabeth of the Trinity

can carry it you gain this interior silence you But and in the around with you world, just as interior pray everywhere. mortificaexterior and concrete without asceticism cannot be acquired
Conclusion:
tion, so it is

When

absurd to talk about interior silence where there

is

no

ex-

terior silence.

IT is

NOW six MONTHS since I have been Master of the Scholastics and have looked into their 'hearts and taken up their burdens upon me. I have not always seen clearly and I have not carried their burdens too well and I have stumbled around a lot, and on many days we have gone around in circles and fallen into ditches because the blind was leading
the blind.
or if they are they have discovered anything new, in them I have if any way to find able to love God more, or helped what I have know I But themselves. themselves, which is to say: to lose
I

do not know

if

discovered: that the kind of

work
is,

would

interfere with "solitude"

I once feared because I thought it in fact, the only true path to solitude.

22o

The Monastery
in

One must be
to lead

some sense

a hermit before the care of souls can serve

desert.

one further into the

But once God has

called

you

to soli-

tude, everything you touch leads you further into solitude. Everything that affects you builds you into a hermit, as long as you do not insist

on doing the work yourself and building your own kind of hermitage. What is my new desert? The name of it is compassion. There is no wilderness so terrible, so beautiful, so arid, and so fruitful as the wilderness of compassion. It is the only desert that shall truly flourish like the lily. It shall become a pool, it shall bud forth and blossom and rejoice

with

joy.

It is in the desert

of compassion that the thirsty land

turns into springs of water, that the poor possess all things. There are no bounds to contain the inhabitants of this solitude in which I live
alone, as isolated as the

Host on the
to

altar,

the food of

all

men, belong-

ing to all
ruins of

and belonging
heart,

none, for

God

is

with me, and

He

sits

in the

my

preaching His Gospel

to the poor.

THE JOB IN THE WOODS is this: since October I have been the timber marker. I suddenly found out all about the trees. Next spring I shall
presumably be in charge of planting ten thousand seedlings to replace what has been cut down. I started out with my pot of paint in October. The work began on the northeast flank of the lake knob, behind Donohue's place. After that we worked north. I am generally a couple of days' work ahead of the brothers who are after me with chainsaws and

axes

and

that orange

army truck and the old

jeep.

The

old jeep

is dis-

tinguished from the flashy red jeep which some brother postulant brought from Kansas but this "new" jeep is reserved for the novices. Right now we are in a deep valley I never knew about before. It is

between two knobs which do not have names, but one of which has become for me Mount Carmel I have marked the trees in many different colors. Sometimes white, sometimes slate-blue. I began the year nineteen fifty-two with canary yellow. So all the west side of the smallest
is splashed with canary the sang Epiphany Gospel to the silent glens. Videntes autem stellam gavisi sunt gaudlo magno valdel On the whole, the best paint was that casein paint I used on the

knob we

see at the east

it

end

of our line of knobs

yellow, and

was

there, too, that I

beech trees and the blighted elms and on the twisted tan oaks along that slope outside the valley, where Prater Caleb brought the novices
a couple of times. Prater Caleb the undermaster is one of my scholastics. That was also the place where, just after a lot of timber had been cut

down and

stacked for loading, and a lot of brush was lying around, a

Day unto Day

forest fire

221

broke out in November, on the feast of the Dedication of the Church. Brother Gelgan got the jeep in the afternoon and I went out with him and three other brothers and we put out the fire with Indian

pumps

strapped on our backs. These are very effective

much more

so

than flapping at the flames with a cedar branch, or scuffing them with
pitchforks.

On
on

the feast of the

Holy Innocents

I took four of the scholastics

It is

out
all

this

knob which

I secretly call

Mount CarmeL

the finest of

the knobs. It runs north and south behind the lake knob and from the
clear of trees, you can see all over this part of Kenis fairly of woods over to the northwest, and in the direction of miles tucky and house New Haven. Out there somewhere, a few miles Hanekamp's top,

which

on,

lies the place where Lincoln was born. So we took a truck as far as Donohue's. After that we got out and walked to the last cornerstone of our property at the end of the valley, and then climbed the knob. There was a high wind blowing and it was cold but wonderful. And I looked down into the big wide bowl of woods which is McGinty's hollow because somebody called McGinty once had a log cabin there or something. But it is all woods now, and I got lost there exactly a year before, on the feast of the Holy Innocents in 1950. The more I get to know my scholastics the more reverence I have for their individuality and the more I meet them in my own solitude. The

best of them,
solitary

and the ones to whom I and at the same time the most

feel closest, are also the

most

replaces

my

theories of solitude. I
I least

do

charitable. All this experience not need a hermitage, because I

have found one where

brothers less well that
that I

my

it. It was when I knew my involved in them. Now more thoughts were

expected

can see something of the depths of solitude which are in every human person, but which most men do not know either to themselves or to others or to God. how to

know them
lay open

better, I

The young ones, I admit, do not have half the problems I used to have when I was a scholastic. Their calmness will finally silence all that remains of my own turbulence. They come to me with intelligent quessometimes with an even more intelligent absence of questions. me with their simplicity. Very spontaneously, they come They that to share my love of anything I may have discovered, around here,
tions, or

refresh

is

cations.

needed,

But they ignore my persistent interest in theological compliThis is to me both a confusion and an education to see that well without what I used to think I they can mostly get along quite when I was sane, I realized I did not need it at all. even
simple.

though,

222
I say theological complications,

The Monastery
not theology. For
I

constantly preach

in to them from the encyclicals that they must know theology. Myself, a on Thomas Saint love and pile of the afternoons after dinner, I read on come the Sunday the horse pasture where neighbors logs beyond that after afternoons to hunt with shotguns. And there I have discovered on mysticism but more all what the monks most need is not conferences
light

or justice or fortitude. And above all what charity or temperance, hope desire is to penetrate the Mystery of Christ they need and what they and in the whole Bible (some of them His in and to know Him

about the ordinary

virtues,

whether they be

faith or

prudence,

seem

Gospels read nothing else but the Bible). Thus it is that I live in the trees. I mark them with paint, and the woods cultivate me with their silences, and all day long even in choir
to

and
like

at

Mass I seem trees, and they

to

be in the

forest:

but

my

children themselves are

flourish all

around

me

like the things that

grow

in

the Bible.

THE BLUE ELM TREE near at hand and the light blue hills in the distance: the red bare clay where I am supposed to plant some shade trees: these are before me as I sit in the sun for a free half hour between direction and work. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and today, as I sit in
the sun, big blue and purple fish swim past me in the darkness of my within me as soon as I close my eyes. empty mind, this sea which opens on a world which, for all I Delightful darkness, delightful sun, shining
care,
It

has already ended. does not occur to me to

wonder whether we

will ever transplant the

the the wood, yonder, to this bare leveled patch young maples from old horsebarn once stood. It does not occur to me to the where place wonder how everything here came to be transformed. I sit on a cedar log half chewed by some novice's blunt ax, and do not reflect on the plans I have made for this place of prayer, because they do not matter. They
will

happen when they

will

happen.

The

hills are as

pure as jade in
is

in His transparent world, but be mentioned, too holy to be observed. I sit in silence.

the distance.

God

is

He

too sacred to

The

big deep fish

are purple in

my
is

sea.

DIFFERENT LEVELS OF DEPTH.

First,

there

action. I

make

plans.

the slightly troubled surface of the sea. Here there is They toss in the wake of other men's traffic: pass-

ing

liners. I

I speak to the scholastics.

make

resolutions to speak less

Day unto Day

of the things that surprise myself wildly, to say fewer

223

and them. Where

do they spring from?

is the darkness that comes when I close my eyes. Here where the big blue, purple, green, and gray fish swim By. Most beautiful and peaceful darkness: is it the cave of my own inner being? In this watercavern I easily live, whenever I wish. Dull rumors only of the world reach me. Sometimes a drowned barrel floats into the room. with silver under their purple scales. Are these the Big gray-green fish, the blind men see all day? I close my eyes to the sun, and live

Second, there

is

things

a natural prayer, peace. When I am tired it is almost slumber. There is no sound. Soon even the fish are gone. Night,

on die second

level,

If you make a theory about up you night Nothing is happening. in quietism. All I say about it is that it is comfortable. It is a rest. I half of glory. Lo, thus I have open my eyes to the sun, praising the Lord shale cities of Genesis. the blank the from returned abyss, re-entering
it

end

Ferns and

fish return.

waters, peace, peace, the sun. pray therein, slightly

of the Lovely dark green things. In the depth is the second level of waters under Such peace.

We

Words, as I meant to drown

waving among the fish. think, do not spring from this second level. They are only
there.

The
tions
sea.
I

socialization does not concern these waters. question of

They

are nobody's property. Animality.

Game

preserve. Paradise.
territory.

whatever perturb their holy botany. Neutral

No quesNo man's

think

God

intended
first.

me

to write about this second level, however,

all

unsatisfactory will not solutions: including the problem of "monastic spirituality/* I talked Fathers Desert even answer, as I answer the scholastics, that the

rather than the

abandon

problems

to their

own

not about monastic spirituality but about purity of heart and obedience and solitude, and about God. And the wiser of them talked very little about anything. But the divine life which is the life of the soul as the and not soul is the life of the body: this is a pure and concrete thing is not measured me in God books. else's be measured
to

by your
scales of

ascetic theory

by somebody and God in you

is

not to be weighed in the

my

doctrine. Indeed,

He

is

not

to

be weighed

at all

Third level. Here there is positive life swimming which is no longer thick like water but pure, like air. Starlight, and you stilldo not know where it is coming from. Moonlight is in this prayer, the middle in for the Redeemer. Walls watching horizons ness,
waiting

in the rich darkness

224
of the night.
is

The Monastery

In velamento diei et in luce stellamm nocte. Everything is no speculation with charged intelligence, though all is night. There here. There is vigilance; life itself has turned to purity in its own refined depths. Everything is spirit. Here God is adored, His coming is recog-

He is received as soon as He is expected and because He is expected He is received, but He has passed by sooner than He arrived, He was gone before He came. He returned forever. He never yet passed by and already He had disappeared for all eternity. He is and He is not.
nized,

Everything and Nothing. Not light not dark, not high not low, not this side not that side. Forever and forever. In the wind of His passing the
angels cry,

"The Holy One

is

gone." Therefore

I lie

dead in the

air of

their wings. Life and night, day and darkness, between life and death. mortal existence, which opens into the sky. This is the holy cellar of

my

strange awakening to find the sky inside you and beneath you and above you and all around you so that your spirit is one with the sky, and all is positive night. Here is where love burns with an innocent flame, the clean desire
It is a

for death: death without sweetness,

tary,

without sickness, without commen-

without reference, and without shame. Clean death by the sword

of the spirit in which is intelligence. And everything in order. Emergence and deliverance. I think this also is the meaning of Ash Wednes-

day:

mourn man because you

are not yet dust. Receive your ashes

and

rejoice.

monk, the holy truth concerning this thing called death. is in each man a deep will, potentially committed to freedom or captivity, ready to consent to life, born consenting to death,
Receive,

Know

that there

turned inside out, swallowed by

in the whale.

its

own

self,

prisoner of itself like Jonas

This
leads

is

him

to

the truth of death which, printed in the heart of every man, look for the sign of Jonas the prophet. But many have

gone

into hell crying out that they had expected the resurrection of the dead* Others, in turn, were baptized and delivered: but their remained

powers

asleep in the dark and in the bosom of the depths. Many of the men baptized in Christ have risen from the depths without troubling to find out the difference between Jonas and the whale.
It is

the whale
it is

the sea. But

we cherish. Jonas swims abandoned in the heart of the whale that must die. Jonas is immortal. If we do

not remember to distinguish between them, and if we prefer the whale and do not take Jonas out of the ocean, the inevitable will come to pass.

Day unto Day The whale and

2.25

the prophet will soon come around and meet again in their wanderings, and once the whale will swallow the again prophet. Life will be swallowed again in death and its last state will be worse
first

than the

must get Jonas out of the whale and the whale must die at a time when Jonas is in the clear, busy with his orisons, clothed and in his right mind, free, holy, and walking on the shore. Such is the meaning of the desire for death that comes in the sane night, the peace that
finds us for a
to

We

moment in clarity, walking by the light of the stars, raised God's connatural shore, dryshod in the heavenly country, in a rare

moment

But even
of

of intelligence. if we are not always intelligent, we must inevitably die. I pursue this no further. It came to me because Prater John thought

God got a lot of kids' pictures from a sister in a school somewhere in Milwaukee. The pictures were supposed to be by backward children. Backward nothing. Most of them were of Jonas in or near the whale. They are the only real works of art I have seen in ten years, since entering Gethsemani. But it occurred to me that these wise children were
drawing pictures of their own lives. They knew what was in their own depths. They were putting it all down on paper before they had a chance to grow up and forget. They were proving better than any apologist that there is

something in the very nature of

man

that expects a

Redeemer and

resurrection

in our being. vestige of the Creator but also contains, written everywhere, in symbols, the economy of our Redemption.
IT is
as

No

from the dead. The sign of Jonas is written wonder that this should be so when all creation is a

JUNE.

On

Pentecost

hebdomadary and

next week, when with flowers, the sanctuary white-hot under the floodlights concealed behind the pillars, high in the ceiling. You look up at the monstrance

Sunday it is my turn again to take my week the Conventual Mass. Then I am deacon the sing Christi comes. Once again, the cloister is paved Corpus

through a cloud of hot, sweet smoke from the censer, and the sweat runs down into your eyes! I feel as though I had never been anywhere in the

were no other place in the world do not say I love Gethsemani in spite of the heat, or because of the heat. I love Gethsemani: that means burning days and nights in summer, with the sun beating down on the
world except Gethsemani
as if there

where

had ever

really lived. I

metal roof and the psalms pulsing exultantly through the airless choir, while, row upon row of us, a hundred and forty singers, we sway for-

226

ward and bow down. And the clouds of smoke go sanctuary, and the novices get thin and go home forever. On two sides of us the new buildings are complete. Half factory and

The Monastery up to God in the

half a Venetian palace, the new "garden house" with the cheese factory in the cellar and the brothers' novitiate on the roof rises enormous over

the cabbages in the garden. Then on the other side, half veiled behind the trees, the slick new yellow guesthouse is full of priests from Evansville

who have been coming

1

here on retreat, in

shifts,

week by week

all

looked at their namecards where they vested in the sacristy and June. wondered who these Fathers were: old Fathers and young Fathers,
Father Hut, Father Mattingly, Father Pfau. And right at the place where our Father Raymond is vesting for the Mass pro defunctis, this

week, they have a card for a Father Flanagan, of the Evansville retreat. Now this is very funny, but of course you, reader, do not understand

why

it is

funny because you do not know that Father Raymond's

to

last

name is also Flanagan. Meanwhile there is supposed

it

be another

new

building. This time

be an infirmary. And when Dom Gabriel Sortais (he is our new Abbot General) came back again last month and made another Visitation, he told us to make rooms opening on the infirmary chapel
will

have

to

can be rolled back and the very sick monks, the Mass from their beds. I do not stop to ask myhear can monks, dying self if I shall die in such a bed, or in any bed at all. It means another year of cement mixers and air compressors in the yard outside this window, where I no longer have time to write books and where my spiritual
so that the partition

children

come
I

to talk

about God. But

if

the cement mixers

it is all

mean

that

someone who
This week
to

is

dying can hear Mass in bed

right with me.

it is

am

the third hebdomadary,

which means

my

turn

say the brothers' Communion Mass, Our Lady's Mass. It is always a votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin, always the same. I like it that way. In the summertime, this Mass is said at three o'clock in the

morning.

morning meditation to go and say it while the rest of the monks recite Matins and Lauds. I generally finish the brothend the the ers' Communions of second nocturn, and then go off into by
So
I

leave the choir after

the back sacristy and kneel in the dark behind the relic case next to Saint Malachy's altar, while the sky grows pale outside over the forest,

and a

The
As

birds sing,

cool air seeps in through the slats of the broken shutters. and the crickets sing, and one priest is silent with God. soon as the morning angelus rings, I go out into the new day,
little

my

Day unto Day

227

own new private dawn, which belongs to me alone. The other priests are now saying their Masses. The novices and scholastics are getting ready for Communion and the brothers are peeling potatoes in the workroom or slinging milkcans around the tile floor of the new dairy. I walk out and have the dawn to myself. I have almost two hours to think by myself and make up the Night Office. I am all pray or read or
and the herd that lows
alone in the cool world of morning, with the birds and the blue hill across the fields in our neighbor's pasture, and the rooster that sings sol-do in the coop behind the apple trees, and

Aidan Nally growling

yonder.

at a

team of mules on the

side of his hill over

Already I am hoping that it will be somewhat the same one day next week, on the feast of Saint John the Baptist, when I will say Mass late, and consequently have this same long interval to myself, in the blue,
wide-open, lonely morning. On that day Prater Caleb's family are comMass for them, and thus I ing from St. Louis and he wants me to say
will give Communion to his little sister Mary Ann who just made her First Communion and who thinks she wants to be either a policewoman

or a Carmelite

when

she grows up.

Lord of hosts! The sparrow hath lovely are thy tabernacles, a nest for herself where she dove the turtle house and a found herself may lay her little ones!

How

of heaven

God the land where you have given me roots in eternity, and earth. This is the burning promised land, the house of God, the gate of heaven, the place of peace, the place of silence, the Each tomato patch is named after a place of wrestling with the angel. saint. And the tomatoes called "St. Benedict, ora <pro nobis" are under
This
is

the care of
tion.

Rod Mudge who came down

he came back

with

Dan Walsh

to

my ordinato

year later

as a novice

and soon expects

make

profession.

Blessed are they who dwell in thy house, thee for ever and ever.

Lord!

They

shall praise

which has become a peeling off the old garden house, the pillars of the old wagon shed has been One of rejected building. a tractor. There will be a new metal hangar for all knocked down

The

roof

is

by

the machines. This corner of the farm, where the old horsebarn used to me for the planting of shade is the desert that has been to
be,
trees, that it

may some day be

given a place of contemplation. Mtaria tua,

Domine virtutuml

228

The Monastery
there, the

Down
It is
1
2

young

bulls

still

sleep behind the single strand of

their electric fence.

four o'clock in the morning.

(Psalm 21:16).
is

"My strength has Burned up like a potsherd"

My

heart

is

troubled within me: and the fear of death

fallen

upon me.

Fear and trembling are come upon me: and darkness hath covered me. And I said: who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest? Lo, I have gone far off, flying away; and I abode in the wilderness.
I waited for

Him

that hath saved

me

from pusillanimity of

spirit

and a storm.

THE SIGN OF JONAS

Epilogue:

FIRE

WATCH, JULY

4,

1952

Watchman, what

Lord, is a time of freedom. You have seen the morning and the night, and the night was better. In the night all things began, and in the night the end of all things has come before me. Baptized in the rivers of night, Gethsemani has recovered her innonight,

The

O My

of the night?

cence. Darkness brings a semblance of order before all things disappear. With the clock slung over my shoulder, in the silence of the Fourth of
July,
it is

my time to
the

be the night watchman, in the house that will one

day perish.

Here

is

way

it is

when

go on the

fire

watch:

Before eight o'clock the monks are packed in the belly of the great
heat, singing to the

Mother of God

like exiles sailing to their slavery,

hoping for
free.

glory.

The

night angelus unlocks the church and sets them

The holy monster which is The Community divides itself into segments and disperses through airless cloisters where yellow lamps do not attract the bugs. The watchman's clock together with the watchman's sneakers are kept in a box, together with a flashlight and the keys to various places,
at the foot of the infirmary stairs.

Rumors behind me and above me and around me

going water

signalize the fathers there is cold dormitories. Where different in to bed severally some stay to drink from celluloid cups. Thus we fight the heat. I

take the heavy clock and sling it on its strap over my shoulder. I walk to the nearest window, on my silent feet. I recite the second nocturn of dark garden, and the house Saturday, sitting outside the window in the

begins to be

silent.

One late Father,

with a change of dry clothes slung over his shoulder,

2,30

to stops to look out the window and pretends sees roe sitting around the corner in the dark, holding the breviary in the of Saturday. yellow light of the window, saying the Psalms It is ten or fifteen minutes before there are no more feet echoing along

The Monastery be frightened when he

the cloisters, shuffling up the stairs. (When you go late to the dormitories you have to take off your shoes and make your way to bed in
socks, as if the others

were already sleeping in such weather!)

human silence. Then I begin eight-fifteen hear the eloquent night, the night of wet trees, with moonlight sliding over the shoulder of the church in a haze of dampness and subsiding
At
I sit in darkness. I sit in to

of this night resounds from heaven to hell with animal the savage innocence of a million unknown creatures. with eloquence, While the earth eases and cools off like a huge wet living thing, the heat.

The world

enormous
until
it

their vitality of

gets into everything,

music pounds and rings and throbs and echoes and swamps the whole world in its neutral

except

madness which never becomes an orgy because all things are innocent, I have mentioned the possibility of evil, all things are pure. Nor would how the heat and the wild music of living things that I remember

why

can drive people crazy, when they are not in monasteries, and make them do things which the world has forgotten how to lament. That is some people act as if the night and the forest and the heat and the

animals had in them something of contagion, whereas the heat is holy and the animals are the children of God, and the night was never made
to

hide

sin,

but only
I

to

open
stars.

infinite distances to charity

and send our

souls to play

beyond the
begin

Eight-thirty.
is

my

round, in the cellar of the south wing.

The

naked wires, stinks of the hides of slaughtered calves. My place feet are walking on a floor of earth, down a long catacomb, at the end of which, there is a brand-new locked door into the guest wing that was I punch the clock for the first time in only finished the other day. So the catacomb, I turn my back on the new wing, and the fire watch is
full of

on.

Around one corner is a hole in the wall with a vat where they stew Under this vat Dom Frederic told me to burn all the letters that were in the pigeonholes of the room where he had been Prior. Around another corner is an old furnace where I burned the rest of the papers; from the same room. In this musty silence which no longer smells of wine
fruit.

(because the winery

little alert

is

now in
upon

another building) the flashlight creates a

tennis ball

the walls and floor. Concrete

now

begins

under the watchman's catfeet and moonlight reaches through the

Fire

Watch, July

4,

15)52

231

windows
shelves.

Into a dark place with jars of prunes

and applesauce on

all

the

suddenly, after the old brooding catacomb, you hit something new: the kitchen, painted by the brother novices, each wall and dizzy in a different color. Some of the monks complained of the different colored walls, but a watchman has no opinions. There is tile under the
to the ceiling: "Little children, love shining vats and Scripture close

Then

one another!" There are blue benches in the

is cool. scullery, and this one room Sometimes when you go up the stairs making no noise, a brother comes in late fiom the barns through the kitchen door and runs into you by in the darkness, blinded by the flashlight, and (if a novice) he

surprise
is

probably scared to death. For a few feet, the way

is

is

most

familiar. I

am

in the

little cloister

the monastery's main stem. It goes from the places where the which to the places where they pray. But now it is empty, and like live monks it is a lot nicer when there is nobody there. The steps else everything under my the tailor to down shop have a different sound. They drum

run into the smell of duck and cotton, mixed with the smell of bread. There is light in the bakery, and someone is working I punch the clock by the bakery late, around the corner, behind the oven.
rubber
soles. I

door:

it is

the second station.

is

the hottest one: the furnace room. This time the a stairs don't drum, they ring: they are iron. I fight my way through of flanks the down and in the heat, by go jungle of wet clothes, drying the boiler to the third station which is there up against the bricks, beof the Holy Face. neath an

The

third station

engraving After that, I am in the choir novitiate. Here, too, it is hot. The place at every turn is swept and recently painted and there are notice boards named after is in the little crooked passageways where each blue door a saint. Long lists of appointments for the novices' confessions and direcintion. Sentences from the liturgy. Fragments of severe and necessary and smell formation. But the walls of the building have their own stuffy first days in religion, the freezing tough haunted I am

suddenly winter when I

by

my

first

received the habit

and always had a

cold, the smell

unexof frozen straw in the dormitory under the chapel, and the deep that first Christmas when you have nothing Christmas of pected ecstasy left in the world but God! hit the novitiate that the fire watch begins in earnest. It is when
Alone,
silent,

you rounds through the wandering on your appointed

corri-

232
dors of a huge, sleeping monastery,

The Monastery
you come around the corner and and with the mystery

find yourself face to face with your monastic past of your vocation.

The fire watch is an examination of conscience in which your task as watchman suddenly appears in its true light: a pretext devised by God to isolate you, and to search your soul with lamps and questions, in the
heart of darkness.
I meet in darkness, with You it is always GOB, MY GOD, God the same thing! Always the same question that nohody knows how to

Whom

answer!
I

have prayed

in the nighttime
son. I

You in the daytime with thoughts and reasons, and You have confronted me, scattering thought and reahave come to You in the morning with light and with desire, and
to

great gentleness, with most forbearthis in inexplicable night, dispersing light, defeating all ing silence, desire. I have explained to You a hundred times my motives for

You have descended upon me, with

the monastery and

You have listened and said

entering nothing, and I have turned

it

away and wept with shame.

Is it true that all

my

motives have meant nothing? Is

true that

all

my

desires
I

were an
is

illusion?

While

am asking

question which

questions which You do not answer, You ask me a so simple that I cannot answer. I do not even under-

stand the question.

This night, and every night, it is the same question. There is a special, living resonance in these steep hollow
novitiate chapel,

stairs to

the

where You are

You, shutting You up Here, when it was winter, I used to come after dinner when I was a novice, heavy with sleep and with potatoes, and kneel all the time beallowed to do what we was what I liked. Here, on Sunday mornings, a crowd of us would try to make the Way of the Cross, jostling one another among the benches, and on days of recollection in summer we would kneel here all afternoon with the sweat running down our ribs, while candles burned all around the tabernacle and the veiled ciborium stood shyly in the doorway, peeping out at us
liked.

closed tight with the heat of the lost afternoon.

all alone,

the

windows

upon

cause that was the only period in which Nothing ever happened: but that

we were

between the curtains.

And

here,

now, by night, with

flashlight in

hip and the

my

this huge clock ticking on hand and sneakers on my feet, I

my

right

feel as if

Fire

Watch, July

4, 1952,

233
is

everything had been

unreal. It

as if the past

had never

existed.

The

things I thought were so important because of the effort I put into them have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered. (There used to be a man who walked down the back road on

summer mornings, right in the middle Communion: singing his own private

singing, of the novices* thanksgiving after song, every day the same. It was

the sort of song you would expect to hear out in the country, in the Knobs of Kentucky.) But in this darkness I would not be able to say, for certain, what it was that mattered. That, perhaps, is part of Your unanswerable question! Only I remember the heat in the beanfield the first June I was here, and I get the same sense of a mysterious, unsuspected value that struck me
after Father Alberic's funeral.

AFTER THE NOVITIATE,

the coolest station:

come back

into the little cloister.

Soon

stand at

in the brothers' washroom, at the door of the ceramic studio. Cool winds come in from the forest through the big,
set of associations.

down

wide-open windows. This is a different city, with a different

studio
is

The ceramic

something relatively new. Behind the door (where they burnt out one kiln and bought a new one) little Father John of God suddenly made a good crucifix, just a week ago. He is one of my scholastics. And I think of the clay Christ that came out of his heart. I think of the beauty

and the simplicity and the pathos that were sleeping there, waiting to become an image. I think of this simple and mysterious child, and of all
is waiting to be born in all their hearts? Heroism? Defeat? Peace? Betrayal? Sanctity? Suffering? Deception? Death? Glory?

my

other scholastics.

What

On all sides I am confronted by questions that I cannot answer, because the time for answering them has not yet come. Between the silence of God and the silence of my own soul, stands the silence of the
souls entrusted to me.

Immersed in these three

silences, I realize that

the

questions I ask myself about them are perhaps no more than a surmise. And perhaps the most urgent and practical renunciation is the renunciation of all questions.

THE MOST POIGNANT THING about the fire watch Gethsemani not only in length and height, but

is

that

you go through

also in depth.

You

hit

234
strange caverns in the monastery's history, layers set

The Monastery down by the years,

angeological strata: you feel like an archeologist suddenly unearthing cient civilizations. But the terrible thing is that you yourself have lived

through those ancient civilizations. The house has changed so much that ten years have as many different meanings as ten Egyptian dynasthe floor ties. The meanings are hidden in the walls. They mumble in under the watchman's rubber feet. The lowest layer is at once in the
level of history is

catacomb under the south wing and in the church tower. Every other found in between. The church. In spite of the stillness, the huge place seems alive.

Shadows move everywhere, around the small uncertain area of light which the sanctuary light casts on the Gospel side of the altar. There are faint sounds in the darkness, the empty choirstalls creak and hidden
boards mysteriously sigh. The silence of the sacristy has
its

own

sound.

shoot the

beam

of

Saint Malachy's altar and the relic cases. Vestments are light laid out for my Mass tomorrow, at Our Lady of Victories altar. Keys

down

to

the rattle echoes all over the church. When again in the door and first on for the fire watch I thought the church was full of people no. The night is filled with unutterable murin the dark. But praying murs, the walls with traveling noises which seem to wake up and come back, hours after something has happened, to gibber at the places where
rattle
I

was

it

happened. This nearness to

is

sxcitement. It

in the darkness is too simple and too close for commonplace for all things to live an unexpected life in

You

the nighttime: but their life is illusory and unreal. The illusion of intensifies the infinite substance of Your silence. :>nly

sound

Here, in this place where I

made my vows, where

where
I

mointed for the Holy

Sacrifice,

I had my hands have had Your priesthood seal

ie depth and
lefile

intimate summit of

my

being, a word, a thought,

would

die quiet of

Your inexplicable

love.

Your Reality, O God, speaks to my life as to an intimate, in the midst a crowd of fictions: I mean these walls, this roof, these arches, this ^overhead) ridiculously large and unsubstantial tower. Lord, God, the whole world tonight seems to be made out of paper. Die most substantial things are ready to crumble or tear apart and blow
)f

iway.

How much

more

so this monastery

which everybody
exist!

believes in

and

has perhaps already ceased to

Bre Watch, ]uly

God,
their ruin.
solid
sions,
us,

4,

1952

235

my

All things stir

God, the night has values that day has never dreamed of. by night, waking or sleeping, conscious of the nearness of
illuminations he conceives to be But while we ask our questions and come to our deci-

Only man makes himself

and

eternal.

our decisions out, the roofs of our houses cave in upon towers are undermined by ants, the walls crack and cave in, and the holiest buildings burn to ashes while the watchman is composthe
tall

God blows

ing a theory of duration.

get up and go to the tower. Now is the time to meet You, God, where the night is wonderful, where the roof is almost without substance under my feet, where all the mysterious junk in the
to

NOW is THE TIME

belfry considers the proximate coming of three new bells, where the forest opens out under the moon and the living things sing terribly that only the present is eternal and that all things having a past and a future are

doomed

to pass
is

away!
the

This, then,
the tower.

way from

the floor of the church to the platform

on

First I must make a full round of the house on the second floor. Then must go to the third-floor dormitories. After that, the tower. Cloister. Soft feet, total darkness. The brothers have torn up the tent in the cloister garden, where the novices were two winters sleeping ago, and where some of them got pneumonia. Just yesterday they put a new door on Father Abbot's room, while he was away with Dom Gabriel, visiting the foundations. 1 am in the corridor under the old guesthouse. In the middle of the a table is set with knives and forks and hallway long spoons and bowls for the breakfast of the postulants and family brothers. Three times a day they eat in the corridor. For two years there has been no other place
I

to

put them.
into the old guestwing swings back
floors

THE HIGH, LIGHT DOOR

the
I
stairs.

and

am on

had forgotten
me. The

ishes

of fifty
register

were empty. The silence astonwatch there was a retreat party lined up on the second floor, signing their names in the guest in the middle of the night. They had just arrived in a bus from
that the

upper

last

time I was on the

fire

Notre Dame.
the walls.

Now the place is absolutely empty.

All the notices are off

The

bookshelf has vanished from the hall.

The

population of

holy statues has

been diminished. All the windows are wide open. Moon-

236
light falls

The Monastery
on the cool linoleum
I see
floor.

The

doors of some of the rooms are

open and
rest.

that they are empty. I can feel the emptiness of all the

ence.

like to stop and stand here for an hour, just to feel the differis like a sick person who has recovered. This is the Gethsemani that I entered, and whose existence I had almost forgotten.
I

would

The house

It

was

this silence, this darkness, this

Brother

Matthew
to

emptiness that I walked into with eleven years ago this spring. This is the house that

seemed
gotten

all cities, to

have been built to be remote from everything, to have forbe absorbed in the eternal years. But this recovered
is

The
so

innocence has nothing reassuring about it. The very silence emptiness itself is my most terrible question.
If I

a reproach.
for talking

have broken

this silence,

and

if I

have been

to

blame

to publicize this emptiam I to remark on the presence of so many visitors, so many ness? retreatants, so many postulants, so many tourists? Or have the men of our age acquired a Midas touch of their own, so that as soon as they

much about this emptiness that it came to be am I to praise the silence any more? Who am I

filled

with people,

who

Who

succeed, everything they touch becomes crowded with people? In this age of crowds in which I have determined to be solitary, perhaps the greatest sin would be to lament the presence of people on the

threshold of

my

solitude.

Can

be so blind
if

as to ignore that solitude is

itself yet they rush in upon the desert in be alone? What went they out into the desert thousands, how shall they to see? Whom did I myself come here to find but You, Christ, Who have compassion on the multitudes?

their greatest need?

And

Nevertheless,

whom Your mercy

With my
feet

Your compassion singles out and separates the one on falls, and sets him apart from the multitudes even
.

though You leave him in the midst of the multitudes.

waxed when I was a postulant, I ask these useless questions. With my hand on the key by the door to the tribune, where I first heard the monks chanting the psalms, I do not wait for an
on the
floor I

answer, because I have begun to realize You never answer when I expect. The third room of the library is called hell. It is divided up by wall-

board partitions into four small sections full of condemned books. The are hung with American flags and pictures of Dom Edmond partitions

Obrecht I thread my way through this unbelievable maze to the second room of the library, where the retreatants used to sit and mop their brows and listen to sermons. I do not have to look at the corner where the
books about the Carthusians once sang to

me

their siren

song

as I sail

Fire

Watch, July

4,

1952

237

past with clock ticking and light swinging and keys In my hand to unlock the door into the first room of the library. Here the scholastics have their
desks.

This

is

the walls. Yonder

the upper Scriptorium. The theology books are all around is the broken cuckoo clock which Father Willibrod
just before

winds up each morning with a gesture of defiance, open the windows*

he

flings

Perhaps the dormitory of the choir monks is the longest room in Kentucky. Long lines of cubicles, with thin partitions a little over six feet
high, shirts and robes and scapulars hang over the partitions trying to dry in the night air. Extra cells have been jammed along the walls between the windows. In each one lies a monk on a straw mattress. One

pale bulb burns in the middle of the room.

shadows.

make my way

softly past cell after cell. I

The ends are shrouded in know which cells

have snorers in them. But no one seems to be asleep in this extraordinary tenement. I walk as softly as I can down to the far west end, where
Prater Caleb sleeps in the bell-ringer's comer. I find my station inside the door of the organ loft, and punch the clock, and start off again on
soft feet

along the other side of the dormitory.

There is a door hidden between two cells. It leads into the infirmary annex, where the snoring is already in full swing. Beyond that, steep
stairs to

the third

floor.

assignment before I can climb them. The infirmary, with hot square little chapel, the room that contains the retreats I made before all the dates in my monastic life: clothing, professions, ordinaits

One more

tions. I

cannot pass

it

without something unutterable coming up out of

is

the depths of tower.

my

being. It

the silence which will

lift

me on

to the

Meanwhile I punch the clock at the next station, where next week I am to lose another molar.

at the dentist's office,

NOW THE

I shall ascend to the top of this reliBUSINESS is DONE. gious city, leaving its modern history behind. These stairs climb back beyond the civil war. I make no account of the long laybrothers* dormitory

Now

where a blue
trees.

look out the low

light burns. I hasten to the corridor by the wardrobe. I windows and know that I am already higher than the

the doorway to the attic and the tower. The padlock always makes a great noise. The door swings back on swearing hinges and the night wind, hot and gusty, comes swirling down
at the

Down

end

is

out of the
things.

loft

with a smell of ancient

to

rafters

and

old, hidden,

You have

watch the third step or your

feet go

dusty through the

238
boards.
to

The Monastery

From here on the building has no substance left, but you have mind your head and bow beneath the beams on which you can see the marks of the axes which our French Fathers used to hew them out a
ago.
.
.
.

hundred years

And now the hollowness

that rings

under

my

feet

measures some sixty

over the transept crossing. If I climb around the corner of the dome I can find a hole once opened by the photographers and peer down into the abyss, and flash the light far down
feet to the floor of the church. I

am

upon
I

my stall in choir.

climb the trembling, twisted stair into the belfry. The darkness stirs with a flurry of wings high above me in the gloomy engineering that
holds the steeple together. Nearer at hand the old clock ticks in the tower. I flash the light into the mystery which keeps it going, and gaze upon the ancient bells.
I have looked in the corners where I think some wiring. I am satisfied that there is no fire in this tower which would flare like a great torch and take the whole abbey up with it

have seen the fuse box.

is

there

in twenty minutes.

NOW MY WHOLE BEING breathes the wind which blows through the door through which I see the heavens. belfry, and my hand is on the
AND

The
come

door swings out upon a vast sea of darkness and of prayer. Will it like this, the moment of my death? Will You open a door upon

me

the great forest and set my feet out among the stars?

upon

a ladder under the

moon, and take

The
forest

roof glistens under

hills,

my
I

and the

where
rise

feet, this long metal roof facing the stand higher than the treetops and walk

upon shining
Mists of

air.

damp

heat

abbey. The whole valley is southern hills beyond the water tank, and almost
forest to the north.

around the sleeping flooded with moonlight and I can count the

up out

of the fields

number

the trees of the

Now the huge chorus of living beings rises up out of

my feet:
life

the world beneath

the creeks

singing in the watercourses, throbbing in

and the fields and the trees, choirs of millions and millions of me the cool sky and flying and creeping things. And far above jumping opens upon the frozen distance of the stars. I lay the clock upon the belfry ledge and pray cross-legged with my back against the tower, and face the same unanswered question. Lord God of this great night: Do You see the woods? Do You hear the rumor of their loneliness? Do You behold their secrecy? Do You

Fire

Watch, July

4,

1952

remember
solve like

their solitudes?

Do You

see that

my

soul

is

beginning to

dis-

wax

within me?
et

Clamabo per diem

mihi!

non

exaudies, et

node

et

non ad insipientiam

the place by the stream? Do You remember the the of Knob that time in autumn, when the train was in Vineyard top the valley? Do You remember hollow? Do You remember the
thinly

Do You remember

wooded

hillside

McGinty's behind Hanekamp's place?

the time of the forest

poplars

fire?

we

planted in the

Do You remember Do You know what has become of the little spring? Do You observe the valley where I

marked the trees? There is no leaf

that is not in Your care. There is no cry that was not heard by You before it was uttered. There is no water in the shales that was not hidden there by Your wisdom. There is no concealed

spring

was not concealed by You. There is no glen for a lone house that was not planned by You for a lone house. There is no man for that acre of woods that was not made by You for that acre of woods. But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question. Eternity is in the present. Eternity is in the palm of the hand. Eternity is a seed of fire, whose sudden roots break barriers that keep my heart from being an abyss. The things of Time are in connivance with eternity. The shadows serve You. The beasts sing to You before they pass away. The solid hills shall vanish like a worn-out garment. All things change, and die and disappear. Questions arrive, assume their actuality, and also disappear. In this hour I shall cease to ask them, and silence shall be my answer. The world that Your love created, that the heat has distorted, and that my mind is always misinterpreting, shall cease to interfere with our
that
voices.

Minds which
guage.

The marriage of souls

are separated pretend to blend in one another's lanin concepts is mostly an illusion. Thoughts

which travel outward bring back reports of You from outward things: but a dialogue with You, uttered through the world, always ends by being a dialogue with my own reflection in the stream of time. With You there is no dialogue unless You choose a mountain and circle it with
cloud and print Your words in
delivered to
der, is
fire upon the mind of Moses. What was Moses on tables of stone, as the fruit of lightning and thunnow more thoroughly born in our own souls as quietly as the

breath of our

own
lies

being.

The hand

open.

The

heart

is

dumb. The

soul that held

my

sub-

240

stance together, like a hard gem in the hollow of one day totally give in. Although I see the stars, I no longer pretend to know them. Although I have walked in those woods, how can I claim to love them? One by one I shall forget the names of individual things. You, Who sleep in my breast, are not met with words, but in the emergence of life within life and of wisdom within wisdom. You are found in communion: Thou in me and I in Thee and Thou in them and they in me: dispossession within dispossession, dispassion within dispassion, emptiness within emptiness, freedom within freedom. I am alone. Thou art alone. The Father and I are One.

The Monastery my own power, will

THE VOICE OF GOD

is

heard in Paradise:

"What 'was
vile. I

vile has

become precious.

What is now precious was

what
is vile I

never

have always known the

vile as precious: for

know

not at all.

"What was cruel has become merciful. What is now merciful was never cruel. I have always overshadowed Jonas with mercy, and child? cruelty I know not at all. Have you had sight of Me, Jonas Mercy within mercy within mercy. I have forgiven the universe without end, "because I have never known sin.

My

My

<f

What was

poor has become

infinite.

W^hat

is infinite

was never
all.

poor.

I have always

known

poverty as in-finite: riches I love not at

Prisons

within prisons within prisons. Do not lay up for yourselves ecstasies upon earth, where time and space corrupt, where the minutes break in and steal. No more lay hold on time, Jonas, son, lest the rivers "bear you

My

away.
-fragile has become powerful. I loved what was most frail. upon what was nothing. I touched what was without substance, and within what was not, I am"

'What was

I looked

THERE ARE DROPS

of

dew

that

show

like sapphires in the grass as soon as

stir

the great sun appears, and leaves escaping dove.

behind the hushed

flight of

an

THE SIGN OF JONAS

PART FOUR

Mentors
and
Doctrines

Now
"by

the explanation had been ended the high teacher,

face, to see if I

my
and
I,

and he was observing seemed contented;

who
silent

felt still

new

thirst's

urging,

was

outwardly, within

me

thought:

"Perhaps

too

many

questions are a burden."

One:

WILLIAM BLAKE

/I.LTHOUGH
and almost seem
ten.
if I

to

the Songs of Innocence look like children's poems, have been written for children, they are, to most

children, incomprehensible.

Or at least, they were so to me when I was had read them when I was four or five, it would have Perhaps been different. But when I was ten, I knew too much. I knew that tigers did not burn in the forests of the night. Children are very literal-

minded.
I was less literal when I was sixteen. I could accept Blake's metaphors and they already began to astound and to move me, although I had no real grasp of their depth and power. I liked Blake immensely. I read him with more patience and attention than any other poet. I thought about him more. And I could not figure him out. I do not mean, I could not figure out the Prophetic Books nobody can do that! But I could not place him in context, and I did not know how to make his ideas fit

together.

One gray Sunday in the spring, I walked alone out of the Brooke Road and up Brooke Hill, where the rifle range was. It was a long, bare hogback of a hill, with a few lone trees along the top, and it commanded
a big sweeping view of the Vale of Catmos, with the town of Oakham lying in the midst of it, gathered around the gray, sharp church spire. I sat on a stile on the hilltop, and contemplated the wide vale, from the north, where the kennels of the Cottesmore hounds were, to Lax Hill
in the south. Straight across was Burley House, on top of massed with woods. At my feet, a few red brick houses straggled out from the town to the bottom of the slope. I reflected, that afternoon, upon Blake. I remember how I concentrated and applied myself to it. It was rare that I ever really thought

and

Man ton

its hill,

243

244
about such a thing of rny

Mentors and Doctrines

manner

of

man he

was.

own accord. I was trying to establish what Where did he stand? What did he believe?

What

did he preach?
7

On
their

one hand he spoke of the "priests in black gowns rounds binding with briars my joys and desires/

who were going And yet on the

other

agnosticism tudes of our day.

detested Voltaire, Rousseau, and everybody like them and that they stood for, and he abominated all materialistic deism, everything and all the polite, abstract natural religions of the eighteenth century, the of the nineteenth, and, in fact, most of the common atti-

hand he

The atoms

of Democritus
particles of light

And Newton's

Are sands upon the Red-Sea shore Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.

I was absolutely incapable of reconciling, in my mind, two things that seemed so contrary. Blake was a revolutionary, and yet he detested the most typical revolutionaries of his time, and declared himself opposed without compromise to people who, as I thought, seemed to exemplify

some of

his

own most
I

characteristic ideals.

How

incapable

was

William Blake!

How could I possibly realize

God was
all

of understanding anything like the ideals of a that his rebellion, for all its

strange heterodoxies, was fundamentally the rebellion of the saints. It was die rebellion of the lover of the living God, the rebellion of one

whose
with

desire of

so intense

and

irresistible that it

condemned,

the hypocrisy and petty sensuality and skepticism might, and materialism which cold and trivial minds set up as unpassable barriers between God and the souls of men.
all its

The priests that he saw going their rounds in black gowns he knew no Catholics at the time, and had probably never even seen a Catholic were symbols, in his mind, of the weak, compromising, pharisaic priest of those whose god was nothing but an objectification of their own piety narrow and conventional desires and hypocritical fears.

He

his disdain:

did not distinguish any particular religion or sect as the objects of he simply could not stand false piety and religiosity, in

which the love of God was stamped out of the souls of men by formalism and conventions, without any charity, without the light and life of a faith that brings man face to face with God. If on one page of Blake these priests in black gowns were frightening and hostile figures, on another, the "Grey Monk of Charlemaine" was a saint and a hero of

William Blake

245

charity and of faith, fighting for the peace of the true God with all the ardent love that was the only reality Blake lived for. Toward the end of his life, Blake told his friend Samuel Palmer that the Catholic Church was the only one that taught the love of God.
II

PERHAPS ALL THE GREAT ROMANTICS were capable of putting words together more sensibly than Blake, and yet he, with all his mistakes of spelling, turned out the greater poet, because his was the deeper and more solid inspiration. He wrote better poetry when he was twelve than Shelley wrote in his whole life. And it was because at twelve he had already seen, I think, Elias, standing under a tree in the fields south of London. It was Blake's problem to that untry and adjust himself to a
society

kind of faith and love. More than once, smug and inferior minds conceived it to be their duty to take this man Blake in hand and direct and form him, to try and canalize what they
his

derstood neither

him nor

recognized as "talent" in some kind of a conventional channel.

And
was

always this meant the cold and heartless disparagement of

vital

all
all

that

and

real to

him

in art

and in

faith.

There were years

of

kinds of

petty persecution, from many different quarters, until finally Blake parted from his would-be patrons, and gave up all hope of an alliance

with a world that thought he was crazy, and went his own way. It was when he did this, and settled down as an engraver for good, that the Prophetic Books were no longer necessary. In the latter part of
his
life,

having discovered Dante, he came in contact, through him, with

Catholicism, which he described as the only religion that really taught the love of God, and his last years were relatively full of peace. He never seems to have felt any desire to hunt out a priest in the England where
still practically outlawed: but he died with a blazing and great songs of joy bursting from his heart. As Blake worked himself into my system, I became more and more conscious of the necessity of a vital faith, and the total unreality and unsubstantiality of the dead, selfish rationalism which had been freezing my mind and will for the last seven years. By the time the summer was over, I was to become conscious of the fact that the only way to live was to live in a world that was charged with the presence and reality of God. To say that, is to say a great deal: and I don't want to say it in a way that conveys more than the truth. I will have to limit the statement by saying that it was still, for me, more an intellectual realization than any-

Catholicism was

face

Mentors and Doctrines

thing else: and it had not yet struck down into the roots of my will. The life of the soul is not knowledge, it is love, since love is the act of the

supreme faculty, the will, by which man is formally united to the end of all his strivings by which man becomes one with God.

final

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Tu: BRAMACHARI

THE DOOR of the room in one of the dormitories, where Lax and Sy Freedgood were living in a state of chaos, was a large gray picture, a lithograph print. Its subject was a man, a Hindu, with wide-open eyes and a rather frightened expression, sitting cross-legged in white garments. I asked about it, and I could not figure out whether the answer was derisive or respectful. Lax said someone had thrown a knife at the cut all their heads picture and the knife had bounced back and nearly the picture had that me to understand he off. In other words, gave it: that accounted for the about respect and something intrinsically holy derision manifested toward it by all my friends. This mixture was their standard acknowledgment of the supernatural, or what was considered to be supernatural. How that picture happened to get on that door in that room is a strange story.
It

o,

represented a

Hindu

times, called Jagad-Bondhu. His mission

messiah, a savior sent to India in our own had to do with universal peace

He had died not very long before, and had left a in India. He was, as it were, in the role of a saint who strong following had founded a new religious order, although he was considered more than a saint: he was the latest incarnation of the godhead, according to
and brotherhood.
the

Hindu

In 1932, a big
teries of this

belief in a multiplicity of incarnations. official sort of letter was delivered to

one of the monas-

"order," outside of Calcutta. The letter came from the which was to be held in the following year. World's Fair, Chicago this monastery, I cannot imagine. The letter was a heard of ever they formal announcement of a 'World Congress of Religions." I am writing but that is the substance of the story: they invited this all from

new

How

memory

the abbot of this monastery to send a representative to the congress.

247

248

Mentors and Doctrines

the monastery: it is called Sri Angan, meaning I get this picture of "the playground." It consists of an enclosure and many huts or "cells," to use an Occidental term. The monks are quiet, simple men. They live what we would call a liturgical life, very closely integrated with the and of nature: in fact, the chief characteristic of cycle of the seasons be this deep, harmonious identification with all to their worship seems in praising God. Their praise itself is expressed in songs, living things,

instruments, flutes, pipes. There accompanied by drums and primitive to that, there is a profound addition In is much ceremonial dancing.

on a form of "mental prayer" which is largely contemplative. The monk works himself into it, by softly chanting lyrical aspirations to God and then remains in peaceful absorption in the Absolute. For the rest, their life is extremely primitive and frugal. It is not so
stress laid

do not think there are any fierce But nevertheless, the general level of poverty penances or mortifications. in Hindu society as a whole imposes on these monks a standard of livOccidental religious would probably find unlivable. ing which most Their clothes consist of a turban and something thrown around the body

much what we would

call austere. I

and a robe. No shoes. Perhaps the robe is only some rice, a few vegetables, a piece of fruit.

for traveling. Their food

Of

all

God. They on a keen realization of the goodness of God. Their whole prayer, based
spirituality
is

that they do, they attach most importance to prayer, to praising have a well-developed sense of the power and efficacy of
childlike, simple, primitive if
like, close to
it

you

nature, in-

But the point is, although may genuous, optimistic, happy. than the full flowering of the natural virtue of religion, with the other natural virtues, including a powerful natural charity, still the life of these pagan monks is one of such purity and holiness and peace, in the natural order, that it put to shame the actual conduct of many

be no more

may

Christian religious, in spite of their advantages of constant access to all the means of grace.

So

this

abbot was pleased by the letter. He did heavy dropped not know what the Chicago World's Fair was. He did not understand that all these things were simply schemes for accumulating money. The 'World Congress of Religions" appeared to him as something more than the fatuous scheme of a few restless, though probably sincere, minds. He seemed to see in it the first step toward the realization of the hopes
like a

was the atmosphere

stone.

into

which the

letter

from Chicago

The

of their beloved messiah,

hood. Perhaps, now,

all religions

Jagad-Bondhu world peace, universal brotherwould unite into one great universal
:

Bramachari
religion,

249
all

and

men would
to pieces.

begin to praise

God

as brothers, instead of

tearing each other

At any rate, the abbot selected one of his monks and told him was to go to Chicago, to die World Congress of Religions. This was a tremendous assignment. It was something far more
than an order given, for instance,
to a

that

he

terrible

newly ordained Capuchin to to a mission in India. That would merely be a matter of a proceed
for him.

trained missionary going off to occupy a place that had been prepared But here was a little man who had been born at the edge of a

jungle told to start out from a contemplative monastery and go not only into the world, but into the heart of a civilization the violence and
materialism of which he could scarcely evaluate, and which raised gooseflesh on every square inch of his body. What is more, he was told to

undertake this journey without money. Not that money was prohibited to him, but they simply did not have any. His abbot managed to raise enough to get him a ticket for a little more than half the distance. After

would have to take care of him. I met this poor little monk who had come to America By without money, he had been living in the country for about five years, and had acquired, of all things, the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago. So that people referred to him as Doctor
that heaven

the time

Bramachari, although Hindu term for monk

is simply a generic "Littlebe translated: almost and one that might

believe that Bramachari

BrotherAVithout-the-Degree-of-Docto^^ How he got through all the red tape that stands between America and
the penniless traveler is something that I never quite understood. But it seems that officials, after questioning him, being completely overwhelmed by his simplicity, would either do something dishonest in his
favor, or else
nicalities.

Some

would give him a tip as to how to beat the various techof them even lent him fairly large sums of money. In

any case he landed in America. The only trouble was that he got to Chicago after the World Conwas all over. gress of Religions look at the Fair buildings, which were already being one that time, By torn down, told him all he needed to know about the World Congress of Religions. But once he was there, he did not have much trouble. in the middle of railway stations People would see him standing around to do something about his plight. They would be for Providence waiting white garments (which were partly conintrigued by his turban and cealed by a brown overcoat in winter). They observed that he was wear-

250

Mentors and Doctrines

ing a pair of sneakers, and perhaps that alone was enough to rouse their
curiosity.

He

social clubs,

was frequently invited to give lectures to religious and and to schools and colleges, and he more than once spoke

make

from the pulpits of Protestant churches. In this way he managed to a living for himself. Besides, he was always heing hospitably entertained by people that he met, and he financed the stages of his
journey by artlessly leaving his purse lying open on the living room
table, at night, before his departure.

The open mouth

hosts,

of the purse spoke eloquently to the hearts of his

see, I

saying: "As you

to

am

empty,"

or,

down

morning.

my He

last fifteen cents." It

was often enough

perhaps, "As you see, I am filled up in the

got around.

run into Sy Freedgood? Well Seymour's wife was studyand she met Bramachari there, and then Seymour met Bramachari, and Bramachari came to Long Beach once or twice, and went out in Seymour's sailboat, and wrote a poem which he gave to Seymour and Helen. He was very happy with Seymour, because he did not have to answer so many stupid questions and, after all, a lot of the people who befriended him were cranks and semimaniacs and theosophists who thought they had some kind of a claim on him. They wearied him with their eccentricities, although he was a gentle and patient little man. But at Long Beach he was left in peace, although Seymour's ancient grandmother was not easily convinced that he was not the hereditary enemy of the Jewish people. She moved around in the other room,
ing at Chicago,
lighting small religious lamps against the intruder. It was the end of the school year, June 1938, when already had a huge box in the middle of the room,

How did he

beginning to pack with books, coming to New York. I went down to meet him at Grand Central with Seymour, and

Lax and Seymour which they were when we heard Bramachari was again
it

was

not without a certain suppressed excitement that I did so, for Seymour had me all primed with a superb selection of lies about Bramachari's
ability to float in the air and walk on water. It was a long time before we found him in the crowd, although you would think that a Hindu in a turban and a white robe and a pair of Keds would have been a rather memorable sight. But all the people we asked, concerning such a one, had no idea of having seen him. We had been looking around for ten or fifteen minutes, when a cat came walking cautiously through the crowd, and passed us by with a kind of a look, and disappeared.

"That's him," said Seymour.

"He changed

himself into a cat. Doesn't

Bramachari
like to attract attention.

251

Looking the place

over.

Now

he knows we're

here."

Almost
anything

at once, while

like Bramachari,

came up behind us. I saw Seymour swing around and

"Ah, Bramachari,

Seymour was asking a porter if he had seen and the porter was saying no, Bramachari
say, in his rare,

suave manner:

how
little

are you!"

There stood

a shy

in the midst of his

brown

man, very happy, with a huge smile, all teeth, face. And on tie top of his head was a yellow
all

turban with Hindu prayers written sure enough: sneakers*

I

over

it

in red.

And, on

his feet,

asking like Smith, did he like Harvard? When we were coming out into the air at i i6th Street, I asked him which one he liked best, and he told me that they were all the same to him: it had never occurred to him that one might have
all

shook hands with him, still worrying lest he give me some kind of But he didn't. rode up to Columbia in the subway, with all the people goggling at us, and I was Bramachari about

an

electric shock.

We

the colleges he had been visiting.

Did he

any

special

preference in such things. I lapsed into a reverent silence and pondered on this thought. I was now old and, indeed, I was more mature twenty-three years than that in some respects. Surely by now it to have dawned on

ought

me

that places did not especially matter. But no, I was very much attached to places, and had very definite likes and dislikes for localities as

such, especially colleges, since I was always thinking of finding one that was altogether pleasant to live and teach in.

After that, I became very fond of Bramachari, and he of me. got along very well together, especially since he sensed that I was trying to feel my way into a settled religious conviction, and into some kind of a

We

on God. that he never attempted to explain except some of the externals of the cult, and that was later on. He would no doubt have told me all I wanted to know, if I had asked him, but I was not curious enough. What was most valuable to me was to hear his evaluation of the society and religious beliefs he had come across in America: and to put all that down on paper would require another book. He was never sarcastic, never ironical or unkind in his criticisms: in fact he did not make many judgments at all, especially adverse ones. He would simply make statements of fact, and then burst out laughing his laughter was quiet and ingenuous, and it expressed his complete
life that

was

centered, as his was,

The thing that strikes me now his own religious beliefs to me

is

252

Mentors and Doctrines

amazement at the very possibility that people should live the way he saw them living all around him. He was beyond laughing at the noise and violence of American city life and all the obvious lunacies like radio programs and billboard adidealisms that he came across vertising. It was some of the well-meaning
that struck

him

as

pression among asceticism means.

the

the prevailing imfunny. According to Bramachari, Hindus seems to be that Christians don't know what

For

my own part,

I see

no reason

for discouragement.

Bramachari was

since been familiar to readers of simply saying something that has long the Gospels. Unless the grain of wheat, falling in the ground, die, itself

remaineth alone: but

if it die, it

bringeth forth

much

fruit.

The Hindus
and and

are not looking for us to send them men who will build schools those things are good and useful in themselves hospitals, although
saints to

perhaps very badly needed in India: they want send them.

to

know

if

we have any

Bramachari was not the kind of man to be impressed with such statements as: "There's a quarter of a million dollars' worth of stained glass in this church ... the organ has got six banks of keys and it contains and the retable is a drums, bells and a mechanical nightingale
.

by a real live Italian artist/' genuine The people he had the least respect for were all the borderline cases, the strange, eccentric sects, the Christian Scientists, the Oxford Group,
bas-relief

and all the rest of them. That was, in a sense, very comforting. Not that was worried about them: but it confirmed me in my respect for him. He did not generally put his words in the form of advice: but the one counsel he did give rne is something that I will not easily forget: 'There are many beautiful mystical books written by the Christians. You should read St Augustine's Confessions, and The Imitation of
I

Christ."

he was speaking as if he most people in America had no idea that such He seemed to feel as if he were in possession of a as if there was sometruth that would come to most Americans as news
course I had heard of both of them: but
for granted that books ever existed.

Of

took

it

thing in their own cultural heritage that they had long since forgotten: and he could remind them of it. He repeated what he had said, not without a certain earnestness:
"Yes,
It

you must read those books/' was not often that he spoke with

this

kind of emphasis.

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Three:

MENTORS

MARK VAN DOREN

OR A TEACHER to be absolutely sincere with generation after generation of students requires either supernatural simplicity or, In the natural order, a kind of heroic humility. There was one man at Columbia, or rather one among several, who was most remarkable for
this

kind of heroism.
first

I
I

mean Mark Van Doren.

was at Columbia, just after my twentieth birthday, in the winter of 1935, Mark was giving part of the "English sequence" in one of those rooms in Hamilton Hall with windows looking out between the big columns on to the wired-in track on South Field.
semester

The

There were twelve or fifteen people with more or less unbrashed hair, most of them with glasses, lounging around. One of them was my
friend Robert Gibney. It was a class in English literature, and it had no special bias of any kind. It was simply about what it was supposed to be about: the English literature of the eighteenth century. And in it literature was treated, not
as history, not as sociology, not as economics, not as a series of case histories in psychoanalysis but, mirabile dictu, simply as literature.
I

thought to myself,

who

is this

excellent

man Van Doren who

being

employed
about

to teach literature, teaches just that: talks about writing and books and poems and plays: does not get off on a tangent about

the biographies of the poets or novelists: does not read into their poems a lot of subjective messages which were never there? Who is this man who does not have to fake and cover up a big gulf of ignorance by teaching a lot of opinions and conjectures and useless facts that belong to some other subject? Who is this who really loves what he has to teach,

and does not secretly detest all literature, and abhor poetry, while pretending to be a professor of it? That Columbia should have in it men like this who, instead of subtly
253

254
destroying
all literature

Mentors and Doctrines

irrelevancies, really purified

by burying and concealing it under a mass of and educated the perceptions of their students by teaching them how to read a book and how to tell a good book from a bad, genuine writing from falsity and pastiche: all this gave me a
deep respect for

my new

Mark would come

university. into the room and, without

any

fuss,

would

start

talking about whatever was to be talked about. Most of the time he asked questions. His questions were very good, and if you tried to answer

them

you found yourself saying excellent things that you that you had not, in fact, known before. He had "educed" them from you by his question. His classes were literally
intelligently,

did not

know you knew, and

they brought things out of you, they made your mind explicit ideas. Do not think that Mark was simply produce with thoughts of his own, and then making the students his priming
"education"
its

own

their

thought stick to their minds by getting them to give it back to him as own. Far from it. What he did have was the gift of communicating

to them something of his own vital interest in things, something of his manner of approach: but the results were sometimes quite unexpected and by that I mean good in a way that he had not anticipated, casting lights that he had not himself foreseen. Now a man who can go for year after year although Mark was young then and is young now without having any time to waste in flattering and cajoling his students with any kind of a fancy act, or with whole classes jokes, or with storms of temperament, or periodic tirades spent in threats and imprecations, to disguise the fact that the professor himself has come in unprepared one who can do without all these nonessentials both honors his vocation and makes it fruitful. Not only that, but his vocation, in return, perfects and ennobles him. And that is the way it should be, even in the natural order: how much more so in the

order of grace!
to the order of grace: but considering a mission as on the level natural I can see merely that Providence was using him as an instrument more directly than he realized. As far as I can see, the influence of Mark's sober and sincere

his

Mark, work

know,

is

no stranger

as teacher

intellect,

and

his

and

objectivity

manner of dealing with his subject with perfect honesty and without evasions, was remotely preparing my mind

to receive the

good seed of scholastic philosophy.

And

there

is

nothing

strange in this, for

Mark

himself was familiar at least with some of the

modern scholastics, like Maritain and Gilson, and he was a friend of the American neo-Thomists, Mortimer Adler, and Richard McKeon, who

Mentors

255

had started out at Columbia but had had to move to Chicago, because Columbia was not ripe enough to know what to make of them. The truth is that Mark's temper was profoundly scholastic in the sense that his clear mind looked for the quiddities of things, and directly and substance under the sought being covering of accident and appearances. And for him was, indeed, a virtue of the practical intellect, poetry and not simply a vague spilling of the emotions, wasting the soul and perfecting none of our essential powers. It was because of this virtual scholasticism of Mark's that he would
never permit himself to fall into the naive errors of those who try to read some favorite private doctrine into every poet they like of every nation or every age. And Mark abhorred the smug assurance with

which second-rate left-wing

rialism in everyone

critics find

adumbrations of

dialectical

mate-

who

ever wrote from

to like

Homer and

Shakespeare to

in recent times. If the poet is to their then he is seen to be fancy, clearly preaching the class struggle. If they do not like him, then they are able to show that he was really a forefather of fascism.

whomever they happen

And

all

and
It

all their favorite villains

their literary heroes are revolutionary leaders, are capitalists and Nazis.

was a very good thing for me that I ran into someone like Mark Van Doren at that particular time, because in my new reverence for Communism, I was in danger of docilely accepting any kind of stupidity, provided I thought it was something that paved the way to the Elysian
fields of classless

society. II

PERHAPS IT WAS FOR ME, personally, more than for the others, that Mark's course worked in this way. I am thinking of one particular incident.
It was the fall of 1936, just at the beginning of the new school year on one of those first, bright, crazy days when everybody is full of ambition. It was the beginning of the year in which Pop was going to die and my own resistance would cave in under the load of pleasures and ambitions I was too weak to carry: the year in which I would be all the time getting dizzy, and in which I learned to fear the Long Island railroad as if it were some kind of a monster, and to shrink from New York as if it were the wide-open mouth of some burning Aztec god. That day, I did not foresee any of this. My veins were still bursting with the materialistic and political enthusiasms with which I had first come to Columbia and, indeed, in line with their general direction, I

256

Mentors and Doctrines

had signed up for courses that were more or less sociological and economic and historical. In the obscurity of the strange, half-conscious semiconversion that had attended my retreat from Cambridge, I had tended more and more to be suspicious of literature, poetry the things toward which my nature drew me on the grounds that they might lead to a
sort of futile aestheticism, a

philosophy of "escape."

This had not involved me in any depreciation of people like Mark. However, it had just seemed more important to me that I should take some history course, rather than anything that was still left of his for me
to take.

So now I was climbing one of the crowded stairways in Hamilton Hall room where I thought this history course was to be given. I looked in to the room. The second row was filled with the unbrushed heads of those who every day at noon sat in the Jester editorial offices and threw paper airplanes around the room or drew pictures on the
to the

walls.

Taller than them all, and more serious, with a long face, like a horse, and a great mane of black hair on top of it, Bob Lax meditated on some incomprehensible woe, and waited for someone to come in and begin to talk to them. It was when I had taken off my coat and put down my load of books that I found out that this was not the class I was supposed to be taking, but Van Doren's course on Shakespeare. So I got up to go out. But when I got to the door I turned around again and went back and sat down where I had been, and stayed there. Later I went and changed everything with the registrar, so I remained
in that class for the rest of the year. It was the best course I ever had at college. And good, in many different ways. It was the only place
it

did

me
I

the most

where

ever heard

anything really sensible said about any of the things that were really fundamental life, death, time, love, sorrow, fear, wisdom, suffering, eternity. A course in literature should never be a course in economics or
philosophy or sociology or psychology: and I have explained how it was one of Mark's great virtues that he did not make it so. Nevertheless, the material of literature and especially of drama is chiefly human acts that is, free acts, moral acts. And, as a matter of fact, literature, drama,
poetry,

make

certain statements about these acts that

can be made in no

other way. That is precisely why you will miss all the deepest meaning of Shakespeare, Dante, and the rest if you reduce their vital and creative

statements about
or ethics, or

life and men to the dry, matter-of-fact terms of some other science. They belong to a different order.

history,

Mentors

257

Nevertheless, the great power of something like Hamlet, Coriolanus, or the Purgatorio or Donne's Holy Sonnets lies precisely in the fact that are a kind of and even metathey commentary on ethics and
physics, even theology. Or, sometimes, those sciences can serve as a

psychology the other way around, and commentary on these other realities, which
it is

we

call

plays, poems.

All that year

we

human
portant

desire

and hope and

were, in fact, talking ahout the deepest springs of fear; we were considering all the most im-

not indeed in terms of something alien to Shakespeare hut precisely in his own terms, with occasional intuitions of another order. And, as I have said, Mark's balanced and sensitive and
realities,

and

to poetry,

clear

way

of

seeing things, at once simple and yet capable of subtlety,

scholastic, though not necessarily and explicitly these Christian, presented things in ways that made them live within and with a life that was us, healthy and permanent and productive. This class was one of the few things that could persuade me to get on the

being fundamentally

train

and go
across

came

to Columbia at all It was, and read the Gilson book.

that year,

my only health,

until I

o ETIENNE GILSON
ONE DAY,
month of February, 1937, 1 happened to have five or ten loose dollars burning a hole in pocket I was on Fifth Avenue, for some reason or other, and was attracted by the window of Scribner's
in the

my

bookstore, all full of bright

new

books.

That year I had signed up for a course in French medieval literature. My mind was turning back, in a way, to the things I remembered from
the old days in Saint Antonin. The deep, naive, rich simplicity of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was beginning to speak to me again. I

had written a paper on a legend of a

"J ngl eur de Notre Dame," coma from the of the Desert, in Migne's Latin Fathers with pared story into the Catholic atmosphere, and I was back I drawn Patrology. being

could feel the health of

already within me.

it,

even in the merely natural order, working

Now, in Scribner's window, I saw a book called The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy. I went inside, and took it off the shelf, and looked at the table of contents and at the tide page which was deceptive, because it said the book was made up of a series of lectures that had been given
at the University of

Aberdeen. That was no recommendation,

to

me

25$
especially.

Mentors and Doctrines

But

it

threw

me

off the track as to the possible identity

and

character of Etienne Gilson,

I

who

wrote the book.

bought it, then, together with one other book that I have completely forgotten, and on my way home in the Long Island train, 1 unwrapped the package to gloat over my acquisitions. It was only then that I saw, on the first page of The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, the small print

which

said: "Nihil Obstat

Imprimatur/'

and deception struck me like a knife in the pit of the stomach. I felt as if I had been cheated! They should have warned me that it was a Catholic book! Then I would never have bought it. As

The

feeling of disgust

was, I was tempted to throw the thing out the window at the houses of Woodside to get rid of it as something dangerous and unclean. Such is the terror that is aroused in the enlightened modern mind by a little innocent Latin and the signature of a priest. It is impossible to communicate, to a Catholic, the number and complexity of fearful associations
it

that a

little

thing like this can carry with

it.

It is in

Latin

a difficult,

ancient,

and obscure tongue. That

implies, to

the

mind

that has roots in

all kinds of sinister secrets, which the priests are supposed and to conceal from common men in this unknown language. Then, the mere fact that they should pass judgment on the character of a book, and permit people to read it: that in itself is fraught with terror. It immediately conjures up all the real and imaginary excesses of the

Protestantism,
to cherish

Inquisition.

That is something of what I felt when I opened Gilson's book: for you must understand that while I admired Catholic culture, I had always been afraid of the Catholic Church. That is a rather common position in the world today. After all, I had not bought a book on medieval philosophy without realizing that it would be Catholic philosophy: but the imprimatur told me that what I read would be in full conformity with that fearsome and mysterious thing, Catholic Dogma, and the fact struck me with an impact against which everything in me reacted with repugnance and fear. Now in the light of all this, I consider that it was surely a real grace
that, instead of getting rid of the
is

true:

but more than

used

to

book, I actually read it. Not all of it, it read of books that deep. When I think of

numbers of books I had on my shelf in the little room at Douglaston had once been Pop's "den" books which I had bought and never even read, I am more astounded than ever at the fact that I actually read this one: and what is more, remembered it. And the one big concept which I got out of its pages was something
the
that

Mentors

259

that was to revolutionize my whole life. It is all contained in one of those dry, outlandish technical compounds that the scholastic philosophers were so prone to use: the word aseitas. In this one word, which

can be applied

istic attribute, I

which showed the vague and rather superstitious hangover from an unscientific age that I had believed it to be. On the contrary, here was a notion of God that was at the same time deep, precise, simple and accurate and, what
more, charged with implications which I could not even begin to appreciate, but which I could at least dimly estimate, even with my own
is

God alone, and which expresses His most characterdiscovered an entirely new concept of God a concept me at once that the belief of Catholics was by no means
to

lack of philosophical training. Aseitas the English

equivalent

is

a transliteration: aseity

simply

means the power of a being to exist absolutely in virtue of itself, not as caused by itself, but as requiring no cause, no other justification for its existence that its except very nature is to exist There can be only one such Being: that is God. And to say that God exists a se, of and by and by reason of Himself, is merely to say that God is Being Itself. Ego sum qui sum. And this means that God must enjoy "complete inas regards everything outside but also as regards within Himself." everything This notion made such a profound impression on me that I made a pencil note at the top of the page: "Aseity of God God is being per se" I observe it now on the page, for I brought the book to the monastery with me, and although I was not sure where it had gone, I found

dependence not only

on the shelves in Father Abbot's room the other day, and I have it here before me. I marked three other passages, so perhaps the best thing would be to copy them down. Better than anything I could say, they will convey the impact of the book on my mind.
it

When God
if

what He

mean

says that He is being [reads the first sentence so marked] and says is to have any intelligible meaning to our minds, it can only this: that He is the pure act of existing.

act: therefore excluding all imperfection in the order of existTherefore ing. excluding all change, all ''becoming," all beginning or end, all limitation. But from this fullness of existence, if I had been

Pure

capable of considering it deeply enough, I would soon have found that the fullness of all perfection could easily be argued.

But another thing

that struck

me was

an important

qualification the

260
author made.

Mentors and Doctrines

the concepts of ens in genere and ens inftnitum, the conall

He distinguished hetween the abstract notion of being in general

and
real Infinite Being,

crete

Who,

Himself, transcends

our conto

ceptions.
first

And
all

so I
St.

step toward

marked the following words, which were John of the Cross:

be

my

sensible images, and all conceptual determinations, God affirms Himself as the absolute act of being in its pure actuality. Our concept of

Beyond
a

God,
tion,

mere feeble analogue

explicit

can be made

of a reality which overflows it in every direcis Being, an absolute only in the judgment: Being

contains in itself the suffipositing of that which, lying beyond every object, that the very can we is that And cient reason of objects. rightly say why which hides the divine being from our eyes is nevertheexcess of
positivity
less

the light which lights

up

all

the rest: ipsa caligo

summa

est

mentis

illuminatio.

His Latin quotation was from

St.

Bonaventure's Itinerarium.

The

third sentence of Gilson's that I

marked

in those

few pages read

as follows:

the cause of His Jerome says that God is His own origin and in a certain that God Descartes does, own substance, he does not mean, as but sima as His cause, in by almighty power being by way posits Himself that we must not look outside of God for a cause of the existence of God.

When

St.

ply

think the reason

why

these statements,

and

others like them,

soul.

made

it such a profound impression on me, lay deep in my own Christians meant was this: I had never had an adequate notion of what reGod. I had simply taken it for granted that the God in

And

by

Whom

and to they attributed the creation and ligious people believed, of all things, was a noisy and dramatic and passionate government of all their character, a vague, jealous, hidden being, the objectincation

Whom

own desires and strivings and subjective ideals. The truth is, that the concept of God which I had always
and which
I

entertained,

had accused Christians of teaching to the world, was a He was infinite and a of being who was simply impossible. concept and eternal and yet changing subject to imperfect; yet finite; perfect
all

the variations of emotion, love, sorrow, hate, revenge, that men are could this fatuous, emotional thing be without beginning prey to. How and without end the creator of all? I had taken the dead letter of Scrip-

had killed me, according to the saying its very deadest, and it letter 'The Paul: of St. killeth, but the spirit giveth life/' satisfaction with what I now read of one cause I think
ture at

my

profound

Mentors

Z 6i

was that God had been vindicated in

my own

mind. There

is

in every

intellect a natural exigency for a true concept of God: we are born with the thirst to know and to see Him, and therefore it cannot be otherwise.
I know that many people are, or call themselves, "atheists" simply because they are repelled and offended by statements about God made in imaginary and terms which metaphorical they are not able to inter-

and comprehend. They refuse these concepts of God, not because they despise God, but perhaps because they demand a notion of Him more perfect than they generally find: and because
pret
ordinary, figurative

concepts of God could not satisfy them, they turn away and think that there are no other: or, worse still, they refuse to listen to philosophy, on the ground that it is nothing but a web of meaningless words spun
together for the justification of the same old hopeless falsehoods. What a relief it was for me, now, to discover not only that no idea of ours, let alone any sensible could delimit the of God,

but

also that

we

image, should not allow ourselves to be

satisfied

being with any such

knowledge of Him. The result was that I at once acquired an immense respect for Catholic philosophy and for the Catholic faith. And that last thing was the most important of all. I now at least recognized that faith was something that had a very definite meaning and a most cogent necessity. If this much was a great thing, it was about all that I could do at the moment. I could recognize that those who thought about God had a
good way of considering Him, and that those who believed in Him really believed in someone, and their faith was more than a dream. Further than that it seemed I could not go, for the time being.
there are in the same situation! They stand in the stacks and turn over the pages of St. Thomas* Sum-ma with a kind of curious reverence. They talk in their seminars about Thomas and Scotus and Augustine and Bonaventure and they are familiar with Maritain and Gilson, and they have read all the poems of Hopkins and indeed they know more about what is best in the Catholic literary and philosophical tradition than most Catholics ever do on this earth. They sometimes go to Mass, and wonder at the dignity and restraint of
of libraries

How many

the old liturgy.

in

They

are impressed

by the organization

of a

Church

even the most ungifted, are able to priests, of a least at tremendous, profound, unified doctrine, something preach and to dispense mysteriously efficacious help to all who come to them with troubles and needs. In a certain sense, these people have a better appreciation o the

which everywhere the

262

Mentors and Doctrines

Church and of Catholicism than many Catholics have: an appreciation which is detached and intellectual and objective. But they never come
into the Church.
of the banquet They stand and starve in the doors the banquet to which they surely realize that they are invited while those more poor, more stupid, less gifted, less educated, sometimes even enter in and are filled at those tremendous less virtuous than
they,
tables.

When
about
to
its

had put

this
its

book down, and had ceased

effect
to

to

think explicitly

arguments,

have and more deep-seated before had so great a need.

a desire to
to

my life. I began began and a desire more sincere and mature church go than I had ever had before. After all, I had never
itself

show

in

<s>

FATHER MOORE, DAN WALSH, JACQUES MAHITAIN

my

arm. I had of the presbytery with three books under the but at instructions once, pastor had hoped that I could begin taking I felt about see how think and and and told me to read these books,
i

CAME OUT

pray

it

or ten days' time. I did not argue with him: but the hesitation that had been in my mind only an hour or so before seemed to in a

week

have vanished
at this delay.

so completely that I

So

it

was

arranged that I should

was astonished and a little abashed come in the evenings,

twice a week.

be your instructor/' said the Pastor, There were four assistants at Corpus Christi, but I guessed that Father Moore was going to be the one whom I had heard preaching
"Father

Moore

will

the sermon on the divinity of Christ and, as a matter of fact, he was the one who, in the designs of Providence, had been appointed for this work
of

my salvation.
If

of what it means to be converted people had more appreciation from rank, savage paganism, from the spiritual level of a cannibal or of an ancient Roman, to the living faith and to the Church, they would

not think of catechism as something

trivial

or unimportant. Usually the

word suggests the matter-of-course

through before First a matter of course, it
this
is

instructions that children have to

go

Communion and
of

Confirmation. Even where

it is

one of the most tremendous things in the world,

planting of the

word

God in

a soul. It takes a conversion to really

bring this

home.

Mentors
I

2,63

was never bored.

never missed an instruction, even

old

when

it

cost

me

amusements and attractions, which my had such a strong hold over me and, while I had been impatient of deI had come to that first sudden decision, I now lay from the moment bum for Baptism, and to throw out hints and try desire to with began to determine when I would be received into the Church. My desire became much greater still, by the end of October, for I
the sacrifice of some of

made

the Mission with the men of the parish, listening twice a day sermons by two Paulist Fathers and hearing Mass and kneeling Benediction before the Christ Who was gradually revealing Himself

to

at
to

me.
the sermon on hell began, I was naturally making mental and reflecting comparisons with the one in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist

When
it

on

in a kind of detached manner, as

if I

were a third and separate

this sermon and seeing how it affected person watching myself hearing me. As a matter of fact this was the sermon which should have done

me

the most good and did, in fact, do

is

so.

opinion upset by such a topic. of hell? It is not compulsory for anyone to go there. Those who do, do so by their own choice, and against the will of God, and they can only the work of Providence and into hell defying and resisting all

My

that

it is

Why

a very extraordinary thing for anyone to be should anyone be shattered by the thought

get

by

grace. It

is

their

own

will that takes

diem

there, not God's.

In damning

a decision which is them only ratifying their own decision ever hold our weakwill Nor choice. to their own has left entirely should not Our weakness for damnation. our ness alone responsible

He

He

He

terrify

the source of our strength. Libenter gloriabor in infirmitatlbus meis ut inhabitet in me virtus Christi. Power is made perfect in our very helplessness is all the more potent a claim on infirmity, and calls to Himself the poor, the little ones, the that Divine Mercy
us:
it is

Who

heavily burdened.

sermon on hell was, indeed, what spiritual writers but it was not the hectic, emotional confusion that call "confusion" comes from passion and from self-love. It was a sense of quiet sorrow and patient grief at the thought of these tremendous and terrible sufwhich I deserved and into which I stood a very good chance of

My reaction

to the

ferings

but at the same time, the magnitude present condition: entering, in of the punishment gave me a special and particular understanding of the greatness of the evil of sin. But the final result was a great deepenof soul, a real increase in spiritual profundity and

my

ing

awakening

my

264

Mentors and Doctrines

faith

and an advance in

and love and confidence in God,

to

Whom

alone I could look for salvation from these things. And therefore I all the more earnestly desired Baptism. I went to Father Moore after the sermon on hell and said that I hoped

he was going to baptize me really soon. He laughed, and said that it would not be much longer. By now, it was the beginning of November. Meanwhile, there had been another thought, half forming itself in the back of my mind an obscure desire to become a priest. This was something which I tended to hold separate from the thought of my conversion, and I was doing my best to keep it in the background. I did not mention it either to Father Ford or Father Moore, for the chief reason that in my mind it constituted a kind of admission that I was taking it almost amounted to a the thought more seriously than I wanted to
a seminary. there was also in my mind a kind However, it is a strange thing: of half-formed conviction that there was one other person I should confirst

admission to step toward application for

sult about

becoming a

priest

before I took the matter to the rectory. This

man was a layman, and someone

I had never yet seen, and it was altoto put the gether strange that I should be inclined so spontaneously matter up to him, as if he were the only logical one to give me advice.
I
first

In the end, he was the one

consulted

mean, the one from

whom I first seriously asked advice, for I had long been talking about it to my friends, before I came around to him. This man was Daniel Walsh, about whom I had heard a great deal
from Lax and Gerdy. Gerdy had taken his course on St. Thomas Aquinas in the graduate school of philosophy: and now as the new school

one course. It had nothing exams for the M.A. my degree in January. By now degrees and everything else to do with a university career had become very unimportant in comparison with the one big thing that occupied my mind and all my desires. I registered for the course, and Dan Walsh turned out to be another one of those destined in a providential way to shape and direct my voyear began,

my

attention centered

upon

this

direcdy to

do with

preparation for the

cation.

For
I

it

was he who pointed out

my way

to

the place where

now

am.

was writing about Columbia and its professors, I was not thinking of Dan Walsh: and he really did not belong to Columbia at all. He was on the faculty of the Sacred Heart College at Manhattanville, and came to Columbia twice a week to lecture on St. Thomas and Duns Scotus. His class was a small one and was, as far as Columbia was

When

Mentors

2,65

concerned, pretty much of an academic bypath. And that was in a sense an additional recommendation it was off that "broad and noisy highway of pragmatism which leads between its banks of artificial flowers to the
gates of despair.

Walsh himself had nothing

of the supercilious self-assurance of the

ordinary professor; he did not need this frail and artificial armor for his own insufficiency. He did not need to hide behind tricks and vanities any more than Mark Van Doren did; he never even needed to be brilliant. In his smiling simplicity he used to efface himself entirely in the solid and powerful mind of St Thomas. Whatever brilliance he allowed himself to show forth in his lectures was all thrown back upon its source,

the Angel of the Schools. Dan Walsh had been a student and collaborator of Gilson's and

knew

on he introduced me to Maritain at the Catholic Book dub, where this most saintly philosopher had been giving a talk on Catholic Action. I only spoke a few conventional words to Maritain, but the impression you got from this gentle, one of tremendous kindstooping Frenchman with much gray hair was was And that and ness and simplicity enough: you did not godliness. that there was comforted I need to talk to him. came away feeling very include me in that he would such a person in the world, and confident
Gilson and Maritain welL In
fact, later

some way in his prayers. But Dan himself had caught a tremendous amount of this simplicity and gentleness and godliness too: and perhaps the impression that he made was all the more forceful because his square jaw had a kind of there he sat, this little, stocky man, toughness about it. Yet no:
potential

who had
plicity

smiling and

something of the appearance of a good-natured prize fighter, childlike delight and cherubic simtalking with the most

about the

Summa Theologica.
as

His voice was low and,

he spoke, he half

apologetically

searched

the faces of his hearers for signs of understanding and,

it,

when he found

he seemed
and the

surprised

and

and told him all about my was trying to work with, and he was very pleased. And one of the things he sensed at once was something that I was far from being able to realize: but it was that the bent of my mind was I had not yet followed Bramachari's advice essentially "Augustinian-" I did not take Dan's evaluation of my ideas and to read St Augustine force that was potentially in it for it did directive the all as
I very quickly

made

delighted. friends with him,

thesis

ideas I

having not even come clothed in suggestion or advice.

z66

Mentors and Doctrines

course, to be called "Augustinian" by a Thomist might not in every case be a compliment. But coming from Dan Walsh, who was a true Catholic philosopher, it was a compliment indeed.

Of

For he, like Gilson, had the most rare and admirable virtue of being
able to rise above the petty differences of schools and systems, and seeing Catholic philosophy in its wholeness, in its variegated unity, and in
its

true Catholicity. In other words,

St.

he was able

to study St.

Thomas

Bonaventure and Duns Scotus side by side, and to see them as complementing and reinforcing one another, as throwing diverse and

and

individual light on the same truths from different points of view, and thus he avoided the evil of narrowing and restricting Catholic philoso-

phy and theology

I

to

pray

to

God

a single school, to a single attitude, a single system, that there may be raised up more like him in the
is

Church and
intellectually

in our universities, because there

something stifling and deadening about textbooks that confine themselves to giv-

ing a superficial survey of the field of philosophy according to Thomist the rest in a few controversial objections. principles and then discard all

Indeed, I think it a great shame and a danger of no small proportions, that Catholic philosophers should be trained in division against one an-

and brought up to the bitterness and smallness of controversy: because this is bound to narrow their views and dry up the unction that
other,

should vivify

all philosophy in their souls. Therefore, to be called an "Augustinian" by Dan Walsh was a compliment, in spite of the traditional opposition between the Thomist and

Augustinian schools, Augustinian being taken not as confined to the philosophers of that religious order, but as embracing all the intellectual
descendants of
St.

Augustine.

It is

a great compliment to find oneself

numbered

as part of the

same

spiritual heritage as St.

Anselm,

St.

Bernard, St. Bonaventure,

Scotus also.
that

Hugh and

Richard of
I

St. Victor,

And from

the tenor of his course,

realized

and Duns that he meant

the intellectual, dialectical, specumy lative character of Thomism, as toward the spiritual, mystical, volunraristic,

bent was not so

much toward

and practical way of St. Augustine and his followers. His course and his friendship were most valuable in preparing me or the step I was about to take. But as time went on, I decided to

3o I never

eave the notion of becoming a priest out of the way for the time being, even mentioned it to Dan in those days.

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Four:

POETS

-s>

T.

S.

ELIOT
to sit out-

-LOR THE FIRST TIME

side.

this year it

has been

warm enough

After dinner

I sat in

the sun and read T. S. Eliot's "East Coker"

and part of "The Dry Salvages" from Four Quartets. Eight years ago at the cottage at Olean, Nancy Flagg had "East Coker" in ms., for it was still not published. We all said we didn't like it, but today I like it quite a lot except that I paused a bit at two or three lines of archaic English. I was surprised to find him drawing so heavily on Saint John of the Cross; I do not immediately see how it fits in. And in the second section I was brought up short by "That was a way of putting it" and the other self-conscious passage. Maybe 111 see the point later. But the beginning is fine and the rhymed sections are very beautias beautiful as anything that has been written in English for fifty ful

when we were

years or more*

Thunder

rolled by the rolling stars Simulates triumphal cars

Deployed in constellated wars

Scorpion fights against the Sun Until the Sun and Moon go down

Comets weep and Leonids fly Hunt the heavens and the plains Whirled in a vortex that shall bring

The world to that destructive fire Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.
I

think this book

is

chastity.

He

is

not afraid

the best of Eliot. Also I admire Eliot's literary to be prosaic, rather than write bad verse. But

when he is very prosaic he is weak. However, a word like "grimpen" can liven up the prose. Then when he comes to the part,
267

268

Mentors and Doctrines

Do
Of
it

not

let

me hear

the

wisdom

of old men, but rather of their folly,

becomes poetry again.

The wounded

surgeon plies the

steel

That questions the distempered

is

part;

maybe the best of the whole thing, not only beautiful but deep and contrast with the cosmic bit about precise and poignant. It makes a good the triumphal cars in heaven here everything that was then big, vast, universal, is brought down to the pointed, the moral, and the human. The heavens are indifferent, but here are real wounds in a real moral
order.

A real

death.

The The

chill

ascends from feet to knees,

.
.

fever sings in mental wires.

(And

wires," but

think of Dylan Thomas' "The pleasure bird sings in the hot be sharp and it is the same fever.) As a poet, I have got to
or else quit

precise like Eliot

o DYLAN THOMAS
DYLAN THOMAS' INTEGRITY
as a poet

makes

me

very ashamed of the

who say we love God: why are we not verse I have been writing. as anxious to be perfect in our art as we pretend we want to be in our

We

we write, perhaps In all. it is because we are not any case it is dewriting for God serve God and love Him sometimes write so pressing that those who
service of

God?

If

we

do not

try

to

be perfect in what
after

badly, when those who do not well. I am not talking about grammar

believe in

Him

take pains to write so

something to say and saying it Paul and Saint Ignatius Martyr did not bother about grammar but they
certainly

syntax, but about having in sentences that are not half dead. Saint

and

knew how
is

to write.

the penalty of rushing into print. And people who Imperfection rush into print too often do so not because they really have anything to say, but because they think it is important for something by them to

very important in itself does not necessarily mean that what you have written about it is imbad book about the love of God remains a bad book, even portant.

be in

print.

The

fact tiiat

your subject

may be

PoeU
though
it

269

may be

about the love of God. There are

many who

think

that because they have written about God, they have written good books. Then men pick up these books and say: if the ones who say they be-

cannot find anything better than religion cannot be worth much.

lieve in

God

this to say

about

it,

their

o>

ROBERT LOWELL
Castle, reached

YESTEBDAY Robert Lowell's book, Lord Weary's

is

me.

It

wonderful. Harcourt, Brace made me a present of it after I had gone begging all around the town. Lowell is a poet, and practically the only poet in the country. I wish I could write an article about him. You could compare the "Quaker Graveyard" with Hopkins' 'Wreck of the Deutschland," to the great advantage of "Graveyard." Lowell has little of Hopkins' spiritual depth but he is often more of a poet more fluent

and more

finished.

Hopkins

is

too finished. Lowell can

be much more

perfect than Hopkins because he leaves you with less sense of technical struggle. All the emotional intensity is there. Hopkins' spiritual struggles fought their way out in problems of rhythm. He made his asceti-

cism bearable by thrusting it over the line into the order of art where he could handle it more objectively. When fortitude became a matter of sprung rhythm, he could keep his sufferings, for the time being, at
arm's length.

The poems
and

of Lowell that I like less are those written "After Rilke"

"After Valery."

He

has his roots in

New

England and not in Eu-

rope, although I do not mean that he is in any sense provincial. He does not talk the language of Rilke or Valery merely as a tourist. However, glad as I am to have him write like Valery, I find him more completely
satisfying

when he

talks

about Boston as

"my

city/'

No

immigrant could

write as he writes about Boston.

the bad

New

is nothing of of Dutchland not him. I about do merely speak England

On

the other

hand

there

Farms, but also of "Lord-Geoffrey-Amherst-was-a-soldier-of-the-King.^ You would not dream of insulting the man by expecting to find a

shadow of that in him, even though he has grown up in the thick of it. Perhaps I have made a jaux pas. Harvard higher than Amherst Lowell makes a little bit go a long way but he is always licit and avarice is clean healthy about the way he does it. In him, New England he returns, For instance and after all, I am happy. economy surprised

2.70
I

Mentors and Doctrines

forget how many times, to the man in Dante who was rolled away by the torrent while two angels fought with billhooks for his soul.

THE SIGN OF JONAS

o JORGE CARRERA ANDRADE

HUMANITY, TENDERNESS, AND WIT in the sense of esprit characterize the innocence and seriousness of Jorge Carrera Andrade. He is one of the most appealing of the fine Latin American poets of our century. One is tempted to call him an incarnation of the genius of his humble and
delightful country, Ecuador: a land of green volcanoes, of hot jungles and cold sierras, of colonial cities set like jewels in lost valleys; a land of Indians and poverty. The voice of Ecuador (which sings in his verse)
is

a soft,

humble

voice: a voice, oppressed

but without rancor, without

does not get much to eat but lives in the sun. Ecuador is a wise child, an ancient child, like hungry the child in the Biblical proverbs who was always playing in the world unhappiness, like the voice of a child
before the face of the Creator.

who

An

eternal child, a secret Christ,

who

and to have no hope in any of the strong countries of the world. Ecuador has always been, and will always be, betrayed by the strong. It can despair of them without sorrow, because to despair of shadows is no despair at all. It is, in fact, a pure and sacred hope. This land of truth, this kind of confidence, strong
to smile at the folly of the great

knows how

nations, preparing ruin, cannot understand.

Some fifty-seven years ago Carrera Andrade was born in Quito and in the dawn of his life the cobbled streets of the sleepy capital echoed for him with the of and Verlaine rhythms Gongora. He read the Symunder the eucalyptus trees, and meditated baroque conceits in the green and white presence of the volcano Pichincha. Yet his poetic sensitivity remained simple and happy, for he walked among the cornbolists

and Indians of the country, sharing their blood and their silence, thinking and making their poems in his heart. He has remained preeminently a South American poet. He had taken an active part in the politics and journalism of his country. He had already published more than one book of poems when, in 1928, he boarded a Dutch steamer in Guyaquil and headed for Eufields

rope:

In a ship of twenty bugles I took my trunk of parrots

To

the other

end of the world.

Poets

271

His bags and his money were stolen in Panama. He wandered through Holland, Germany, France, Spain. He lived as poor people live, traveling third-class, carrying everywhere his light burden of poetry and of Indian blood. More and more alone in the ancient cities, he wrote poems, first one book then another. In the strikes, the riots, the movements of the day, he stood with the poor. He sided with the Left, hoping for a better world. But the ambiguities of power of the humble and defenseless to increase its own
politics

making use

him.

He broke away He set up a small

to

from Communism.

He

power did not satisfy found himself more alone.

home
went

publishing house in Paris. He married. He came South America. He was sent as Consul of Ecuador to a small

Le Havre. Later he and in the consular service of his counChina, England, In he came to the United States Ecuadorian as Consul in San 1941 try. Francisco. He found the and he city exciting, responded gladly to the the and to hard-boiled of North America. He wrote friendship mystery a "Song to the Oakland Bridge" which was to him a symbol of strength and peace:
city of Peru.

He

returned to France as Consul in

to Japan,

Thy Thy

spans are of peace,

sea-chains set

men

free.

From thy unceasing journey thou

Dragging a
city

and

returnest, a handful of orchards.

I do not think Carrera Andrade has built his hopes definitely on any earthly or political power. In the cold war between East and West, he, now working at UNESCO, has been of course "for the West." But at the same time he has learned a new geography, the world which has

Yet

to

be discovered sooner or

later

by those who do not believe in power,

violence, coercion, tyranny, war. "I embarked for the secret country, the country that is everywhere, the country that has no map because it
is

within ourselves."
It is in this secret

we have become

country that I have met Carrera Andrade and here good friends. Here without noise of words we talk to-

gether of the mountains of Ecuador, and of the silent people there who do not always eat every day. The secret country is a country of loneliness and of a kind of hunger, of silence, of perplexity, of waiting, of
strange hopes: where men expect the impossible to be born, but do not always dare to speak of their hopes. For all hopes that can be put into words are now used by men of war in favor of death: even the most

sacred

and

living

words are sometimes used in favor of death.

172-

Mentors and Doctrines

last

During the
lis

war the poet was

silent,

except for the quiet irony of

poem about the parachute jumper. He looked about him at the lesolation of man, at the prison without a key in which man had eniosed himself, or so it seemed, forever. Carrera Andrade has not reproached anyone, has not joined the harsh chorus of the prisoners in
lespair.

He

has listened,
so

silently,

to other voices

and other harmonies.

unassuming? Can the voice of a new voice of the gray-green Andes, of the longivorld be so the Is this quiet? bidden America, of the dim and cool twilight of the Sierra dawn out

Can prophecy be

humble,

so

}f

which peace, perhaps,

will

one day be

bom?

Who
iem

can answer such absurd questions? It is foolish perhaps to ask outside of the secret country in which, unasked, they retain their

meaning and prepare the hearer, quiedy, for the answer they already
:ontain.

NEW

DIRECTIONS IJ

Five:

HERAKLEITOS THE OBSCURE

the most challenging, inscrutable, and acute of philosoHerakleitos of Ephesus, the "dark" skoteinos, tenebrosus. He phers lived in the Ionian Greek city sacred to Artemis, where he flourished at the turn of the fifth century B.C., in the days of the Greek tyrants, and
is

V-/NE OF

He was a contemporary of Pindar and Aeschylus and of the victorious fighters of Marathon, but unlike the poets who wrote and sang in the dawn of the Attic Golden age, Herakleitos was a tight-lipped and cynical pessimist who viewed with sardonic contempt
of the Persian wars.

the political fervor of his contemporaries. He was one of those rare spirits whose prophetic insight enabled them to see far beyond the limited horizons of their society. The Ionian

world was the world of Homer and of the Olympian gods. It was a world that believed in static and changeless order, and in the laws of mechanical necessity basically materialistic. Against this Olympian
formalism, against the ritualism and the rigidity of the conventional exterior cult, the static condition of a society that feared all that was not ''ordinary /* Herakleitos rose up with the protest of the Dionysian
mystic.

He spoke for the mysterious, the unutterable, and the excellent, He spoke for the logos which was the true law of all being not a static
and
rigid form,

but a dynamic principle of harmony in conflict. This was represented by Herakleitos under the symbolic form logos principle of fire. However, fire was not only a symbol for Herakleitos. Later philosophers have derided the intuition by which Herakleitos designated but perhaps the experifire as the "primary substance" of the cosmos ence of our time, in which atomic science has revealed the enormous burning energy that can be released from an atom of hydrogen, may prove Herakleitos to have been nearer the truth than was thought by

274

Mentors and Doctrines

Plato or Aristotle. However, the "fire" of Herakleitos is something more than material. It is spiritual and "divine." It is the key to the spiritual

enigma of man. Our

the fire that
is

spiritual

and mystical destiny

is

to

"awaken" to

within us, and our happiness depends on the harmony in conflict that results from this awakening. Our vocation is a call to
spiritual oneness not to be attained

in and with the logos. But this interior fulfillment is by a false peace resulting from artificial compulsion
"state"

a static

and changeless

imposed by force of will upon the

dynamic, conflicting forces with us. True peace is the "hidden attunement of opposite tensions" a paradox and a mystery transcending both

and will, like the ecstasy of the mystic. Herakleitos left no writings of his own. Legend says that he composed a book which he presented to Artemis in her temple, but almost all the
sense

and exploits are to be mistrusted. It is much more he wrote nothing at all. His sayings, those cryptic fragments which have so tenaciously survived, have come down to us in the writstories told of his life

likely that

ings of others. Herakleitos is quoted first of all by Plato and Aristotle, but also by later writers like Plotinus, Porphyry, Theophrastus, Philo, and several Christian Fathers such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen,

and Hyppolitus. Sometimes these philosophers and theologians quote Herakleitos with approval to illustrate a point of their own; more often they bring him up only in order to refute him. But St Justin Martyr
refers to

ism.

The

him, along with Socrates, as a "Saint" of pre-Christian paganfact that he is unknown to us except in the context which
is

on him makes him even more difficult to understand Though the fragments which form his whole be work can surviving printed on two or three pages, long and laborious research is needed to untangle their authentic meaning and to liberate the obscure Ionian from the bias imposed on his thought by the
others have foisted

than he

in himself.

interpretation of opponents. His enigmatic sayings are terse paradoxes, often wearing the sardonic and oracular expression of the Zen mondo. The comparison suggests
itself quite naturally in our day when Oriental thought has once again found a hearing (perhaps not always an intelligent hearing) in the West. Herakleitos appears at first sight to be more Oriental than Greek, though this appearance can easily be exaggerated, and Herakleitos himself warns us against irresponsible guesses in difficult matters. "Let us

not conjecture at random about the greatest things." But it is true that the logos of Herakleitos seerns to have much in common with the Tao
of Lao-tse as well as with the

Word

of St. John. His insistence that

Herakleitos the Obscure

275

miliar

apparently conflicting opposites are, at bottom, really one is also a fatheme in Oriental thought. Herakleitos, we must remember,

Aristotle's principle of identity and contradiction. He does not look at things with the eyes of Aristotelian logic, and consequently he can say that opposites can be, from a certain point of view, the same. The variations and oppositions between conflicting forces in the world

comes before

when men become

tions,

are immediately evident to sense, too intent on

and

are not a complete illusion. But analyzing and judging these opposi-

sirable, profitable

and separating them out into good and evil, desirable and undeand useless, they become more and more immersed in illusion and their view of reality is perverted. They can no longer see

the deep, underlying connection of opposites, because they are obsessed with their superficial separateness. In reality, the distinction to be made is not between this force which is good and true, as against that force

and false. Rather it is the perception of underlying onethe key to truth and goodness, while the attachment to superficial separateness leads to falsity and moral error. This is why Herakleitos says, "to God all things are good and just and right, but

which

is evil

ness that

is

hold some things wrong and some right." God sees all things as good and right, not in their separateness by which they are in contrast to everything else, but in their inner harmony with their apparent opposites.

men

But men separate what God has united. Herakleitos looks on the world not as an abstractionist, but from the

viewpoint of experience. However, and this is important, experience for Herakleitos is not merely the uninterpreted datum of sense. His philosophical viewpoint is that of a mystic whose intuition cuts through apparent multiplicity to grasp underlying reality as one. This vision of unity which Parmenides was to sum up in the universal concept of be-

ing was seen by the poet and mystic, Herakleitos, as "Fire/* must be very careful not to interpret Herakleitos in a material

We

is a dynamic, spiritual principle. It is a divine energy, the manifestation of God, the power of God. God, indeed, is for Herakleitos "all things/' But this is probably a much more subtle statement

way. Fire for him

than

as fire
riety

we might be inclined to imagine at first sight, for he says that just when it burns different kinds of aromatical spices becomes a vaof perfumes, so God working in the infinite variety of beings

manifests Himself in countless appearances. God, strictly speaking, is then not merely "fire" or "earth" or the other elements, or all of them put in nature. He Himtogether. His energy works, shows itself and hides
self is the Logos, the

Wisdom, not

so

much

"at

work" in nature but

276

Mentors and Doctrines

rather "at play" there. In one of the fragments the "dark one" speaks of the logos in the same terms as the sapiential literature of the Bible

speaks of the divine

Wisdom:

as a "child playing in the world":

he prepared the heavens, I was present: when with a certain law and compass he enclosed the depths: When he established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters:

When

he compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits: When he balanced the foundations of the earth;
I

When

was with him forming

ing before
of men.

all

things:

and was delighted every

were
to

day, play-

him

at all times;

Playing in the world: and

my

delights

be with the children

PROVERBS 8:27-31
Herakleitos says: "Time is a child playing draughts. a child's." The reference to the game of draughts

The kingly power

is

is

a metaphor for

his basic concept that all cosmic things are in a state of becoming and and this constant interplay of elements in a state of dynamic

change,
is

the expression of the divine Law, the "justice," "hidden harmony," or "unity" which constantly keeps everything in balance in the midst of conflict and movement.
flux

Wisdom,

for Herakleitos, does not consist in that "polymathy"

the

'learning of many things" tabulates an almost infinite

the scientific research which observes

and

number

of

phenomena. Nor does

it

consist

arbitrary selection of one of many conflicting prinin order to elevate it above its opposite and to place it in a posiciples, tion of definitive and final superiority. True wisdom must seize upon

in the willful

and

movement itself, and penetrate to the logos or thought within dynamic harmony. 'Wisdom is one thing it is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things." We are reminded of the words of the Old Testament Book of Wisdom the one most
the very
that

influenced

by Hellenic thought.
all

such things as are hid and not foreseen, I have learned: for wisdom, which is the worker of all things, taught me. For in her is the spirit of understanding: holy, one, manifold, subtile,
eloquent, active, undefiled, sure, sweet, loving that quick, which nothing hindereth, beneficient,

And

which

is

good,

Gentle, kind, steadfast, assured, secure, having

all

all

things,

and containing

all spirits, intelligible,

power, overseeing pure, subtile.

Herdkleitos the Obscure

277

is more active than all active things: and reacheth everywhere by reason of her purity. For she is a vapour of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God: and therefore no defiled thing cometh into her. For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of his goodness.

For wisdom

WISDOM 7-21-26
in the inspired language of the sacred writer we find the Scripdevelopment which perfects and completes the fragmentary intuitions of Herakleitos, elevating them to the sublime level of contempla-

Here

tural

and inserting them in the economy of those great truths which Herakleitos could not have dreamt: the Incarnation of the Logos and man's Redemption and Divinization as the supreme manifestation of wisdom and of the "attunement of conflicting opposites." The heart of Herakleitean epistemology is an implicit contrast between man's wisdom, which fails to grasp the concrete reality of unity in multiplicity and harmony in conflict, but which instead seizes upon one or other of the conflicting elements and tries to build on this a static and onesided truth which cannot help but be an artificial fiction. The wisdom of man cannot follow the divine wisdom "one and manifold" in its infinitely varied movement. Yet it aspires to a universal grasp of all reality. In order to "see" our minds seize upon the movement around them and within them, and reduce it to immobility. If it were possible for them to fulfill their deepest wish, our minds would in fact impose on tie dynamism of the cosmos a paralysis willed by our own compulsiveness and prejudice: and this would ruin the world. For if things were the way we would have them be, in our arbitrary and shortsighted conception of "order," they would aU move in one direction toward their ruin, which would be the supreme disorder. All order based purely on man's conception of reality is merely partial and partial order leads or by water. The to chaos. Then all things would be consumed by fire
tive theology

of

real order of the

cosmos is an apparent disorder, the "conflict" of opin fact a stable and dynamic harmony. The wisdom posites of man is the product of willfulness, blindness, and caprice and is only the manifestation of his own insensibility to what is right before his

which

is

But the eyes and ears of interpreting their data.

eyes.

tell

us nothing

if

our minds are not capable

of paradox without
is

And

so Herakleitos, wielding the sharp

weapon

mercy, seeks to

awaken the mind

of his disciple to a reality that

right

278

Mentors and Doctrines

before his eyes but that he is incapable of seeing. He wants to liberate him from the cult of "vanity" and to draw him forth from the sleep of

formalism and subjective prejudices.

tos,

Hence

the paradox that Heraklei-

and individualist in thought as well as in life, maintains that the truth is what is common to all. It is the "fire" which is the life of the cosmos as well as of each man. It is spirit and logos. It is "what is right before your eyes." But each individual loses contact with the One Fire and falls back into the ''coldness" and moisture and "sleep" of his little subjective world. The awakening is then a recall from the sleep of individualism in this narrow, infantile the vision of what is universally true. Unfortunately, to "common" sense, the sleep of the individual spreads through society and is encouraged by social life itself when it is lived at a low level of spiritual intensity. The life and thought of the "many" is a conspiracy of sleep, a refusal to struggle for the excellence of wisdom which is hard to find. The
is

who

an uncompromising

aristocrat

"many" are content with the inertia of what is commonplace, "given/' and familiar. They do not want anything new: or if they do, it must be a mere novelty, a diversion that confirms them in their comfortable inertia and keeps them from being bored with themselves, no more. Hence, the "many" are complacently willing to be deluded by "polymathy"
the 'learning of many things" the constant succession of novel "truths," new opinions, new doctrines and interpretations, fresh observations and tabulations of phenomena. This multiplicity beguiles
the popular
is

mind with

a vain appearance of wisdom.

spiritual "sleep"

nothing but intellectual and

But in reality it which deadens all cathrough by

pacity for the flash of mighty intuition by which multiplicity is suddenly the comprehended as basically one penetrated through and
logos, the divine fire.
efforts to grasp "the unexmust keep himself alert, he must constantly must not fear to strive for the excellence that will make him an object of hatred and mistrust in the eyes of the conventional majority as did Hermodorus, whom the Ephesians threw out of their city on the ground that if he wanted to excel he had better go and do it somewhere else, for "we will have none who is best among us."

The

wise

man must make tremendous

pected": that is to say he "seek for himself," and he

The

aristocratic

contempt of Herakleitos for the conventional verbal-

izing of his fellow citizens was something other than a pose, or a mad reflex of wounded sensibility. It was a prophetic manifestation of intransigent honesty. He refused to hold his peace and spoke out with angry concern for truth. He who had seen "the One" was no longer

Herakleitos the Obscure

279
flatter.

permitted to doubt, to hedge, to compromise, and to

intuition as

To

treat his

among many opinions would have been inexcusable. False humility was an infidelity to his deepest self and a betrayal of the fundamental insights of his life. It would have been above all a contact the betrayal of those whom he could not
effectively

one

except by

shock of paradox. Herakleitos took the same stand as

Isaias,

who was

commanded by God
them
be acceptable.

to "blind the

eyes of this people" by speaking to

in words that were too simple, too direct, too uncompromising to It is not to men of compromise to understand paragiven bles, for as Herakleitos remarked: 'When the things that are right in front of them are pointed out to them, they do not pay attention, though they think they do/'

This is the tragedy which most concerns Herakleitos and which should concern us even more than it did him: the fact that the majority of men think they see, and do not They believe they listen, but they do not hear. They are "absent when present" because in the act of seeing and hearing they substitute the cliches of familiar prejudice for the new and unexpected truth that Is being offered to them. They complacently imagine they are receiving a

new

light,

but in the very mo-

ment of apprehension they renew their obsession with the old darkness, which is so familiar that it, and it alone, appears to them to be light Divinely impatient with the wordplay and imposture of those pseudowise

men who

deceive others

by

collecting

and reshuffling the current

opinions, presenting old errors in

new

disguises, Herakleitos refused to

play their pitiable game. Inspired, as Plato said, by the 'more severe muses," he sought excellence, in his intuitions, at the cost of verbal
clarity.

He would
than

verses, rather

go deep, and emerge to express his vision in oracular flatter the crowd by giving it what it demanded and

expected of a philosopher, of a professional scholar

we would

say today.

Lord at Delphi who neither utters nor hides his it but shows by a sign." His words would be neither expositions meaning of doctrine nor explanations of mystery, but simply pointers, plunging toward the heart of reality: "fingers pointing at the moon." He knew

He would

be

like "the

very well that

was

inevitable

It is

many would mistake the finger for the moon, but that and he did not attempt to do anything about it. interesting to compare Herakleitos with the Prometheus of

Aeschylus. In Prometheus, the Firebearer, we see a similar revolt against notice that the Titan, Prometheus, Olympian formalism. represents

We

primitive, more "Dionysian" earth gods of archaic in rebellion Greece, against the newly established tyranny of Zeus.

the older,

more

280

Mentors and Doctrines

Aeschylus was consciously introducing politics into his tragedy, and as a result it strikes the modern reader with a tremendous force. The play
is

the pressure to conform, exercised the upon agent of Zeus, has a shockingly by Hermes, totalitarian for all interpreters of the Procrux about it great ring
as actual as

Darkness at

Noon and

the chained Titan

metheus of Aeschylus, in this context, is whether his fire symbolizes science or wisdom. One might argue the point at length but in the end the only satisfactory solution is that it symbolizes both. For Prometheus, fire is science perfected by wisdom and integrally united with wisdom

bidden harmony." For the Olympians it is perhaps true to say wisdom is not important, and that what they begrudge men is science, because science means power. Our interpretation of Prometheus will be completely perverse if we believe that what he wants is power.
in a
that

On the contrary, he represents the protest of love (which unites gods and men in a single family) against power (by which the gods oppress men and keep them in subjection). In this way Herakleitos rebelled
against the accepted

Olympian order of things preached by Homer and

Hesiod.

As
"fools

a result, most people found him terribly disturbing. They were who are fluttered by every word/' "dogs barking at everyone they

do not know/' In the end they had their revenge: the revenge that popular mediocrity takes upon singular excellence. They created a legend about Herakleitos a legend which they could understand, for it
consigned him forever to a familiar category and left them in comfort. They dismissed him as a crank, a misanthrope, an eccentric kind of beat who thought he was too good for them and who, as a result, condemned himself to a miserable isolation. He preferred loneliness to the warm security of their collective illusion. They called him "the weeping
philosopher," though there is very little evidence of tears in his philosophy. The story developed that he finally retired from Ephesus in disgust and went to live alone in the mountains, "feeding on grass and plants/*
referred to

A writer
kleitos."

him

as the "crowing, mob-reviling, riddling

Hera-

implication was of course that Herakleitos was proud, that he despised the mob. Certainly contempt for other men is not compatible
it excludes love and empathy. It is altogether was a proud man. But can we be sure of this? Is pride synonymous with an aristocratic insistence upon excellence? It takes humility to confront the prejudice and the contempt of all, in order to cling to an unpopular truth. In the popular mind, any failure to

The

with humility in so far as

possible that Herakleitos

Herakleitos the Obscure

2,81

"conform," any aspiration to be different, Herakleitos exalting himself, his own

trine

labeled as pride. But was opinions, or the common truth

is

which transcends individuals and opinions? If we understand his docwe will see that this latter was the case. A biographer (writing eight hundred years after his death), collected

every story that might make Herakleitos look like a proud eccentric. Basing himself on the fact that Herakleitos had apparently been a member of the hereditary ruling family of Ephesus and had renounced his
responsibilities,

Diogenes Laertius recorded that:

When he was asked by the Ephesians to establish laws he refused to do so because the city was already in the grip of its evil constitution. He used to retire to the temple of Artemis (outside the city) and play at knuckle bones with the children; when the Ephesians stood around him he said:
'Why,
villains,

do you marvel?

Is it

not better to do

this

than join you in

politics?"

doubt this story is all that the popular mind was able to retain of his mysterious legion about "time being a child, playing draughts/' They had taken the finger for the moon, and wanted history to ratify their
error.

No

This story of Herakleitos playing knuckle bones in the temple is completely misleading. Several of his fragments show that he was deeply concerned with man's political life. But, as usual with him, the concern is far below the surface of trivial demagoguery and charlatanism which sometimes passes for "politics/' Political life, for Herakleitos, was based on the common understanding of the wise, that is of those who were awake, who were aware of the logos, who were attuned to the inner harmony underlying conflicting opposites. Such men would not be excited by violence and partisan easily deluded by the political passion
interest.

They would not be swept away by popular

would be
able to see
is,

prejudices or fears,
their

for they

beyond the limited horizons of

own

substantially, the union of those minds petty group. who stand far above their group and their time, and who have a deeper,
Political life

more

universal view of history

is

and

of

men. Such men are necessarily

not achieved merely by a speculative particiand in philosophical insights. It demands great moral energy pation sacrifice. They must not be content to see the logos, they must cling to their vision, and defend their insight into unity with their very lives.
a minority. Their union

'Those

who

mon

as a city holds fast to

speak with understanding must hold fast to what its law, and even more strongly/'

is

com-

282,

Mentors and Doctrines

is

Heraldeitos

not certainly not antisocial, certainly

an

anarchist.

He

does not reject all law. On the contrary, wise and objective laws are the reflection of the hidden logos and accord with the hidden harmony

underlying the seemingly confused movement on the surface of political life. Hence the function of law is not to impose an abstract arbitrary
justice

which

is

nothing but the willfulness of a tyrant guided only by

fantasy and ambition. Law is an expression of that "justice" which is the living harmony of opposites. It is not the vindication of one part of reality as "good" in opposition to another part considered as "evil." It is the expression of the true good which is the inner unity of life itself, the logos which is common to all. Hence it defends the good of all against usurpation by particular groups and individuals seeking only their own limited advantage under the guise of universal
his

own

"good."

Because of his aphoristic statements about "war" being the "father of all," Herakleitos has been referred to as a fascist. The term is ridiculous,
since

ever

it

by war he means chiefly the conflict of apparent opposites whermay be found, not simply military conflict. One might just as

well call
like
life

a Marxist because this reconciliation of opposites looks In point of fact, Herakleitos holds that political Hegelian is both absurd and unjust as long as the more excellent minds are
dialectic.

him

excluded from fruitful participation in political life by the preponderance of mediocrities. Not that the world must be ruled by academic

must be in the hands of those and moral abilities, are able to discern the common justice, the logos, which is the true good of all and which, in fact, is the key to the meaning of life and of history. Why write of Herakleitos in our day? Not, after twenty-five hundred years, to make him what he cannot be: popular. But he speaks to our age if only some of us can hear him he speaks in parables to those who are afraid of excellence in thought, in life, in spirit, and in intellect. His message to us is spiritual, but few will accept it as such: for we have, by now, got far beyond an Ionian pagan. Or have we? Can it be that some of us who are Christians implicitly use our "faith" as an excuse for not going half as far as Herakleitos went? His thought demands effort, integrity, struggle, sacrifice. It is incompatible with the complacent security which can become for us the first essential in thought and life we call it "peace." But perhaps Herakleitos is closer than we are to the spiritual and intellectual climate of the Gospel in which the Word that enlightens every man coming into the world is
philosophers: but that the leadership who, by their well developed political

Herakleitos the Obscure

283

made

flesh, enters

the darkness

which

receives

Him

not:

where one

must be

again without re-entering the womb; where the Spirit is as the wind, blowing where it pleases, while we do not know where it comes from or where it is than going. There was another, far
greater

bom

spoke in parables. He came to cast fire on the earth. Was He perhaps akin to the Fire of which Herakleitos spoke? The easy way to deny it is to dismiss the Ionian as a pantheist. Tag him with a
Herakleitos,

who

philosophical label

and

file

him away where he won't make anybody

uncomfortable!

But not all Christians have done this. Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose vision of the world is Heraklitean as well as Christian, has wreswith the thought in a poem that is no complacent evasion of the For the Cosmos a "Heraklitean fire/' His is indeed challenge. Hopkins, of is both Heraklitean and Scotistic. It is an intuition concept inscape
tled

of the patterns
itself

and harmonies, the 'living character" impressed by

life

wisdom of the Living God in the mystery of intermovements and changes. "Million fueled, nature's bonfire burns playing
revealing the

spark of the divine fire is man out death. But is death the end? Does the put by fire burn with another flame? Hopkins reaches further into the merely mystery, not playing with words but wrestling with the angel of tribuon/*
special, "clearest-selved"
is

The most

himself. This spark

lation, to reach the Resurrection

and

"I

am

all at

once what Christ

Herakleitos did not

when "world's wildfire leaves but ash" is ... immortal diamond/' know Christ. He could not know that the logos

flesh and dwell amongst us. Yet he had some intimation and of resurrection. Some of his mysterious sayings suggest New Testament texts about the Risen Life of man in Christ: "Man kindles for himself a light in the night time when he has died but is alive ... he that is awake lights up from sleeping." True, he is talking only of the spiritual and intellectual awakening which is the experience of the enlightened one, discovering the logos. But the mystical quality of this experience makes it also a figure of resurrection and new life, in which Herakleitos evidently believed. He spoke, as we saw above, of the wise man clinging with all his strength to the "common" thought which unites him with other enlightened minds. The wise man must cling to the logos and to his unity with those who are aware of the logos. He must bear witness to the

would be made
of immortality

"common" thought even

is

at the cost of his

own

life.

To

die for the truth

then the "greatest death" and wins a "greater portion." What is this portion? "There awaits men when they die such things as they look not

284
for

Mentors and Doctrines

nor dream
of."

The

death of the wise

man

Is

the "death of

fire";

passage from darkness into greater

death of the fool clinging to "death of earth or water/' a sinking into coldness, darkness, oblivion, Those who die the death of fire the death which Chrisand
nonentity.
tianity

from confusion into unity. The light, and self-interest is the subjective opinion

was

to call

was a "witness"

to the Fire

Herakleitos definitely believed martyrdom, and which and the Logos become superior beings.

the company of They live forever. They take their place among and of cosmos the of men, for they who watch over the destinies

those

have,

in their lives, entered into the secret of the logos. "They who die great to become the wakeful guardians of the living and the deaths rise

up

dead."

The

aristocracy in

which Herakleitos believed was then not an

these are illusory). It is class, of power, of learning (all one of wisdom: the of an aristocracy might almost say of mystispirit, cism and of sanctity.
aristocracy of

THE BEHAVIOR OF TITANS

Six:

LETTER TO SURKOV
October
2,9,

1958

To

Aleksei Surkov

Soviet Writers'

Union

Moscow
Dear
I

Sir:

writing this letter to you today as a sincere friend of literature, it may be found, including Russia. I write to you assuming that you are, as I am, interested in the future of man. I assume that we

am

wherever

both attach supreme importance to basic

human

values, in spite of the

diversity in the means which we take to protect them. I am aware that for you literature and politics are inseparable. For me, however, I can assure you that this letter has nothing political about it. I am a notori-

ously, and conspicuously, nonpolitical author. It is probably for this reason that you know little or nothing about me. I am counting on this fact, however, to write an objective and unprejudiced letter about a

matter of great importance to us both, and to our respective nations. But lest you assume too readily that I have some unconscious political bias, I
capitalist

can assure you that

do not find

it

hard

to believe that

the

system may sometime evolve into something else, and I will not grieve if it does so. I am passionately opposed to every form of violent aggression in war, revolution, or police terrorism, no matter who may exercise this aggression, and no matter for what "good" ends. I am

a man dedicated entirely to peace and man whether as a citizen, a worker, or,
I speak to
tuals

to justice, and to the rights of in this case, as a -writer.

you

in the

name

of those innumerable Western intellec-

waited for years with keen hopeful sympathy to read some great work that might come out of Russia. I speak to you as one who has the most sincere admiration for the Russian literary heritage, in all its extreme richness. But I also speak to you as one who has been
repeatedly disappointed by the failure of

who have

modern Russian

writers to ful-

285

286
fill

Mentors and Doctrines

the tremendous expectations aroused by the great writers of the past.

so

and

was therefore with great joy, and deep respect for Russia, that I many like me were able to hail the recent work of Boris Pasternak which burst upon us full of turbulent and irrepressible life, givIt

ing us a deeply moving image of the heroic sufferings of the Russian nation and its struggles, sacrifices, and achievements. That this work
received the
trick. It is

Nobel Prize

certainly

cannot have been a merely

political

the expression of the sincere and unprejudiced admiration of the world for a Russian genius worthy to inherit the pre-eminence
of the great Tolstoi.

What makes you

light?

think that

we

in the

West

those scattered passages which

show Communism in a not

are eager to seize upon too favorable

Have we

not heard

much

stronger things than this said

by

Khrushchev himself about Stalin in the Twentieth Party Congress of 1956? Was it not natural that when Pasternak heard such things said, he felt that it would be permissible to say much less, and in a much

more

book that in the early days of the RevoBut if you silence Pasternak not are you by violence now, giving overwhelming evidence that what he attributed to the early days is still there today? I hardly see how you can avoid condemning yourselves in condemning Pasternak, because he obviously wrote his book with the conviction that tyranny and brutality had come to an end. If you condemn him, and prove him wrong, what
lution there

indirect way, himself? Pasternak indicates in this

was much

senseless brutality.

does that
If

mean?

your government is strong and prosperous, what does it have to fear from anything said by Pasternak about the early days of the Revo-

you silence him it will only be interpreted as a sign of inand weakness. In 1956 the whole world hoped that at last freedom and prosperity would come to reward the long hard years of bitter sacrifice made by the supremely generous Russian nation under Stalin. Dr. Zhivago was written with nothing else but this hope in mind. That you condemn the book and its author means that this hope has proved to be a tragic illusion, and that the darkness is settling once again
lution? If
security
selves

deeper than ever. In condemning Pasternak, you are condemning yourand are condemning Russia. If Pasternak suffers unjust and vio-

lent retribution for his well-intentioned work, the

bitter

whole world

will feel

sorrow for Russia. If Pasternak

faith,

is

punished unjustly when, in

officials

good

he simply followed the lead of the highest

as they did, then it will

in the

Party,

and spoke out

be a proof that the Soviet

Letter to Surkov

287
Is
its

system cannot survive where free speech that the Soviet system is committed by
despotism for as long as
it

allowed,

and consequently nature to unrelieved very

may

exist.

Are you Communists unable to see how this great book has glorified Russia? Can you not understand that this book will make the whole world love and admire the Russian people and nation, and venerate them for the superb heroism with which they have borne the burdens laid upon them by history? If you punish Pasternak it is because you
do not love Russia, do not love mankind, but seek only the limited
interests of a political minority. I had asserted that this would not

be a

political letter,

and yet

find

that these last statements

Please believe that I

have a political nature. You will call them lies. would be the first man in the world to rejoice if

were proven me some such

it
it.

to

me

that these statements

were

false. I
it

proof. I will
is

be delighted
beaten

to

embrace

beg you to give and to proclaim

But

if

Boris Pasternak

down and

can never accept any "proof* you might wish will be if Pasternak is left free!
I

persecuted for his work, to offer. The best proof

offended by the things I have felt it necessary to write. to you as a friend, not as an enemy, not as one who write yet hates you. For the Russian nation I have the greatest and most sincere love, and an unbounded admiration. For the present Leaders of Russia

You may be
I

And

no hatred, and no fear, but only sorrow. In closing, I had thought momentarily that I might challenge you to publishing this letter in Prcwda along with your arguments against it Would such a thing be possible in Russia? It would be possible here!
I feel

Very

sincerely yours,

THOMAS MERTON
Unpublished

Seven:

RELIGION AND THE BOMB

MAY, 1962
_HE DEVELOPMENTS of the last year have brought home to everyone that war will never be prevented by the sheer menace of nuclear
weapons.

TH

The H-bomb

is

too powerful to

make war

a practical, let alone

ethical, solution to international problems. An all-out nuclear war is something that simply cannot be "won." And yet even though we must

agree with the coy statement of Herman Kahn, "Almost nobody wants to be the first man in history to kill one hundred million people," it turns

out that quite a few men, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, are willing to commit themselves to policies and objectives which may make a nuclear

war

inevitable.

fifth century, Christian theologians and statesmen have accepted the doctrine of the "just war/' Theoretically the just war is a defensive war in which force is strictly limited and the greatest care as taken to protect the rights and the lives of noncombatants and even of

Since the

combatants. History teaches us that these requirements were seldom met in practice. Nevertheless, before the invention of gunpowder, the overwhelming advantage in a contest between equally matched forces be-

defender in the walled city or castle. traditional idea of the "just war" is fraught with amsince nuclear biguities, weapons are purely offensive weapons. Not only that, they are weapons which cannot help but annihilate noncombatants, open cities, and even neutrals, due to their enormous and uncontrollable

longed

to the

But today the

destructive power. Finally, these are

weapons against which there

is

no

really effective defense. Furthermore, it seems that nuclear weapons are very likely to be used in a massive all-out first strike if they are to be used at all. If tactical nuclear weapons are used in a so-called "limited
2,88

Religion and the

Bomb

2,89

war" there is no guarantee whatever that the loser will not resort to massive and megatonic retaliation. For a belligerent to control himself
in this matter he would have to be far more heroically virtuous than if he were to disarm completely and trust in divine providence.
the theologian is faced with a problem of great complexity he wants to justify nuclear war by traditional Christian standards.
realization that

Hence

if

Meanwhile, in the prevailing climate of uneasiness, with the growing huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons and new missiles not not deter do a nuclear strike but may well invite one, Christians only

are beginning to see that the first strike does not necessarily have to come from the Communist side. Though it is true that President Ken-

nedy has declared

has been

that the

known

for presidents to

United States would "never strike first/* it change their minds under pressure,

and in any case there are many possibilities of accident, miscalculation, misinterpretation, and plain confusion which might lead to a first strike in the name of Democracy, Liberty, and Christianity! The mere suggestion of such a possibility still raises furious protest. One is asked immediately to "prove" it. Well, the United States has been doing a great job preparing for nuclear war, and has given special
attention to

making our nuclear

have the in and best of the and that we nuclear world supply weapons biggest intend to use them whenever we feel sufficiently provoked to do so. The whole concept of deterrence, on which hopes of peace are still being based by "realists/* depends on the credibility of this threat The Russians on their own side are uttering even greater threats. When the full force of two huge mass societies and all their propaganda are devoted
clearly wants everyone
I to disbelieve? I find all that they to putting this idea across, who and their readiness about willingness to wage a nuclear war entirely say

Our government

strike capacity fully credible. to know that we

am

credible.

In this grave

crisis

may hinge on the heroism and

the future of Christianity and of the whole world faithful. In other words, integrity of the

we

than

find ourselves confronting the possibility of nuclear war with more common and universal urgency, because we Christians are at least
this

dimly aware that

may

still

be a matter of choice for us and that the

future of Christianity on earth decision we are making.

may depend on

the moral quality of the

Although since Hiroshima there has been a semblance of religious and the West, and even in some of the Iron Curtain spiritual renewal in

2po

Mentors and Doctrines

countries, the reality and depth of the renewal can certainly be questioned. It is true that statistics show quantitative growth, but this does

not necessarily imply a development in quality. The Cold War has been playing on rather inadequate religious sensibilities. It has aroused the dread of imminent disaster. It has at the same
time awakened deep hatreds and indeed
it

has revealed the profoundest

tendencies to destructiveness and to suicidal despair. Precisely the greatest danger of "Cold War religion"

is that it provides these destructive tendencies with an apparent ethical and religious justification. It makes nuclear war look like spiritual heroism. It justifies

If we had not almost comglobal suicide as sacrifice and martyrdom. and innate Christian our lost religious sense we would be pletely

of the deepest and most sacred of realiutterly aghast at the perversion awful truth that in many ways the see the be able to ties. would

We

Cold

War

is

systematically perverting

and eroding the Christian con-

science.

doubtful whether for most Christians the real underlying religious issue is clearly visible. On the contrary, at least in America, the react in much the same way as the average priest and minister seems to
It is

and average agnostic or atheist. The interests of the West, the Church are all confused with one another, and the possibility of de-

NATO,

fending the West with a nuclear first strike on Russia is sometimes accepted without too much hesitation as "necessary" and a "lesser evil."

We

assume that Western society and Christendom are

still

identical

and

that

Communism

equals Antichrist.

And we

are ready to declare without

hesitation that "no price is too high" to pay for our religious liberty. cliche sounds noble to those who are not shocked by its sinister
biguities.

The
am-

least

"Paying the price" used to be equated with Christian sacrifice, or at with some form of suffering or hardship in which one's own in-

now when we say turns out, counting not only our own megacorpses but also twenty, fifty, a hundred, two hundred million dead on the enemy side. No price is too high to pay! In an orgy of sacrificial
terests

were
is

set aside in

view of a higher good. But

are, it

"no price

too high"

we

ardor

we

will not hesitate to sacrifice their children.

We will

not hesi-

contaminate future generations. No price is too high! will even annihilate neutrals. will douse the whole hemisphere with
tate to

We

We

lethal fallout.

We

will

East be immolated.

go the limit. We will let Europe and the Near We will sacrifice India (whose inhabitants have not,

meanwhile, been consulted).

Religion and the

Bomb

291

Should

It is

"No

price

Even

if it

be necessary to spell out the fact that this slogan too high" somehow lacks nobility? were established beyond doubt that we were defendreally
really

ing religious freedom, this claim (at such cost) would still be absurd and immoral. But are we so sure that when we speak of defending our liberty, our rights, our personal integrity, we are not purely and simply
talking about irresponsibility, good times, a comfortable life? What are we defending? Our religion or our affluence? Or have we so identified the two that the distinction is no
clear?

longer

o COLD WAR AND THEOLOGY

THEBE CAN BE no question
the true religious,
political,

that

we have to defend in every way possible and cultural values without which our lives

would lack meaning. But these values cannot be defended by capitulation to a war policy that leads to the defeat and destruction of both sides.

The arguments of those who are now trying to prove that an all-out nuclear war can be "won" lack even the semblance of plausibility. Their own most optimistic figures, based on extremely bland assumptions
which they have fed
into their computers,

show

that even if

America

"survived" a victory over Russia she could easily become a victim of a determined aggressor like Red China, which in any case will soon have
its

own

nuclear weapons.
there can be

religious justification for a policy of all-out nuclear aggression, there is a strong and articulate body of theological opinion in favor of nuclear deterrence and an "adequate posture of

While

no

defense/ Father John Courtney Murray, to qualify it by saying the following:

who

holds this view, hastens

it

O The uninhibited violence of nuclear war "disqualifies

and proportionate means

as

an apt

for the resolution of international conflicts

and

even for the redress of just grievances/' 2) Appeal to the jus belli "seriously blocks progress of the international community toward that mode of political organization which Pius XII regarded as the single means for the outlawry of all war, even of defensive war/' (In both these statements Father

Murray

is

practically

paraphrasing words of Pius XII.) 3) While he quotes Pius XII to support his contention that the stockfor defense is legitimate, he adds "this does piling of atomic weapons

292
not morally validate everything that goes on at

Mentors and Doctrines

Cape Canaveral or Los

Taking
his

Alamos/'

However, Father Murray does not

offer a pacifist solution.

stand on the natural law and on the traditional just war theory, he believes that defensive wars may be necessary and that they ought to be small nuclear bombs. This is fought with conventional weapons or with all very well on paper, but when we realize that the twenty-kiloton bomb on Hiroshima is now regarded as small and is included that was

dropped

among the
licit,

tactical

we

see that his position

nuclear weapons which Father Murray would call is not so simple. Also, his footnotes and

licirness of

megatonic strike could be in some working toward the idea that even a pre-emptive sense regarded as "defense/' One wonders if this does not after all tend to validate morally "everything that goes on at Cape Canaveral or Los
Alamos/'

other interpolations seem to suggest that he is not only considering the nuclear weapons but also that he is apparently

An

eminent Catholic theologian in England, Canon L. L. McReavy,

declares without equivocation that the policy of nuclear deterrence, in so far as it relies on a serious threat of massive nuclear retaliation against

the cities of the

enemy

is

morally unacceptable. In an article published

in the Clergy Review two years ago, Canon McReavy stated, "A positive intention to commit an immoral act in certain circumstances, however

much one may hope they will never arise, is itself here and now immoral" However, he adds that nuclear weapons may be stockpiled for
back into the same practical
the moral theologian.
possible use against 'legitimate [military] targets/' is difficulty, for there

Here again we fall no indication what-

ever that military strategists are going to

make

the fine distinctions of

So Canon McReavy himself admits (in a letter to the Catholic Herald) it is probable that nuclear weapons "will not in fact be used with the discrimination required by the moral law, and I regard it as are used at allf even as a last morally certain that if megaton weapons
resort

and in self-defen$e f they will be used immorally" Because of these practical ambiguities there is a strong argument in

favor of "relative" or "nuclear" pacifism.

A RECENT COLLECTION of

and essays by Catholics, Nuclear Weapons Christian Conscience (Merlin Press, London, 1961), frankly takes the stand that the hypotheses of 'realists*' who seek to justify nuclear war

more from within to undermine Western civilization than the do from the outside/' These Catholic intellectuals protest can enemy
are "doing

Religion and the

Bomb

293

with

all their

strength against the "habitual moral squalor"

now

pre-

vailing,

and remind the Christian who may have forgotten the Cross

that in a situation like ours

we may

be forced

to

choose "the ultimate

of meaningful suffering" or deny the Christian faith itself. It is absurd and immoral to pretend that Christendom can be defended by

weapon

the H-bomb.

As
tempt
him.

St.

Augustine would

say, the

weapon with which we would

at-

We would be annihilated morally and no doubt physically as well.

it

to destroy the

enemy would

pass through our

own

heart to reach

The H-bomb may

Communists, but
a

possibly wipe out Western society if it is used by will destroy Christendom spiritually if it is used as

weapon of aggression by Christians, It must be noted that these Catholic

writers are not formal pacifists.

They admit

the traditional theory of the "just war" but feel that this concept is no longer viable. At the same time they attack the extreme argument that Christianity must be by its very nature pacifist. One of
the writers blames this idealistic view for encouraging the opposite cynical extreme, "doublethink about double effect" The book questions

the moral honesty of manufacturing and stockpiling nuclear weapons while "suspending the decision to use them." Another problem raised by this book: to what extent can the individual

when his government pursues a policy that leads directly to all-out nuclear war? One of the writers answers: "In modern warfare, responsibility for all that is not antecedently, clearly and in any way participublicly ruled out must be accepted by anyone who
claim to remain uncommitted
pates in

waging the war/'

<s>

THE FIGHT FOR PEACE

YET rr REMAINS TRUE that there is still a general apathy and passivity among the faithful and the clergy. Perhaps it is exact to say that they are afflicted with a kind of moral paralysis. Hypnotized by the mass media, which tend to be bellicose,, baffled and intimidated by the general atmosphere of suspicion, bewildered by the silence or by the amand remembering the biguity of their pastors and religious leaders, failure of the peace movements that preceded World War II, people tend to withdraw into a state of passive and fatalistic desperation. There earth by the shelter salesmen, and have they have been literally run to
set

the day

themselves despondently to digging holes in their backyards against when the missiles begin to fly.

294

Mentors and Doctrines

are the chances of a religious peace

situation"?

in such a grim one hand, the astute and tireless propaganda of the Soviets has succeeded without too much name by associating it entirely difficulty in giving disarmament a bad

What

movement

They would seem

to

be very slight

On

with Communist cold-war pressures. Anyone in the West who speaks up for disarmament, by that very fact automatically runs the risk of being called a Communist agent or a fellow traveler. Pacifism has a noxious reputation. It is not properly understood. Distinctions

The

between nuclear pacifism and absolute pacifism are not made. as a kind of pathetic idiot, a pacifist is automatically categorized

an appeal to confused and to salvage his self-respect by sentimental ideals. He can do no good. He only plays into the hands of coward trying
the enemy. It is true that pacifist movements tend to attract a certain number of true that peace movements in professional oddballs. It is also perfectly

democratic countries run the risk of being exploited by Communist elements, whether secret or overt. But it should not be necessary to state
that

one can favor a policy of nuclear disarmament, even

''pacifist/'

unilateral,

without being a Red, a beatnik, or a

after all permissible for a Catholic to be a limited pacifist? Is not even relative pacifism an expression of radicalism and disobedience, which would be unthinkable in a true Catholic? If

Someone

will ask:

is it

Church has not formally and expressly condemned nuclear war, is who claims to be a nuclear pacifist, by that fact pretending to be "more Catholic than the Church?" Here we must quite frankly face the ambiguous statement that the Church has "never condemned nuclear weapons/* Is this really exact? Certainly the Pope has never uttered a formal ex cathedra condemnation that would outlaw nuclear war. But is it necessary for him to do
the

not the Catholic

be clarified by the teaching Church and left to the faithful to apply for themselves? There exist more than a score of clear statements by Pius XII and John XXIII which deplore, in the strongest terms, all recourse to war and violence in the settlement of international disputes. These statements are not something new. They were not made necessary by the atomic bomb. Even before World War II, Pope Pius XII warned that war with conventional methods could be criminal. In 1939, after the
this? Is it

not

sufficient that the principles

authority of the

Blitzkrieg in Poland,

ventional weapons against civilians

for vengeance/'

Pope Pius declared that the unlawful use of conand refugees "cried out to Heaven

Religion

and the Bomb

October 1953, that
"all

He

also said, In

glorification of

war

Is

to

be

condemned

as a deviation of the

mind and heart" In

his

1944 Christmas

Message, before Hiroshima, he had asserted that "the theory of war as an apt and proportionate means of solving International conflicts Is now out

and he declared that the duty of banning all wars of aggression was "binding on all" This duty, he said, "brooks no delay, no procrastination, no hesitation, no subterfuge." Pope Pius XII denounced nuclear
of date,"

bombing very clearly and without any possibility of being mistaken. In an address to the World Medical Association in 1954, he declared that from the moment a weapon was so destructive that its effects could not be controlled and limited to It beannihilation
military objectives,

came immoral. Here

are his words:

"Should the evil consequences of adopting this method of warfare ever become so extensive as to pass utterly beyond the control of man, then indeed Its use must be rejected as immoral. In that event it would

no longer be a question

of defense against injustice and necessary protection of legitimate possessions, but of the annihilation pure and simple of all human life within the affected area. This Is not lawful on tide/*

We must note that this applies equally to offensive and defensive war.
obligatory to defend one's nation against unjust aggression, only legitimate means can be used. And if the destructive effect of war is far greater than the political injustice suffered, war is not legitimate. "If the damage caused by the war is disproportionate to the injustice
it is

any

While

suffered,

it

may

well be a matter of obligation to suffer the injustice,"

Pope Pius XII

said to

army

doctors

on October

19, 1953.

Unfortunately, statements like this one, though dutifully reported in the press and respectfully noted by the faithful are seldom really assimi-

by them. That is why the serious moral implications of the measured papal denunciations of nuclear war appear overlooked. The popes have not merely been trying to say that nuclear war Is not nice, but that it radically affects traditional Catholic norms of the morallated
ity of war.

This

is

an

essentially

new kind

of

war and one in which the

necessary conditions for "a just" war are extremely difficult to maintain. war of total annihilation simply cannot be considered a "just war/*

no matter how good the cause for which it is undertaken. Such is the view taken by no less authoritative a theologian than Cardinal Ottaviani, Secretary of the Holy Office. Writing before the development of the H-bomb, the Cardinal (then Monsignor) said without ambiguity: "The war of their
treatises Is

not the war of our experience. Principles

296

Mentors and Doctrines

derive from the very nature of things: the difference between war as it Modern wars can was and as we know it is precisely one of nature. never fulfill the conditions which govern, theoretically, a just and lawful war. Moreover, no conceivable cause could ever be sufficient justification for the evils, the slaughter, the moral and religious upheavals which war today entails/' Such is the thesis in an article by Cardinal Ottaviani entitled 'War Is to Be Forbidden Entirely," published in Latin in his Public Laws of the Church (Rome, 1947). Unfortunately such opinions have not been like this do not widely disseminated. It may be said also that statements
.
.
.

exclude the defensive use of nuclear weapons in tactical warfare, assuming that such warfare can be "kept within limits/'

Let us add one more authoritative statement.

The French

bishops,

when questioned about the lawfulness of nuclear weapons, replied in June 1950 that such a question did not even need to be asked, since nuclear war was already condemned by the "elementary sense of humanity!'

those

The bishops nevertheless spelled out the answer quite clearly for who no longer knew how to listen to the law of God implanted in
They
said

their hearts.

"we condemn [nuclear weapons] with

all

our

strength/' After so

many

statements,

made

so clearly

can

we

still

assume that a Catholic

who

authority, protests against nuclear war is

and with such

more Catholic than the Church?" How can we go on deceiving ourselves that it is somehow a Christian duty, prescribed by the Church, for us to collaborate in nuclear mass murder just because Pope Pius XII also affirmed that the state still re"trying to be

tained

do not deprive any nation of the basic natural right to defend itself by ordinary means. Nor do they dispense the citizen from helping the nation so to defend itself. The
point at issue
is

legitimate right of self-defense? Certainly the moral risks of nuclear war

its

not self-defense, but the means used in self-defense. It pure sophistry to contend that because Pius XII said that self-defense
is

by legitimate means was still mandatory, therefore self-defense by any means has now become legitimate. If the nation prepares to defend itself by methods that will almost certainly be immoral and illicit, then the Christian has not only the right lout also the duty to question the validity of these methods, and to protest against

them, even to the point of refusing his cooperation in their

use.

unjust and immoral

Religion and the

Bomb

297

o CONCLUSIONS
way

THKOUGHOUT THIS ARTICLE we have addressed ourselves in a general to all those who still cling to the Judaeo-Oiristian traditions of the
Western world. In conclusion
let

us consider our obligation as Catholics.

Certainly this obligation cannot and must not be reduced to the choice of one particular political and military policy. But we must recognize the basic moral that the unlimited and terroristic use of nuclear principle for or that matter of conventional weapons, weapons, is always immoral, and therefore criminal, always always totally unacceptable to the Christian conscience.

This principle having been clarified, we can go on to examine other methods of defending ourselves the enemies of our nation and
against
of our Christian heritage.

The

real

problem

is

not so

much

the choice of a particular means, the

selection of a

more

or less acceptable policy.

The malady

lies

deeper

present confusion and irresponsibility which lead so many "good Christians" to accept, instinctively and without question, a strategy which has been repeatedly criticized by the popes, must be
XII.

than that.

The

symptomatic of that "deviation of the mind and heart" deplored by Pius And the fact that they can point to theologians and publicists who
encourage them in their aberration makes the problem all the more The truth is that when the popes warn against our grave and

serious.

imminent danger of being involved in war crimes, we do not hear them, and their message does not register. At best, if we are paying attention at
are hunting for the escape clause that enables us to continue in maintaining the more precarious moral position.
all,

we

If we are going to defend Christianity and save it from the disastrous inroads of materialism and totalitarian autocracy, we must begin by realizing that the struggle necessarily begins within ourselves, both per-

sonally
If

and

as a group.

The problem

affects

both the individual and the

collective conscience of Christians.

we

spontaneously approve of nuclear terrorism,

if

we become

apologists for the uninhibited use of naked power, we are thinking like Communists, we are behaving like Nazis, and we are well on the way
to

becoming

either

one or the

other. In that event

we had better face

the

fact that

we

are destroying our

own

Christian heritage.
Jubilee

Eight:

WAR AND THE

PRAYER FOR PEACE

o THE ROOT OF WAR

THE ROOT OF ALL WAR is fear: not so much the fear men have one another as the fear they have of everything. It is not merely that they do not trust one another; they do not even trust themselves. If they are not sure when someone else may turn around and kill them, they are still less sure when they may turn around and kill themselves. They cannot trust anything, because they have ceased to believe In God.
1

of

IT is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above all our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves which is too and too powerful to be consciously faced. For it is this which deep

makes us see our own

evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves. see crime in others, we try to correct it by destroying them or at least putting them out of sight. It is easy to identify the sin with

When we
the other

the sinner
is

when he is someone other than our own self. In way round; we see the sin, but we have great

ourselves,

it

find it very hard to identify our shouldering responsibility for it. with our own will and our own malice. On the contrary, we naturally tend to interpret our immoral act as an involuntary mistake, or as the malice of a spirit in us that is other than ourself. Yet at the same time we are fully aware that others do not make this convenient distincsin

We

difficulty in

tion for us.

acts,

The

acts that

have been done by us

are, in their eyes, "our"

and they hold us

is

fully responsible.

tend unconsciously to ease ourselves still more of the burden of guilt that is in us, by passing it on to somebody else. When I have done wrong, and have excused myself by attributing the wrong to "another" who is unaccountably "in me," my conscience Is not yet satisfied. There is still too much left to be explained. The "other in myself"

What

more,

we

War and
is

the Prayer for Peace

2pp

Lome. The temptation Is, then, to account for my fault by an equivalent amount of evil in someone else. Hence I minimize seeing sins and compensate for doing so by exaggerating the faults of own my
too close to
others.

were not enough, we make the situation much worse by artifically intensifying our sense of evil, and by increasing our propensity to feel guilt even for things which are not in themselves wrong. In all these ways we build up such an obsession with evil, both in ourselves and in others, that we waste all our mental energy trying to account for

As

if this

this evil, to

punish

it,

to exorcise

it,

can.

We
is

or to get rid of

it

in

any way we
something or

drive ourselves
left

mad

with our preoccupation and in the end

there

no outlet

but violence.

We

have

to destroy

someone. By that time

scapegoat in the cause of every wrong.

we have created for ourselves a whom we have invested all the evil in

suitable

enemy, a

the world.
conflict If

He

is

He

is

the fomentor of
evil will

only be destroyed, conflict will cease, no more war.

he can be done with, there will be

all

This kind of fictional thinking is especially dangerous when it is supported by a whole elaborate pseudo-scientific structure of myths, like those which Marxists have adopted as their ersatz for religion. But it is

no less dangerous when it operates in the vague, fluid, conand unprincipled opportunism which substitutes in the West for for religion, philosophy, and even for mature thought.
certainly

fused,

o MORAL CONFUSION
confusion, when no one knows any longer what to think, and when, in fact, everybody is running away from the responsibility of thinking, when man makes rational thought

WHEN THE WHOLE WOULD is in moral

about moral issues absurd by exiling himself entirely from realities into the realm of fictions, and when he expends all his efforts in constructing

more fictions with which to account for his ethical failures, then it becomes clear that the world cannot be saved from global war and global destruction by the mere efforts and good intentions of peacemakers. In actual fact, everyone is becoming more and more aware of the widening gulf between good purposes and bad results, between efforts to make peace and the growing likelihood of war. It seems that no matter how elaborate and careful the planning all attempts at international dialogue end in more and more ludicrous failures. In the end no one has any

2 OO

Mentors and Doctrines

faith in those

more

who even
all their

attempt the dialogue.

will,

On

the negotiators, with

contempt and of hatred.

It is

pathetic good the "men of good will/' the

become the

the contrary, objects of

men who have

made their poor efforts to do something about peace, who will in the end be the most mercilessly reviled, crushed, and destroyed as victims of
the universal self-hate of

man which

inthey have unfortunately only

creased by the failure of their good intentions. to associate Perhaps we still have a basically superstitious tendency
failure

with dishonesty and guilt failure being interpreted as "punishment." Even if a man starts out with good intentions, if he fails we tend he was at least to think he was somehow "at fault." If he was not guilty,
is something we have not yet learned to "wrong." And ''being wrong" either condemn it with face with equanimity and understanding. do not disdain or forgive it with godlike condescension.

We

and identification. compassion, humility, manage to solve our us would that truth one the see never we begin Thus help or less all more are that we wrong, that ethical and political problems: our mixed our obstructed motives, and limited all we are all at fault, by
to accept it

godlike

We

with

human

our self-righteousness, self-deception, our greed,

aggressivity

and our tendency

to

and hypocrisy.

IN

OUR REFUSAL to accept the partially good intentions of others and work with them (of course prudently and with resignation to the ineviour table imperfection of the result) we are unconsciously proclaiming our own of lack own our realism, own our intolerance, own malice,

ethical

and

political quackery.
first

Perhaps in the end the

real step

toward peace would be a

realistic

be in many ways even more illusory and dishonest than our own. We will never get anywhere unless we can is an inextricable tangle of good and evil accept the fact that politics motives in which, perhaps, the evil predominate but where one must continue to hope doggedly in what little good can still be found. But someone will say: "If we once recognize that we are all equally action will instantly be paralyzed. We can only act all
mies

the fact that our political ideals are perhaps to a great exacceptance of that are not tent illusions and fictions to which we cling out of motives from ourselves this we of because that prevent always perfecdy honest: eneour of ideals the in political seeing any good or any practicability

which may,

of course,

wrong,

political

the contrary, I believe that we are in the right." the the be can action valid for basis recognition that the only political

when we assume

On

War

and the Prayer

for

Peace

301

nation but that

i

true solution to our problems is not accessible to any one isolated party or all must arrive at it by working together.

DO NOT MEAN to encourage the guilt-ridden thinking that is always too in everything. This too Is an evasion of responsibility, glad to be "wrong" because every form of oversimplification tends to make decisions ultiindividmately meaningless. We must try to accept ourselves, whether
but in ually or collectively, not only as perfectly good or perfectly bad, have to our mysterious, unaccountable mixture of good and evil.

We

stand by the

modicum of good
real rights,

have to defend our

in us without exaggerating it because unless we respect our own rights

that
is

We

we will certainly not respect the rights of others. But at the same time we have to recognize that we have willfully or otherwise trespassed on the
rights

of others.

We must be able to admit this not only as the result of

when
it is

self-examination, but

and perhaps pointed out unexpectedly,

moral

not too gendy, by somebody

else.

conduct, principles which govern personal in the harmony possible in small social units like the family, also apply It is, nations. of wider area of the state and in the whole community

These

which make

however, quite absurd, in our present situation or in any other, to expect these principles to be universally accepted as the result of moral exhortations. There is very little hope that die world will be ran according to

moral principles,
of heart

on the part

base political

some hypothetical change of politicians. It is useless and even laughable to and subthought on the faint hope of a purely contingent
all

of a sudden, as a result of

illumination in the hearts of the world's leaders. Yet outjective moral side of political thought and action, in the religious sphere, it is not only to hope for such a mysterious consummation, but it is necespermissible

can and must believe not so much that the myssary to pray for it. 'convert*' the ones who are mostly responsible God can of terious light at least that they may, in spite of their obbut for the world's peace,
stinacy

We

and

their prejudices,

be guarded against

fatal error.

o ON PRAYING FOR PEACE

WHAT is THE use of postmarking our mail
with exhortations
to

"pray for

billions of dollars on atomic submarines, therpeace" and then spending monuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles? This, I would think, would be what die New Testament calls "mocking God' and mock-

certainly

32-

Mentors and Doctrines

ing Him far more effectively than the atheists do. The culminating horror of the joke is that we are piling up these weapons to protect ourselves

against atheists who, quite frankly, believe there is no God and are convinced that one has to rely on bombs and missiles since nothing else offers it then because we have so much trust in Is real any security.

the power of God that we are intent upon utterly destroying these people before they can destroy us? Even at the risk of destroying ourselves
at the

same time?

i DO NOT MEAN to imply that prayer excludes the simultaneous use of ordinary human means to accomplish a naturally good and justifiable end. One can very well pray for a restoration of physical health and at the same time take medicine prescribed by a doctor. In fact, a believer

should normally do both.

right proportion

And

there

would seem

to

between the use of these two means

be a reasonable and to the same end.

But consider the utterly fabulous amount of money, planning, energy, anxiety, and care which go into the production of weapons which almost immediately become obsolete and have to be scrapped. Contrast all this
with the pitiful
little gesture "pray for peace" piously canceling our four-cent stamps! Think, too, of the disproportion between our piety and the enormous act of murderous destruction which we at the same time

seem

countenance without compunction and without shame! It does not even to enter our minds that there might be some incongruity in praying

the God Who told us to love one another as He had warned us that they who took the sword would perish by it, and at the same time planning to annihilate not thousands but millions of civilians and soldiers, men, women, and children without disto the

God of peace,

loved us,

Who

crimination, even with the almost same annihilation for ourselves!

It

infallible certainty of inviting the

may make

sense for a sick

man

to

pray for health and then take

in his praying for health

medicine, but I fail to see any sense at then drinking poison.

all

and

WHEN i PRAY
peace

for peace I pray

all

the Chinese but above

God to pacify not only the Russians and nation and myself. When I pray for own my

I pray to be protected not only from the Reds but also from the and blindness of my own country. When I pray for peace, I pray folly not only that the enemies of my country may cease to want war, but above all that my own country will cease to do the things that make war

inevitable. In other words,

that the Russians will give

I pray for peace I am not just praying without a struggle and let us have our own up

when

War
way.

and the Prayer

I

for

Peace

303
the Russians

am

praying that both

we and

stored to sanity and learn how to worlc out our problems, as best Instead of for suicide. together, preparing global

may somehow be rewe can,

I am fully aware that this sounds utterly sentimental, archaic, and out of rune with an age of science, But I would like to submit that pseudoscientific thinking In politics and sociology have so far had much less

than this to offer. One thing I would like to add in all fairness Is that the atomic scientists themselves are quite often the ones most concerned about the ethics of the situation, and that they are among the few who
dare to open their mouths from time to time and say something about
It.

But who on earth

listens?

NEW

SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION

o>

PRAYER FOR PEACE

Almighty and merciful God, Father of all men, Creator and Ruler of the Universe, Lord of History, whose designs are inscrutable, whose glory is without blemish, whose compassion for the errors of men Is
inexhaustible, in your will
is

our peace!

Mercifully hear this prayer which rises to you from the tumult and desperation of a world in which you are forgotten, In which your name
is

cause

not invoked, your laws are derided and your presence we do not know you, we have no peace.

is

ignored. Be-

the heart of an eternal silence, you have watched the rise of emseen the smoke of their downfall. pires and have

From

You have

erful, carried

seen Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Rome, once powaway like sand in the wind.

You have
in
of

which great powers have torn whole continents peace and justice.

witnessed the impious fury of ten thousand fratricidal wars, to shreds in the name

And now
of

our nation itself stands in imminent danger of a war the which has never been seen! This nation dedicated to freedom, not to power, Has obtained, through freedom, a power It did not desire.

like

And

seeking by that power to defend

policies of power.

its

freedom,

it is

enslaved by the

processes and

304

Mentors and Doctrines

that can

Must we wage a war we do not desire, a war And which our very hatred of war forces us to

do us no good,

prepare?
this free nation.

day of ominous decision has

now dawned on

Armed with

We
In

a titanic weapon, and convinced of our own right face a powerful adversary, armed with the same weapon, equally convinced that he is right
this

moment
fail.

of destiny, this

moment we never

foresaw,

we

cannot
in

afford to

Our

choice of peace or war

may

decide our judgment and publish

it

an eternal record.
In
this fatal

moment

of choice in

which we might begin the patient

We

architecture of peace may also take the last step across the rim of chaos.

Save us then from our obsessions!

sions, teach

Open our

eyes, dissipate

our confu-

us to understand ourselves and our adversary! Let us never forget that sins against the law of love are punished by loss
of faith,

And

those without faith stop at

no crime

to achieve their ends!

Help us to be masters of the weapons that threaten to master us. Help us to use our science for peace and plenty, not for war and destruction.

Show
to

us

how

to use

atomic power to bless our children's children, not

blight them.
to

Save us from the compulsion most hate

follow our adversaries in

all

that

we

Confirming them in their hatred and suspicion of us.

Resolve our inner contradictions, which

now grow beyond

belief

and
us

beyond bearing.

They

are at once a torment and a blessing: for if

the light of conscience,

we would not have

to

you had not endure them.

left

Teach us
Teach us
Grant

to
to

be long-suffering in anguish and insecurity.

wait and
trust.

light,

grant strength and patience to

To

this Congress,

all who work for peace our President, our military forces, and our adversaries.

War and
Wisdom

the Prayer for Peace

to our power,

305

Grant us prudence in proportion

in proportion to our science, Humaneness in proportion to our wealth

And

bless our earnest will to help all races

and might, and peoples

to travel, in

friendship with us, Along the road to justice,

But grant us above

ways,

all

liberty, and lasting peace: to see that our ways are not necessarily

your

That we cannot

And

fully penetrate the mystery of your designs that the very storm of power now raging on this earth Reveals your hidden will and your inscrutable decision.

Grant us
Grant us

to see

your face in the lightning of

it is

this cosmic storm,

O God of holiness, merciful to men:

to

seek peace where

will,

truly found!

In your

O God, is our peace!

AMEN
Unpublished

ST.

JOHN OF THE CROSS

you might John of the Cross. I say it will tell you something not very much. St. John of the Cross and El Greco were contemporaries, they lived in the same country, they were mystics, though by no means in the same degree. In other ways they were quite different Father Bruno, in the best life of St. John of
talce

LF YOU HAVE NEVER seen El Greco's view

a look at
it.

of Toledo,
St.

It will tell

you something about

the Cross so far written, reminds his reader several times not to go imagining that St. John of the Cross looked like an El Greco painting.

He was more like

is

one of Zurbaran's Carthusians. Even that comparison

not altogether exact

to

The

original

and authentic

portrait of the saint

have an innocent and rather expressionless face. He does not look in any way ascetic. In fact you would think you were looking
shows him
at the portrait of a

Madrid shopkeeper or of a cook.

is

It is full of spiritual imheavenly Jerusalem wearing an iron mask. Yet there is nothing inert about these buildings. The dark city built on its mountain seems to be entirely alive. It surges with life,

El Greco's view of Toledo

very dramatic.

plications. It looks like a portrait of the

coordinated by some mysterious, providential upheaval which drives all these masses of stone upward toward heaven, in the clouds of a blue
disaster that foreshadows the

end of the world.

where was John beginning of St. Theresa's reform he was of the reform, and kidnaped by opponents No one idea had where he had disappeared. any gone and, as St. Theresa lamented, nobody seemed to care. He was locked up in a cell without light or air during the stifling heat of a Toledan summer to
St.

Somewhere in the middle

of the Cross

of the picture must be the building kept in prison. Soon after the

306

St.

John
trial

of the Cross

307
for

persecutors seriously believed to be a canonical crime. The complex canonical and political implications of the Carmelite reform had involved the saints of that reform in the

await

and punishment

what his

Spain, had no taste. And was simplicity supported by an altogether devastating prudence in these adventures, seems to have rather

kind of intrigue for which they alone, of even St. Theresa, whose dovelike
enjoyed them.

all

John of the Cross found little that was humanly speaking enjoyable in Toledo jail His only excursions from his cell came on die days when he was brought down to the refectory to be publicly scourged by his jailers, who were scandalized at his meek silence, believing It to be the
his

man do

sign of a reprobate conscience, hardened in rebellion. something to defend himself?

Why

didn't the

Here in Toledo, in what he called "the belly of the whale/' the saint, wisely more silent than the prophet Jonas, dealt not with men but with
alone, waiting patiently for the divine answer that would end this dark night of his soul. No one knows when or how the answer came, but when St. John made his miraculous escape during the octave of the in he carried his in 1578, Assumption, pocket the manuscript of a poem which respectable critics have declared to be superior to any other in the

God

Spanish language. These critics range from Menendez y Pelayo, who may be deemed to be respectable in a rather stuffy sense, to more recent

and more advanced writers. Even the London magazine, Horizon) included two very competent articles on St John of die Cross in a series of "studies of genius." As far as I know, John of the Cross was the only
saint in the series.

when St John of the Cross was in But the imprisonment of St John of the Cross, and the Spiritual Canticle which bloomed miraculously in the closet where he was jailed, had little to do with the exiled GreeL The color scheme is quite different. The painter's view of the city must be a winter view, black, purple, green, blue, and gray. And the movement is a blind upheaval in which earth and sky run off the top of the canvas like an ebbtide in the arctic ocean. The color scheme of John's imprisonment is black and ocher and brown and red: the red is his own blood running down his back. The movement is centripetal. There is a tremendous in the soul immobilized, entombed in a burning stability, not merely
El Greco was painting in Toledo
prison there.
those alone
stone wall, but in the depths of that soul, purified by a purgatory that know who have felt it, emerging into the Center of all cen-

308
ters,

Mentors and Doctrines

the Love which moves the heavens and the
last
stars, the Living God. where one would imagine the Sfmtoud have heen written is a dungeon!

The

place in the world

Canticle to

I will try to translate a little of it:

My Beloved is like the mountains.

Like the lonely valleys
full o

woods

The strange islands The rivers with their sound The whisper of the lovely air!
The night,
About the
appeased and hushed
rising of the

dawn,

The music stilled The sounding solitude The supper that rebuilds my life

And brings me love.

Our bed of flowers
Surrounded by the lions' dens Makes us a purple tent,
Is built of peace-

Our bed

is

crowned with a thousand shields of

gold!

Fast-flying birds

Lions, harts,

and leaping does1 Mountains, banks, and vales Streams, breezes, heats -of day

And terrors watching in the night: By

the sweet lyres and by the -siren's I conjure you; let .angers end!

song

And do not
But
let

touch the wall

the bride be safe: let her sleep on!

Only the
everyday
infinitely

saint

and

God

can

tell

what distant echoes of an

utterly alien

common
the

deep sleep

life penetrated die darkness of the jail cell and the of the peace in "which his soul lay hidden in God.
*
.
.

Touch not
at the

but the religious police could not disturb the waU had been carried so far that he was no longer troubled ecstasy of one who
thought of being rejected even by the holy!

NO oisffi can become a saint witboat solving the problem of suffering, No one who has ever written anything, outside the pages of Scripture, has

St.

John of the Cross

309

given us such a solution to the problem as St. John of the Cross. I will not speculate upon his answers. I will merely mention the fact that they
exist

and

pass on. For those

of the Soul.

But

this

who want much must be

to read

it,

there

is

the

Dark Night

said; Sanctity

can never abide a

merely speculative solution to the problem of suffering. Sanctity solves the problem not by analyzing but by suffering. It is a living solution,

burned in the flesh and spirit of the saint by fire. Scripture itself tells us as much. "As silver is tried by fire and gold in the furnace, so the Lord
trieth hearts" (Prov. 17:3).

"Son,

when

thou comest

to

the service of

justice and fear and prepare thy soul for temptation. Humble thy heart and endure: incline thy ear and receive the words of understanding and make not haste in the time of clouds. Wait on God with patience: join thyself to God and endure, that thy life may be increased in the latter end. Take all that shall be brought upon thee, and in thy sorrow endure and in thy humiliation keep patience. For gold and silver are tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of humilia-

God, stand in

tion" CEccles.

2,:

1-5).
is not even directly produced and have suffered have become devils rather many

Sanctity does not consist in suffering. It

by

suffering, for
saints.

than
their

What

is

ings of the saints

and

more, there are some who gloat over the sufferare hideously sentimental about sufferings of

own, and cap it all by a voracious appetite for inflicting sufferon other people, sometimes in the name of sanctity. Of such were ing those who persecuted St John of the Cross in his last days, and helped him to enter heaven with greater pain and greater heroism. These were not the "calced" who caught him at the beginning of his career,
but the champion ascetics of his own reformed family, the men of the second generation, those who unconsciously did their best to ruin the work of the founders, and who quite consciously did everything they
could to remove

would be

John of the Cross from a position in which he what he knew to be the Theresian ideal. of suffering. For itself is a Sanctity living solution of the problem the saint, suffering continues to be suffering, but it ceases to be an obstacle to his mission, or to his happiness, both of which are found of God. The will of God is found positively and concretely in the will
St.

able to defend

by the saint

less in manifestations of die divine good-pleasure

than in

God

Himself.
is always opposed to natural joy. natural between suffering and supernatural opposition is in the order, simply an aspect of charity. It supernatural Joy,

Suffering,

on

the natural level,

There
joy.

is

no

3*
is

Mentors and Doctrines

inseparable from the love that
is

poured forth in our hearts by the

not yet mature, its joy is not always sanctity under pain. But true charity, It can be buried too recognizable. easily far from being diminished by suffering, uses suffering as it uses everyis

Holy Ghost. But

when

thing else: for the increase of its own immanent the expression of a divine life within us, and this
to

vitality.
life, if

we

Charity allow

is
it

have

that

way, grow and thrive most in the very presence of all seems to destroy life and to quench its flame. A life that blazes
its

will

with a hundredfold brilliance in the face of death

ble. Its joy

is

therefore invincisuffering.

cannot

fail. It

conquers everything.
is its

It

knows no
it

Like the Risen Christ,

death,

Who

Author and

Principle,

knows no

THE LIFE OF CHARITY was perfect in the great Carmelite reformer, St. John of the Cross. It was so perfect that it can hardly be said to shine before men. His soul was too pure to attract any attention. Yet precisely because of his purity, he is one of the few saints who can gain a hearing in the most surprising recesses of an impure world. John of
the Cross,

who seems

at first sight to

be a saint

for the

most pure of

elite, may very well prove to be the last hope of harlots and publicans. The wisdom of this extraordinary child "reaches from

the Christian

end

to

in God,

end mightily/' Lost in the pure wisdom of God, like God, and he attains to all things. This saint, so often caricatured as an
is

extremist,

actually

beyond

all

extremes.

tremes in the center of his

neutral.

own
is

Having annihilated all exhumility, he remains colorless and

is

His doctrine, which

it is

considered inhumanly hard,

simple. Its simplicity
to hide itself

only

hard because

an obstacle

to

superhumanly our nature, which seeks

seems to present

from God in a
amidst the

labyrinth leaves of Paradise.

of

mental complexities, like

Adam and Eve

The

hardest thing to accept, in St. John of the Cross,

is

not the
as

Cross, but the awful neutrality of his interior solitude. After

so reasonably points out,

all,

he

when

the soul

is

detached, by the Cross, from

every sensible and spiritual obstacle, its journey to God becomes easy and joyful: "The Cross is the staff whereby one may reach Him, and

whereby the road is greatly lightened and made easy. Wherefore Our Lord said through St. Matthew: My yoke is easy and my burden is is the Cross. For if a man resolve to submit himlight, which burden
self to

carrying his cross

that

is to

say, if

he resolve

to desire in truth

St.

John of the Cross meet

trials

211
all

to

and

to

bear them in

things for God's sake, he will

travel

find in

and sweetness wherewith he may 2 this road, detached from all things and desiring nothing/' The two words "desiring nothing" contain all the
great relief

them

on
all

difficulty

and

the simplicity of St. John of the Cross. But no Christian has a right to complain of them. an echo of two words that sum They are

simply

up the teaching of Jesus Christ in "If any man would come after me,
This
total self-denial,

the Gospel: abneget semeiipsum.

let

which

inmost depths of the human a wasteland without do special features of any kind whatever. not even have the consolation of beholding a personal disaster. A

." himself. . of the Cross into the John pursues reduces our interior spirit, landscape to
.

him deny

St,

We

cataclysm of the spirit, the contemplative Is

that of

If terrible, is also interesting.

But the soul of

complete
loneliis

happy to be reduced ness and dereliction In which the most

self-complacency.

to a state of

significant

renouncement

Many men

are attracted to a solitude In

will have the leisure and the opportunity themselves. Not so St. John of the Cross: "These times contemplate of aridity cause the soul to journey In all purity in the love of God, since it Is no longer influenced in Its actions by the pleasure and sweetness of the actions themselves . . but only by a desire to please
to
.

which they believe that they

becomes neither presumptuous nor self-satisfied, as perchance it was wont to become In the time of its prosperity, but fearful and timid with regard to itself, finding in itself no satisfaction whatsoever;

God.

It

and herein
virtues.
. .

consists that holy fear Save for the pleasure

it,

which preserves and

increases the

indeed which at certain times

God

find pleasure and consolation of sense, through its own diligence, in any spiritual exercise or action. . . , There grows within souls that experience this arid night (of the senses)

infuses into

it is

a wonder

if it

care for

God and

yearnings to serve

Him,

for In proportion as the

thing very 3 pleasing to God/' The joy of this emptiness, this weird neutrality of spirit which leaves the soul detached from the things of the earth and not yet in possession of those of heaven, suddenly blossoms out into a pure paradise of liberty,
of which the saint sings in his Spiritual Canticle: it is a solitude full of wild birds and strange trees, rocks, rivers, and desert islands, lions and

breasts of sensuality wherewith it sustained and nourished the desires that it pursued, are drying up, there remains nothing in that aridity and detachment save the yearning to serve God, which is a

312

Mentors and Doctrines

the joys of the spirit, aspects leaping does. These creatures are images of of interior solitude, fires that flash in the abyss of the pure heart whose loneliness becomes alive with the deep lightnings of God.
IF
i

SAY that

St.

John of the Cross seems

is

to

me

to

of the saints, that

saint

only another

way
St.

of saying that
also

be the most accessible he is my favorite

together with three others

who

seem

to

me

most approachaall,

ble: St. Benedict, St. Bernard,

and

Francis of Assisi. After

the

people you

make

friends with are the ones

who welcome you

into their

that St. John of the Cross company. But besides this, it also seems to me himself a most accessible saint. This, to those who is absolutely and in find him forbidding, will seem an outrageous paradox. Nevertheless it is true, if you consider that few saints, if any, have ever opened up to

other

men such remote depths in their own soul. St. John of the Cross admits you, in the Living Flame, to his soul's ''deepest center/' to the of fire, the attributes of God, flash "deep caverns" in which the lamps

who else has done as much? St. mysteriously in metaphysical shadows; not in us to himself reveals John allegory, as does St. Theresa (in the
Mansions') but in symbol. And symbol is a far more potent and effective medium than allegory. It is truer because it is more direct and more intimate. It does not

need

to

be worked out and applied by the reason.

The

symbols that spring from the depths of the heart of St. John of the Cross awaken kindred symbols in the depths of the heart that loves him.

Their

effect,

of course,
to love

is

may

believe, the saint himself has

supported and intensified by grace which, we begged for the souls of those who
in

have been called

the soul with

him

God. Here

is

a union and a friendship of

knows no such intimacies. Those who love St. Peter from the Gospels, and react in vivid sympathy for his all too human experiences, do not come as close to Peter as the one who
Himself. Earth

God

know St. Peter St. John of the Cross in the depths of prayer. on a more exterior surface of life the level of passion and emotion. But
meets

We

on that

level there is less

communion, and

less effective

communication,

than in the depths of the spirit. And thus St. John of the Cross not only makes himself accessible to us, but does much more: he makes us accessible to ourselves by opening
our hearts to

God

within their
I

own
is

depths.

In the end, however,

thing: St.

may

as well

have the courtesy

to

admit one

John of the Cross

templative monastery there will be

not everybody's food. Even in a consome who will never get along with

St.

John of the Cross

313

him and others who, though they think they know what he is about, would do better to let him alone. He upsets everyone who thinks that his doctrine Is supposed to lead one by a way that is exalted. On the contrary, his way Is so humble that it ends up by being no way at all,
for

John of the Cross

exaltation.

Omnis

Is unfriendly to systems and a bitter enemy of all qui se exaltat humiliabitur. His glory Is to do without

the love of Christ. glory for John of the Cross is the patron of those
thought, by
difficult,

who have

a vocation that
Is

Is

others, to

and obscure.

those

whom God

reality, lowly, the patron and the protector and master of has led Into the uninteresting wilderness of contem-

be spectacular, but which, In

is

He

His domain Is precisely defined. He is the patron of in the strict sense, and of their spiritual directors, not of contemplatives in the juridical sense. He is the patron of those who pray contemplatives in a certain way in which God wants them to pray, whether they happlative prayer.

pen
is

to

be In the

cloister,

the desert, or the

city.

Therefore his influence

not limited to one order or to one land of order. His teaching is not merely a matter of "Carmelite Spirituality/* as some seem to think. In
to say that he is the father of all those whose an isolation outside the boundary of "spirituality." undefined prayer He deals chiefly with those who, in one way or another, have been brought face to face with God in a way that methods cannot account
fact, I

would venture

is

for

and books do not

explain.

He

Is

In Christ the

model and the maker

said. St.

of contemplatives wherever they may be found. When this much has been said, enough has been

John of the Cross was not famous in his own lifetime and will not be famous in our own. There is no need that either he, or contemplation, should be famous. In this world in which all good things are talked about and none of them are practiced, it would be unwise to make conpractically no harm has templative prayer a matter for publicity, though perhaps been done, thus far, by making its name known. God Himself knows well enough how to make the thing known to those who need it, In His
designs for them.
Is one of the greatest he is and perhaps the greatest and that in his humility he poet as well as the greatest contemplative, was also most human, although I have not said much to prove it. I know that he will understand that this essay about him was written as a veiled act of homage, as a gesture of love and gratitude, and as a dis-

Let

it

suffice to

have said that

this

Spanish saint

most hidden of the saints, that of all saints

314
guised prayer.
writer
1

Mentors and Doctrines

He knows

what the prayer

seeks.

May

he grant

it

to the

and

to the readers of these words.

1 lift this line bodily

from the translation of Professor E. Allison Peers.

of Mount Carmel, ii, 7. Complete Works of St. }ohn of the Cross, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers, Westminster, Newman, 1945, Vol. I, of the Soul,
13. Peers, op. tit., Vol.
I,

The Ascent

p. 91.

*Tke Dark Night

i,

p. 393.

SAINTS FOR

NOW

Ten:

THE LETTERS OF

ST.

BERNARD

of God's dealing with us," says Car"that personal sanctity should be attendant upon high . the prophets have ordinarily not spiritual dignity of place or work . but are not only gifts only inspired to know and teach God's graces; they
JLT

HAS BEEN the ordinary rale

dinal

Newman,

will,

but inwardly converted

to

obey

it.

For surely those only can preach

who feel it personally; those only transmit it fully from God to man, who have in the transmission made it their own/' It is this "ordinary rule" that makes God so wonderful in His saints. It is the only explanation of a St. Bernard in whom, as in some of His other great saints, God Is not only wonderful but also scandalous. Did
the truth duly

not St. Paul warn all generations that the folly of the Cross would always be a scandal? Bernard of Clairvaux was plunged deep in the mystery of the Cross, which was the mystery of God's will for his world and ours. He who had left the world to become a monk was thrown back into the world to be an apostle, a worker of miracles, a peacemaker and a warmaker, the reformer of abbeys, the monitor of cardinals and popes, a prophet sent
to

warn

The
by
fire

kings. saint who wrote the Letters

of the truths in

became the passionate embodiment which he believed. The words of God which are purified
to contain

burned white-hot in a human frame scarcely able

them.

House of God was devouring a sick man whose continued existence on earth could only be explained by miracle. Bernard, the contemplative, was a great man of action because he was a great contemplative. And because he was a contemplative he never ceased fearing to be a mere man of action. He knew better than anyone

The

zeal for the

that even the saints cannot touch pitch without being defiled

by

it.

The
3*5

316
natural sincerity

Mentors and Doctrines

and the supernatural zeal

for divine truth that

burned

within

the faults of frailty and passion which even a saint could commit in the heat of ruthless and energetic

him could not help showing him

Yet he refused
to

have mercy on his body or on his soul, and most difficult problems of his age. Most of the letters were hammered out of the white-hot material found in conflict. They show the man as he is, and because he is so much a man, that saints must be men may sometimes be inclined readers who
action.

threw himself

fiercely into the

forget

to question his sanctity. That would be a great pity in needs saints as badly as ours. Bernard is sent to instruct us

an age which

how human

be, to forge out the will of God in the heat of the affairs of men. In his Sermons on the Canticle he can be as lyrical as St. Francis. the bishops to have time for e In his letters he is too
saint

must

busy upbraiding

sermon

to the birds,

In the Letters we see, more than anything else, the public facets of a many-sided character. Bernard himself would have been ready to admit that he did not appear at his best in some of the petty business which
his letters endeavored to settle.

often do we not hear him cry out nuditia the the and diei, the "evils of the day/' the necessitas, against material sordid trivial and often questions that inevitably arise in human

How

down society to draw than his own protestations of humility

good

men

from God? But Bernard was more humble

would lead us

to believe.

He had

the humility to be himself in the thick of a silly argument. He had the have to bicker with grace to admit that a saint might possibly

another saint over their respective rights to a monk who had skipped from one monastery to another without observing the proper formalities.

He

did not fear to display a bold

and grandiose impatience with

his

correspondents, even were they kings. King of England with words like these:

He

could open a

letter to

the

"The King

of kings has for

long chastised your royal majesty, for he is more powerful than you/' And he could do so without starting a war, because it was so evident
that

he knew

this

King of kings that he spoke of so

familiarly: that

he

was, indeed, His spokesman, and required a respectful hearing, Father Bruno James suggests that St. Bernard is "at his best when he
is

the righteous anger of angry/* I need not defend

St Bernard,

for only

God can tell die difference between a holy indignation and the "anger of man which workedi not the justice of God" C James 1:2-0). But I know that when St. Paul was angry, it was Christ Who spoke in him (II Cor*

who even

13:2-3). I only hope that the angry Bernard, the passionate Bernard, In his anger and In Ms passion was a saint, will not blind

The who

Letters of

St Bernard

317

everyone to the merciful Bernard, the gende and long-suffering monk could be as tender as a mother to anyone who did not give evidence

Christ's

of being a hardened Pharisee, and unending patience with the

who had
weak

sinner

in his heart something of and compassion for the

publican. Some of the letters are curiously amusing, like the one which records a discussion between St. Bernard and St. Norbert, in which St. Norbert

expressed his conviction that Antichrist would appear on the scene in their "own generation/' St. Bernard "did not feel compelled to agree."

Most

of the letters contain concise

and memorable aphorisms which

will bear long meditation. tells a Cluniac monk, who has just been elected bishop of a wicked city: "You must not only be patient so as not to be overcome by evil, you must also be peaceable so as to overcome
evil by good." To another bishop-elect, whose past life offers little to recommend him for such a difficult position, St Bernard writes dryly: 'It is laid down that we should love others as we love ourselves. But
if you were to love others as you have hitherto loved yourself, I for one would not wish to be committed to your care." But there are other letters which show St. Bernard as a speculative mystic* The twelfth letter, to the Carthusians, on the subject of "pure love/' takes us at once to the heart of St Bernard's theology. It sets forth the principle that the "immaculate law of God" is charity, and that there is no mystical liberation, no transformation in Christ, for the soul that has not been elevated, by the Spirit of God, above the law of selfishness and cupidity

He

realm of divine charity. Although English can never quite recapture the solidity of Latin, Father Bruno James has preserved most of the vigor and life and rhythm of the original. This is a rare translation, easily the best English version of the saint's Letters so far published, which really sounds something
to the

like St. Bernard. I think such a success could only have been achieved love for the saint and for the Cistercians someone who had a

by

great

of the twelfth century.

may Nothing remains to be said except that whether St Bernard, whether he may understand St. Bernard, he can hardly fail to recognize, in perusing the Letters, that he is face to face with an Bernard is too important to be overlooked. He imposing personality. St. of every educated man, along with St Aubelongs on the bookshelves St Anselm and St Thomas Aquinas. The gustine and St Gregory, whole Bernard is not to be found in the Letters alone: but the whole Bernard can never be known without them.
the reader
like

3*8

Mentors and Doctrines

If we really take the trouble to know him, we will gain more than mere respect for his great gifts. We will come to admire and love him. Admiration and love mean little, however, without imitation. Perhaps our own century needs nothing so much as the combined anger and

gentleness of another Bernard.

THE LETTERS OF

ST.

BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

Eleven:

CHRISTIAN CULTURE NEEDS

ORIENTAL WISDOM

HUNDRED YEARS AGO America began

its

to discover the

Orient and

discovery was valid, it reached toward philosophical the inner truth of Oriental thought. But the intuitions of Emerson and
tradition.

The

Thoreau were rich in promises that were not fulfilled by their succesAmerica did not have the patience to continue what was so happily begun. The door that had opened for an instant closed again for a cenan d sometimes tury. Now that the door seems to be opening again C one wonders whether it is the door of the same house) we have another
sors.

chance.
It is
for,

imperative for us to find out

what

is

inside this fabulous edifice,

from where we stand, we can descry the residents dressed in our kind of clothing and engaged in our kind of frantic gesturing. They are tearing the place apart and rebuilding it in the likeness of our own utilitarian dwellings, department stores, and factories. Not that there is anything wrong with industrial production or a higher standard of or should know, by this time, that our material living. Yet we know, riches imply a spiritual, cultural, and moral poverty that is perhaps far greater than we see.

The literal
and
its

translation of the tide

"I don't

Too Teh Ching

is

Book of the

Way

^Hidden) Power.
is

If there is a correct

answer to the question,

"What

the Tao?"

it is:

know."

Tao can be
As As

Names can be named, but

talked about but not the eternal Tao, not the Eternal Name. the origin of heaven and earth it is nameless: "the Mother" of all things it is nameable.

32,0
It is like

Mentors and Doctrines

in the center of the verge.

an "empty bowl that can never be filled/' It is like the hole hub of a wheel, upon which all the spokes con-

We make
But
Its
it is

doors and

windows

for a room;

these
it,

Look

at

empty spaces that but you cannot see it!

Formless.

make

the

room

livable.

name name
at

is
it,

Listen to
Its

but you cannot hear

Soundless.

it!

is
it,

Grasp
Its

but you cannot get

Incorporeal.

it!

name

is

It is

inexhaustible life and yet

the formless form, the imageless image. It is a "fountain spirit" of it never draws attention to itself. It does its

work without remark and without recognition. It is utterly elusive: if you think you have seen it, what you have seen is not the Too. Yet it is the source of all, and all things return to it "as to their home/' The whole secret of life lies in the discovery of this Tao which can never be discovered. This does not involve an intellectual quest, but
rather a spiritual change of one's
like" the

whole being.

One

"reaches" the

Tao

Tao, by acting, in some sense, according to the by becoming the is at once perfect activity and perfect rest. For Tao "way" (Tao).
It is

Hence human

supreme, actus purissimus. activity, even virtuous

activity, is

not enough to bring

one into line with the Tao. Virtuous activity tends to be busy and showy, and even with the best intentions in the world it cannot avoid
sounding the trumpet before
itself

in the market place.

He who cultivates the Tao is one with the Tao; He who practices Virtue is one with Virtue; And he who courts after Loss is one with Loss.
way of whirlwind activity, of rash endeavor, of "extraneous growths/' It is the way of accumulation the of ambition, of success. The way of Virtue is the Confucian spectacular aggression,
of Loss is the

The way

way

of self-conscious

and
St.

professional goodness

pure form of virtue.

the

Thomas would

say

it

which is in fact a less works humano modo

of the Gifts of

rather than with the divine

and mysterious spontaneity

Holy Ghost But the way of Tao is just that: the way of supreme which is virtuous in a transcendent sense because it "does spontaneity
not strive/'

Christian Culture

Needs Oriental Wisdom

321

High

virtue
it

is

nonvirtaous;

There! ore
Therefore

has virtue.
has no virtue.

Low virtue never frees itself from vrrtiioiisiies%

it

The

"sage" or the

man who

has discovered the secret of the

Tao

has

not acquired any special esoteric knowledge that sets him apart from others and makes him smarter than they are. On the contrary., lie is,

from a certain point of view, more stupid and exteriorly less remarkable. He is "dim" and obscure. While everyone else exults over success as over a sacrificial ox, he alone is silent, 'like a babe who has not yet smiled/' Though he has in fact "returned to the root/' the Tao, he appears to be the "only one who has no home to return to."

He is very much like the One who has nowhere to lay His head; even though the foxes have holes and the birds of the air their nests. He who has found the Tao has no local habitation and no name on the earth. He is "bland like the ocean, aimless as the wafting gale/* Again
we remember the Gospels: "The wind blows where it will. ... So is everyone who is born of the spirit" (John 3 8). The way of the sage is the way of not attacking, not charging at his objective, not busying himself too intently about Bis goals. The Chinese
:

ideogram for this is unfortunately hardly able to be translated. The Wei is a Taoist "active" symbol in it looks like a charging horse. better left as it stands. and Zen technical expression, and perhaps it is coins an English expression for it: "non-ado" and one can Dr. see what is at the back of his mind. It recalls the Shakespeare title

Wu

Wu

Much Ado About

The

Nothing. Japanese Zen artist and poet Sengai has left us two Japanese characters, Bu Ji, which are a work of art in themselves and eloquent of the spirit of Tao. Bu Ji means "nothing doing." I can say that there
is

by Sengai than in all the skyscrapers of New York, and yet he dashed diem onto paper with four strokes of his brush.
powerful signs created

more energy, more

creativity,

more

"productiveness" in these two

Hence
cause

Wu Wei

is

far

it acts at rest, acts

from being inactive. It is supreme activity bewithout effort Its effordessness is not a matter
that drives the planets
it is

of inertia, but of

harmony with the hidden power

and the world.

does not act of and by himself, still less for himself alone. His action is not a violent manipulation of exterior reality, an "attack" on the outside world bending it to his con-

The sage then accomplishes very that acts in him and through him.

much

indeed because

the

Tao

He

322

Mentors and Doctrines

quering will: on the contrary, he respects external reality by yielding to it and his yielding is at once an act of worship, a recognition of sacredness and a perfect accomplishment of
cise situation.

what

is

demanded by

the pre-

The world
after.

is

a sacred vessel which must not be tampered with or grabbed

it is

To

tamper with

to spoil
is

it,

and

to grasp it is to love

it.

The power of

the sage

then the very power which has been revealed

in the Gospels as Pure Love. Dens cantos est is the full manifestation of the truth hidden in the nameless Tao, and yet it still leaves Tao

not a name, any more than Tao is. One must enter into communion with the reality before he can know anything about it; and then, more like than not, he will know "in the cloud of unknowing."
nameless. For Love
is

go beyond the

word and

sixty-seventh chapter of the Tao profound and the most Christian. In the

The

Teh Chlng is one of the most Tao "which is queer like noth-

ing on earth** are found three treasures: mercy, frugality, and not wanting to be first in the world. And the extraordinarily profound statement
is

made

that
I

Because

am

merciful, therefore I can

be brave.

For heaven will come to the rescue of the merciful and protect mercy.

him with

Its

Again one hears echoes of the Gospel: "Blessed are the merciful"; "Perfect love casteth out fear/' Comparing Dr. Wu's translation with that of Lin Yutang in the Modern Library edition of Lao Tzu ( another extremely interesting translation, with parallel passages from the poet and sage Chuang Tzu) we find new perspectives. (It is often necessary to
read a translated Chinese text in two or
If

more

versions.)

one forsakes love and fearlessness, forsakes restraint and reserve power, forsakes following behind and rushes in front^ He is doomed!
For love
is

victorious in attack

And invulnerable in defense,

Heaven arms with love Those it -would not see
destroyed.

The word which

"mercy"
is

Dr. Lin Yutang translates as 'love" and Dr.

Wu

as

in fact the compassionate love of the mother for the child.

Christian Culture

Needs Oriental Wisdom

and die wise
ruler are

323
not rush for-

Once
ward

again, the sage

men who do

but cherish, with loving concern, the "sacred" reality of persons and things which have been entrusted to them by the Tao.
to aggrandize themselves

It must be remembered that the Tao Teh Ching is basically not a manual for hermits but a treatise on government and much is said there on war and peace. It is a classic that our leaders might be expected to read and doubtless some of them might do so with profit. One of its most astute sayings is that in a war die winner is likely to be on the side that enters the war with the most sorrow.

To

rejoice over a victory is to rejoice over the slaughter of

rejoices over the slaughter of

men!
to thrive

Hence a man who

.
.

men

cannot expect

in the world of men.

.

Even

victory

is

a funeral.

paradoxical brilliance of the Tao classic contrasts with the simthe Hsiao Ching, a primer of Chinese Confucian ethics and of plicity the first texts of one formerly studied by Chinese schoolboys. But this

The

makes

some respects, than the better-known Tao Teh Ching. Many who would be secredy irritated by the apparent subdety of the Tao classic might prefer to meditate on the classic of filial love. It is a revelation of the deepest natural wisdom and its intuitions are surprisingly "modern." In fact we are here on the same ground as Freud and substantially die same conclusions that were reached by Freud more than twenty centuries later are here exposed in all simplicity and without benefit of the Oedipus complex. One might be tempted to imagine that this treatise is designed merely to keep sons in subjection to their parents and hence to exalt parental
it

even more

interesting, in

true that the rigid formalism authority for its own sake. It is doubdess of Confucian ethics became, after hundreds of years, a somewhat suffo-

cating system. But in

cally yersondistic.

its

original purity, the

Confucian ideal

is basi-

The fundamental

from is received as a parents gift them. Hence the astounding fact that toward of out gratitude veloped this filial piety is not simply a cult of the parent as such, but a development of one's own gifts in honor of the parents who gave them to us.
our person

justification for filial piety is that and is to be fully deour

Then, when we reach manhood and our parents are old, we make a return to them by loving support. This basic attitude is said to fitting be "the foundation of virtue and the root of civilization/' If a child can enter fruitfully and lovingly into the five basic rela-

324
tionships,
leader,

Mentors and Doctrines

will certainly develop into a good citizen and a worthy supposing that to be his vocation. The five basic relationships

he

are those of father to son,

marked by

justice;

mother

to son,

marked by

compassion, or merciful love; the son to his parents, marked by filial love; the elder brother has friendship for his younger brother; the younger, respect for his senior.

Thus we see a wonderful organic complex of strength from the father, warmth from the mother, gratitude from the son, and wholesome, respectful friendship

between brothers.
be proud in high
station;

He who

really loves his parents will not

he will

not be insubordinate in an inferior position;

among

his equals

he

will not

be ruined; to be insubpunishment; to be contentious among one's equals leads to physical violence. So long as these three evils are not uprooted a boy cannot be called filial even though he feast his parents daily on the three kinds of choice meat.
be contentious* ordinate in an

To be

proud in high

station is to

inferior position is to incur

On

makes

such a ground grows up a love that reaches out through society and it the earthly image of the invisible order of heaven.

The Hsiao Ching

ing
the
to fruitful

then shows

how

this love

has various ways of com-

Heaven Son

development in all the levels of society from the Son of down through the princes and scholars to the peasants. "From of Heaven to the commoner, if filial piety is not pursued from

to end, disasters are sure to follow/' The society of love (comthe works of Pseudo-Dionysius) is hierarchical. The lower pare depend on the higher in this exercise of love.

beginning

The King
l>e

is

at the

summit

All depends

on him and he should

ideally

all

capable of the widest and most all-embracing love. For he must love his subjects and care for their needs. In so doing, he embodies the

"heavenly principle" on earth and imitates the Son of Heaven who loves all alike. also has a duty to share with his subjects this knowl-

He

edge of heavenly love, and this he does by means of ritual and music. In other words, the nation which lives by love grows in love by lituigi-

which

cal celebration of the mystery of love: such are the Christian terms would expand this primitive intuition.

in

we

It is important to notice that in all this, there is no such thing as blind subservience to age and to authority. the contrary, one of the basic duties of filial love is to correct the father when he is wrong and

On

one of the basic duties of the minister

ens. This of course

was the

ideal.

is to correct his prince when he The pungent humor of Chuang Tzu

Christian Culture

Needs Oriental Wisdom

this

325
kind of
"filial

shows us many occasions when in practice

not appreciated.
Christopher
education. It

love"

was

Dawson has remarked on

is

the "religious vacuum" to into our study of the essential introduce absolutely

in our

humanities a dimension of wisdom oriented to contemplation as well as to wise action. For this it is no longer sufficient merely to go back
over the Christian and European cultural traditions. The horizons of the world are no longer confined to Europe, have to gain new perspec-

We

tives,

and on

this

our spiritual and even our physical survival

may

de-

pend.

Does this mean that the suggestion given in our tide is Does Christian culture need Oriental wisdom? It would
rash to state this without further qualification. Yet selves a few pertinent questions on the subject.
First of all, it is quite clear that

strictly true?

certainly

be

we may

ask our-

no non-Christian

religion or philoso-

phy has anything that Christianity needs, in so far as it is a supernatuYet from die point of view of the "incarnation" rally revealed religion.
of revealed Christian truth in a social and cultural context, in man's

we know how much Greek philosophy and Roman law the actual formation of Christian culture and even Chriscontributed to
actual history,
tian spirituality.

We

know

too

with what breadth of view and with

the thirteenth century made lofty freedom the scholastic doctors of use of Aristotle and his Arabian commentators. It can certainly be said

what
that

a similar use had been made of Oriental philosophy and religious in Asia thought from the very start, the development of Christianity
if

would have been a different story. Our Western Christian thought and culture would also have been immeasurably enriched and deepened.

Have we not been

really attempting
to

few easy
are
all

quietists!"

generalizations? And so on?

too ready to dismiss Oriental philosophy without understand it? Do we not still shrug it off with a "Oh, that's all pantheism!" "The Buddhists

Can we be

level of "comparative religion,"

content to leave the rich Asian heritage of wisdom on the and subject it to a superficial and pass-

off concepts like "Tao" and "Dhanna" and ing consideration, checking tourist might saunter through the Louvre vaguely bored as a "Dhyana" the famous masterpieces as he walked by them? Or can we

registering

and philosophies from an apologetic simply study these Asian religions or missiological standpoint, as "rival systems" which are known a priori
to

be

"false,"

but which one must at

least

know how

to refute?

One

cannot arrive at

an understanding of any "wisdom," whether natural

326
or supernatural,
trated

Mentors and Doctrines

by arguing

by logical analysis. tually reveal themselves only on the plane of spiritual experience, or perhaps, if you like, of aesthetic experience. They belong, of course, to
the natural order: but they certainly have deep
ral
affinities

The

either for or against it Wisdom is not penevalues hidden in Oriental thought ac-

with supernatu-

that they may be able, if Surely to lead us to a deeper and wiser unand appreciated, properly grasped derstanding of our own magnificent mystical tradition, just as Platoitself.

wisdom

we cannot doubt

nism, without actually "influencing" the Greek Fathers, gave them a language and a sensibility that were equipped to penetrate in a specially
significant way At least this

the depths of the revealed mystery of Christ. much can and must be said: the "universality"
are essential to the

ability

necessarily "catholicity" and a readiness to enter into dialogue with all that is pure, wise, and humane in every kind of culture. In this one sense at

which

Church

and imply an

profound,

least a dialogue

with Oriental wisdom becomes necessary.

Christian

culture that
fact, that it

not capable of such a dialogue would show, by that very lacked catholicity.
is

The

Catholic

World

Twelve:

CONQUISTADOR, TOURIST,
INDIAN

AND

FROM

A LETTER TO PABLO ANTONIO CUADRA CONCERNING GIANTS*'

ME CONSIDER the question of the world's future, if it has one. leaders of the opposed ideologies are persuaded that it has. The masters of Russia think that the self-destruction of our commercial culThe
ture will usher in the golden age of peace and love. Our leaders think that if we and they can somehow shoot the rapids of the cold war, waged with the chemically pure threat of nuclear weapons, we will

both emerge into a future of happiness, the nature and the possibility of which still remain to be explained. For my part, I believe in the very serious possibility that both powers

morning, so to speak, to find that they have burned map during the night, and nothing will remain but the spasmodic exercise of automatic weapons still in the throes of what has casually been called "post-mortem retaliation." In this new situation it is conceivable that Indonesia, Latin America, Southern Africa, and Australia may find themselves heirs to the opportunities and objectives that the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. shrugged off

may wake up one

and

blasted each other off the

with such careless abandon.

The largest, richest, and best-developed single land mass south of the Equator is South America. The vast majority of its population is Indian, or of mixed Indian blood. The white minority in South Africa would quite probably disappear. A relic of European stock might survive in Australia and New Zealand. Let us also hopefully assume the partial survival of India and of some Moslem populations in central and northern Africa.

328
If this

Mentors and Doctrines

should happen
it

will

be an event fraught with a rather ex-

traordinary spiritual significance. It will

mean

that the

more

cerebral

cultures, which have tended to live more and more by to isolate themselves more and more from the natural world by rationalization, will be succeeded by the sections of the human race which they oppressed and exploited without the slightest appre-

and mechanistic asbtractions and

ciation for, or understanding for, their human reality. Characteristic of these races is a totally different oudook

on

life,

is not abstract but concrete, not pragmatic but spiritual oudook which rather than rationalistic and aggressive. affective intuitive and hieratic, The deepest springs of vitality in these races have been sealed up by the Conqueror and Colonizer, where they have not actually been poisoned by him. But if this stone is removed from the spring perhaps its waters will purify themselves by new life and regain their creative, fruc-

tifying power.

be quite succinct: the greatest sin of the European-RussianAmerican complex which we call the West (and this sin has spread its own way to China), is not only greed and cruelty, not only moral dishonesty and infidelity to truth, but above all its unmitigated arrogance toward the rest of the "human race. Western civilization is now in full decline into barbarism (a barbarism that springs from within itself)
Let
because

me

To
by

has been guilty of a twofold disloyalty: to God and to Man. a Christian who believes in the mystery of the Incarnation, and who
it

that belief means something more than a pious theory without real humanistic implications, this is not two disloyalties but one. Since the Word was made Flesh, God is in man. God is in all men. All men are
to be seen and treated as Christ. Failure to do this, the Lord tells us, involves condemnation for disloyalty to the most fundamental of revealed truths. "I was thirsty and you gave me not to drink. I was hungry

and you gave

me

not to eat

."

This could be extended in every

be so extended, all over the entire possible sense: and it is meant to area of human needs, not only for bread, for work, for liberty, for health, but also for truth, for belief, for love, for acceptance, for fellowship and
understanding. One of the great tragedies of the Christian West was the almost complete destruction of the Indian cultures of America by European and
tans

Christian conquerors. In the north the Indian was wiped out by Puriwho appealed to the Old Testament example of the conquest of
felt

Canaan, and

themselves exercising a divine mandate to exterminate

the godless savage. In South America the appeal was

more

sophisticated.

Conquistador? Tourist, and Indian

329

In the name of Aristotle and the natural law, as well as of scholastic theology, savagery and treachery In war against the Indian were considered fully justified for several reasons. First, it was just to wipe out a civilization that violated the natural law by Its idolatrous worship. Second, It was just to subjugate in warfare an inferior people, destined

very nature for slavery (Aristotle). Third, it was legitimate to exploit and oppress men who were not fully human, were not really

by

its

rational animals,

and did not

really

have

souls.

These ideas were

right-

eously held, with full subjective sincerity, by selves to be in possession not only of the full
truth,

men who

believed them-

light of divinely revealed

but of a social structure that embodied all that was good, noble, and Christian. In imposing their opinions and customs, even in the most
felt that they were acting as the of the divine will. could not approved agents They recognize that the races they had conquered were essentially equal to themselves and. in

violent

and unscrupulous ways, they

some ways
It

superior.

Such

is

the warmaker's thought process in every

age, not excluding our own.

Europe should bring Christ to and the Andes, as well as to the Hindus and the Chinese: but where they failed was in their inability to encounter Christ already potentially present in the Indians, the Hindus, and the
certainly right that Christian

was

the Indians of Mexico

Chinese.
Christians have too often forgotten the fact that Christianity found way into Greek and Roman civilization partly by its spontaneous and
it

its

creative adaptation of the pre-Christian natural values

civilization.

found in that

martyrs rejected all the grossness, the cynicism and was simply a cult of secular falsity of the cult of the state gods which power, but Clement of Alexandria, Justin, and Origen believed that
Heraldeitos and Socrates had been precursors of Christ. They thought that while God had manifested himself to the Jews through the Law

The

and the Prophets he had

also

spoken

to the Gentiles

through their

its way in the world of the first century philosophers. Christianity made not by imposing Jewish cultural and social standards on the rest of the

world, but by abandoning them, getting free of them so as to be "all the great drama and the supreme lesson of things to all men." This was the Apostolic Age. By the end of the Middle Ages that lesson had been to newly discovered continents forgotten. The preachers of the Gospel became preachers and disseminators of European culture and power. did not enter into dialogue with ancient civilizations: they im-

They

posed their

own monologue and in preaching

Christ they also preached

33 o
themselves.

Mentors and Doctrines

The very ardor of their self-sacrifice and of their humility enabled them to do this with a clean conscience. But they had omitted to listen to the voice of Christ in the unfamiliar accents of the Indian,
as

Clement had listened for it in the pre-Socratics. Whatever India may have had to say to the West she was forced to remain silent. Whatever China had to say, though some of the first missionaries heard it and understood it, the message was generally ignored as irrelevant. Did anyone pay attention to the voices of the Maya and the Inca, who had deep things to say? By and large their witness was merely suppressed. No one considered that the children of the Sun
might, after
all,

abstract discussions

hold in their hearts a spiritual secret. On the contrary, were engaged in to determine whether, in terms of

academic philosophy, the Indian was to be considered a rational animal. One shudders at the voice of cerebral Western arrogance even then

by the rationalism that is ours today, judging the living man and condemning it to exclusion from spiritual mystery of primitive the category on which love, friendship, respect, and communion were
eviscerated

made

to

depend.

God speaks, and God is to be heard, not only on Sinai, not only in my own heart, but in the voice of the stranger. That is why the peoples of the Orient, and all primitive peoples in general, make so much of the
mystery of hospitality. God must be allowed the right to speak unpredictably. The Holy Spirit, the very voice of Divine Liberty, must always be like the wind
in "blowing where he pleases" (John 3:8). In the mystery of the Old Testament there was already a tension between the Law and the Prophets. In the New Testament the Spirit himself is Law, and he is

He certainly inspires and protects the visible Church, but cannot see him unexpectedly in the stranger and the alien, we will not understand him even in the Church. must find him in our must find him in enemy, or we may lose him even in our friend.
everywhere.
if

we

We We

the pagan or

we

will lose

him

in our

own

selves, substituting for his

living presence an empty abstraction. How can we reveal to others what we cannot discover in them ourselves? must, then, see the truth in the stranger, and the truth we see must be a newly living truth, not just a projection of a dead conventional idea of our own a projection of our

We

own

self

There and the which is

upon the stranger. is more than one way

of morally liquidating the "stranger"

"alien." It is sufficient to destroy, in some way, that in him different and disconcerting. pressure, persuasion, or force

By

Conquistador, Tourist, and Indian

331

one can impose on him one's own ideas and attitudes toward life. One can indoctrinate him, brainwash him. He is no longer different. He has been reduced to conformity with one's own outlook. The Communist,

who

does nothing

if

not thoroughly, believes in the thorough liquidation

and the reduction of everyone else to a carbon copy of himself. The Capitalist is somewhat more quixotic: the stranger becomes of his own screen of fantasies, part part of the collective dream life which is manufactured for him on Madison Avenue and in Hollywood.
of differences,

For

all

seen.

He

practical purposes, the stranger no longer exists. is replaced by a fantastic image. What is seen

He

is

not even

in a vague, superficial way, is the stereotype that the travel agency.

and approved, has been created by

This accounts for the spurious cosmopolitanism of the naive tourist and traveling businessman, who wanders everywhere with his camera, his exposure meter, his spectacles, his sunglasses, his binoculars, and around him in all directions never sees what is there. though gazing

He

is

not capable of doing

told

so.

He is

too docile to his instructors, to those

who have

him

everything beforehand.

He

believes the advertise-

ments of the travel agent at whose suggestion he bought the ticket that landed him wherever he may be. He has been told what he was going to see, and he thinks he is seeing it. Under no circumstances does it occur to him to become interested in what is actually there. Still less
to enter into a fully human rapport before him. It just does not occur to

with the

human
has

beings
its

who

are
life,

him

that they

might have a

a spirit, a thought, a culture of their individual character.

own which

own

peculiar

know why he is traveling in the first place: indeed he at traveling somebody else's suggestion. Even at home he is alien from is himself. doubly alienated when he is out of his own atmosphere.
does not
is

He

He

He

cannot possibly

able,

publicists, never exploited by a friend who belongs the spiritual understanding of political agitators: to a different culture. The tourist lacks nothing except brothers. For

something bought with money, never estimated by

realize that the stranger has something very valuirreplaceable to give him: something that can never be

him

these do not exist.

tourist

The
If

never meets anyone, never encounters anyone, never finds

is

the brother in the stranger. This

his tragedy.

after a hundred and fifty years, only North Americans had realized, that Latin Americans really existed. That they were really people. That they spoke a different language. That they had a culture. That they

332-

Mentors and Doctrines

had more than something to sell! Money has totally corrupted the brotherhood that should have united all the peoples of America. It has that had destroyed the sense of relationship, the spiritual community Most no! But North Bolivar. of in the to flourish years already begun
Americans still don't know, and don't care, that Brazil speaks a language other than Spanish, that all Latin Americans do not live for the siesta, that all do not spend their days and nights playing the guitar and makto the fact that Latin America is ing love, They have never awakened to the United States, not only on the and large culturally superior by
level of the

wealthy minority which has absorbed more of the sophistication of Europe, but also among the desperately poor indigenous cultures, some of which are rooted in a past that has never yet been surit is

passed on this continent. So the tourist drinks tequila, and thinks

the
fiesta

he has been
walks
is

told to wait for.

How

no good, and waits for should he realize that the

Indian

who

down

the street with half a house

is

on

his

a hole in his pants,

so

Christ? All the tourist thinks

that

it is

head and odd for

many Indians to be called Jesus. So much for the modern scene. I am no prophet, no one is, for now we have learned to get along without prophets. But I would say that if Russia and North America are to destroy one another, which they seem it would be a great pity if the survivors in the quite anxious to do,
ror,

"Third World" attempted to reproduce their collective alienation, horand insanity, and thus build up another corrupt world to be de-

stroyed by another war. To the whole third world I would say there is one lesson to be learned from the present situation, one lesson of the

do,

Mark what they greatest urgency: be unlike the two great destroyers. and act differently. Mark their official pronouncements, their ideolowithout
will find

difficulty you gies, and Jiavior: their bluster, their violence, their

them hollow. Mark

their be-

by their fruits you shall know become the victims of their own
ness of their

blandishments, their hypocrisy: them. In all their boastfulness they have

terror,

own

hearts.

They

which is nothing but the empticlaim to be humanists, they claim to

know and

man. They have come to liberate man, they say. But not know what man is. They are themselves less human than do they
love
their fathers were, less articulate, less sensitive, less profound, less capable of genuine concern. They are turning into giant insects. Their societies are becoming anthills, without purpose, without meaning, with-

out

spirit

and

joy.

What

is

wrong with

their

humanism?

It is

a humanism of termites,

Conquistador, Tourist, and Indian

333

insect, a worm in the wood, and what? There are flying ants. Even if man flies all over the universe, he is still nothing but a flying ant until he recovers

because without

God man becomes an

so

even
a

if

he can

fly,

human

center and a

human

spirit in

the depth of his

own

being.

Good Work

PART FIVE

Love

I then: "Master,

my

sight is

made

so vivid

in this, your light, that I can see clearly

your meaning, as far as you

therefore, dear father, I l>eg
to

set its limit;

show me

love, to

you tenderly which you have reduced

its

every good action and

contrary"

Prologue:

PURE LOVE

A MOVEMENT of the will toward what the intellect sees speak only of spiritual love here. Sensual love is a movement of the will, guided by the senses, seeking their own satisfaction. There is a desire of God that is called charity although it remains a
JLjovE
is

to

be good.

love for
for

God as the highest good I can desire for myself. The desire own fulfillment in God, can be charity: but it must be educated my and formed. For charity is the love of God, not precisely as my own

highest good, but because

He

is

good in Himself.

highest and most perfect fruition of God is found in a love that rests in Him purely for His own sake alone. This love follows from the
vision of

The

and love

Him as He is in Himself. I can and should desire this vision as my own highest good. Every Christian must, in fact, have

something of the theological virtue of hope, which is explicitly directed toward this end: the fruition of God in heaven. This is the great paradox of charity: that unless we are selfish enough to desire to become perfectly unselfish, we have not charity. And unless

we

love ourselves enough to seek perfect happiness in the total forgetfulness of ourselves, we will never find happiness. Charity is a selfinterest which seeks fulfillment in the renunciation of all its interests.
If I
it

in

have charity I will seek my highest good in God, but I will find Him, not by taking Him to myself but by sacrificing myself for

love of
possess
sion.

Him. And when myself in Him.

as I

my

charity

is

thus perfect, I shall find and

As long

In heaven, the vision of

of blessedness.

charity

and Duns and

paradox can serve as matter for discusdisposes of the problem. St. Thomas Scotus no longer need to argue, there, about the nature of
earth, this

am on

God

When we see Him,

there will be

no question
337

338

we will see that anyone tut Him. When we see Him, is to love God: for all creatures are creature any way meant to be loved in their Creator, and only in Him. We will see that them: and that in thus loving it is only in Him that we can really love them we are also loving Him. That is why St. Bernard can say that of pure love when we finally love even we reach the
of our loving

the only

to love

highest degree
for

ourselves in

God and

His

sake.

us from comtoo, love has ended in liberation. It has delivered at last we arrive at the simplicity There and paradox. plication, problem, that God created us to have: for, after all, if He loves us, we cannot that we are not to be loved. The perfection of say we are not good, or so lofty that it is above the stained atof unselfishness is a peak love

There

mosphere of
in spite of

this earth in

which even humility and unselfishness have,

all

our good

will, to suffer certain distortions.

On

that

moun-

taintop

we

are at last selfless

for

any need for comment or

will in us.
us,

God in ourselves without enough excuse. For what we thus love is only His
to love

We lofe ourselves in the perfection to which He has brought

we are perfect, done. And we are
not because

not because
is

we

are happy, but because

His will
because

at last perfect, at last perfectly

happy,

are perfect or happy. longer care whether or not we our souls, as in all else, His will simply find our peace in this: that in 1 is done.

we no

We
the

It is clear

that this love

is

the fulfillment of the law because

it is

of God. Such love as this, when it is perfect fulfillment of the will found on earth, fulfills every smallest detail of the most minute rubric
of the Liturgy, every jot

and

tittle

of

its

religious rule

and

its

other

not in a spirit of hair-splitting Pharisaism but with the freeobligations, dom of a child of God to whom these things are no longer a matter of

no

compulsion but a source of joy: and that is why the just man needs law. This too is the explanation of Christ's words that He came not 2 to destroy the Law of Moses, but to fulfill it. Only this love can satisfy
Christ's injunction that our justice

must abound beyond that of the

Scribes
St.

and Pharisees. 3

And he found it everywhere

this
is

Bernard knew that such perfection of love was a kind of ecstasy. in the Psalms. This pure and ecstatic love, love which is the mystical marriage of the soul with God, is what
"justice" in the line,
is

meant by the word

God/'
4

"Thy

justice is as the

mounof the

tains of

This love

the

mons

Vulgate version of Psalm 67 (the

new

coagulatus, translation calls

mons yinguis
it

a "high-ridged

and wooded mountain.") This pure and mystical

love, continues St,

Pure Love
is

339
the mountain of

God in Psalm 23 where the Psalmist asks: Bernard, "Who can go up to the mountain of the Lord?" It is therefore the term of the ascetic life that is outlined in the middle of the Psalm:

Who

can go up

to the

mountain of the Lord or who

shall stand in

Ills

holy

place? He that has clean hands

and a pure

heart,

who

does not set his

mind on

vain

tilings,

and

lias

not sworn deceitfully to his neighbor.

He

shall receive a "blessing

is

from the Lord and mercy from God

that seek him, of

his Saviour.

This

the generation of
of Jacob*

them

them

that seek the face of

the

God

since
It

A detailed commentary of the apparently in these two or three lines would reveal mentioned prosaic that the Fathers believed "purity of heart*' to be a function of that gift 6 of understanding which is one of the keys to mystical contemplation.
of Clairvaux could find in it
little

This same Psalm is one of the cornerstones of monastic spirituality, it has an important place in the Prologue to St. Benedict's Rule. is therefore interesting to see how much a monastic saint like Bernard
virtues

non tarn nostra vel sopita necessitas vel sortita felicitas, quam ejus in nobis et de nobis voluntas adimpleta videbitur, quod et quotidie postulamus in oratione cum dicimus fiat voluntas tua sicut in coelo et in terra/'
"Delectatit sane

quod

St. Bernard, De Diligendo Deo, X, 28. See Matthew, 5:17-20. 3 Matthew, 5:20. * Psalm, 35:7. St. John of the Cross gives much the same interpretation o "judicia Domini vera" (Psalm, 18:10-11). The Ascent to the Cross IT, 26.
2 5 6

Psalm, 23:3-6. See St. Augustine,

8, a./.

De Sermons Domini

in Monte. St.

Thomas Aquinas,

II, Ilac,

Q.

BREAD IN THE WILDERNESS

One

THE WAYS OF LOVE

'HEN A WOUND is beginning to heal, they strip off the bandand the adhesive tape seems to take most of the skin with it. When a man comes into an army, the first thing they do is take away his civilian clothes, and give him a uniform. When a man enters a monastery, the same kind of thing takes place. If it is a good monastery, he will begin right away to be stripped of practically everything. If it is not such a good monastery, he will be left with most of the things he brought with him, and may even acquire a lot more before he is
ages,

finished.

When

man becomes

a Cistercian, he

is

stripped not only of his

clothes, or part of his skin, but of his whole body and most of his it is not all finished the first spirit as well. day: far from it!

And

The

whole Cistercian

life is

an

evisceration, a gutting

and scouring of the

secular clothes for a religious habit is symbolic. symbolic, because it brings with it the grace of a sacramental: but that very grace is order to the same thing which the symbol represents: the interior stripping and expoliation and exchange.
}

human soul. The exchange of And it is more than

The man

reason

why we must
is

be emptied of everything that belongs to

in the world

that

fill

us with something

else,

God has brought us to the monastery to and we cannot be filled unless we are first
is

emptied, to

make room

for

what

to

come.

WHAT DOES God want Therefore we must get

has given us.

to fill us with? His joy, His peace: charity. rid of all other lesser joys, all false peace, all

the loves that are inadequate to satisfy

and

fulfill

the capacities

God
the

Our happiness
340

consists

in the recovery of our true nature:

The Ways

of Love

341

nature according to which we are made in the image of God, and the fulfillment of our purified natural capacities by supernatural grace

and

glory.

Our

happiness consists in being like God, being identified

with Him, in Christ.

One
image

of the things rooted in our nature

is

which

constitutes us in God's

our innate

liberty.

God

is

infinitely free,

because

He

is in-

finitely powerful and beyond any other determination except that of His own love; and love is, of its essence, free. The freedom that is in our nature is our ability to love something, someone besides ourselves, and for the sake, not of ourselves, but of the one we love. There is in the human will an innate tendency, an

inborn capacity for disinterested love. This power to love another for his own sake is one of the things that makes us like God, because this

power is the one thing in us that is free from all determination. It is a power which transcends and escapes the inevitability of self-love. For we have also in our nature an inborn tendency to love ourselves. This tendency is good, and a great good: without it we would never be able to survive. But the very fact that it is ordered to our survival means that this good self-love cannot be free. Everything that is, by its very nature, seeks some kind of perfection that is due to that nature, not freely, but by an inner compulsion rooted in the nature itself. So man, as Duns Scotus teaches, together with all the scholastics, is bound
necessarily

by

this

inborn

self-love, this affectio

commodi,

to seek the

highest perfection of his nature, to seek happiness whether he wills it or not. In this respect, then, he is not free. Self-love, even when it is good, is a principle of necessity, of compulsion.

But the inborn

according to what
is

the affectio justitiae

principle of disinterested love, which Scotus calls meaning that love which we can give things is due to them because of their intrinsic excellence

us above the necessities of our nature, and destined to control and regulate all the movements of the affectio commodi in the interests of freedom and greater perfection of another. man can love someone else, or God, for that matter, so strongly that he can ignore all the rightful claims of the affectio corn-modi and sacrithis disinterested love lifts

fice life itself for the object of his love.

However, even

if

disinterested love delivers us

of reasonable self-interest, and

makes us

free of determination as

be on the natural plane, there is still a far possible to man. There is another affectio justitiae, a higher principle of disinterestedness and liberty, infused into man's soul by God Him-

from the limitations we can freedom than this higher

342
self:

Love

the virtue of charity, supernatural love, which not only perfects man's inborn tendency to disinterested; free love, but elevates it far above the plane of any created nature to participation in the very perfection of God's

own

love,

God's

own
is

liberty.

At the same

time, of

course, since grace perfects all that

even our

self-love is

sublimated to

be perfected in nature, worthy the supernatural plane by a higher

to

of heaven. affectio commodi, the hope Thus the balance of our nature is never destroyed. These two remain in our will, whether they inseparable tendencies must always or whether the right order of infused the be virtues, by

transfigured
is

things

so completely upset

and reversed that the

affectio corn-modi

are no longer capable of loving usurps control over our freedom, and we selfish interests. for our own except

anything

The ultimate limit of such a captivity the damned are completely absorbed in
i

is hell,

where, as Scotus says,

frustrated self-love.

their

own

HAVE OUTLINED

these principles of

Duns

Scotus because from them

can be drawn a complete understanding of what the contemplative life is all about. Not only that, but their psychological depth is such that when we possess them, we are able to penetrate into the underlying reasons for practically all the things a man has to experience in a
Cistercian monastery.

The highest perfection of our nature is in the perfect operation of our highest faculties directed to their most perfect object: in two words, the highest perfection of our nature is loving God: loving Him not
simply because He is our highest good, but more especially and formally because He is infinitely good in Himself. It is this pure and
is the glory God asks of us, and it is also our in all happiness possible to man. ultimate the highest reward,

perfect love that

own

Accipimus beatitudinem pro

summa

perfectione beatipcabilis naturae

suo objecto perfectissimo conjugente. (IV. Ox. xlix q.6, n24). ipsant (Fruitio beatitudinis*) est actus amicitiae volendo Deo in se loene esse
.

summe

et iste Cactus) proprie est charitatis. (I.

Ox.

q-5).

Consequently,

we

can be happy in this world only in so far as

we

are free to rejoice in the good of another: specifically, in so far as we are free to rejoice in the good which is God's* If the whole world were only capable of grasping this principle that true happiness consists only in the freedom of disinterested love

the ability to get

interests

and

away from ourselves, and our own limited sphere of appetites and needs, and rejoice in the good that is in

The Ways
Is it

of Love
it is

343
also ours,

others, not because

but formally in so far as

this

it is theirs!

freedom, happiness will not only follow as a matter of course: joy would pursue us everywhere and we could not get away from it. Why? Since everything that is, is
good, and since the world is full of things that are good in themselves and which all proclaim the infinite goodness and power of God: if we
rejoiced in the good that

not obvious that

when we have

by them,
or
a

we would

is possessed by others, formally as possessed not be able to look at a flower or a blade of grass

an insect or a drop of water or a grain of sand or a leaf, let alone whole tree, or a bird, or a living animal, or a human being, without

exploding with exultation.

Now

the contemplative life

is

ordered to one thing above

all:

the

perfecting of this amor amicitiae, disinterested love, and the liberation of our wills from the bondage of self-love, and not only of natural
self-love,

but the unnatural disfigured

self-love

which

is sin,

and which

goes by the technical

Great moments

of concupiscence. of joy and strength that come to those

name

who have

dedicated their lives to God,

special movement of grace, ested love. For the clean fire of that love, flooding the soul with its pure and intense and invisible flame, seems to cleanse the whole man,

come when one is able, by a strong and to perform some act of pure and disinter-

and leave him filled with an amazing lightness and freedom for action; and a moment of this pure prayer, instantaneously reestablishing the order in the soul, works also on the body, sometimes fortifying one against weariness and infirmity, and bringing a new lease even on
physical
life.

bitterest forms that interior suffering can take is a kind of imitation of hell. The closer one comes to God, the more apt a subject will he be for this furious and penetrating pain until he is

But one of the

purified altogether
suffering
is

and is impervious to all pain. The source of this the realization of the malice there is in the slightest dis-

order of the affectio commodi. The moment we prefer our own satisfaction to the will of the God we love, there is disorder: and God, in His mercy, sometimes leaves us to savor the full bitterness that is in

our selfishness and

are to

sin.

And

the better

we

love

Him, the

closer

we

is

the bitterer the experience can become. For our selfishness, in so far as it implies a rejection of God, our life, casts us into the abyss of a frightful solitude in which

Him,

Who
we

are forced to remain face to face with our

own

ourselves inescapable insufficiency to satisfy

egoism and our own by any means in our

344

Love

power. God sometimes shows us on earth what has to be suffered by the souls in hell, and leaves us, for a time, to become the prisoners o

our

own tremendous

emptiness without
to escape

apparently without power

act. It is a

Him, and we find by means of a single

ourselves
unselfish

us

is

condition in which the very goodness of all that is around a frustration and a crushing reproach, and there seems to be
left

nothing

but eternal damnation.

there are people in the world, innocent sin, clean of all selfishness, who have to

The strange thing is that men and women, pure of all

thirsty,

suffer these things in expiation for the devouring egoism of a blood-

cannibal civilization.

that brings us to the final paradox. of the depths of this, the ultimate trial, can rise the most perfect that dark hell, singing a song charity, like a phoenix, in the flames of

And
Out

of

triumph so pure and splendid that it comes forth like Christ from the smashed gates of Limbo, delivering the souls of the just. Crushed and abandoned in this desolation of our own misery, the amor amicitiae

rises

from the dead with the blind, unbeatable power of

its

trust in

the goodness and mercy of God, the Beloved, and with swift and direct flight, pierces the darkness of the abyss and soars to the height of heaven to give Him the greatest and purest glory the glory that
to the Father from Christ annihilated in Gethsemani and on Calvary. Then even desolation becomes a joy, and one of the greatest joys, because we find in it a means and instrument to serve the ends of the one thing that matters, the affectio justitiae, the amicitw, the pure charity, the sacrificial love that has given Christ everything, and fills up what is wanting, of His passion, for His Body, which is the Church. Souls that have reached this degree of love on earth will never know any other purgatory when they come to leave it. And it is to this that the Cistercian life, and the life of the Carmelite

went up
crucified

nun, the Carthusian monk, the Camaldolese hermit are ordered: the liberation of man's true nature by means of love, by means of sacrifice. Consequently, every trial, even the smallest, every opportunity to deny ourselves, whether it be a matter of disordered self-love or the legitimate affectio corn-modi, does not matter every chance to offer some kind of sacrifice is to be regarded as a grace, as a favor, as a
providential opportunity to grasp at freedom. I thank God that from the first minute I entered the monastery

He

The Ways
has given

of Love

345

me many such graces, and I am sorry that by my weakness and mistrust and fear I have obliged Him to limit and restrict their number. However, I cannot say that He plunged me into desolation as soon as I came in the front door, nor that He neglected to strengthen my puny nature with consolations, in due time, for which I thank Him: I do not despise them! They have opened the way to new worlds,
Unpublished, from the Original Manuscript of

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

Two:

A BODY OF BROKEN BONES

JLoti

AND

and

all

men were made

to find

our identity in the

we all complete one another "unto a Mystical Christ, in the age of the fulness of Christ/' perfect man, unto the measure of
One

Whom

When we all reach that perfection

of

of love

which

is

the contemplation

in His glory, our inalienable personalities, while remaining so that each one eternally distinct, will nevertheless combine into One
all

God

of us will find himself in

reality of
all.

the others,

and God

will

be the

life

and

Omnia

in omnibus Dews.

God is a consuming Fire. He alone can refine us like gold, and separate us from the slag and dross of our selfish individualities to fuse us into this wholeness of perfect unity that will reflect His own Triune Life forever.
As long
as

we do

unite us in Himself, the gold that

not permit His love to consume us entirely and to is in us will be hidden by the rock

and dirt which keep us separate from one another. As long as we are not purified by the love of God and transformed into Him in the union of pure sanctity, we will remain apart from one another, opposed to one another, and union among us will be a precarious and painful thing, full of labor and sorrow and without lasting
cohesion.

WHOLE WORLD, throughout the whole of history, even among religious men and among saints, Christ suffers dismemberment.
IN THE

His physical Body was crucified by Pilate and the Pharisees; His mystical Body is drawn and quartered from age to age by the devils in the agony of that disunion which is bred and vegetates in our souls,
prone
346
to selfishness

and

to sin.

All over the face of the earth the avarice

and

lust of

men

breed un-

Body

of

Broken Bones

347

ceasing divisions among them, and the wounds that tear men from union with one another widen and open out into huge wars. Murder, massacres, revolution, hatred, the slaughter and torture of the bodies

and

souls of

men, the destruction of

cities

by

fire,

the starvation of

the annihilation of populations and finally the cosmic inof nuclear Christ is massacred in His members, humanity genocide:
millions,

torn limb from limb; God is murdered in men. The history of the world, with the material destruction of cities

and and people, expressed the interior division that tyrannizes the souls of all men, and even of the saints. Even the innocent, even those in whom Christ lives by charity, even those who want with their whole heart to love one another, remain divided and separate. Although they are already one in Him, their union is hidden from them, because it still only possesses the secret
nations

substance of their souls.

characters

minds and their judgments and their desires, their human and faculties, their appetites and their ideals are all imprisoned in the slag of an inescapable egotism which pure love has

But

their

not yet been able to refine.

As long
suffering
saints

as

by

are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us our very contact with one another, because this love is

we

the resetting of a

Body

of broken bones.

Even

saints

cannot live with

without some anguish, without some pain at the differences that come between them. There are two things which men can do about the pain of disunion

on

this earth

with other men. They can love or they can hate. Hatred recoils from the sacrifice and the sorrow that are the price of
this resetting of bones. It refuses the

pain of reunion.

in every weak, lost, and isolated member of the human race an agony of hatred born of his own helplessness, his own isolation.

There

is

of unworthiness, is the sign and the expression of loneliness, of insufficiency. And in so far as each one of us is lonely, is unworthy, each one hates himself. Some of us are aware of this self-hatred, and

Hatred

because of

it we reproach ourselves and punish ourselves needlessly. Punishment cannot cure the feeling that we are unworthy. There is

nothing

we

can do about

it

as long as

we

feel that

we

are isolated,

insufficient, helpless, alone. Others,

who

are less conscious of their

own

form by projecting it on to others. There is a proud and self-confident hate, strong and cruel, which enof hating, for it is directed outward to the unworthijoys the pleasure
self-hatred, realize it in a different

348
ness of another.
like all hate,
it

object that
it

is

and happy hate does not realize that the self that hates, and not the consumes and destroys is form self-destructive, and even when in Hate hated. any

But

this strong

triumphs physically

it

triumphs in

its

own

spiritual

ruin.

that takes joy in hating, is strong because it Strong hate, the hate does not believe itself to be unworthy and alone. It feels the support

an avenging and destroying spirit. From such blood-drinking gods the human race was once liberated, with great toil and terrible sorrow, by the death of a God Who deof a justifying

God, of an

idol of war,

livered Himself to the Cross

and suffered the pathological cruelty of

His own creatures out of pity for them. In conquering death He to the reality of a love which asks no questions about opened their eyes death. But worthiness, a love which overcomes hatred and destroys

men have now come

satiably

to reject this

divine revelation of pardon,

and

to the old war gods, the gods that inthey are consequently returning drink blood and eat the flesh of men. It is easier to serve the

thrive on the worship of collective fanaticism. hate-gods because they To serve the hate-gods, one has only to be blinded by collective pasthe sion. To serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face all unvjorthiness in love to of the decision terrible spite of
responsibility

whether in oneself or in one's neighbor.

that lies at the tormenting sense of unworthiness a hate root of all hate. The man who is able to strongly and with all unworthiness conscience is one who is complacently blind to
It is the rankling,

quiet in himself

and serenely capable of seeing all his own wrongs in someBut the man who is aware of his own unworthiness and the unworthiness of his brother is tempted with a subtler and more torone
else.

hate of everymenting kind of hate: the general, searing, nauseating with tainted is because everything unworthiness, and
thing
everyone,
is

everything
really
is, is

unclean, everything
love.

is

foul with sin.

What

this

weak hate

same time
love

He who cannot love feels unworthy, and at the somehow no one is worthy. Perhaps he cannot feel because he thinks he is unworthy of love, and because of that
weak
feels that

he

also thinks

no one

else is

worthy.

The beginning
to hatred, is

of the fight against hatred^ the basic Christian answer

not the

come before

in order to

prehensible. It is tian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved.

commandment to love, but what must necessarily make the commandment bearable and coma prior commandment, to believe. The root of Chris-

The

Body

of Broken Bones

349

faith that

one

is

loved by God.

That

faith that

one

is

loved by

God

although unworthy In the true Christian vision of God's love, the idea of worthiness loses
or, rather, irrespective
its significance. Revelation of the mercy of God makes the whole problem of worthiness something almost laughable: the discovery that worthiness is of no special consequence (since no one could ever, by himself, be strictly worthy to be loved with such a love) is a true

of one's worth!

liberation of the spirit. And until this discovery is made, until this liberation has been brought about by the divine mercy, man is imprisoned in hate.

Humanistic love

will not serve.

As long

as

we

believe that

we

hate

no one,

that

we

are merciful, that

we

are kind

by our very nature,

we

deceive ourselves; our hatred is merely smoldering under the gray are apparently at peace with everyashes of complacent optimism. one because we think we are worthy. That is to say we have lost the

We

capacity to face the question of unworthiness at all. But when we are delivered by the mercy of God the question no longer has a meaning.

Hatred

tries to
It

united with us.

cure disunion by annihilating those who are not seeks peace by the elimination of everybody else

but ourselves.

But love, by all wounds.

IF

its

acceptance of the pain of reunion, begins to heal

YOU WANT TO KNOW what

one way
to get a

is

meant by "God's

will" in man's life,

this is

in anything that is one another in love.

good idea of it. "God's will" is certainly found required of us in order that we may be united with

You can
is

call this, if

you
to

like,

the basic tenet of

the Natural Law, which

like

that

we

should treat others as

another what

them to treat want another not

that

us, that

we

should not do

we would we would

we

to do to us. In other words, the natural law is simply should recognize in every other human being the same nature,

plainest

the same needs, the same rights, the same destiny as in ourselves. The summary of all the natural law is: to treat other men as if

they were men.

human
other

Everything

alone were a man, and every other were an animal or a piece of furniture. that is demanded of me, in order that I may treat every

Not

to act as if I

man

a effectively as

human

under the natural law." Whether or not

it

being, "is willed for me by God I find the formula satisfactory,

is

obvious that I cannot live a truly

human

life if I

consistently

disobey this

fundamental principle.

350

Love
I I

But
them.

cannot

treat other

men

as

men

unless

have compassion for

to realize that

must have

at least

enough compassion

when

as I do when I suffer. And if for some they suffer they feel somewhat reason I do not spontaneously feel this kind of sympathy for others,

then

God's will that others their with to share

it is

do what

can

to learn

how.

must learn

their desires. I

are of

must the same class, the same

their sufferings, their ideas, their needs, joys, learn to do this not only in the cases of those who

profession,

the same race, the

same

nation as myself, but when men who suffer belong to other groups, even to groups that are regarded as hostile. If I do this, I obey God. a matter left If I refuse to do it, I disobey Him. It is not therefore

open

to subjective caprice.
is

God's will for every man, and since contemplation is a to anyone who does not consent to God's will, congift not granted the question for anyone who does not try to cultivate templation is out of
Since this

compassion for other For Christianity is not merely a doctrine or a system of beliefs, it His own is Christ living in us and uniting men to one another in

men.

and Thou, Father, in Me, that they may And the glory which Thou hast given be made me I have given them, that they may be One as we also are One." In "hoc cognoscent omnes quia mei estis disdfuli, si dilectionem habueriLife

and

unity. "I in them, perfect in One.

.

tis

if

ad invicem. "In this shall all men know that you are you have love one for another."

my

disciples

"He
IE

that loveth not abideth in death/'

suffering
Christ,

a means to escape from contemplation principally as the anguish and the from withdrawal as a the miseries of human life, in the charity of other men with reunion for of this

YOU KEGAEB

struggle

is and you will never you do not know what contemplation of it is For find God in your contemplation. precisely in the recovery know and God discover that we our union with our brothers in Christ Him, for then His life begins to penetrate our souls and His love faculties and we are able to find out Who He is from possesses our the experience of His mercy, liberating us from the prison of self-

concern.

THERE
tion, to

is

conflict,

ONLY one true flight from the world; it is not an escape from but the flight from disunity and separaanguish, and suffering,
for,

in the love of other men. unity and peace Christ would not pray that What is the "world"

and of which

Body

of

Broken Bones

351

He

said that

His

disciples

were in

it

but not of

it?

The world

is

the

unquiet city of those who live for themselves and are therefore divided against one another in a struggle that cannot end, for it will go on
eternally in hell. It is the city of those who are fighting for possession of limited things and for the monopoly of goods and pleasures that

cannot be shared by

all.

world merely by leaving the city and hiding yourself in solitude, you will only take the city with you into solitude; and yet you can be entirely out of the world while reif

But

you

try to escape

from

this

maining in the midst of

selfishness

it, if

you

let

God

set

you

free

from your
flight

own
from

and

if

For the

flight

you from the world

the

live for love alone.

is

nothing else but the

self-concern.

And

man who
him

locks himself

up

in private with his

evil

own

selfishness has

put himself into a position where the

like a devil or drive

within

him will either That is why

like to

possess
it is

him

out of his head.

dangerous to go into solitude merely because you

be alone.

NEW

SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION

Three:

THE MORAL THEOLOGY OF THE DEVIL

1 HE
men

DEVIL has a whole system of theology and philosophy, which

will explain, to anyone who will listen, that created things are evil, that men are evil, that God created evil and that He directly wills that

should suffer

evil.

According

to the devil,

God

rejoices in the

men and, in fact, the whole universe is full of misery because God has willed and planned it that way. Indeed, says this system of theology, God the Father took real pleasure in delivering His Son to His murderers, and God the Son came to earth because He wanted to be punished by the Father. Both of
suffering of

them together seek nothing more than to punish and persecute their As a matter of fact, in creating the world God had clearly in mind that man would inevitably sin and it was almost as if the world were created in order that man might sin, so that God would have an opportunity to manifest His justice. So, according to the devil, the first thing created was really hell as if everything else were, in some sense, for the sake of hell. Therefaithful ones.

fore the devotional life of those

who

are "faithful** to this kind of

evil.

theology consists

above

all

in an obsession with

As

if

there were

not already enough evils in the world, they multiply prohibitions and make new rules, binding everything with thorns, so that man may not escape evil and punishment. For they would have him bleed from morning to night, though even with so much blood there is no remission of sin! The Cross, then, is no longer a sign of mercy (for mercy

has no place in such a theology ), it is the sign that Law and Justice have utterly triumphed, as if Christ had said: "I came not to destroy the Law but to be destroyed by it.*' For this, according to the devil, is the only way in which the Law could really and truly be "fulfilled."
v

352

The Moral Theology

of the Devil

353

Not love but punishment is the fulfillment of the Law. The Law must devour everything, even God. Such is this theology of punishment, hatred, and revenge. He who would live by such a dogma must rejoice
in punishment.

He may,

by

"playing ball"

with the

indeed, successfully evade punishment himself Law and the Lawgiver. But he must take

good care that others do not avoid suffering. with their present and future punishment. There must be no mercy.
This
is

He must occupy The Law must

his

mind

triumph.
is

the chief

mark

of the theology of hell, for in hell there

is

everything but mercy. That

why God Himself

is

absent from hell.

Mercy

is

the manifestation of His presence.

THE THEOLOGY OF THE DEVIL

is for those who, for one reason or whether because are another, perfect, or because they have come they to an agreement with the Law, no longer need any mercy. With them (O grim joy!) God is "satisfied/' So too is the devil. It is quite an

achievement, to please everybody!

The
it,

people who listen to this sort of thing, and absorb it, and enjoy develop a notion of the spiritual life which is a kind of hypnosis of

evil.

The

pleasure. Perhaps this because they derive a deep, subconscious comfort from the thought that many other people will fall into the hell which they themselves
is

God, retribution, the end of the world, and which they smack their lips with unspeakable
of

concepts of sin, suffering, damnation, punishment, the justice so on, are things over

are going to escape.

They

And how do they know they are going to escape it? cannot give any definite reason except for the fact that they feel
relief at

a certain sense of

the thought that

all this

punishment

is

pre-

pared for practically everyone but themselves. This feeling of complacency is what they refer to as "faith/*
constitutes a kind of conviction that they are "saved/*

and

it

THE DEVIL makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them of the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which "God is satisfied/' and after that he lets them spend the rest of their
meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men.
lives

THE MORAL THEOLOGY

"Pleasure
is
is

of the devil

starts

sin."

Then he

goes on

to

work
is

it

out with the principle: the other way: "All sin

pleasure." After that

he points out that pleasure

practically unavoidable

and

354

Love

that we have a natural tendency to do things that please us, from which he reasons that all our natural tendencies are evil and that our nature is evil in itself. And he leads us to the conclusion that no one can

possibly avoid sin, since pleasure is inescapable. After that, to make sure that no one will try to escape or avoid sin,

Then the whole and people decide concept of sin is in that way and for live that there is nothing left except to pleasure, and lives evil deordination that are naturally good become by
he adds
that

what

is

unavoidable cannot be a

sin.

thrown out the window

as irrelevant,

pleasures are thrown

IT

away

in unhappiness

and

sin.

SOMETIMES HAPPENS that men who preach most vehemently about evil and the punishment of evil, so that they seem to have practically

are really unconscious haters nothing else on their minds except sin, not appreciate them, and this world does the think of other men. They
is

their

way
it

of getting even.

THE DEVIL
preach
is

is

not afraid

to

preach the will of

God

provided he can

in his

own

way.

"God wills you to do what an interior attraction which tells you, by a nice have But you right. warm glow of satisfaction, what is right. Therefore, if others try to interfere and make you do something that does not produce this comfortable sense of interior satisfaction, quote Scripture, tell them that you ought to obey God rather than men, and then go ahead and do

The argument

this: goes something like

your

own

will,

do the thing that gives you that nice,

of the devil
is

warm

glow/'

THE THEOLOGY

in this theology

but magic. "Faith" is really not theology a of God Who reveals not the acceptance really

Himself as mercy. It is a psychological, subjective "force" which applies a kind of violence to reality in order to change it according to one's own whims. Faith is a kind of supereffective wishing: a mastery that

power that is generated by "profound convictions." By virtue of this wonderful energy one can exert a persuasive force even on God Himself and bend His
special, mysteriously

comes from a

dynamic

will

own will By this astounding new dynamic soul force of (which any quack can develop in you for an appropriate remuneration) you can turn God into a means to your own ends. We become civilized medicine men, and God becomes our servant. Though He is terrible in His own right, He respects our sorcery, He allows Himself to be tamed by it. He will appreciate our dynamism, and will
will to one's
faith

The Moral Theology

reward
it

of the Devil

355

with success in every thing we attempt will become we because have "faith." will be rich because we have popular u faith." All our national enemies will come and down their arms

We

We

lay

at

our feet because

we have

"faith." Business will

boom

all

over the

world, and we will be able to make money out of everything and everyone under the sun because of the charmed life we lead. We have
faith.

But there

is

a subtle dialectic in

all this, too,

We
a

hear that faith does everything. So

generate some "soul force."

we

bit, to

We believe. We believe.
He

close our eyes

and

strain

close our eyes again, and generate some more soul force. The devil likes us to generate soul force. helps us to generate plenty are just gushing with soul force. of it.

We

Nothing happens.

We

But nothing happens. So we go on with this

business.

until

we become

get tired of "generating soul force." get tired of this "faith" that does not do anything to change reality. It does not take
anxieties,
lift all

We

disgusted with the

whole

We

away our
It

does not

responsibilities off

effective after

all. It

us a prey to uncertainty. our shoulders. Its magic is not so does not thoroughly convince us that God is satis-

our

conflicts, it leaves

fied with us, or even that

it

are satisfied with ourselves (though in this, is true, some people's faith is often quite effective). Having become disgusted with faith, and therefore with God, we

we

now ready for the Totalitarian Mass Movement that will pick us on the rebound and make us happy with war, with the persecution up
are

of "inferior races" or of
tively

enemy

classes, or generally speaking,

with

ac-

punishing someone who

is

different

from

ourselves.
is

ANOTHER CHARACTEBISTIC
tion of all distinctions

of the devil's moral theology

this

the exaggera-

between

and

that,

good and

evil, right

and

longer is wrong. These distinctions become irreducible divisions. at there any sense that we might perhaps all be more or less fault, and that we might be expected to take upon our own shoulders the wrongs

No

by forgiveness, acceptance, patient understanding and love, and thus help one another to find the truth. On the contrary, in the devil's theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to This does not exactly prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong. make for peace and unity among men, because it means that everyone
of others

wants

to

be absolutely

or to attach himself to another right himself

who

Love
is

absolutely right And in order to prove their rightness they have to punish and eliminate those who are wrong. Those who are wrong, in
turn, convinced that they are right . . . etc. Finally, as might be expected, the moral theology of the devil grants an altogether unusual amount of importance to ... the devil. Indeed

one soon comes

to find

out that he

is

That he

is

behind everything. That he

very center of the whole system. is moving everybody in the

is is

world except ourselves. That he is out to get even us. And that there every chance of his doing so because, it now appears, his power

equal to that of God, or even perhaps superior to it. ... In one word, the theology of the devil is purely and simply that the
devil is god.

NEW

SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION

Four:

LOVE CAN BE KEPT ONLY BY BEING

GIVEN

AWAY

HAPPINESS that

is

found: for a happiness that enough to make us happy.

sought for ourselves alone can never be is diminished by being shared is not big

There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God's inner life. He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves. In disinterested activity we best fulfill our own capacities
to act

and

to be.

Yet there can never be happiness in compulsion. It is not enough for love to be shared: it must be shared freely. That is to say it must be given, not merely taken. Unselfish love that is poured out upon a
does not bring perfect happiness: not because love reor a reward for loving, but because it rests in the hapa return quires the beloved. And if the one loved receives love selfishly, the of piness lover is not satisfied. He sees that his love has failed to make the beloved
selfish object

has not awakened his capacity for unselfish love. that unselfish love cannot rest perfectly except in a love that is perfecdy reciprocated: because it knows that the only true peace is found in selfless love. Selfless love consents to be loved the beloved. In so doing, it perfects itself. selflessly for the sake of The gift of love is the gift of the power and the capacity to love,

happy.

It

Hence the paradox

and, therefore, to give love with full effect

is also to

receive

it.

So, love

357

358
can only be kept by being given away, and
fectly
it

Love
can only be given per-

when

it is

also received.

LOVE not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two. It has only one good: that of the beloved, which with another not is, at the same time, my own. Love shares the good
by dividing it with him, but by identifying itself with him so that his good becomes my own. The same good is enjoyed in its wholeness by two in one spirit, not halved and shared by two souls. Where love is the lover does not even stop to inquire whether really disinterested, he can safely appropriate for himself some part of the good which he wills for his friend. Love seeks its whole good in the good of the beloved, and to divide that good would be to diminish love. Such a division would not only weaken the action of love, but in doing so would also diminish its joy. For love does not seek a joy that follows from its effect: its joy is in the effect itself, which is the good of the beloved. Consequendy, if my love be pure I do not even have to seek for myself the satisfaction of loving. Love seeks one thing only: the
good of the one loved.
the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward,
It leaves all

TO LOVE ANOTHER is to will what is really good for him. Such love must be based on truth. A love that sees no distinction between good and evil, but loves blindly merely for the sake of loving, is hatred,
rather than love. of such love
is

love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal not the real advantage of the beloved but only the

To

exercise of love in our

own

souls.

Such love cannot seem

to

be love

pretends to seek the good of the one loved. But since it cares actually nothing for the truth, and never considers that it may it proves itself to be selfish. It does not seek the true advango astray,
unless
it

tage of the beloved or even our own. It

is

not interested in the truth,

but only in

which

is

proclaims the exercise of love for

itself. It

itself
its

content with an apparent good: own sake, without any consideration

of the good or bad effects of loving. When such love exists on the level of bodily passion it is easily recognized for what it is. It is selfish, and, therefore, it is not love. Those

whose love does not transcend the

desires of their bodies, generally

do

not even bother to deceive themselves with good motives. They follow their passions. Since they do not deceive themselves, they are more
honest, as well as

more

miserable, than those

who

pretend to love on a

Love Can Be Kept Only by Being Given Away

spiritual

359
is

plane without realizing that their "unselfishness"

only a

deception,

CHARITY
perate,

is

neither

weak nor Hind.

It is

essentially prudent, just, tem-

and
is

our love

strong. Unless all the other virtues blend together in charity, not genuine. No one who really wants to love another will

him falsely. If we are going to love others at all, we our make minds to love them well. Otherwise our love is a must up
consent to love
delusion.

step to unselfish love is the recognition that our love may be first of all purify our love by renouncing the pleasure of loving as an end in itself. As long as pleasure is our end, we will be dishonest with ourselves and with those we love. will not seek
first

The

deluded.

We must

We

their good,

but our

own

pleasure.

IT is CLEAR, then, that to love others well

we must

first

love the
rela-

truth. And since love is a matter of practical and concrete tions, the truth we must love when we love our brothers

human
is

not mere

abstract speculation:
life

it is

the moral truth that

theirs.

is

to

be embodied and

is more than the given cold perception of an obligation, flowing from moral precepts. The truth we must love in loving our brothers is the concrete destiny and them by the love of God. One who really sanctity that are willed for

in our

own

destiny and

This truth

loves another

is

and healthy and prosperous in

with anything so incomplete.

not merely moved by the desire to see him contented this world. Love cannot be satisfied
If I

am to love my brother, I must somehow

enter deep into the mystery of God's love for him. I must be moved not by human sympathy but by that divine sympathy which is

only revealed to us in Jesus and which enriches our pouring of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.

own

lives

by the

out-

The

truth I love in loving

It

my

abstract. philosophical and and concrete, practical and

must be

brother cannot be something merely at the same time supernatural

I

alive.

And

mean

these words in

no meta-

truth I must love in my brother is God Himself, phorical sense. The I must seek the life of the Spirit of God breathing in in him. living

him.

And
heart

can only discern and follow that mysterious

life

by the

action of the

same Holy

Spirit living

and

of acting in the depths

IS

my

own

NO MAN

AN ISLAND

Fwc:

THE

WOMAN

CLOTHED WITH THE SUN

proves to

/\LL THAT HAS BEEN WRITTEN about me that hers is the most hidden

the Virgin

Mother

of

God

of sanctities.

God has revealed very little about her, men who know nothing of who and what she was tend to reveal themselves when they try to add something to what God has told us about her. And the things we do know about her only make the true character
than
to us

find to say about her sometimes tells us it does about Our Lady. For since

more about

What people their own selves

and quality of her

sanctity

seem more hidden.

We believe that hers was

Who
sanctity

the perfect sanctity outside the sanctity of Christ her Son, is God. But the sanctity of God is only darkness to our minds. Yet the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin is in a way more hidden than the
of

God: because
is

He

has at least told us something about Himself

objectively valid when it is put into human language. told us only a few important things and then we cannot grasp the fullness of what they mean. For all

that

about

Our Lady He has

But even
has

He

told us about her soul

amounts

to this:

that

it

was absolutely

full of

the most perfect created holiness. But what that means, in detail, we have no sure way of knowing. Therefore the other certain thing we know about her is that her sanctity is most hidden. And yet I can find her if I too become hidden in God where she is

To share her humility and hiddenness and poverty, her concealment and solitude is the best way to know her: but to know her thus is to find wisdom. Qui me inveniet vitam et hauriet salutem a
hidden.

Domino.
IN THE ACTUAL LIVING,
Christ are
all

human

the poverty and

all

person who is the Virgin Mother of the wisdom of all the saints. It all

360

The Woman Clothed with

came
is

the
is

Sun
in her.

361

to

them through

her,

and

The

a participation in her sanctity, because in the order lished God wills that all graces come to men

sanctity of all the saints has estab-

He

That

is

why

to love her

and

to

know

through Mary. her is to discover the true

meaning of everything and to have access to all wisdom. Without her, the knowledge of Christ is only speculation. But in her it becomes experience because all the humility and poverty, without which Christ cannot be known, were given to her. Her sanctity is the silence in which alone Christ can be heard, and the voice of God becomes an
experience to us through her contemplation.

The emptiness and interior solitude and peace without which we cannot be filled with God were given by Him to Mary in order that she might receive Him into the world by offering Him the hospitality of a
being that was perfectly pure, perfectly
fectly at peace,
silent, perfectly at rest, perin utter humility. If we ever manage to ourselves of the noise of the world and of our own passions, it

and centered

empty
is

because she has been sent close to us by in her sanctity and her hiddenness.

God and

given us a share

MARY ALONE,

of all the saints, is, in everything, incomparable. She has the sanctity of them all and yet resembles none of them. And still we can talk of being like her. This likeness to her is not only something to desire it is one human quality most worthy of our desire:

but the reason for that

degrees, in us
all.

is

that she, of

all

creatures,

most perfectly

recovered the likeness to

God

that

God

willed to find, in varying

if

It is necessary,

no doubt,

to talk

about her privileges as

in

they were

something that could be

made comprehensible

human

language

and could be measured by some human standard. It is most fitting to talk about her as a Queen and to act as if you knew what it meant to a throne above all the angels. But this should not make say she has anyone forget that her highest privilege is her poverty and her greatest most hidden, and the source of all her power is glory is that she is that she is as nothing in the presence of Christ, of God. This is often forgotten by Catholics themselves, and therefore it is not surprising that those who are not Catholic often have a completely wrong conception of Catholic devotion to the Mother of God. They
can understand their reasons for doing so, imagine, and sometimes we that Catholics treat the Blessed Virgin as an almost divine being in her as if she had some glory, some power, some majesty of her own
right,

3^2

Love

that placed her on a level with Christ Himself. They regard the Assumption of Mary into heaven as a kind of apotheosis and her

own

Queenship as a strict divinization. Hence her place in the Redemption would seem to be equal to that of her Son. But this is all completely contrary to the true mind of the Catholic Church. It forgets that Mary's
chief glory is in her nothingness, in the fact of being the "Handmaid of the Lord," as one who in becoming the Mother of God acted

simply

in loving submission to His command, in the pure obedience of faith. She is blessed not because of some mythical pseudo-divine prerogative,

but in

all

her

human and womanly

limitations as

one

who

has believed.

It is the faith and the fidelity of this humble handmaid, "full of grace" that enables her to be the perfect instrument of God, and nothing else

but His instrument.

The work
is

work of God. "He

glory of
like

that

was done in her was purely the hath done great things in me." The mighty
that

Mary

is

anyone else, from Him through Christ.

purely and simply the glory of God in her, and she, can say that she has nothing that she has not received
precisely her greatest glory: that having retaining nothing of a "self" that could glory in
is

As a matter

of fact, this

nothing of her own, anything for her own sake, she placed no obstacle to the mercy of God and in no way resisted His love and His will. Hence she received more

from

Him

than any other

saint.

He was

able to accomplish His will

perfectly in her, and His liberty was in no way hindered or turned from its purpose by the presence of an egotistical self in Mary. She was and
is in the highest sense a person precisely because, being "immaculate," she was free from every taint of selfishness that might obscure God's light in her being. She was then a freedom that obeyed Him

perfectly

and IB

this

obedience found the fulfillment of perfect love.

of Catholic devotion to

THE GENUINE SIGNIFICANCE

Mary

is

to

be seen

in the light of the Incarnation itself. The Church cannot separate the Son and the Mother. Because the Church conceives of the Incarnation

and into time, and His great gift of Himself one who was closest to Him in this great mystery was the one who participated most perfectly in the gift. When a room is heated an by open fire, surely there is nothing
as God's descent into flesh to

His

creatures, she also believes that the

ones

strange in the fact that those who stand closest to the fireplace are the who are warmest. And when God comes into the world through
is

the instrumentality of one of His servants, then there

nothing

sur-

The Woman Clothed with

the

Sun

363

prising about the fact that His chosen instrument should have the and most intimate share in the divine greatest

gift free from all sin, was as egotism, pure as the glass of a very clean window that has no other function than to admit the light of the sun. If we rejoice in that light, we implicitly praise the cleanness of the window. And of course it might be argued that in such a case we might well forget the window altogether. This the is true. And Son of in God, yet emptying Himself of His majestic

Mary, who was empty of

all

power, having become a child, abandoning Himself in complete dependence to the loving care of a human Mother, in a certain sense draws our attention once again to her. The Light has wished to remind
us of the window, because He is grateful to her and because He has an infinitely tender and personal love for her. If He asks us to share
this love,
it is

certainly a great grace

this

and a
is

privilege,
it

and one

of the

most important aspects of

creatures.

privilege

that

enables us to some

extent to appreciate the mystery of God's great love and respect for His

THAT GOD should assume Mary

a

into heaven

is

not just a glorification of

"Mother Goddess/' Quite the contrary, it is the expression of the divine love for humanity, and a very special manifestation of God's respect for His creatures, His desire to do honor to the beings He has made in His own image, and most particularly His respect for the body which was destined to be the temple of His glory. If Mary is believed to be assumed into heaven, it is because we too are one day,
by the grace of God,
in her,
it is

to dwell

where she
it to

is.

If

human

nature

is

glorified

it is glorified in us too, and for this reason that His Son, taking flesh, came into the world. In all the great mystery of Mary, then, one thing remains most clear:

because

God

desires

be

is nothing, and that God has for our sakes delighted His glory and His love in her. It is because she is, of all the saints, the most perfectly poor and the most perfectly hidden, the one who has absolutely nothing whatever that she attempts to possess as her own, that she can most fully communicate to the rest of us the grace of the infinitely selfless God. And we will most truly possess Him when we have emptied ourselves and

that of herself she

to manifest

resembling Him by resembling her. And all our sanctity depends on her maternal love. The ones she desires to share the joy of her own poverty and simplicity, the ones

become poor and hidden

as she

is,

364

Love
she wills to be hidden as she
is

whom

hidden, are the ones

who

share

her closeness to God.

IT is a tremendous grace, then,
living in the world we have things that absorb that world,
for poverty nature or

a person privilege when to live in suddenly loses his interest in the

and a great

and

discovers in his

own

soul an appetite

and
is

solitude.

grace

the most precious of all the gifts of the desire to be hidden and to vanish from the sight

And

men and be from one's own

of

accounted as nothing by the world and to disappear self-conscious consideration and vanish into nothingthat
is

ness in the

immense poverty

the adoration of God.

it

This absolute emptiness, this poverty, this obscurity holds within the secret of all joy because it is full of God. To seek this emptiness
true devotion to the

is

Mother
is to

of God.
full of

hidden in its depths share her mission of bringing

Yet
all

be

To find it is to find her. And to be God as she is full of Him, and to

to all

Him

men.

all receive generations must call her blessed, because they is life and whatever obedience her granted joy supernatural through to them. And it is necessary that the world should acknowledge her

and that the praise of God's great work in her should be sung in in her name. For unless poetry and that cathedrals should be built Our Lady is recognized as the Mother of God and as the Queen of all the saints and angels and as the hope of the world, faith in God
will

remain incomplete.

How

can

we

ask

Him

for all the things

He

would have us hope for if we do not know, by contemplating the sancof the Immaculate Virgin, what great things He has power to tity
accomplish in the souls of

men?

more we are hidden in the depths where her secret is so, the more we will want to praise her name in the world and discovered, in the God Who made her His shining tabernacle. Yet we her, glorify, will not altogether trust our own talent to find words in which to praise her: for even if we could sing of her as did Dante or St. Bernard we would still have little to say of her, compared with the Church who alone knows how to praise her adequately and who dares to apply to

And

the

her the inspired words God uses of His own her living in the midst of Scripture, and unless

Wisdom. Thus we

find

we

find her, also, hidden

in Scripture wherever and in whatever promises contain her Son, we shall not fully know the life that is in Scripture. It is she who, in these last days, is destined by the merciful delegation of Go'd to manifest the

power

He

has given to her, because of her

The Woman Clothed with

But
it

the

Sun

365

poverty, and save the last men living in the ruins of the burnt world. if the world's last age, by the wickedness of men, is likely to be
also be, for the poor

made
and

the most terrible, yet by the clemency of the Blessed Virgin will who have received His mercy, the most victorious

the most joyful.

NEW

SEEDS OE CONTEMPLATION

Six:

POEMS

FREEDOM AS EXPERIENCE
When, as the captive of Your own invincible consent, You love the image of Your endless Love,
Three-Personed God, what intellect Shall take the measure of that liberty?

Compared with Love, Your Triune Law,

All the inexorable stars are anarchists:

Yet they are bound by Love and Love

is

infinitely free.

Minds cannot understand, nor systems

imitate

The scope of such

All the desires

simplicity.

and hungers that defy Your Law and perish in imprisonment: And all the hopes that seem to founder in the shadows of a cross Wake from a momentary sepulcher, and they are blinded by
Wither
to fears,

their

freedom!

Because our natures poise and point towards You about You as the planets swing upon the sun And all suns sing together in their gravitational worlds.

Our loves revolve

And so, some days in prayer Your Love,

Prisoning us in darkness from the values of Delivers us from measure and from time,

Your universe,

Melts

all

And solves
Deep

the barriers that stop our passage to eternity the hours our chains.

And then, as fires like jewels germinate

in the stone heart of a Kaffir mountain, So now our gravity, our new-created deep desire Burns in our life's mine like an undiscovered diamond.

366

Poems
Locked in that strength we stay and stay

367

And cannot go away

For You have given us our
liberty.

We

Imprisoned in the fortunes of Your adamant can no longer move, for we are free.

FIGURES FOR AN APOCALYPSE

CANA
"This "beginning of miracles did Jesus in

Cana

of Galilee."

Once when our eyes were clean

as noon, our

rooms

Filled with the joys of Cana's feast:

For Jesus came, and His disciples, and His Mother,

And after them the singers And some men with violins.
Once when our minds were Galilees, And clean as skies our faces,

Our simple rooms were charmed with sun. Our thoughts went in and out in whiter coats than God's
In Cana's crowded rooms, at Cana's tables.

disciples',

Nor

did

we seem to fear the wine would fail:

We

For ready, in a row, to fill with water and a miracle, saw our earthen vessels, waiting empty.

What wine those humble waterjars foretell!

Wine for
Yet

Have feared,

bended to the dirty earth, since lovely Eden, the sun's fire, hardly mumble, in their dusty mouths, one prayer.
the ones who,

Wine for old Adam,

digging in the briars!

A MAN IN THE DIVIDED SEA

EVENING
Now, in the middle of the limpid evening, The moon speaks clearly to the hill. The wheatfields make their simple music,
Praise the quiet sky.

368

Love

And down the road, the way the stars come home, The cries of children
Play on the empty air, a mile or more, And fall on our deserted hearing,
Clear as water.

They say the sky is made of glass, They say the smiling moon's a bride. They say they love the orchards and apple trees, The trees, their innocent sisters, dressed in blossoms,
Still

wearing, in the blurring dusk,

that morning's
first

White dresses from

communion.
shines

And, where blue heaven's fading fire They name the new come planets With words that flower

last

On little voices, light as stems of lilies.

And where blue heaven's fading fire last shines,
Reflected in the poplar's ripple, One little, wakeful bird

Sings like a shower.

MAN

IN THE DIVIDED SEA

THE ANNUNCIATION
Ashes of paper, ashes of a world

Wandering, when fire is done: We argue with the drops of rain!

Until

Even

in elements

One comes Who walks unseen we have destroyed.

Deeper than any nerve He enters flesh and bone. Planting His truth, He puts our substance on. Air, earth, and rain Rework the frame that fire has ruined, What was dead is waiting for His Flame. Sparks of His Spirit spend their seeds, and hide To grow like irises, born before summertime. These blue things bud in Israel.

Poems

The girl prays by the bare wall

Between the lamp and the chair. (Framed with an angel in our galleries She has a richer painted room, sometimes a crown.
Yet seven Build her

and Ark, and Tower. She is the Secret of another Testament She owns their manna in her jar.)

pillars of obscurity to Wisdom's house,

Fifteen years old The flowers printed on her dress

Cease moving in the middle of her prayer

When God, Who sends the messenger,

Meets His messenger in her Heart. Her answer, between breath and breath, Wrings from her innocence our Sacrament! In her white body God becomes our Bread.
It is

her tenderness
his bed.

Heats the dead world like David on Times that were too soon criminal And never wanted to be normal

Evade the beast that has pursued You, me, and Adam out of Eden's wood.
Suddenly we find ourselves assembled

Cured and recollected under

several green trees.

Her prudence wrestled with

the

Dove

To hide us in His cloud of steel and silver:

These are the mysteries of her Son.

And here my heart, a purchased outlaw,

Prays in her possession Until her Jesus makes my heart

Smile like a flower in her blameless hand.

THE STRANGE ISLANDS

A PSALM
When psalms surprise me with their music
And antiphons turn to rum
The
the Spirit sings:

bottom drops out of my soul

370

Love
cellar,

And from the center of my

Opens a heaven of naked

Love, louder than thunder

air.

New eyes awaken.

I

send Love's
all

name into

And songs grow up

Choirs of

the world with wings around me like a jungle.

creatures sing the tunes Your Spirit played in Eden. Zebras and antelopes and birds of paradise

Shine on the face of the abyss

And I am drunk with

Of the sixth day in

the great wilderness

Genesis.

But sound is never half so fair As when that music turns to air

And the universe dies of excellence.

Sun, moon, and
Fall
stars

from their heavenly towers. Joys walk no longer down the blue world's shore.

Though fires loiter,

lights

still

fly

on the

air of

the gulf,

All fear another wind, another thunder:

Then one more voice

Snuffs
all their flares

in one gust.

And I go forth with no more wine and no more stars And no more buds and no more Eden And no more animals and no more sea:
While God sings by himself in
acres of night

And walls fall down,

that guarded Paradise.

THB TEAKS OF THE BLIND LIONS

THE QUICKENING OF
On
the Contemplative Vocation

ST.

JOHN THE BAPTIST

Why do you fly from the drowned shores of Galilee,

From

Why

the sands and the lavender water? do you leave the ordinary world, Virgin of Nazareth,
the farms,

The yellow fishing boats,

Poems

371

The winesmelling yards and low cellars Or the oilpress, and the women by the well?

Why do you fly those markets,

Those suburban gardens,

The trumpets of the jealous lilies,

Leaving them
all,

lovely

among

the lemon trees?

You have trusted no town With the news behind your eyes. You have drowned Gabriel's word in

thoughts like seas

And turned toward the stone mountain To the treeless places. Virgin of God, why are your clothes like sails?
The day Our Lady, full of Christ,
Entered the dooryard of her relative Did not her steps, light steps, lay on the paving leaves like gold? Did not her eyes as gray as doves
Alight like the peace of a Elizabeth?

new world upon

that house,

upon miraculous

Her salutation
Sings in the stone valley like a Charterhouse bell:

And the unborn saint John

Wakes
Bounds with the echoes
Sing in your
cell,

in his mother's body, of discovery.

small anchorite!

How did you see her in the eyeless dark?

What secret syllable Woke your young faith
to

the

mad truth
Spirit of

That an unborn baby could be washed in the

God?

Oh burning joy!
What seas of life were planted by that voice!
With what new sense Did your wise heart receive her Sacrament, And know her cloistered Christ?
You need no eloquence, wild bairn,
Exulting in your hermitage.

Your

ecstasy

is

your apostolate,
contemplata tradere.

For whom

to kick is

Your joy is the vocation

372-

Love

Of Mother Church's hidden children Those who by vow lie huried in the cloister or the hermitage: The speechless Trappist, or the gray, granite Carthusian, The quiet Carmelite, the barefoot Clare,
Planted in the night of contemplation, Sealed in the dark and waiting to be born.

Night is our diocese and silence is our ministry Poverty our charity and helplessness our tongue-tied sermon. Beyond the scope of sight or sound we dwell upon the air Seeking the world's gain in an unthinkable experience. We are exiles in the far end of solitude, living as listeners

With hearts attending to

Waiting upon the
first

the skies

we cannot understand:

Planted like sentinels

drums of Christ the Conqueror, upon the world's frontier.

far

But in the days,

rare days,

when our Theotocos

sails,

Flying the prosperous world Appears upon our mountain with her clothes like

Then, like the wise, wild baby, The unborn John who could not see a thing We wake and know the Virgin Presence
Receive her Christ into our night

With stabs of an

intelligence as white as lightning.

Cooled in the flame of God's dark fire Washed in His gladness like a vesture of new flame We burn like eagles in His invincible awareness And bound and bounce with happiness, Leap in the womb, our cloud, our faith, our element, Our contemplation, our anticipated heaven Till Mother Church sings like an Evangelist.

THE TEARS OF THE BLIND LIONS

Seven:

LOVE

IN

MEDITATION

it is

JLHE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTIC of religious meditation is that a search for truth which springs from love and which seeks to

possess the truth not only

fore,

an

intellectual activity
intensifies

by knowledge but also by love. It is, therewhich is inseparable from an intense con-

and application of the will. The presence of love in and clarifies our thought by giving it a deeply affective quality. Our meditation becomes charged with a loving appreciation of the value hidden in the supreme truth which the intelligence is seeking. This affective drive of the will, seeking the truth as the soul's highest good, raises the soul above the level of speculation and makes our quest for truth a prayer full of reverential love and adoration striving to pierce the dark cloud which stands between us and the throne of God. We beat against this cloud with supplication, we lament our poverty, our helplessness, we adore the mercy of God and His supreme to His worship. perfections, we dedicate ourselves entirely Mental prayer is therefore something like a skyrocket. Kindled by a act of intellispark of divine love, the soul streaks heavenward in an gence as clear and direct as the rocket's trail of fire. Grace has released all the deepest energies of our spirit and assists us to climb to new and
secration of spirit

our meditation

unsuspected heights. Nevertheless, our own faculties soon reach their limit. The intelligence can climb no higher into the sky. There is a its fiery trajectory as if to acknowlpoint where the mind bows down

edge

its

limitations

and proclaim the

infinite

supremacy of the unat-

tainable

God.
here that our "meditation" reaches

But
praise.

it is

takes the initiative

its climax. Love again and the rocket "explodes" in a burst of sacrificial Thus love flings out a hundred burning stars, acts of all kinds,

373

374
expressing everything that in drifting fires that
is

Love
best in man's spirit, Name of

and the soul spends

itself

glorify the

God

while they
St.

fall

earthward and die away in the night wind! That is why St. Albert the Great, the master

who gave

Thomas

Aquinas

theological formation at Paris and Cologne, contrasts the contemplation of the philosopher and the contemplation of the saints:
this

The

one contemplating and

is,

contemplation of philosophers seeks nothing but the perfection of the it goes no further than the intellect. But the con-

templation of the saints is fired by the love of the one contemplated: that God. Therefore it does not terminate in an act of the intelligence but

passes over into the will

by

love.

St. Thomas Aquinas, his disciple, remarks tersely that for this very reason the contemplative's knowledge of God is arrived at, on this earth, by the light of burning love: per ardorem caritatis datur cognitio
veritatis.

(Commentary on

St.

John's Gospel, Chapter 5.)

contemplation of "philosophers/' which is merely intellectual speculation on the divine nature as it is reflected in creatures, would be

The

The

therefore like a skyrocket that soared into the sky but never went off. of the rocket is in its "death," and the beauty beauty of mental

total

prayer and of mystical contemplation is in the soul's abandonment and surrender of itself in an outburst of praise in which it

spends

itself

entirely to bear witness

to

the transcendent goodness of the

infinite

God. The

rest is silence.

II

ALL COMPARISONS are defective in some respect. Our image of the skyrocket might perhaps mislead imaginative minds. Meditation does not have to be colorful or spectacular. The effectiveness of our mental
prayer is not to be judged by the interior fireworks that go off inside us when we pray. On the contrary, although sometimes the fruit of a good meditation may be an ardent sensible love springing from vivid insights into the truth, these so-called "consolations of prayer" are not to be trusted without reserve or sought for their own sake alone.

We

should be deeply grateful

when our

when it helps us to do whatwith greater humility, fidelity, and courage. Nevertheless, since the fruit of mental prayer is harvested in the depths of the soul, in the will and in the intelligence, and not on the
ever

of clear understanding and felt despise the stimulation of sensible devotion

prayer really brings us an increase generosity, and we should by no means

we have

to do,

Love in Meditation
level of

375

meditation that

emotion and instinctive reactions, it is quite possible that a is apparently "cold," because it is without feelings, may be most profitable. It can give us great strength and spiritualize our
it

above the level of the senses and teaching us to reason and the principles of faith. by This is one of the points at which ignorance makes progress in mental prayer difficult or even impossible. Those who think that their
interior life, lifting

guide ourselves

meditation must always culminate in a burst of emotion, fall into one of two errors. Either they find that their emotions run dry and that their prayer seems to be "without fruit." Therefore that conclude they

they are wasting their time and give up their

their craving for sensations in Or else they belong to the

efforts, in

order to satisfy
are

some other way.

category of those

whose emotions

They can almost always weep at prayer. They can quite easily produce sentiments of fervor, with a little concentration and the right kind of effort, whenever they desire them. But this is a dangerous form of success. Emotional versatility is a help at the beginning of the
inexhaustible.
interior life,

on it may be an obstacle to progress. At the are easily attracted to created pleasures, our senses beginning, will emotions keep us from turning to God unless they themselves can be given some enjoyment and awareness of the value of prayer. Thus
but
later

when our

beginning, in the senses and in feeling. But

the taste for spiritual things has to start out with a humble and earthly if our prayer always ends

in sensible pleasure and interior consolation, we will run the risk of resting in these things which are by no means the end of the journey.
Ill

THE PRECISE WAY

in

which each individual makes

his meditation will

upon his temperament and natural gifts. depend An intellectual and analytic mind will break down a text into its component parts, and follow the thought step by step, pausing in
in large measure

deep

reflection

upon each new

idea, in order to
all its

ent points of view and draw forth

speculative

examine it from differhidden implications, both

ascend, by reason-

But

and practical. too analysis must not go

far.

The mind must

ing, for an intellectual,

to the threshold of intuition.

Meditation enters into

when

his

mind can

subject in one deep and penetrating Above all, tion, letting the truth sink in and become a part of himself. at should leave the the rest, intuition, setting intelligence temporarily

its full swing, content of the whole the grasp rests in this intuiThen he gaze.

376
will free to

Love
adapt
itself to

the practical consequences of the truth thus

and to direct our whole life in accordance with it. Such minds as these which are a minority can fruitfully meditate on an article of the Summa Theologica or on any other theological an intellectual text. But even they cannot always be contented with
seen

approach to supernatural things. For a theologian, in practice, mental prayer should become a kind of refuge from his speculative study, an oasis of affectivity to which he can retire to rest after his intellectual labor. In any case, the prayer of love is always higher than mere mental considerations. All mental prayer, whatever may be its begin-

must terminate in love. true end of Christian meditation is therefore practically the same as the end of liturgical prayer and the reception of the sacraments: a deeper union by grace and charity with the Incarnate Word who is the only Mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ.
nings,

The

peculiar value of mental prayer, however, is that it is completely personal and favors a spiritual development along lines dictated by our

The

own

particular needs.

The
and

interior life
to

demands of us a heroic

strugto
re-

gle to practice virtue

detach ourselves from inordinate love of

temporal, created things.

We

cannot possibly bring our souls

nounce our most powerful natural desires unless we somehow have a real and conscious appreciation of our contact with something better. The love of God remains a cold and abstract thing unless we can bring ourselves to realize its deeply intimate and personal character. We can never hope, on earth, to achieve anything like a clear realization of what it means to be loved by the three divine Persons in one divine nature. But it is very easy to appreciate the love of God when we see it concretized in the human love of Jesus Christ for us. This is the best and most logical foundation for a life of faith, and therefore
this

above

all

should be the primary object of meditation.

SPIRITUAL DIRECTION AND MEDITATION

Eight

PROMETHEUS: A MEDITATION

NOTE: TWO FACES OF PROMETHEUS

of Cain's sin: not the

JLjKASMUs once discussed with Colet and other divines the nature murder of Abel but his first sin. Their conclusions are no longer interesting or important. The only reason I allude to the discussion is that the Cain of Erasmus turned out to be Promesance
theus in a fable that tells us and about our own.

much

about the mentality of the Renais-

Cain, says Erasmus, had often heard his parents speak of the wonderful vegetation of Paradise, where the "ears of corn were as high as the alders/' and he persuaded the angel at the gate to bring him a few seeds from inside the garden. planted them and succeeded admirably

He

drew down upon him the wrath of the Almighty. His sacrifices were no longer acceptable. It is curiously significant that modern and "progressive" man should consider himself somehow called upon to vindicate Cain, and that in doing so he should identify Cain with the fire-bearing Titan whom he has been pleased to make the symbol of his own technological genius and of his cosmic aspirations. But what is equally significant is the confusion of the two opposite the version of Hesiod, in which Promeinterpretations of Prometheus: theus is a villain, and the version of Aeschylus in which he is the hero. The difference between these two versions lies of course in the different
as a farmer, but this attitude toward the implacable father figure: Zeus. Hesiod represents and approves the Olympian order,

where Zeus

over the subversive and dethroned gods of reigns in absolute power archaic Greece. Zeus is the god of the invading Achaians who destroyed the matriarchal and tribal society of primitive Greece, the society of

the Earth Mother, of Demeter, of

Hera and Athene. Prometheus, the

377

378
son of Earth and of Ocean,
is

a threat to the static order established

and no flower may look by Zeus, the order in which no bird may chirp at the sun without the permission of the jealous Father. Zeus is the
master of
life

rather than

its

giver.

He

tolerates

man and

man's world,

but only barely.

stole the fire for men (there According to Hesiod, when Prometheus was no other way in which he could get fire away from Zeus) Zeus in the way we well know with the revenged himself on Prometheus stake drives a he that added detail through his heart. But Zeus is also how? mankind: By sending woman. revenged upon an aggressively male society! Woman of Strange, ponderous fantasy is a as Zeus comes from good but her punishment, for in her "everything

heart/'

Woman,

the culminating penance in a life of labor and sorrow! In the world picture of Hesiod, though it is beautiful, primitive, full

of Hellenic clarity, we find this darkness, this oppressive and guilty view that life and love are somehow a punishment. That nothing can

ever be really good in

is

it.

That

life is

slavery

Zeus, and because Prometheus

has resisted Zeus.

and sorrow because of That therefore life

. . .

is broken like a slave, nothing but a wheel upon which man receives woman as a Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus, the nature of the gift until from Zeus and does not wake up to

gift
it is

too late.

Then he remembers what Prometheus had

told

him: never

accent any gift from the gods. Hesiod is a great poet and yet to me this view of life is utterly horrible. I hate it and I reject it with everything in my being. All the more because it is, I believe, implicit in the atheism of the world into which I was born and out of which, by Christ's grace and the gift of

God,

have been reborn.

of Aeschylus is one of the most heartrendsacred of and tragedies. I know of none that strikes so deep ing, pure, into the roots of man, the root where man is able to live in the mystery of God. The Prometheus of Aeschylus is the exact opposite of the Prometheus of Hesiod. Between Prometheus and the Earth Mother and Ocean rises the figure of a usurper. For in Aeschylus it is Zeus, not Prometheus,

The Prometheus Bound

who

is

the usurper.

It is
is

hubris. True,
limits

Prometheus

Zeus, not Prometheus, who is sick with driven by desperation beyond the wise

the rebellion of life against inertia, of

which the Greek mind recognized so well. But his rebellion is mercy and love against tyranny,

Prometheus:
of

Meditation

379

humanity against cruelty and arbitrary violence. And he calls upon the feminine, the wordless, the timelessly moving elements to witness his sufferings. Earth hears him.

In the end of the tragedy (which is only the first of a trilogy, two plays of which have been lost) Earth promises her son a deliverer. Herakles will come and break his brother's chains. Zeus will be mol-

The

will change, and he will see things in a new light. struggling gods will be reconciled, and the reconciliation will be the victory of Prometheus but also the victory of Earth, that is to say of
lified.

His mind

mercy, of humanity, of innocence, of trust. Once more it will be possible for men to receive
It will

be possible and right

faces of

to

wait for

to gifts,

from heaven. on them. To use depend

gifts

them
one

to build, innocently, a better world.

Prometheus represent two attitudes toward life, the other positive, negative. It is significant that the Renaissance, in choosing between the two, selected the negative. It is against this
meditation is a negative choice that my Prometheus is written. the of of modern Prometheus. It is a return to rejection negative, myth

The two

My

the archaic, Aeschylean, and positive aspect of Prometheus, which the same time, to my mind, deeply and implicity Christian.

is,

at

The Prometheus
Christ on the Cross.

of Hesiod

is

Cain.

The Prometheus

of Aeschylus

is

In

my

meditation I have started from Hesiod's view in order to

argue against it.

o PROMETHEUS:
THE SMALL GODS men have made
only a
justly
little

MEDITATION

for themselves are jealous fathers,

their sons, only a little stronger, only a little greater than afraid of their mortal children, they are unImmortal wiser. fathers, a fortunate too immortality. To fight with them protected by

requires at once heroism

the Living

God

is

knowing that he he will be able to overthrow them. Alas, he realizes too late that he has made them immortal. They must eventually devour him.

despair. The man who does not know condemned, by his own gods, to this despair: because, has made his own gods, he cannot help hoping that

and

THE PROMETHEAN INSTINCT

to say,
it is

almost

infinite.

is as deep as man's weakness: that is Promethean despair is the cry that rises

out of the abyss of man's nothingness

the inarticulate expression of

380
the terror

Love

having

to

man cannot face, the terror of having to be someone, of be himself. That is to say, his terror of facing and fully real-

izing his divine sonship, in Christ,

and in the Spirit of Fire Who is Prometheus thought he had to steal given us from heaven. The fire the affirmation and vindicafrom the gods is his own identity in God 7 tion of his own being as a sanctified creature in the image of God. The fire Prometheus thought he had to steal was his own spiritual freeof Prometheus to be himself was to be guilty. The dom. In the
eyes
exercise of liberty

was

a crime,

made (the gods

from them).

to

whom

that in order to have all

an attack upon the gods which he had he had given all that was good in himself, so that he had, it was necessary to steal it back

PROMETHEUS KNOWS
a tour de force.

for his
feels

nature

tells

him

this

that

he must

become a person. Yet he

that he can only do this by an exploit,

the exploit itself is doomed to failure. Condemned to face this gesture and this crime, he feels drawn, his nature very by by his very nature itself, to extinction. The fire attracts him more than

And

he can believe

it is in reality his possible, because

own. But he hates

himself for desiring what he has given to his gods, and punishes himself before he can take it back from them. Then he becomes his own vul-

consuming himself, he finds realization. won fire for other men, I have sacrificed myself for others/* But in reality he has won nothing for anybody. He has suffered the loss of his own soul, but he has not gained
ture,

and

is satisfied

at last. In

(Secretly he

tells

himself: "I have

the whole world, or even a small part of

it.

He

has gained nothing.)

himself and

GUILTY, frustrated, rebellious, fear-ridden, Prometheus seeks to assert fails. His mysticism enables him to glory in defeat.

For since Prometheus cannot conceive of a true victory, his own triumph is to let the vulture devour his liver: he will be a martyr and
his

a victim, because the gods he has created in his own image represent own tyrannical demands upon himself. There is only one issue in

his struggle with

them: glorious defiance in a luxury of despair.

the gods seems great, indeed, to those who do not know the Living God. They do not know that He is on our side against false gods and defeat is not permissible. One who loves Christ is not

To struggle with

allowed to be Prometheus.
the
fire

He

is

not allowed to

fail.

He must

kee^

that

is

given him from heaven. And he must

assert that the

Prometheus:
fire is his.

Meditation
his rights against all the false gods

381

He

hold that

it

must maintain was stolen.

who

GUILT was the precious

that

gift of the false gods to Prometheus, a gift waste possible. Not knowing that the fire was his for the asking, a gift of the true God, the Living God, not knowing that fire was God not did need for Himself (since He had something

made

all

this

made

it expressly for man) Prometheus felt he was obliged to steal what he could not do without. And why? Because he knew no god that would be willing to give it to him for nothing. He could not conceive of such a god, because if he himself had been god, he would have needed fire for himself and would never have shared it with another. He knew no god that was not an enemy, because the gods he knew were only a little stronger than himself, and needed fire as badly as he needed it. In order to exist at all, they had to dominate him and feed on him and ruin him (for if he himself had been a god, he knew he would have had to live on what was weaker than himself).

Thus the gods Prometheus knew were weak, because he himself was weak. Yet they were a little stronger than he was, strong enough to chain him to Caucasus. (He had that much strength left in himself,
he was strong enough to consume himself for all in for eternity punishment having desired their fire. In fact, he destroyed that himself forever they might live. For this reason idolatry was, and
after creating his gods:
is,

the fundamental sin.)

A MAN must make the best of whatever gods he has. Prometheus had to have weak gods because he was his own god, and no man admits
he is his own god. But he subjects himself to his own weakness, conceived as a god, and prefers it to the strength of the Living God. If Prometheus had known the strong God, and not worshiped weak been different The guilt Prometheus felt gods, things would have
that

from the beginning was more necessary for his gods than for himself. If he had not been guilty, such gods would not have been able to exist. Without guilt he could not have conceived them, and since they to be guilty in order to think only existed in his own mind he had
of
his

them

at

all.

His

guilt,

then,

was

homage

of love

and
fire

trust.

By

his guilt

a secret expression of love. It was he bore witness to his little

their fire

household gods, his

hoarders.

he loved them and believed in

By stealing their falsity

he confessed that more than he loved the

3 8z

Love

than he believed in His truth. It was then a his part to open his heart to his unreal gods, on supreme homage and steal from them that fire which, in reality, was his own. Surely, he had given them everything, in order to show how much he preferred
Living
act of
their

God and more

nothingness to the Living

God and even

to himself!

NO ONE was

ever less like Prometheus on Caucasus, than Christ on His Cross. For Prometheus thought he had to ascend into heaven to steal what God had already decreed to give him. But Christ, Who had in Himself all the riches of God and all the poverty of Prometheus,

came down with the fire Prometheus needed, hidden in His Heart. And He had Himself put to death next to the thief Prometheus in order to show him that in reality God cannot seek to keep anything good to
Himself alone.
Far from killing the man who seeks the divine fire, the Living God will Himself pass through death in order that man may have what is
destined for him.
If Christ
fire

has died and risen from the dead and poured out upon us the

of His

Holy

Spirit,

why do we imagine
to

that our desire for life

is

Promethean

desire,

doomed
if

punishment?

Why

God we reproach
on
Because

our longing to "see good days" were something do did not desire, when He Himself told us to seek them?

do

we

act as

Why

ourselves for desiring victory? our defeats, and glory in despair?

Why

do

we

pride ourselves

we

think our
life is

life is

know that our our own selves.

Because

more important

important to ourselves alone, and do not to the Living God than it is to

we
we

think our happiness

is for

ourselves alone,

and do not

realize that it is also

His happiness.

Because

think our sorrows are for ourselves alone, and do not be-

lieve that they are

much more than

can
steal

that:

they are His sorrows.

There

is

nothing

we

from

Him

at all,

because before

we

can

think of stealing

it, it

has already been given. THE BfiHAVIOE OF TITANS

Nine:

THE GOOD SAMARITAN

"Who is my neighbor?" Christ told the parable of the Good Samaritan in answer to that question. First let us remember that while to us all Samaritans are Good Samaritans, it was not so to those who first heard the parable. In their eyes all Samaritans were, by the very fact, bad. Indeed that was why a Samaritan had to be the subject of the parable: since it was necessary for the hearers to realize that at least one Samaritan could be a good
one.

We

on the other hand accept Samaritans without

identified ourselves

difficulty as good,

with them. All Samaritans are good in our having eyes because we consider ourselves Samaritans. Since we have come to regard ourselves as good Samaritans, do we not perhaps consider that Jews are less good than ourselves? In that case we will not understand the parable at all, for we shall imagine that the priest and levite passed by the wounded man just because they were Jews. And we shall think that it was because the Samaritan was both "good" and "Samaritan" that he helped him. But if we interpret the parable in this way we close our minds to its meaning. For neither the Jew nor the Samaritan is our neighbor in any
exclusive or comforting sense. Consider the question that was asked:

"Who

is

my

neighbor"?"

This

was, in fact, the second question which a lawyer asked of Christ. His shall first, intended as a temptation or an embarrassment, was, "How I obtain eternal life?" This is an important question, and so important that nobody can be without the answer to it. And note that he asks this
question of

Him

of

Whom we

read: "This

is

eternal life:

to

know
383

384
Thee, the

Love

One True God, and

Jesus Christ

Whom

Thou

hast sent."

Since the answer to the most important of questions is accessible to did know it. He everyone, the lawyer should have known it. And he

had no need

to ask it at all.
first

The Lord made

this clear, for

He

said:

"What

commandment?" When the lawyer replied, saying that the first commandment was the love of God and of our neighbor, then Christ told him to keep that commandment and he would have eternal life. In this way it became clear that the question was not that he had a real problem, the lawyer necessary. But in order to prove
is

the

asked again: "Who is my neighbor?" can perhaps assume that he meant by this he had no problem about loving God, since "God is good," but that he was perplexed about his neighbor, since some men are better than others and all are

We

loving

himself against loving imperfect. This being the case, in order to protect an unworthy object and thus wasting his love, he wanted to know

where
fore

to

draw the

line.

Who

is

alien not to
it is

be loved? The question

the neighbor to be loved, who is the is a matter of classification. Thereis

a matter of judgment also, for to classify

to judge.

How then

does one classify people, and judge

them
is

accurately as

or of hatred, or of indifference? This

a pretty question.

worthy of love, But to the

Lord

it

that ye be not judged."

was a question that had no meaning, for He said, "Judge not, Do not classify, and do not be classified.
to

THE PARABLE seems not

answer
it

answer
is

this question, or at least

not

to

directly. saying, my neighbor, in order actively to give him the love that is commanded by God?" and Christ gives an example of one who needs love, and who passively receives love from someone who falls outside the category of "neighbor." And yet the Samaritan is constituted a "neighbor" by the

For the lawyer

"How

shall I identify

he gives love. what this answer really says is more than the scribe explicitly asked. For the answer cuts right through the knot of the question.
fact that

Now

Christ does not

tell

the scribe

how

to

judge and

classify

but teaches

him

that classifications are without significance in this matter of love. For we do not and cannot love according to classifications. Or if we do,

then

we do

not love in the full sense of the word. Love

is free; it

does

not depend on the desirability of its object, but loves for love's sake. But if love submits itself to an object, to a good outside itself, it tends to its own destruction. If it confers good upon its object, then it thrives

and grows. For the nature

of love is to give as well as to receive. It both

The Good Samaritan

gives and receives, but it if love demands first of

385
in giving it receives. Therefore gives first, all to receive a good from its object, before

and

beginning
If a

then it can never begin to love. has to be pleasing to me, comforting, reassuring, before I can love him, then I cannot truly love him. Not that love cannot conto love,

man

sole or reassure!
to love. If a

But

if I

demand

first

to

be reassured,

will never dare

then

has to be a Jew or a Christian before I can love him, cannot love him. If he has to be black or white before I can

man

love him, then I cannot love him. If he has to belong to my political party or social group before I can love him, if he has to wear my kind
of uniform, then dictated
is no longer love because it is not free: it is outside by something myself. It is dominated by an appetite other than love. I love not the person but his classification, and in that

my

love

event

I love

him not
I

as

a person but as a thing.

confirms

me

in attachment to

my own
I

label.

even love myself,

value myself not for

this

I love his label which But in that case I do not what I am, but for my label,

my

classification.

In

way
to

myself, and those who seem

for I

me

remain at the mercy of forces outside to be neighbors are indeed strangers

am

first

of all a stranger to myself.

this is the

DO YOU THINK perhaps

men

meaning of the parable: that all men? Because they are human, and have the same nature? No, this is not the meaning. This would be simply a matter of extending the classification to its broadest limits, and including all men in one big category, "Man." Christ means more than this however, for He gives a more than philosophical answer. His
are to be loved because they are

answer

is

a divine revelation, not a natural ethical principle. It

is

revelation of the mystery of God. Hence in revealing truth it remains mysterious and in some sense hidden. Yet if we get as close as we can to the source of revelation, we can gain deeper insight into the mystery.

The

parable of the

Good Samaritan

is

a revelation of

God

in a

word

that has great importance through all the Scriptures from the beginning to the end. It is a revelation of what the prophet Hosea says,

speaking for the invisible God, "I will have mercy and not

sacrifices."

What
tures,

is this

and

cordia as though

find spoken of everywhere in the Scripthe Psalms? The Vulgate rings with miseriin especially church bell. Mercy is the "burden" or with a

mercy which we

deep

and undersong of the whole Bible. But the Hebrew word which we render as mercy, misericordia, says more still than mercy.
the "bourdon"
it is

the bass bell

386

Love
is

Chesed (mercy)

also fidelity,

it is

also strength. It

is

the faithful,

the indefectible mercy of God. It is ultimate and unfailing because it is the power that binds one person to another, in a covenant of hearts.

the power that binds us to God because He has promised us mercy and will never fail in His promise. For He cannot fail. It is the power and the mercy which are most characteristic of Him, which come nearer to the mystery into which we enter when all concepts darken and evade us. There are other attributes of God which are further from Him and nearer to ourselves. They come and go in the Scriptures. They are flashes and presences, they appear and disappear as if they were in some sense provisional, as if they were approximations: too partial! For and completed in so far as all concepts of God have to be corrected than others. For example the they are analogies. Some however more
It is

metaphor that

He is angry, when in fact He is not angry. It is true that manifests His wrath and He judges. He punishes and He strikes. But when we say that He does all these things, He does not do them He
we do
it

seemed to us that He was angry. We are saying that if -we had been in His place we would have been angry and would have struck. But because "my
it

but something else which been said that He is angry

not understand.

And when

it

has

has only been said that

thoughts are not your thoughts, says the Lord/ there is something much nearer the truth which appears on a far more transcendent level when the anger vanishes. This is the sun which does not change, be-

hind the passing clouds which are other aspects of God. This unchanging, fundamental, stable element is the mystery which is revealed in
the

Hebrew word

chesed.

For what do

we read in Isaiah?
woman
forsaken and mourning in
spirit,

For the Lord hath called thee as a

from her youth, said thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a moment of indignation have I hid my face a little from thee, but with

and

as a wife cast off

everlasting kindness have I

(ISA.

had mercy on

thee, said the

Lord thy Redeemer,

54:6-8)

Again Hosea says that the Lord does not want to be called Lord so as "husband/* since to be called Lord is to be worshiped with fear rather than love, as though He were a Baal and not a Savior. For it is characteristic of a Baal to have no chesed. The power of the Baal is another power, frightening and capricious, but unable to reach the

much

The Good

Samaritan

387
of our hearts

depths of our

being. Chesed can take possession transform them and so it is said

it

own

and

And And

shall

be in that day, saith the Lord, That she

call

shall call

me;

My
shall

husband, and she shall

me no more

Baali.

I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and she no more remember their name. (HOSEA 2:16-17)

Again chesed

is

something more than mercy, But

it

contains in itself

many
its

varied aspects of God's love

its

which

flash forth in

mercy and are

revealed HimMoses on Sinai. First Moses had begged to see His face, and the Lord had told Moses that no one could see Him and live, Moses had pleaded to see Him, so God showed Himself without showing Himself. That is to say He "passed by" Moses who only "saw Him after He had That to is passed by/' say that Moses saw Him by not since Him He saw He was gone. But He "had when Him, seeing been" there (He who is everywhere and nowhere). That is to say that Moses having first known Him in complete darkness without seeing Him, then saw Him in a kind of light-after-darkness without knowing Him. First the dark flash and the passing and the night, then the cries and words drawn out of the depths of the darkness and mystery of that awakening. These great words shot up out of the heart of Moses and exploded in various shapes and tones which all formed the figure of
self to

fountain and

hidden source. Remember

how God

chesed:
the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, patient and of much compassion and true, who keepest mercy unto thousands: who takest away
iniquity
thee.

and wickedness and

sin,

and no man

of himself

is

innocent before

(EXOD. 34:6-7)

The

chesed of

God

is

no worthiness, and no makes them at once innocent. This look seems guilty and with His look to some to be anger because they fly from it. But if they face it they see that it is love and that they are innocent. (Their flight and the confusion of their own fear make them guilty.) The chesed of God is truth. It is infallible strength. It is the love by which He seeks and chooses His chosen, and binds them to Himself. It is the love by which

a gratuitous mercy that considers no fitness, return. It is the way the Lord looks upon the

He

is

married
still

must

fidelity.

mankind, so that if humanity is faithless to Him it have a fidelity to which to return: that is His own always For He has become inseparable from man in the chesed which
to

388

Love
call Incarnation,

we

and Passion, and Resurrection.

Spirit.

He

us His chesed in the Person of His

The

Paraclete

has also given is the full,

our inexpressible mystery of chesed. So that in the depths of there is an inexhaustible spring of mercy and of love. Our
has become love.

own own

being

being

full of Christ, of chesed.

self has become God's love for us, and it is But we must face it and accept it. We must be to ourselves and to accept ourselves and others as chesed. We must of others signs and sacraments mercy.

Our own

Chesed,

MERCY AND POWER,

is

manifests

itself visibly in
life is

the chasid, or

the saint. Indeed the saint

one whose whole

is

immersed in the

chesed of God.

The

saint

Through

the chasid the love of

God

the instrument of the divine mercy. reaches into the world in a visible

and love, meekness and power. The mystery, a mystery of poverty chasid is in many respects a foolish one, who has been made comical
by mercy. The apparent tragedy of his nothingness
with joy. In his folly the divine tion is a new creation, so that
divine mercies
is

turned inside out

wisdom shines forth and his annihilahe rejoices in the incongruity of the

and

is

everlastingly astonished at the creative love of

God.
of

He

calls

upon

all

them do not pay the hills and stars

majority of

attention.

beings to praise this love with him, and most Yet the sun and moon and the sea and

join him, nevertheless, in praising chesed.

The

men, perhaps, consider him

crazy.

(God,
of

too, is glad to

be thought crazy in His chasid. For the wisdom

in his love

God is folly in the eyes of men.) The folly of the chasid is manifested

and concern

for his

neighbor, the sinner. For the sinner is "next to*' the chasid or the saint. They are so close to one another, so like one another, that they are sometimes almost indistinguishable. The professionally pious man, on

the contrary, makes a whole career out of being evidently distinguishable from sinners. He wants it to be very clear to God and to man that

he and the sinner are in

different categories.

Hence

the love of the

chasid for the sinner (and of the sinner for the chasid) is not the patronizing concern of the pious and respectable, but the impractical concern of one who acts as if he thought he were the sinner's mother.

Such a one behaves like the Samaritan in the parable, and not like the priest and levite, who were well aware of proprieties, and classifications, and categories. Who knows? Perhaps the priest took a look at the character lying in the ditch and observed that he had blood all over him and that it would never do to contract a ritual impurity. Espe-

The Good
cially

Samaritan

out here in the desert, miles from water. Those

who

are profes-

sionally respectable and whose lives are measured out in long and formal ceremonies, have other and more urgent things to do than to be instruments of chesed.

WHO, THEN,

I bound? Who must I love? and they do not have clear answers. On the contrary any attempt to answer them involves us in endless subtleties, and vagueness, and ultimate confusion. Love is not
is

my

neighbor?

To whom am

These are not

intelligent questions,

by classifications. The measure of love that Christ has set for us beyond measure: we must "be perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect." But what is meant by the "perfection" of the heavenly Father? It
limited
is

is

all,

impartiality, not in the sense of justice that measures out equally to knowing their merits, but in the sense of chesed that knows no

classification of

good and

evil, just

or unjust. "For

He

sends His rain

upon

We

the just and the unjust." are bound to God in chesed.

let

The power

of His

hold of us and will not

And

we sent upon us, we can be moved by His unpredictable wisdom, so that we love whom we love and we help whom we help, not according to plans of our own but according to the measure laid down for us in His
because

go of us: therefore we have have emptied ourselves in this folly

mercy has taken become foolish. which He has

hidden

of His Spirit,

which knows no measure. In this folly, which is the work we must love especially those who are helpless and who can do nothing for themselves. We must also receive love from them, realizing our own helplessness, and our own inability to fend for ourselves. Chesed has made us as though we were outcasts and sinners. Chesed has numbered us among the aliens and strangers: chesed has
will,

not only robbed us of our reason but declassified us along with everyone else, in the sight of God. Thus we have no home, and no family,

and no niche

of worthiness in society,
to

and no recognizable function.

be especially charitable, and we cannot pride appear virtue. has apparently robbed us of all that, for on Chesed ourselves of God alone shall have nothing else to live he who lives by the mercy

Nor do we even

Plenitudo legis est charitas. by, only that mercy. whole law.

Mercy

fulfills

the

THE MYSTERY

of the

Good

Samaritan, then,

is

this:

the mystery of

chesed, power and mercy. In the end, it is Christ Himself who lies wounded by the roadside. It is Christ Who comes by in the person of

39 o
the Samaritan.

Love

And Christ is the bond, the compassion and the underthem. This is how the Church is made of living between standing stones, compacted together in mercy. Where there is on the one hand a helpless one, beaten and half dead, and on the other an outcast with no moral standing, and the one leans down in pity to help the other, then there takes place a divine epiphany and an awakening. There is "man," there reality is made human, and in answer to this movement of compassion a Presence is made on the earth, and the bright cloud of the majesty of God overshadows their poverty and their love. There may be no consolation in it. There may be nothing humanly charming
about it. It is not necessarily like the movies. Perhaps the encounter is outwardly sordid and unattractive. But the Presence of God is brought about on earth there, and Christ is there, and God is in communion
with man.

what we are talking about when we speak of "doing the will Not only fulfilling precepts, and praying, and being holy, but being instruments of mercy, and fastening ourselves and others to God
This
is

of God."

in the

bonds of chesed.

THE TWO QUESTIONS asked by the

scribe were, then, useless. Therefore Christ did not answer them. Yet he did not pass them by without attention. On the contrary, He saw them as indications of the scribe's

plight
oil

and of our own. Instead of answering the questions, He poured and wine into the wounds. This He did by His own words, Who is
to all

Himself the answer

useful questions.

Good Samaritan

Ten:

TOWER OF

BABEL

Part

One
One

THE LEGEND OF THE

The
Building of the

TOWER

Scene

Tower

RAPHAEL, THOMAS, FIRST BUILDER, SECOND BUILDER, LEADER, CAPTAIN,

CHORUS
[Musical Prelude
the building of the Tower. Enter

RAPHAEL and THOMAS.

THOMAS

Ought we, Raphael,

to join

The

We
RAPHAEL
I

builders of this city? can quickly learn

Their language and their ambition.

No, we must stand

If

apart.

we

We

learn their language

will
is

no longer understand
being
said.

What If we

imitate their zeal

We
THOMAS
RAPHAEL
:

will lose all sense of

what

is

to

be done.

They are clear-minded men Of one purpose.

No. They only appear To know what they are building.

They
That

think

it is

a tower

will reach heaven.

They
Mind.

think they speak the same

Language, that they are of one

391

Love
Presently

We

shall discover that they are

Only

of one voice.

Many

minds,

Many Many

thoughts signifying nothing. words, many plans

hearts,

Without purpose. Divided

Weak
Armed

hands. Hearts that will be

Closed to one another. Hands

against one another. There is no agreement There can be no tower.

FIRST BUILDER:

I believe

in the tower.

Therefore I will work longer hours. SECOND BUILDER: I believe in the Leader. Therefore
I will sacrifice

myself

To
FIRST BUILDER:

build this tower.

I believe in

our common language, Therefore I will serve the Leader.

I believe

SECOND BUILDER:
FIRST BUILDER:

in labor without reward.

is

The
I

reward enough, believe in work without food and sleep

tower

Although it is not yet possible. SECOND BUILDER: The Leader will make it possible.
FIRST BUILDER:

Everyone knows that the Leader Will make everything possible.

It is good that we agree brother. Let us never stop working;

SECOND BUILDER:

Let us build
war.

this

Tower

for the

Leader

who

loves

FIRST BUILDER:

Yet,

it is

Build this

good that we agree. Let us Tower for the Leader who loves peace.

CAPTAIN:

Silence! Stop work. Listen to the Leader.

LEADER:

The Tower is nearly finished.

It is the greatest It is the

of

all

only perfect

and

Towers, in fact eternal Tower* There has

never been

And never will be another such Tower. The Tower is inviolable. It will

Tower

of Babel

393

Be attacked by invisible powers From above and from below by

corruption.

agents of social

Are you

tired of

work,

my people?

Then, when

Tower is built, We shall have war. But the Tower is impregnable.

the

Do your duty. Soon you will

Taste the excitement of war.

CAPTAIN:

Back

to

work.

The Tower must be

finished

by

nightfall.

CHORUS: Grow Babylon, grow,

Great Babylon, touch the
stars.

What if the Lord should see you, now?

Grow, Babylon, grow! RAPHAEL They suppose that if they build a high tower very [The dialogue quickly, they will be nearly as strong as God, Whom
continues they imagine to be only a little stronger than themagainst the selves. And if the highest part of the tower is level 'background of with the lowest part of heaven, man and God will
the CHORUS]:

have

to discuss everything

THOMAS:
RAPHAEL:

It is therefore a religious tower,

on equal terms, and they are men

of faith.

No,

it is

a tower of unbelief.
failed to believe in?

THOMAS: What have they

RAPHAEL:

Two things

First they

do not believe in themselves,

and because of this they do not believe in God. Because they do not believe in themselves or in God,
they cannot believe in unity. Consequently they cannot be united. Therefore they cannot finish the

THOMAS:

tower which they imagine they are building. Nevertheless they are very busy with whatever they think they are doing.
is

RAPHAEL: That
faith.

a pretense. Activity

is

their substitute for

Instead of believing in themselves, they seek to convince themselves, by their activity, that they
exist.

And

their activity pretends

to

direct itself

against

God, in order that they may reassure them-

selves that

He

does not

exist.

394

Love

THOMAS:

Why

so?

RAPHAEL: Because if He does not exist, then they do not have to be troubled with the problem of their own existence either. For if they admit they exist they will have to love one another, and this they find insupportable.

THOMAS: But

surely they love one another! Otherwise how could they unite in a common endeavor? Surely, they are united, and their union has brought them

success.

RAPHAEL: No, they have only united in their common, though hidden, desire to fail. Their ambition is only the
occasion for a failure they certainly seek. But they require that this failure come upon them, as it

were, out of the

ruin on fate,

stars.
still

They want

to

blame

their

and

have the secret

satisfaction

of ruining themselves.

THOMAS:
RAPHAEL:

Why should they do so much

dium

work

in order to fail?
te-

Their hearts seek disaster as a relief from the

of an unsatisfactory existence. least divide them from one another.

Ruin

will at

They will be run away, to put barricades against one another. Since they cannot stand the pretense of unity, they must seek the open avowal
able
to
scatter,

to

of their enmity.

FIRST BUILDER:

SECOND BUILDER:
CAPTAIN:

is this thing called war which has been promised us as our reward for finishing the tower? It is another work invented by the Leader, more

What

glorious than this

one

as well as

more exhausting.
will ascend to the

Silence. Stop work!

The Leader

garden he has planted on the summit of the Tower he has built. He will walk and sing under the exotic trees upon whose branches he will presently

hang the heads of our common enemies*

LEADER: Already
I see that

the skies are as full of words as

they are of stars. Each word becomes an instrument of war. Words of the clocks and devils. Words
of the

wheels and machines. Steel words stronger

Tower

of Babel

395
than flesh or
spirit.

Secret words

essences of things* Last of all, the one word strikes at the heart of creation, and dissolves
its

which divide the which

it

into
this

original nothingness. Give me possession of one word, and I will forget every other.

CHORUS:

Fear! Fear!
Fell the husiness that springs Out of the dark. Feel fear pass cold

hands (like wind) over your skin! Fear talks out of the thundercloud.

Grow

Ships fold their wings. The almond trees pale before the storm.

[CHORUS continues
logue.}

as

background
I

to following dia~

THOMAS: Raphael,

am

scared,

see the tower nodding

against the moon. I see the great cranes hending under the cloud.

RAPHAEL: Look

at the little boats,

the river. See

how

Thomas, how they fly down the carts topple off the side of

the road!

THOMAS:

desert

Raphael, that cloud first came up out of the no bigger than a man's fist. Then at once it

stood over the tower like a man's arm.

denly the burly dark filled the whole sky. still hear me in this wind?

Then sudCan you

RAPHAEL:

Wind
beats

with a thousand fingers pulls away the scaffists the wind folding. With a thousand invisible

on the battlements
the trumpets!

of the great

Tower.

FIRST

WATCHMAN: Blow
pet!

Blow the storm-warning trumis

VOICE:

It is too late,
fire

the storm

already

upon

us.

WATCHMAN: Blow the

VOICE: It
is

trumpet, blow the

fire

trumpet!

too late. Fire has sprouted

from a hole in the

Tower!

CHORUS:

Hide Hide Hide Hide

us from the

fall,

hide us from the

fall!

us in the catacomb, hide us in the well! us in the ground, hide us from the sky! us from the Tower's
fall!

396

Love

WATCHMAN: Blow the poison trumpet, blow the poison trumpet! VOICE: Too late! The captains have already taken poison. WATCHMAN: Then blow the trumpet of division.
VOICE: Blow the trumpet of division! THOMAS: This is Babylon's end!

RAPHAEL: No,

it is

Babylon's beginning!

CHORUS:

blow upon this plain you winds of heaven. Blow, blow, you winds of God, upon the sands. Scatter the seeds of war to the world's end.

Now

Scene

Two The

Trial

RAPHAEL, THOMAS, SOLDIERS, CAPTAIN, LEADER, PROFESSOR, GANDA, FALSEHOOD, LANGUAGE, CHORUS
[SCENE

PROPA-

Square in a half-ruined

city,

RAPHAEL and THOMAS.]

RAPHAEL: Everywhere the great machines of war Stand face to face. The hunters in the sky Bargain with life and death. Babylon, like a great star wandering from its
Unsettles the universe, dragging nations
chaos.

orbit,

down

into

THOMAS:

Is this

Begin

the same city? All the cities to look like the same city.

in the world

Wagons come down to the water Where the crowds stand

After flags have fallen.

Angry men

Stand without speech,

Wait
SOLDIERS

for the

conquering army.

marching song]: bar snake and the zigzag snake Will bite each other in the head
[enter, singing

The

And drown

each other in the

river:

Who
The

will reign

when both

are dead?

fire

bird

and the water bird

Have brought good luck

to Babylon But who will reign when both are dead?

Tower

of Babel

397

CAPTAIN: Gather the citizens in the square

And

fill

the whole city

With
There
Peace

the sound of one voice.

shall

be no other

voice.

For peace,

is this:

only a giant voice.

There There
LEADER:

shall

shall

be one Babylon, fearing the orator. be one Babylon, hating itself.

settle

[Enter LEADER, PROFESSOR, LAWYERS.]

Now we

must

the question of guilt.

The Tower fell. Babylon was dishonored. Our armies, though everywhere victorious,
Are
full of traitors* Sabotage Halts the production of new weapons.
is

Who

responsible?

CHORUS: Nothing is light, nothing is dark, Nothing is defined. Sunlight and darkness Both bring forth new fear.

Things are beginning to lose their names, Persons their character. All

Wear
CAPTAIN:

the look of death, and become terrible.

Silence! Traitors. Salute the Leader!

He brings

you

life,

salvation,

Prosperity, peace. Can you not see that despair, Unhappiness, will presently cease to exist?

LEADER:

Who

has taught these people the lies they utter? What enemy has poisoned their minds?

CAPTAIN:

We know the traitor's name,

One who was at first our best friend, one who was Our most capable officer. One we thought Would not fail us.

LEADER:
CAPTAIN:

Who
Have

is it

then?

Language!

He

and

his regiments, the words,

sold out to the

enemy.

LEADER:

Impossible.

Words have always been our best soldiers. They have defeated meaning in every engagement And have almost made an end of reality.
CAPTAIN:

No, Majesty. They

are in league with sense,

398 Order and even silence. They are in the pay Of thought and of communication.

Love

LEADER: Then they have betrayed their sacred trust For theirs is a mission of division and destruction.
CAPTAIN:

Our

first

witness will explain the functions of lan-

guage.

FROFESSOR:

History

is

a dialogue

Between forward and backward

Going inevitably forward by the abuse of thought

And

Now

the gradual destruction of intelligence. the function of the word is

To designate: first the machine, Then what the machine produces, And finally what the machine destroys.
Words have no
They belong by
other function.
right to the political process: Doing, making, destroying. Or rather

Being done, being made, being destroyed.

Such
CAPTAIN:

is

history.

This witness can prove that language is the enemy of history and should therefore be abolished.
Let him proceed.

LEADER:
PROFESSOR:

The word

is

a means of locomotion

Forward and backward

Along the infinite horizontal plane Created by the history Which words themselves destroy (Substituting what ought to have happened For what actually happened).
LEADER:

But

if

that

is

the case, Language

is

the fulfillment

of history.

Why

then should

it

be destroyed?
proves

PROFESSOR:

The machine must always destroy The maker of the machine, for this
That the machine
it

is

greater than the one

who made

Just as

man

is

more important than God,

this principle,

Words

reflect

in their relation

to

history.

Words

create history.

But

they, in turn,

Tower

of Babel

399

Must be destroyed by the history they have created,

The word

supersedes the event, as light emerges

it

from darkness,
Transforming the event into something

was not

But the

event, in turn, supersedes

its

interpretation

as darkness

Replaces wins.

light,

and

in the

end

it is

darkness that

LEADER:
PROFESSOR:

And the Words of the historian are forgotten. Which then is real? The light, or the darkness?
Words
create reality as fast as they are eaten

by

it,

And they destroy reality as fast as they themselves Come back to life, out of the minds of men.
This
is

the

movement

of history:

The backward, forward working of the web; The plunge forward, into the web, The struggle backward, but not out of the web.
LEADER: Words, then, are the ultimate reality! Let there never again be any silence. Let tongues never be still. For if there be silence, our history will in-

we will stantly be unmade, and if we stop talking cease to exist. Words, therefore, are acquitted. Let
Silence be called to the stand.

CAPTAIN:

One moment!

It is

not so simple. There are three

is

kinds of language. There

falsehood, and there
is

true language, there

is

propaganda. Let us call all three to the stand, beginning with the most danCall

gerous.

LEADER:
CLERK:

Truth
tell

to the stand!

Truth,

us your name.

TRUTH:
CLERK.*

My name is Truth.
Where do you live?
as they are, in minds that see things as are. they are, in wills that conform to things as they

TRUTH: In things

LAWYER: Truth, you are the enemy of the Mammoth State* You have pretended to serve us, and you have All the while poisoned the minds of the people

With enemy

doctrines.

You refuse

40 o

Love

To conform your declarations to the pure

Slogans of our Leader. You are Insubordinate, a saboteur, a spy, tool of the enemy.

therefore

How many murders, bombings, acts

Of open or hidden violence have you Not committed against us? You are The worst of enemies. You are The destroyer of the Tower.
VOICES:

To the salt mines! To the salt mines! TRUTH: You are your own enemies. You destroyed
Tower.
VOICES
:

your

own

Put him
Kill him.

to death.

Shoot him!

Down with him! He is the People's enemy.

SECOND PHILOSOPHER:
CAPTAIN:

can defend Truth.

Shall

we hear this witness?

LEADER: Give him one minute, not more.

SECOND PHILOSOPHER: There is no need to put Truth to death. Truth has never existed, there is no Truth.
Everything
is

vague.

The world,

O Leader,
to exist.

Which only seems

Needs
to

to exist,

be expressed in words which seem Actually, nothing has real being. Seeming is existing. Everything that seems, Is. It is what it wants to be.
It

has no being, only wanting.

it? If

Truth, then,

But what is

may seem to exist. we look too close

is

We see right through the seeming.

Leader, there
VOICES:

no Truth.

OTHER VOICES:
LEADER:

He is right! There is no truth! He is a liar! Truth exists, but it is not true.

Truth or no Truth, words are agents of the Meaning. Let them be put to death.
Death, death, death, Let words be put to death!
traitor:

VOICES:

CAPTAIN

One moment!

Tower of Babel

401

Not all words claim to be true. The pure, holy, divine words What are they? Are they true?
[Awkward silence,
LEADER:

of the Leader,

"broken by the LEADER.]

Send
I

this witness to the salt mines.

have words of
stand!

my

own. Call Propaganda

to the

CLEKK:

Do you
and
to I do.

swear

to conceal the truth, the

whole

truth,

confuse nothing hut the issue?

PROPAGANDA:
LEADER:

What is your name?

Where do you live?

PROPAGANDA: Legion.
LEADER:

PROPAGANDA: In the heads of the people. LEADER: What do the people look like? PROPAGANDA: Zombies.
LEADER:

How long have they looked like zombies?

Since

PROPAGANDA:
LEADER:

we got inside.

How did you get inside?

PROPAGANDA: By shots in the arm, by beatings over the head, noises in the ear, and all the right kind of medicines.

LEADER:

Who destroyed the Tower?

religious warmongers, the clergy, the freemasons, the Pope, the millionaires, the Elders of Zion, the Young Men's Christian Association, the
Jesuits,

PROPAGANDA: The

and the Legion of Mary.

LEADER: You are a faithful guardian of the Mammoth Democracy, you shall be decorated with the order of
the

Tower and you

shall possess exclusive

freedom

of speech and worship in every part of the world. Go forth and form the minds of the young. [Turn-

ing to CLERK] Call Falsehood to the stand. [Solemn music enter FALSEHOOD.]
VOICE:

This must be one of the gods.

Sir,

LEADER:

who are you?

FALSEHOOD:

Why, I am Truth.

402
LEADER: Ah,
yes.

Love

We should have known.

Tower.
the builder
of

FALSEHOOD:
VOICES:

I built the

The

builder of the Tower,

the

Tower!
LEADER: Your worship, will you be so kind as to tell us the function of language, and indicate whether or not

words had anything to do with the ruin of the tower? Are words faithful to our cause, or should they be done away with? Can our empire subsist
without language?

FALSEHOOD:

am your strength. Without me you

will serve

fall. I

will give

you the only words that

your purpose.

You should never have listened to anyone but me. Your city is made in my image and likeness. I penewill

by destroying it. Those who follow me instead of being split in half and each one, one man, will become two angels. If you follow me
trate reality

be

and
CAPTAIN:

listen to

my

words, you will find this out for

yourself.

This must be the voice of our creator.

us, Majesty,

LEADER: Tell

who

destroyed the

Tower?
I

FALSEHOOD: The Tower has never been destroyed. Just as

arn

immortal, the Tower is indestructible. The Tower is a spiritual reality and so am I. The Tower is everywhere. What you call the fall of the Tower

was only
active

its

beginning,

its

phase of existence.

The Tower

passage into a new, more is not a build-

ing but an influence,

an invisible I am and the power. King who lives on the summit of the Tower. And because I
a mentality,

The Tower

stands,

am
LEADER:

everywhere, everywhere is the Tower of Babel. Divine and omnipresent Majesty, forgive us for not

What shall we do with who resist people your authority? FALSEHOOD: Let all men serve me in chains*
having recognized you.

the

CHORUS: Grow, Babylon, grow, Serve your Lord in chains. Chains will be your liberty.

Tower

of Babel

43

Grow, Babylon, grow! CLERZ: There is one more witness!

LEADER:
CAPTAIN:

Who is he?
His name
Useless!
is

Silence.
out! Let silence

LEADER:

Throw him

be

crucified!

[Music, an

all-out crucifixion of silence.]

THE STRANGE ISLANDS

Eleven:

CHANT TO BE USED IN PROCESSIONS AROUND A SITE WITH FURNACES

How we made them sleep and purified them How we perfectly cleaned up the people and
I

worked a big heater

installed a guaranteed

was the commander

made improvements and

system taking account of decent

human weakness

purified

and

remained

How I commanded
I

made

cleaning appointments and then I

made

the travellers sleep

and
I

after that I

made soap

was born into a Catholic family but as these people were not going to need a priest I did not become a priest I installed a perfectly good machine it gave satisfaction to many

When trains arrived the soiled passengers received appointments

for
It

fun in the bathroom they did not guess

was a very big bathroom for two thousand people it awaited arrival and they arrived safely
all

There would be an orchestra of merry widows not

art

the time

much

If

they arrived at

all

they would be given a greeting card to send

home taken
joke

care of with good jobs wishing

you would come

to

our

Another improvement I made was I built the chambers for two thousand invitations at a time the naked votaries were disinfected with
Zyklon B Children of tender age were always invited by reason of their youth they were unable to work they were marked out for play
404

Chant

to

Be Used

in Processions

Around a

Site

with Furnaces

405

They were washed like the others and more than the others Very frequently women would hide their children in the piles of clothing but of course when we came to find them we would send
the children into the chamber to be bathed

How I often commanded and made improvements and sealed the door on top there were flowers the men came with crystals I guaranteed
always the crystal parlor
I

guaranteed the chamber and

it

was sealed you could

see through

portholes

They waited for the shower it was not hot water that came through
vents though efficient winds gave full satisfaction portholes

showed

this

The satisfied all ran

together to the doors awaiting arrival

it

was guaranteed they made ends meet.

How I could tell by their cries that love came to a full stop I
found the ones
I

had made clean

after

about a half hour

Jewish male inmates then worked up nice they had rubber boots in return for adequate food I could not guess their appetite

Those

at the door

for rubber
for defence

were taken apart out of a fully stopped love male inmates strategic hair and teeth being used later
all

Then

the males removed

clean love rings and

made away with

happy gold

A big new firm promoted steel forks operating on a cylinder they

got the contract and with faultless workmanship delivered very fast

goods

How

commanded and made

it

soap 12 Ibs fat 10 quarts water 8 oz to

to find

a Ib of caustic soda but

was hard

any

fat

"For transporting the customers we suggest using light carts on wheels a drawing is submitted"

"We acknowledge four steady furnaces and an emergency guarantee"

"I

am a big new commander operating on a cylinder I elevate the

and then
cool"
into a test fragrance I suggested
it

boil for 2 to 3 hours purified materials

For putting them

elevator operated by the latest cylinder

an express was guaranteed

Their love was fully stopped by our perfected ovens but the love rings were salvaged

406

Love
to the satisfaction of

Thanks

male inmates operating the heaters

without need of compensation our guests were warmed All the while I had obeyed perfectly

So
the

site

was hanged in a commanding plant and grounds

position with a full view of

You

my career but you would do as I did if you knew and dared yourself In my days we worked hard we saw what we did our self sacrifice was conscientious and complete our work as faultless and detailed
smile at

Do not think yourself better because you

burn up friends and

enemies with long-range missiles without ever seeing what you have done

The

Catholic

Worker

PART SIX

Vision

When

I arose

the ledges of the holy mountain

light,

were already covered with

as

we moved on with

the sun behind us.

Epigraph

INEBRIATION in the waters of contemplation, whose mystery and delighted the first Cistercians and whose image found its way into the names of so many of those valley monasteries that stood in forests, on the banks of clean streams, among rocks alive with
is

THEBE

fascinated

springs.

These are the waters which the world does not know, because

it

prefers the water of bitterness and contradiction. These are the waters of peace, of which Christ said: "He that shall drink of the -water that
I shall give him, shall him shall become in

not

thirst for ever.

But the

-water that 1 shall give

him a fountain

of water, swinging

uf

into life

everlasting." These are the

Waters of

Siloe, that flow in silence.

THE WATERS OF SILOE

Prologue:

MYSTICISM IN THE NUCLEAR AGE

JL HE RACE is facing the greatest crisis in its history, because religion itself is being weighed in the balance. The present unrest in five continents, with everyone fearful of being destroyed, has brought many men to their knees. This should not lead us into the illusion that
is necessarily about to return to God. Nevertheless, the exof the posure nineteenth-century myths "unlimited progress" and the "omnipotence" of physical science has thrown the world into confu-

HUMAN

the world

sion.

spiritual

hope for an order based on philosophical and theological truth, one which allows free expression to the fundamental religious instinct of man. So vast is this movement that a psychoanalyst

Many

are spontaneously turning to the only evident

and moral

integration

as important as Carl
I

Jung can make the following declaration:

estants,

have treated many hundreds of patients, the larger number being Prota smaller number Jews and not more than five or six believing
. .

. there Catholics. Among all my patients in the second half of my life has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers and none of them has really been healed who did not regain

his religious outlook. 1

The big problem that confronts Christianity is not Christ's enemies. Persecution has never done much harm to the inner life of the Church as such. The real religious problem exists in the souls of those
of us

who

in their hearts believe in God,

and who recognize

their obli-

gation to love

Him and

serve

Him

yet do not!

409

41 o
It

Vision

and
of

would only confuse the issue if we attributed this to perversity This is no time for accusations and for judgments. No one us can afford to blame others for the progressive decline of the Chrisill-will.

tian spirit in Christendom, yet it has declined until the world has finally are all to advanced to find itself entering the post-Christian era.

We

blame, and our fathers were to blame, and perhaps the very concept of "blame" is to blame. When Christian perspectives are warped, Chrisinto an obsession with guilt, and tianity turns from a religion of hope
in order to evade the
pressures of intolerable self-blame,
to

we

fling our-

change the world and oursupposed selves with it. And, effectively, it is from these inner pressures of restless Christendom that they have arisen, the amazing forces that are
selves into activities that are

now indeed changing

our world. But the forces thus released are chang-

ing the world into one that is no longer Christian. To keep the world Christian, to halt this terrifying process, there are Christians who are willing to resort to war, and to make full use of
the frightful destructive powers that
is

modern man has

discovered. This

not only futile apostasy from Christ and from His

but criminal.

It is in effect

a moral
to love.

and

spiritual

commandment

Can we

not

see that to risk the destruction of man for the supposed glory of Christ is, in effect, to crucify Christ over again in His members? The great temptation of our time is the temptation of a culminating impiety, a

"nuclear crusade/' And it is hate that leads us into this temptation. Our constant baiting and condemnation of our enemies is just as bad as their constant blaming and condemnation of us. If we cannot stop judging each other, we run the constant risk of destroying each other. This

does not alter the fact that

trine,

However, the

fact that

Communism is a false and Communism is wrong

pernicious docdoes not mean

that our politics are infallibly right. The world we live in is dry ground for the seed of God's Truth.

modern American
try
to

not altogether a propitious place in which to city love God. You cannot love Him unless you know Him. And you
is

peace in
those

unless you have a little time and a little and think about Him and study His truth. Time and peace are not easily come by in this civilization of ours. And so
to

cannot come

know Him

which

to pray

who
and

profess to serve
to sacrifice their

God

either,

are often forced to get along without hopes of an interior life, But how far can

one go in

this sacrifice before it ceases to

5

be a

sacrifice

and becomes

prevarication! selves to God

The

truth

is,

we

are simply not permitted to devote ourinterior life.

without

at the

same time leading an

Mysticism in the Nuclear Age

411

The reason for this is plain. Everything we do in the service of God has to be vitalized by the supernatural power of His grace. But grace is granted us in proportion as we dispose ourselves to receive it
by the interior activity of the theological virtues: faith, hope, charity. These virtues demand the full and constant exercise of our intelligence and will. But this exercise is frequently obstructed by exterior influences which blind us with passion and draw us away from our supernatural objective. This cannot be avoided, but it must be fought against by a constant discipline of recollection, meditation, prayer, study, mortification of the desires, and at least some measure of soli-

tude and retirement.

It is certainly not possible, or even desirable, that every Christian should leave the world and enter a Trappist monastery. Nevertheless, the sudden interest of Americans in the contemplative life seems to

prove one thing quite clearly: that contemplation, asceticism, mental prayer, and unworldliness are elements that most need to be rediscovered by Christians of our time. There
is little

danger that

we

will

neglect apostolic labor and exterior activity. Pope Pius XII in a recent exhortation drew attention to the fact that external activity had perhaps

been overstressed

in

some

quarters,

and reminded Catholics

that their
life

personal sanctity and union with Christ in a deep interior the most important things of all. His Holiness writes:

were

We

cannot abstain from expressing our preoccupation and our anxiety for those who, on account of the special circumstances of the moment, have become so engulfed in the vortex of external activity that they neglect the
:

have already stated chief duty [of the Christian] his own sanctification. that can be saved by the world that those who in presume writing publicly

We

what has rightly been called the 'Tieresy of action" better judgment. 2

must be made

to exercise

The

Communists used to be in revolt against everything Communist the obligation to "bourgeois" imposed on every serious a strict and almost religious asceticism with regard to pracpractice that is valued by the society he hates. I say that this tically everything
fact that the
to fee the case,

used

because it is clear that the Stalinist empire has a cultural level in which everything that was basest reached rapidly in bourgeois materialism has become the Stalinist ideal. If Christianity the standards of the materialis to prove itself in open rebellion against
ist

more

Christians must show is fighting for survival, society in which it definite signs of that agere contra, that positive "resistance," which

412
is

Vision

the heart of the Christian ascetic "revolution."

The

true

knowledge

of

God can be bought

only at the price of this resistance.

ourselves have called the
for standing back and

WE,

Atomic Age, have on our own reflecting acquired a peculiar facility thousand five that took place years history as if it were a phenomenon as if we had no part in it. We view ago. We like to talk about our time

who

live in

what we

it

as objectively as if it existed outside ourselves, in a glass case. If you are looking for the Atomic Age, look inside yourself: because you are it.

And so, alas, am L The evil that is in the modern world ought to be sufficient indication that we do not know as much as we think we do. It is a strange paradox indeed that modem man should know so much and still know pracThe paradox is most strange because men in other tically nothing. times, who have known less than we know, have in fact known more.
True, in all times there has been wickedness and great blindness in world of men. There is nothing new under the sun, not even the H-bomb (which was invented by our Father Adam). And it is also
this

true that the ages of greatest despair have sometimes ended up by being that we have awakened to our ages of triumph and of hope.

Now

fundamental barbarism, for civilization, because

it

seems to

me

that there

is

once again a hope

men of good will want more than ever to be civilized. And now that we have our tremendous capacities for evil to staring us in the face, there is more incentive than ever for men become saints. For man is naturally inclined to good, and not to evil. Besides our nature, we have what is infinitely greater the grace of
God, which draws us powerfully upward
refused to no one
to the infinite

Truth and

is

who

desires

it.

THE WHOLE HAPPINESS

condition.

made up

of man and even his sanity depend on his moral since society does not exist all by itself in a void, but is of the individuals who compose it, the problems of society

And

cannot ultimately be solved except in terms of the moral

life

of indi-

viduals. If the citizens are sane, the city will be sane. If the citizens are wild animals, the city will be a jungle.

But morality
its

is

not an end in
is

itself.

own

reward.
itself

God

our reward.

The moral

Virtue, for a Christian, is not life leads to something

beyond

to the experience of

formation in

Him. This transformation

in the light of glory. taste of heaven in mystical contemplation.

union with God, and to our transis perfected in another life, and Yet even on earth man may be granted a fore-

And whether he

experiences

Mysticism in the Nuclear Age

it

413
his faith,
is

or not, the

man

of faith,

by virtue of
coelis!

already living in

heaven. Conversatio nostra in

not

The fact that contemplation is actually the lot of very few men mean that it has no importance for mankind as a whole.

does

society depends, in the long run, on the moral and health of individuals, the subject of contemplation becomes spiritual a vastly important one, since contemplation is one of the indications of spiritual maturity. It is closely allied to sanctity. You cannot save the
If the salvation of

world merely with a system.

You cannot have

without

peace without charity.

You cannot have

social order

saints, mystics,

and prophets.

II

OUR NATURE imposes on us a certain pattern of development which we must follow if we are to fulfill our best capacities and achieve at least
the partial happiness of being human. This pattern must be properly understood and it must be worked out in all its essential elements.

can be stated very simply, in a single senand we 'must love the truth we know, and we must act according to the measure of our love. What are the elements of this "pattern" I speak of? First, and most
Otherwise,
tence:
fail.
it

we

But

We must know the truth,

all:

I must adapt myself to objective reality. Second, this achieved adaptation by the work of my highest spiritual faculties and will. it demands Third, intelligence expression when my whole actions commanded which, by their moral will, produces by my being,

important of

is

vitality

and

fruitfulness,

show

that I

am

living in

harmony with the

represent a psy-

true order of things. These are the bare essentials of the pattern.

They

chological necessity without which

spiritual health.

man

cannot preserve his mental and

I have only stated these fundamentals of our nature in order to build on them. Contemplation reproduces the same essential outline of this much higher level For contemplation is a work of pattern, but on a to which it unites us is not an abstraction but Reality grace. The Truth and Life itself. The love by which it unites us to this Truth is a gift of God and can only be produced within us by the direct action of God. The activity which is its final and most perfect fruit is a charity so in which supreme that it gathers itself into a timeless self-oblation

there

is

no motion,

radius of a

moment

that

for all its perfection is eternal.

is

held within the boundless

414

Vision
difficult matters.

THESE are
I

To

say that

we must know

the truth

return to our simple sentence: When and love the truth we know, I am

not talking primarily about the truth of individual facts and statements but about Truth as such. Truth is reality itself, considered as the object of the intellect.

The Truth man needs

to

know

is

the transcendent

of reality,

Since

we

are merely a partial manifestation. particular truths ourselves are real, this Truth is not so far distant from us as

which

one might imagine.

in which, most of the ordinary waking life is a bare existence from time, we seem to be absent from ourselves and reality because we are involved in the vain preoccupations which dog the steps of every times when we seem suddenly to awake and living man. But there are

Our

discover the full

meaning

of our

own

present reality. Such discoveries

are not capable of being contained in formulas or definitions. They are a matter of personal experience, of uncommunicable intuition. In the
light

of such an experience

it is

that

occupy our minds*

We

easy to see the futility of all the trifles of the calm and the recapture something

balance that ought always to be ours, and

far too

we

understand that

life is

to be squandered on anything less than perfection. great a gift In the lives of those who are cast adrift in the modern world, with

nothing to rely on but their

own

resources, these

moments

of under-

a glimpse standing are short-lived and barren. For, though man may get of the natural value of his spirit, nature alone is incapable of fulfilling
his spiritual aspirations.

THE TRUTH man needs

Himself.

The paradox

known

unless

He

is

is not a philosopher's abstraction, but Gocl of contemplation is that God is never really also loved. And we cannot love Him unless we do

His will. This explains why modern man, who knows so much, is nevertheless ignorant. Because he is without love, modem man fails to see the only Truth that matters and on which all else depends.

God becomes
in an ineffable

in the world wherever

present in a very special way and manifests Himself He is known and loved by men. His glory slimes

manner through those

whom He

has united to Himself. expect of the

Those who
that
fact,

yet know nothing of God have a perfect right to we who do pretend to know Him should give evidence
as

not only by "satisfying every one that asketh us a reason of that B hope which is in us/' but above all by the testimony of our own lives. For Christ said, in His priestly prayer;

Mysticism in the 'Nuclear Age

415

The

glory which thou hast given me I have given them, that they may be one as we also are one: I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one: and the world may know that thou hast sent -me, and "hast

loved them as thou hast also loved me. 4

It is useless to

study truths about

God and

lead a

life that

has noth-

one can do such a thing without, in fact, displaying complete ignorance of the meaning of Christianity. For the Christian economy is by no means a mere philosophy or an
ing in
it

of the Cross of Christ.

No

ethical system,

still

less a social theory.

Christ

Who

was not a wise man who came to teach a doctrine. He is God, became incarnate in order to effect a mystical transformation of

mankind.

He

did, of course, bring

with

Him

a doctrine greater than

any that was ever preached before or since. But that doctrine does not end with moral ideas and precepts of asceticism. The teaching of Christ is the seed of a new life. Reception of the word of God by faith initiates man's transformation. It elevates him above this world and above his own nature and transports his acts of thought and of desire to a supernatural level. He becomes a partaker of the divine nature, a Son of God, and Christ is living in him. From that moment forward, the door to eternity stands open in the depths of his soul and he is capable of becoming a contemplative. Then he can watch at the frontier of an abyss of light so bright that it is darkness. Then he will burn with desire to see the fullness of Light and will cry out to God, like Moses in the cloud on Sinai: "Show me Thy face!"
1 C. G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, World, Inc., p. 264. 3 Menti Nostrae, Sept. 2,3, 1950. a
4

New

York, Harcourt, Brace

&

IPet. 3:15.

John

17:2,2-2,3.

THE ASCENT TO TRUTH

One:

VISION

AND

ILLUSION

IKE EARTHLY

DESiBES

men

cherish are shadows.

There

is

no

true

happiness in fulfilling them. Why, then, do we continue to pursue joys without substance? Because the 'pursuit itself has become our only substitute for joy.

Unable

to rest in

anything

we

achieve,

we

determine

to

for new satisfactions. In this forget our discontent in a ceaseless quest chief satisfaction. The goods that so becomes our desire itself pursuit,

disappoint us when they are in our grasp can still stimulate our when they elude us in the present or in the past. Few men have so clearly outlined this subtle psychology of as Blaise Pascal, who writes:

interest

illusion

can pass his whole life without boredom, merely by gambling each a modest sum. Give him, each morning, the amount of money he with day might be able to win in a day, on condition that he must not gamble: you
will

A man

make him

miserable!

You may

say that

what he

seeks

is

the

of gaming, not the winnings. All right, let him play for nothing. be no excitement. He will be bored to death!

amusement There will

So it is not just amusement that he seeks. An amusement that is tame, without passion, only bores him. He wants to get worked up and to delude himself that he is going to be happy if he wins a sum that he would actually refuse if it were given him on condition that he must not gamble. He needs to create an object for his passions, and to direct upon that object his desire, his anger and his fearlike children who scare themselves with their

own

1 painted faces.

based on desires is like a spider's web, says Saint Gregory of Nyssa. Woven about us by the father of lies, the Devil, the enemy of our souls, it is a frail tissue of vanities without substance, and yet it can catch us and hold us fast, delivering us up to him as his prisoner.
life

416

Vision and Illusion

Nevertheless, the illusion

417

is only an illusion, nothing more. It should break through this tissue of lies as it is for us to destroy a spider's web with a movement of the hand. Saint Gregory

be as easy for us
says:

to

All that

man

pursues in this

life

has no existence except in his mind, not in

reality: opinion, honor, dignities, glory, fortune: all these are the work of this life's spiders. . . . But those rise to the heights escape, with the

who

a wing, from the spiders of this world. Only those who, like flies, are and without remain in the heavy energy caught glue of this world and are taken and bound, as though in nets, by honors, pleasures, praise and maniflick of

fold desires,

and thus they become the prey of the beast that seeks

to

capture

them. 2
Ecclesiastes is the paradox that, although the sun," each new generation of mankind is condemned by nature to wear itself out in the pursuit of "novelties" that do not exist. This concept, tragic as the Oriental notion of karma

The fundamental theme of there is "nothing new under

which

it

resembles so closely, contains in

itself

the one great enigma of

paganism. Only Christ, only the Incarnation, by which God emerged from His eternity to enter into time and consecrate it to Himself, could
save time from being an endless circle of frustrations. Only Christianity can, in Saint Paul's phrase, "redeem the times." Other religions can break out of the wheel of time as though from a prison: but they can

make nothing

of time

itself.

Saint Gregory of Nyssa, pursuing his meditations on the psychology of attachment and illusion, vision and detachment, which constitute his commentary on Ecclesiastes, observes how time weaves about us this

web

of illusion. It

is

not enough to say that the

man who

is

attached

world has bound himself to it, once and for all, by a wrong choice. No: he spins a whole net of falsities around his spirit by the repeated consecration of his whole self to values that do not exist. He
to this

exhausts himself in the pursuit of mirages that ever fade and are reas fast as they have faded, drawing him further and further life immersed in into the wilderness where he must die of thirst.

newed

matter and in sense cannot help but reproduce the fancied torments which Greek mythology displays in Hades Tantalus starving to death

with food an inch from

his lips, Sysiphus rolling his boulder uphill

to the bottom again, though he knows it must escape him and roll down the summit. he is reaching just as And so, that "vanity of vanities" which so exercised the Ancient Preacher of Ecclesiastes and his commentator is a life not merely of

4i 8

Vision

sterile

deluded thoughts and aspirations, but above all a life of ceaseless and What is more, in such a life the measure of illusion is activity.

the very intensity of activity itself. The less you have, the more you do. The final delusion is movement, change, and variety for their own sakes
alone.
All the preoccupation of men with the things of this life [writes Saint Gregory], is but the game of children on the sands. For children take de-

have finished building light in the activity of their play and as soon as they what they build, their pleasure ends. For as soon as their labor is completed,
the sand falls

down and no tiling

is left

of their buildings. 3

This profound idea often finds echoes in the pages of Pascal. It might well have provided a foundation for his famous theory of "distraction"

knew that the philosophers, who laughed at day long after a hare that they would probably not have accepted as a present, had not plumbed the full depths of man's not hunt foxes because inanity. Men who call themselves civilized do

divertissement. 4 Pascal
for

men

running

all

they want to catch a fox. Neither do they, for that matter, always study philosophy or science because they want to know the truth. No: they are condemned to physical or spiritual movement because it is unbearable
for

them

to sit

still.

As Pascal

says:

We
us. 5

rest, and overcome obstacles to obtain it. But if we overcome these obstacles, rest becomes intolerable, for we begin at once to think either

look for

of the misfortunes that are ours, or of those that threaten to descend

upon

was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest. That it transcends the level activity, which is contemplation, is immanent and of sense and of discourse. Man's guilty sense of his incapacity for this one deep activity which is the reason for his very existence, is prewhat drives him to seek oblivion in exterior motion and desire. cisely Incapable of the divine activity which alone can satisfy his soul, fallen
himself upon exterior things, not so much for their own sake as for the sake of the agitation which keeps his spirit pleasantly numb.

Man

man

flings

He

has but to remain busy with

trifles;

his preoccupation will serve as

a dope. It will not deaden all the pain of thinking; but it will at least do something to blur his sense of who he is and of his utter insufficiency.

Pascal sums

up

his observations with the remark: "Distraction is the

only thing that consoles us for our miseries

est of

and yet

it is, itself,

the great-

our miseries/'

Vision and Illusion

Why? Because it "diverts" us, turns us aside from the one thing that can help us to begin our ascent to truth. That one thing is the sense of our own emptiness, our poverty, our limitations, and of the of
inability

created things to satisfy our profound need for reality and for truth. What is the conclusion of all this? imprison ourselves in falsity

We

by our love for the feeble, flickering light of illusion and desire. cannot find the true light unless this false canlight be darkened. not find true happiness unless we ersatz of the ourselves deprive happi-

We

We

ness of

empty diversion. Peace, true peace, is only suffering, and we must seek the light in darkness,
II

to

be found through

THERE ABE,
of darkness.

in Christian tradition, a theology of light and a theology On these two lines travel two mystical trends. There are

the great theologians of light: Origen, Saint Augustine, Saint Bernard, Saint Thomas Aquinas. And there are the great theologians of darkness: Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, Saint John of the
Cross. The two have found no

Thomas

mystics Cross himself

"darkness/'

by side. Modern theologians of genius in uniting the two, in synthesizing Saint Aquinas and Saint John of the Cross. Some of the greatest Ruysbroeck, Saint Theresa of Avila, and Saint John of the
lines travel side
difficulty

describe both aspects of contemplation,

"light"

and

are also in those of Saint

works of Saint Gregory of Nyssa as there John of the Cross which might easily fit into a context of Zen Buddhism of Patanjali's Yoga. But we must remember that when a Christian mystic speaks of the created world as an illusion and as "nothingness," he is only using a figure of speech. The words are never to be taken literally and they are not ontological. The world
are pages in the
is

There

metaphysically

real.

edge and
is

love of their Creator

Creatures can lead us efficaciously to the knowland ours. But since the created world

of intelligence, and since the disorder of sin gives us a tendency to prefer sensible goods before all others, we have a way of seeking the good things of this life as if they were our

present to our senses, and yond the reach both of sense

God
and

as

He

is

in Himself

is

infinitely be-

last

end.

When
becomes
illusion.

Creation appears
illusion.

to

The supreme
is

us in the false light of concupiscence, it value that cupidity seeks in created

not exist in them. things does

man who
real:

takes a tree for a ghost

it is

is

in

The

tree

objectively

but in his mind

something

420
that
it is

Vision
not.

A man who

takes a cigar

also in illusion. It is a real cigar dollar bill, it is a pure illusion.

coupon for a ten-dollar bill is coupon, and yet, considered as a ten-

When we live as if the multiplicity of the phenomenal universe were the criterion of all truth, and treat the world about us as if its shifting scale of values were the only measure of our ultimate good, the world becomes an illusion. It is real in itself, but it is no longer real to us because it is not what we think it is. Many Christian mystics look at the world only from the subjective if they say that the standpoint of fallen man. Do not be surprised, then,
world
Saint,
it is nothingness, and offer no explanation. But of Nyssa, together with many of the Greek Fathers, not Gregory to mention those of the West, sees all sides of the question.

is

empty, that

The

contemplation of

God

in nature,

which the Greek Fathers

called

the one theoria yliysica, has both a positive and a negative aspect. as is of maniGod a is theoria hand, positive recognition physica fested in the essences (ZogoO of all things. It is not a speculative science
of nature but rather a habit of religious awareness which endows the soul with a kind of intuitive perception of God as He is reflected in His

On He

This instinctive religious view of things is not acquired by study so much as by ascetic detachment. And that implies that the
creation.

positive

and negative elements in

this

"contemplation of nature" are

is an equally really inseparable. The negative aspect of theoria fhysica instinctive realization of the vanity and illusion of all things as soon as

their Creator.

they are considered apart from their right order and reference to God Saint Gregory of Nyssa's commentary on Ecclesiastes,

from which
in
its

we have quoted, is a tract on the "contemplation of nature" twofold aspect, as vanity and as symbol. Does all this mean that the theoria physica of the Greek Fathers was

a kind of perpetual dialectic between the two terms vision and illusion? No. In the Christian platonism of the Fathers, dialectic is no longer as important as it was in Plato and Plotinus. The Christian contemplation of nature does not consist in an intellectual tennis game between these two contrary aspects of nature. It consists rather in the
ascetic gift of a discernment which, in one penetrating glance, apprehends what creatures are, and what they are not. This is the intellectual counterpoise of detachment in the will. Discernment and detachment (krisis and apatheia) arc two characters of the mature Christian soul. They are not yet the mark of a mystic, but they bear witness that one is traveling the right way to mystical contemplation, and that the stage

of beginners

is

passed.

Vision and Illusion

presence of discernment and spontaneous thirst for what is good

421

The

detachment is manifested by a charity, union with the will of

God and an equally spontaneous repugnance for what is evil. The man who has this virtue no longer needs to be exhorted by promises to
do what
so GREAT
is

right, or deterred

from

evil

by

threat of punishment. 7

is

the least of
is,

the power of man's intelligence that it can start out from all beings and arrive at the greatest. The mind of man

by its very nature, a participation in the intelligence of God, Whose light illumines the conclusions of rational discourse. Words can be sadly mistreated and misused; but they could not be false unless they
could also be
true.

the tongues of fools or charlatans, but language as such retains to signify and communicate the Truth.

Language may become a suspicious instrument on its power

Faith, without depending on reason for the slightest shred of justification, never contradicts reason and remains ever reasonable. Faith

does not destroy reason, but fulfills it. Nevertheless, there must always remain a delicate balance between the two. Two extremes are to be
avoided:
this

and skepticism, superstition and rationalism. If upset, if man relies too much on his five senses and on his reason when faith should be his teacher, then he enters into illusion. Or when, in defiance of reason, he gives the assent of his faith
credulity
is

balance

to a fallible authority, then too he falls into illusion. Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.
x
2

Blaise Pascal, Les Pensees, Paris, Ed. Giraud, 1928, p. 66.

Saint Gregory o Nyssa, Commentary on the Psalms, P.G. 44:464-465, Cf. Danielou, Platonistne et Th&ologie Mystique, p. 133. 8 Homily i on Ecclesiastes, P.G. 44:628. Cf. Danielou, op. cit., p. 136. * I am not insisting that Pascal had read Saint Gregory of Nyssa. His thoughts on divertissement may have been drawn from a reading of Saint Bernard's De Gradi"bus Humilitatis. It is in any case in the full tradition of Saint Augustine's De
Trinitate, Bk. xii
B

(on the

fall

of

Adam).

Pascal, op. cit., p. 67. 'I&uL, n. 171, p. 75.

7

Saint Gregory of Nyssa,

Commentary on

the Psalms, C.

5.

P.G. 44:450-451.

THE ASCENT TO TRUTH

Two:

ASCETICISM

AND

SACRIFICE

JLF MY SOUL silences my flesh by an act of violence, my flesh will take revenge on the soul, secretly infecting it with a spirit of revenge. Bitterness and bad temper are the flowers of an asceticism that has pun-

ished only the body. For the spirit is above the flesh, but not comthe flesh. It reaps in itself what it sows in its pletely independent of own flesh. If the spirit is weak with the flesh, it will find in the flesh

the image and accusation of its own weakness. But if the spirit is violent with the flesh it will suffer, from the flesh, the rebound of its own violence. The false ascetic begins by being cruel to everybody because he is cruel to himself. But he ends by being cruel to everybody but himself.
true asceticism: that which is guided not by our but the spirit of God. The spirit of man must first subject spirit by itself to grace and then it can bring the flesh in subjection both to grace and to itself. "If by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you

THERE

is

ONLY one

own

shall live" (Rorn. 8:13).

But grace is charitable, merciful, kind, does not seek its own interests. Grace inspires us with no desire except to do the will of God, no matter what His will may be, no matter whether it be pleasing or unpleasant to our own nature. Those, then, who put their passions to death not with the poison of their own ambition but with the clean blade of the will of God will live in the silence of true interior peace, for their lives are hidden with Christ in God, Such is the meek "violence" of those who take Heaven

by storm.

WE CANNOT become saints merely by trying to run away from material things. To have a spiritual life is to have a life that is spiritual in all
422

Asceticism
its

and

Sacrifice

423
actions of the

wholeness

a life in

which the
'is

of the soul, in

and the

soul

holy because of

God

it. When we live such a life, the actions of our body are directed to God by God Himself and give Him glory, and at the same time

body are holy because dwelling and acting

they help to sanctify the soul.

The
fast

saint, therefore, is sanctified

but also by eating

when he should

not only by fasting when he should eat. He is not only sanctified

by

his prayers in the darkness of the night, but by the sleep that he takes in obedience to God, made us what we are. Not only His

Who

solitude contributes to his union with

love for his friends

and

his relatives

God, but also his supernatural and those with whom he lives and

works.

God, in the same infinite act of will, wills the good of all beings and the good of each individual thing: for all lesser goods coincide in the one perfect good which is His love for them. Consequently it is clear

some men will become saints by a celibate life, but many more become saints as married men, since it is necessary that there be more married men than celibates in the world. How then can we imagine that the cloister is the only place in which men can become
that
will
saints?

Now

the

life
it

of the

body seems
life.

to receive less consideration in

the cloister than

for
its

does in secular

But

it is

clear that married life,

success, presupposes the capacity for a deeply human love which to be spiritual and physical at the same time. The existence of a ought sacrament of matrimony shows that the Church neither considers the

body evil nor repugnant, but that the "flesh" spiritualized by prayer and the Holy Ghost, yet remaining completely physical, can come to play an important part in our sanctification.
IT GIVES

GREAT GLORY to God for a person to live in this world using and appreciating the good things of life without care, without anxiety, and without inordinate passion. In order to know and love God through His gifts, we have to use them as if we used them not (I Cor. 7:31) and yet we have to use them. For to use things as if we used them not means to use them without selfishness, without fear, without afterand confidence and love of God. thought, and with perfect gratitude All inordinate concern over the material side of life was reproved by Christ when He said: "What one of you, by taking thought, can add to his stature one cubit? (Matt. 6:27). But we cannot use created we are detached from them. At the same unless without anxiety things them by using them sparingly and yet from detached we become time,
1'

without anxiety.

424

Vision

tremulous scrupulosity of those who are obsessed with pleasures for them they love and fear narrows their souls and makes it impossible to get from their own flesh. They have tried to become spiritual away

The

by worrying about the flesh, and as a result they are haunted by it. They have ended in the flesh because they began in it, and the fruit of their anxious asceticism is that they "use things not/' but do so as if they
used them. In their very self-denial they defile themselves with what but they pretend to avoid. They do not have the pleasure they seek,

would

of guilt which they they taste the bitter discouragement, the feeling like to escape. This is not the way of the spirit. For when our

intention

is

directed to God, our very use of material things sanctifies

both them and us, provided we use them without selfishness and without presumption, glad to receive them from Him Who loves us and

Whose love is all we desire.

NO MAN
IS

AN ISLAND

Tkru:

ART AND SPIRITUALITY

*NE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT and most neglected elements in the beginnings of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the do not see splendor that is all around us in the creatures of God.

We

these things because

to.

we have withdrawn from

them. In a

way we have

our senses are so constantly bombarded with stimulation from every side that unless we developed a kind of protective insensibility we would go crazy trying to respond to all the advertisements at the same time!
life

In modern

The

first

step in the interior life, nowadays,

is

not, as

some might

imagine, learning not to see and taste and hear and feel things. On the contrary, what we must do is begin by unlearning our wrong ways of seeing, tasting, feeling, and so forth, and acquire a few of the right
ones.
gin. Before learn to see life as if it

rettes,

not merely a matter of renouncing television, cigawe can begin to be ascetics, we first have to were something more than a hypnotizing telecast. And we must be able to taste something besides tobacco and alcohol: we must perhaps even be able to taste these luxuries themis

For asceticism

and

selves as if they too

were good. can our conscience tell us whether or not we are renouncing things unless it first of all tells us that we know how to use them properly? For renunciation is not an end in itself: it helps us to use

How

we

revolts us, if things better. It helps us to give them away. If reality to whom shall we sacrifice it? it in from turn disgust, away merely

How
and

shall

we

consecrate

it?

How

shall

we make

of

it

a gift to

God
4*5

to

men?

426

Vision

work

In an aesthetic experience, in the creation or the contemplation of of art, the psychological conscience is able to attain some of its

highest and most perfect fulfillments. Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. The mind that responds to the
intellectual

and

spiritual

values that

lie

or a piece of music, discovers a spiritual takes it out of itself, and makes it present to itself
that
it

hidden in a poem, a painting, it above itself, vitality that lifts

on a

level of

being

did not

know it could ever achieve,

and

THE SOUL

that picks

self-analysis

at itself in the isolation of its own dull pries arrives at a self-consciousness that is a torment and a
itself

But the spirit that finds disfigurement of our whole personality. above itself in the intensity and cleanness of its reaction to a
of art is "self-conscious" in a

work

way

that

is

productive as well as sublime.

Such a one finds in himself totally new capacities for thought and vision and moral action. Without a moment of self-analysis he has discovered
himself in discovering his capacity to respond to a value that
lifts

him

above his normal

ent.

He

is

His very response makes him better and differconscious of a new life and new powers, and it is not strange
level.

that

he should proceed

to

develop them.

to respond to such prayer, to be able Art and prayer have never been conceived by the Church as enemies, and where the Church has been austere it has only been because she meant to insist on the essential difference
It is

important, in the

life of

flashes of aesthetic intuition.

art and entertainment. The austerity, gravity, sobriety, and of Gregorian chant, of twelfth-century Cistercian architecture, strength of Carolingian minuscule script, have much to say about the life of prayer, and they have had much to do, in the past, with forming the

between

prayer and the religious consciousness of saints. They have always done so in proportion as they have freed souls from concentration upon themselves, as well as
arts

from mere speculation about technical values in the

and

in asceticism.

NO MAN

IS

AN ISLAND

o POETRY, SYMBOLISM, AND TYPOLOGY

THE PSALMS are poems, and poems have a meaning although the poet has no obligation to make his meaning immediately clear to anyone who does not want to make an effort to discover it But to say that

Art and Spirituality

427
is

not to say that they must necessarily convey information or an explicit message. In poetry, words are practical charged with meaning in a far different way than are the words in a
piece of scientific prose. The words of a poem are not merely the signs of concepts: they are also rich in affective and spiritual associations. The

poems have meaning

poet uses words not merely to make declarations, statements of fact. That is usually the last thing that concerns him. He seeks above all to

put words together in such a way that they exercise a mysterious and
vital reactivity

among

themselves,

and

so release their secret content of

associations to produce in the reader an experience that enriches the of in his a manner depths spirit good poem induces an quite unique. that could not he other combination of experience

produced by any an entity that stands by itself, graced with an individuality that marks it off from every other work of art. Like all great works of art, true poems seem to live by a life entirely their own. What we must seek in a poem is therefore not an accidental reference to something outside itself: we must seek this inner principle of indiof and life which is its soul, or "form." What the viduality poem acwords.
It is therefore

tually

"means" can only be

it is

experience which
poetic experience of the world.
It is

is

in the whole content of poetic of capable producing in the reader. This total what the poet is trying to communicate to the rest

summed up

supremely important for those

who

read the Psalms and chant

them in the public prayer of the Church content of these great songs. The poetic
bestowed on
all

to grasp, if they can, the poetic

gift
is

not one that has been

rnen with equal lavishness and that gift is unfortubut also, to some nately necessary not only for the writers of poems extent, for those who read them. This does not mean that the recitation of the Divine Office is
ties

an aesthetic recreation whose

full possibili-

can only be realized by initiates endowed with refined taste and embellished by a certain artistic cultivation. But it does mean that the
are fully satisfied by the Burma type of reader whose poetic appetites our American Shave rhymes along highways may find it rather hard
to get

anything out of the Psalms.

make Since, then, they are poems, the function of the Psalms is to them. wrote us share in the poetic experience of the men who
matter

No

how

carefully

of the Psalms,

and how and study their

scientifically

historical

interpret the words background, if these investiga-

we may

tions do not help us to enter into the poetic experience

which the

428
Psalms convey, they are of limited value in showing us what revealed in the Psalms, for the revealed content of the Psalter
Let
it

Vision

God
is

has

poetic.

of the

therefore be clear, that since the inspired writer is an instrument in the Psalter is revealed in the Spirit, what is revealed

Holy

in a poetic expoetry of the Psalter and is only fully apprehended that is analogous to the experience of the inspired writer. perience of the Psalms as poetry Actually, the simplicity and universality makes them, accessible to every mind, in every age, and in any tongue,

and I believe that one's poetic sense must be unusually deadened if one has never at any time understood the Psalms without being in some way moved by their deep and universal religious quality. The Psalms are more than poems: they are religious poems. This means that the experience which they convey, and which the reader
must
try to share,
is

Religious poetry

as distinct

not only a poetic but a religious experience. from merely devotional verse is poetry

that springs from a true religious experience. I do not necessarily mean a mystical experience. Devotional poetry is verse which manipulates and which does so, perhaps, even on a truly poetic religious themes

But the experiential content of the poem is at best poetic only. Sometimes it is not even that. Much of what passes for "religious" verse is simply the rearrangement of well-known devotional formulas, without any personal poetic assimilation at all. It is a game, in which souls, no doubt sincere in their piety, play poetic checkers with a certain number of familiar devotional cliches. This activity is prompted by a
level.

fundamentally religious intention,

of

if

the

poem be

God

or for the salvation of souls.

But such poems

written for the glory rarely "save" any

souls.

ones

They flatter those who are comfortably "saved" but irritate the who really need salvation. A truly religious poem is not born

merely of a religious purpose. Neither poetry nor contemplation is built out of good intentions. Indeed, a poem that springs from no deeper spiritual need than a devout intention will necessarily appear to be at
is simply "willed" is not art, tends to have the same disquieting effect upon the reader as forced piety and religious strain in those who are trying hard to be

the same time forced and tame. Art that

it

and

contemplatives, as if infused contemplation were the result of human effort rather than a gift of God. It seems to me that such poetry were
better not written. It tends to confirm unbelievers in their suspicion that religion deadens instead of nurtures all that is vital in the spirit
of

man. The Psalms, on the other hand, are simplest and the greatest of all religious poems.

at the

same time the

Art and Spirituality

42,9

one will question the truly religious content of the Psalms. They are the songs of men and David was the greatest of them for whom God was more than an abstract idea, more than a frozen watchmaker
sitting in his

No

without him.

Nor

tower while his universe goes ticking away into space is the God of the Psalms simply an absolute, im-

manent Being spinning forth from some deep metaphysical womb an endless pageantry of phenomena. The Psalms are not incantations to
lull

us to sleep in such a one.

symbolism of the Psalter, primitive and simple as it should not deceive us into thinking that David had an "anthropois, God. Such a mistake could only be made by materialists who morphic"
lost all sense of poetic form and who, moreover, had forgotten the violent insistence of the great Jewish prophets on the transcendence, the infinite spirituality of Jaweh, was so far above all things imagina-

The human

had

Who

ble that

He

did not even have an utterable name.

The God

of the

Psalter is "above all gods/' that is to say, above anything that could possibly be represented and adored in an image. To one who can penetrate the poetic content of the Psalter, it is clear that David's

concept of God was utterly pure. And yet this God, the heavens" is "near to those who call upon Him."
all

Who is "above all He Who is above

things

is

also in all things,

all.
1

and

He

is

capable of manifesting Himself

through them

The men who wrote the Psalms were carried away in an ecstasy of unijoy when they saw God in the cosmic symbolism of His created
verse.

The

work

"heavens declare the glory of of his hands.

God, and the firmament proclaims the

Day unto day heralds the message, and night unto night makes it "known. There is no speech nor words, whose voice is not heard: Their sound goes forth unto all the earth, and their strains unto the farthest hounds of the world. There he has set his tabernacle for the sun, which like to the bridegroom coming out from the bridal chamber, he exults like a giant to run his
course*

His going forth

other.
.
.

is

from one end of the heavens, and

his circuit

ends at the

2 .

Praise ye the Lord from the heavens, praise ye him in the high places. Praise ye him, all his angels, praise ye him, all his hosts.

sun and moon, praise him, all ye shining stars. Praise ye him, heavens Praise him, ye of heavens, and ye waters that are above the heavens:

43
Let them praise the
created,

Vision

name
them

of the Lord, for

he commanded and they were

he gave a decree, which
shall

And he

established

for ever

and

ever:

not pass away.

Praise the

Lord from the earth, ye sea-monsters and all ye depths of the and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind, that fidfil his word, Mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, Beasts and all cattle, serpents and feathered fowls, Kings of the earth and all people, princes and all judges of the earth, Young men and even maidens, old men together with children; Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted;*
Fire

sea.

Although we tend to look upon the Old Testament as a chronicle of which men were far from their God, we forget how many of the patriarchs and prophets seem to have walked with God with some of the intimate simplicity of Adam in Eden. This is especially evident in the first days of the Patriarchs, of which the Welsh metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan, speaks when he says:
fear in

My
An

And

I walke in those groves. leaves thy spirit doth still fan, I see in each shade that there growes

God, when

Angell talking with a

man

Under a juniper some house, Or the coole mirtles canopie, Others beneath an oakes greene houghs, Or at some fountaines bubling Eye; Here Jacob dreames, and wrestles; there Elias by a Raven is fed
f

Another time

"by

th*

Angell, where
his bread;

He

"brings

him water with

In Abrahams Tent the winged guests (O how familiar then was heaven!*)
JEate,

drinke, discourse, sit downe, Untill the Coole, and shady even .

and
. .

rest

As age succeeded age

the

memory

of this primitive revelation of

God

seems to have withered away, but its leaf is still green in the Psalter, David is drunk with the love of God and filled with the primitive sense
that man is the Leltonrgos or the high priest of all creation, born with the function of uttering in "Liturgy'* the whole testimony of praise which mute creation cannot of itself offer to its God.

The function of cosmic symbols in the The revelation of God to man through

Psalter

is
Is

an important one,
not the exclusive

nature

Art and Spirituality

property of any one religion. and forms the foundation for
the vision of
faith,
It is
all
is

431
shared by the whole

human

race

God

in nature

natural religions. 4 At the same time a natural preamble to supernatural

which depends upon distinct and supernatural revelation. Hence even those modern readers who may be repelled by the "historical" Psalms, will nevertheless be attracted by those in which the keynote is struck by cosmic symbolism, and by the vision of God in nature. However, the cosmic symbolism in the Old Testament is something much more than an element which Judaeo-Christian revelation shares with the cults of the Gentiles. The Old Testament writers, and particularly the author of the creation narrative that opens the Book of Genesis, were not only dealing with symbolic themes which had made their appearance in other religions of the Near East: they were conto sciously attempting purify and elevate the cosmic symbols which were the common heritage of all mankind and restore to them a dignity of which they had been robbed by being degraded from the level of
theistic

polytheistic myths. important that I hope I may be permitted a brief 5 digression in order to touch upon it. what knows with the rationalists of the late enthusiasm Everyone

symbols

to that of
is

This question

so

nineteenth century berated the Judaeo-Christian revelation for being fabricated out of borrowed materials, because the religious themes and

symbols of the Old Testament were similar to those of many other Eastern religions, and because the New Testament made use of lan-

guage and concepts which bore a great resemblance to the formulas of Platonic philosophy, the ritual language of the mystery cults, and the mythological structure of other Oriental beliefs. Even today the world
is

full of

honest persons

who

suppose that

this parallelism

somehow

weakens the Christian claim to an exclusive divine revelation. The writers of the Old and New Testament were simple men, but St. John the Evangelist was certainly not so simple as to imagine that the Greek word logos, which he may well have borrowed from the Platonthe Biblical ists, was a personal discovery of his own. The fact that writers were inspired did not deliver them from the common necessity which compels writers to clothe their ideas in words taken from the current vocabulary of their culture and of their time. When God inwith the true account of the creation of spired the author of Genesis the world, the writer might, by some miracle, have set the whole thing

down
ogy.

But

in the vocabulary of a twentieth-century textbook of paleontolthat would have made Genesis quite inaccessible to anyone

Art and Spirituality

433

a witness to the power of God, they thought the sun was god. The whole universe became an enclosed system of myths. The meaning and

the worth of creatures invested

them with an

illusory divinity.

sensed that there was something to be venerated in the in the reality, peculiarity of living and growing things but they no what knew that reality was. longer They became incapable of seeing
still

Men

settled

that the goodness of the creature is only a vestige of God. Darkness the translucent universe. became afraid. Beings had upon a meaning which men could no longer understand. They became afraid

Men

These things had to be approached with that the mystery of their meaning, seem superstitious began which had become hidden, was now a power that had to be placated
of trees, of the sun, of the sea.
rites. It

to

and,

if

possible, controlled

by magic

incantations.

the beautiful living things which were all about us on this earth and which were the windows of heaven to every man, became

Thus

The world fell with man, and longs, with for man, regeneration. The symbolic universe, which had now become a labyrinth of myths and rites, the dwelling place of a million
infected with original sin.

magic

hostile spirits, ceased altogether to speak to

most

men

of

God and

told

them only

of themselves.
to

above himself
projections of full of shame,

The symbols which would have raised God now became myths and as such they were simply man's own biological drives. His deepest appetites, now
became
his darkest fears.

man

corruption of cosmic symbolism can be understood by a simple a room comparison. It was like what happens to a window when
ceases to receive light from the outside. As long as see through our windowpane. night comes,
it is

The

daylight,

we
see

When

we

can

still

our lights go on, light inside our room. through then we only see ourselves and our own room reflected in the pane. Adam in Eden could see through creation as through a window. God
it,

if

there

is

no

When

shone through the windowpane as bright as the

the sun. light of

Abra-

ham and
through

the patriarchs and David and the holy men of Israel the chosen race that preserved intact the testimony of God could still see the window as one looks out by night from a darkened room

and

sees the

moon and

stars.

lamps of their sky, that the reflection of their own

to light

and

beyond/'

They began to So much, then, for cosmic symbols. In the Psalms we find them dean and bright again, where David sings:

But the Gentiles had begun to forget the own, and presently it seemed to them room in the window was the "world worship what they themselves were doing.

434
Lord, our Lord, how glorious is thy name in hast exalted thy majesty above the heavens.
all
. .

Vision
the earth, thou
.

who
stars,

When

gaze at the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the

hast

moon and

made: What is man, that thou are mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou hast care of him? And thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honor; Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands;
things under his feet: of them, and the beasts of the The birds of the heaven and the fishes of the sea: and whatever traverses the paths of the seas.

which thou

thou hast put Sheep and oxen,

all

all

field, too,

Lord, our Lord,

how wonderful

is

thy

name

in all the earthl Q

But it is not the cosmic symbolism that is the most important symbolism in the Bible, There is another. This is the symbolism we have already referred to as typology. The typological symbolism of the Bible is not common to other religions: its content is peculiar to the
Judaeo-Christian revelation. It is the vehicle of the special message, the "Gospel" which is the very essence of Christian revelation. And it is
typology above
all

that

makes the Psalms a body of

right, altogether unique. a special kind of symbolism. It

religious

poems

which

are,

by

their

own
is

Scriptural typology

is

something far
in the

purer and more

efficacious

than allegory.

in the Psalms allegory is altogether negligible. Psalter that reminds us of the tissue of allegorical complexities which goes to make up a poem like Spenser's Faerie Queene, It seems to me that the personification of moral abstractions is foreign to the spirit of true contemplation. The relation of types and antitypes in Scripture is a special manifestation of God: it is the testimony of His continuous providential

would even add that There is almost nothing

I

human history, Unlike the universal cosmic symbols, which repeat themselves over and over with the seasons, historical and Cosmic symbols reflect the actypical symbols are altogether singular. tion of God like the light of the sun on the vast sea of creation. Typowhich divide the dark sky of history with a logical symbols are meteors sudden, searing light, appearing and vanishing with a liberty that knows no law of man. Cosmic symbolism is like clouds and rain: but
intervention in

typology

is

like a storm of lightning

wounding the

earth unpredictably

with

fire

from heaven.

Consider for a

moment

the typology of the Deluge, In the Deluge,

Art and Spirituality

God purifies the world, destroying sin. The Deluge is simply a type of the one great redemptive act in which God destroyed sin: Christ's passion and death. But the symbolism of the Deluge goes further: it
also manifests to us the activity of God destroying sin in the souls of individuals by the sacraments, for instance Baptism and Penance, in which the merits of Christ's Passion are applied to our souls. This also corresponds to another Old Testament type: the crossing of the Red

Sea by the people of Israel. Finally, all these symbols are tied together in one, final climax of significance. All Scriptural types point to the last end, the crowning of Christ's work, the establishment of His Kingdom, His final and manifest triumph in His mystical body: the Last

Judgment. There again, the same creative action by which God manifested Himself in the Deluge will once more strike the world of sin. But this time it will have the nature of a final "accounting" in the sense
that then all

response to

men will come forth to give testimony to their personal God's action in the world. Those who have believed, and

who have

freely accepted the light and the salvation offered to them from heaven, will pass, like the Israelites, through the Red Sea; they will be rescued in Christ as Noah's sons were saved in the Ark; they will have lived out the meaning of their Baptism because they will have died and risen with Christ. Those who were not with Christ and all who are not with him are against Him will manifest what they too have chosen. It will be by their own choice that they will drown in the Deluge, and perish with the Chariots of Egypt in the closing

waters of that

last sea.

of the Psalms literally foretell the suffering and a "type" of Christ. The Psalter as a whole glory of Christ, but David is Testament as a whole and often the particular is "typical" of the sentiments of the Psalmist are, at least in a broad sense, "typical" of the

Not

only do

many

New

sentiments in the Heart of the Divine Redeemer.

Even the
laid

sins of

David belong
1
a

to Christ, in the
all."

sense that

"God hath

upon Him

the iniquity of us

10

Cf The Roman
.

Missal: Collect for the

Mass

of the Dedication of a Church.

Psalm 1 8, a-y. "Psalm 148, 1-13. 4 C. Romans, i 18 and Acts, 14:

:

15.

am

lem Fwtwi,
*

article of Pere Jean Danielou, S.J.: "The Probespecially indebted to the of Symbolism" in Thought, September 1950. See also his hook Sacratnentum

Paris, 1950.

The

classical passage in this

connection

is

the

first

chapter o St. Paul's Epistle to

the Romans.

436
'Romans, 1:18. 8 Romans, 11x5. 8 Psalm 8:2, 4-10. Every

Vision

line of this

Psalm has

antipolytheistic repercussions.

Man, who can see God through His creation is in possession o the truth which makes him free. (John, 8:32.) Thus he leads a spiritualized existence "a little
than the angels" and stands in his rightful place in the order of creation, above the irrational animals. The Gentiles, on the other hand, have descended lower than the animals since they have lost the knowledge of God though God remains evident in His creation. For by their ignorance of God, they have
less

doomed themselves
Bernard;

De
970.
53:6.

also: St. worship of beasts. (Romans, 1:23.) Compare Volume n. Latina, 182, 4; II, Deo, Pcitrologm Diligendo Chapter
to the

Column
10

Isaias,

BRBA0 IN THE WILDERNESS

^ POETRY AND CONTEMPLATION:

A
AUTHOR'S NOTE:

REAPPRAISAL

years ago I wrote an article called "Poetry and the Contemplative Life" which was published first in The Commonweal and then appeared in a volume of verse, Figures for an Afocalyfse.

Ten

a ''problem" and tried to original form, this article stated was rather widely apply a rather crude "solution" which, at the time, interested in religious verse and, at least by imdiscussed

In

its

by people

plication,

in religious experience. Many of them were inclined to "solution" that was proposed. Others wisely rejected it bethe accept cause of its somewhat puritanical implications.

in

have found that the confident pronouncements made my early writing lay more and more heavily on my conscience as a writer and as a priest, and while it is evidently impossible to correct

As time passed

and amend

all

my

wrong-headed propositions, at

least I

would

like to

revise the essay of 1948,

The

factory precisely because it to write a whole new article, approaching the subject from an entirely different angle. I believe it is necessary to revise the earlier article and
to restate the case in the

revision is unfortunately not fully satisis no more than a revision, But I do not want

One
retains

same context, arriving at a different conclusion. of the unavoidable defects of this kind of revision is that it
1'

an altogether misleading insistence on the terms "contemplation and "contemplative life" as something apart from the rest of man's
existence.

tion"

is

a kind of objectivized entity

This involves a rather naive presupposition that "contemplawhich gets "interfered with" by

Art and Spirituality

437

such things as aesthetic reflection. There is a certain amount of truth behind this supposed conflict, but to state it thus crudely is to invite all sorts of misunderstanding. In actual fact, neither religious nor artistic contemplation should be regarded as "things** which happen or which one can "have." "objects" They belong to the much more mysterious realm of what one "is" or rather "who" one is. Aesthetic intuition is not merely the act of a faculty, it is also a heightening and intensification of our personal identity and being by the perception of our connatural affinity with "Being" in the beauty contemplated. But also, and at the same time, the implied conflict between "con-

templation" as rest and poetic creation as activity is even more misleading. It is all wrong to imagine that in order to "contemplate" divine
things or what you will, it is necessary to abstain from every kind of action and enter into a kind of spiritual stillness where one waits for

"something

to

happen." In actual

fact, true

contemplation

is

inseparable

from
tion,

and from the dynamism of life which includes work, creaproduction, fruitfulness, and above all love. Contemplation is not
life

be thought of as a separate department of life, cut off from all man's other interests and superseding them. It is the very fullness of a fully integrated life. It is the crown of life and of all life's activities. Therefore the earlier problem was, largely, an illusion, created by
to
this division of life into formally separate

compartments, of "action"
stated so

and "contemplation." But because this crude division was forcefully and so frequently in my earlier writings, I feel
most necessary now to try to do something together the two sides of this unfortunate
In this present
article,

that

it

is

to heal this
fissure.

wound and draw

and it is meant to be do not fully succeed. and up, probably attempting patch If this is true, I do not care so much, as long as it is clear that I am in the disinfectant, stitching and drawing the wound together, pouring and putting on a bandage.
the
is still

wound
it

evident,

so. I

am

to

IN

AN AGE OF SCIENCE and

technology, in which

man

finds himself

bewildered and disoriented by the fabulous versatility of the machines he has created, we live precipitated outside ourselves at every moment,
interiorly

empty, spiritually

lost,

seeking at

all costs to

forget our

own

in the name of emptiness, and ready to alienate ourselves completely that comes along. At such a time as this, it seems absurd "cause" any to talk of contemplation: and indeed a great deal of the talk that has

43 8

Vision

this subject, is ludicrous and the appearance of a safe and on inadequate. Contemplation rather bourgeois "cause" of a few well-meaning Christians the refuge who are willing to acquaint themselves with St. Thomas and St. John
itself

been bandied about timidly enough on

takes

of the Cross,

passivity 5 of the Spiritual Life/ For others, safer still, contemplation ing more than a life of leisure and of study: in many cases

and

and to disport themselves thereafter in such Edens of fervor as cannot be disapproved by the so-called "Masters

means nothmore a fond

hope than an accomplished

fact.

The
after

relative timidity of these adventures,

and the harebrained chase

exotic forms of spirituality, should not make us too prone to laugh at every symptom of man's acute need for an interior life. For one of the most important and most hopeful signs of the times is in the

more

of

turbulent, anarchic, but fully determined efforts of a small minority men to recover some kind of contact with their own inner depths, to

recapture the freshness and truth of their own subjectivity, and to go on from there not only to an experience of God, but to a dialogue with the spirit of other men. In the face of our own almost hopeless aliena-

we are trying to get back to ourselves before it is too late. One of the most outstanding examples of this struggle is seen in the almost symbolic career of Boris Pasternak, whose more recent poetry and
tion,

prose can most certainly qualify in a broad

plative.

and

basic sense as contem-

The

contemplative

is

legs crossed, or

one

who

not just a man who sits under a tree with his edifies himself with the answer to ultimate and

is one who seeks to know the meaning of life spiritual problems. He not only with his head but with his whole being, by living it in depth and in purity and thus uniting himself to the very Source of Life a

and therefore too real to be conword or concept or name assigned by tained satisfactorily inside any man: for the words of man tend to limit the realities which they
Source which
is

infinitely actual

that can be limited express, in order to express them, And anything cannot be the infinite actuality known to the contemplative without words and without the mediation of precise analytical thought. can

We

intuitive perception of life in its say, then, that contemplation is the revealed Himself as the unnamable "I Am* Source: that Source

Who

and then again made Himself known

templation
Christ:
it is

to

us as

Man

in Christ,

Con-

is

experience of God in an obscure intuition of

Man, God in the world, God in God Himself, and this intuition is

Art and Spirituality

a gift of

43P
reveals

God

Who

Himself in His very hiddenness as

One

unknown.
Contemplation is related to art, to worship, to charity: all these reach out by intuition and self-dedication into the realms that transcend the material conduct of everyday life. Or rather, in the midst of ordinary
life itself

they seek and find a

new and

transcendent meaning.

And

transfigure the whole of life. Art, worship, and love penetrate into the spring of living waters that flows from the depths where man's spirit is united to God, and draw from those depths

by

this

meaning they

power
into

to

create a

new world and

new

life.

Contemplation goes

deeper than
ecstatic

and unites them, and plunges man's whole soul the supernal waters, in the baptism of wordless understanding and
all three,

prayer.

There can be various levels of contemplation. There is contemplation in a broad and improper sense the religious intuition of the artist,
the lover, or the worshiper. In these intuitions, art, love, or worship remain in the foreground: they modify the experience of ultimate reality, and present that reality to us as the "object'' of aesthetic vision,
loses sight of ultimates

or adoration, or love. In an even less proper sense, "contemplation" and becomes preoccupied with a beautiful thing,

or a meaningful liturgy, or a loved person. But in its proper meaning, contemplation transcends
all

all

"objects,"

"things," and goes beyond all "ideas" of beauty or goodness or truth, passes beyond all speculation, all creative fervor, all charitable action, and "rests" in the inexpressible. It lets go of everything and finds All in Nothing the todo y nada of St. John of the Cross.

On
I

went

a dark night, kindled in love with yearnings happy chance forth without being observed, my house being now at rest.

In darkness and secure, by the secret ladder, disguised In darkness and concealment,

happy chance-

my

house being now

at rest*

In the happy night, in secret when none saw me Nor I beheld aught, without light or guide save that which burned in
heart

my

This light guided me more surely than the light of noonday To the place where He (well I knew who!) was awaiting me A place where none appeared.

Now when we
templation,
it is

speak of a possible conflict between poetry and conclearly only contemplation in the last, most perfect

440
sense that
is

Vision
intended. For

when we

speak of contemplation in the

more broad and improper sense, we find it uniting itself with art, with worship, and with love. It is not only compatible with poetic creation, but is stimulated by it, and in its turn inspires poetry. And in the realm
of worship, contemplation in this broad sense is stimulated by meditation, by prayer, by liturgy, and arises out of these religious activities. Above all, in the sacramental life of the Church, we find contemplation in this broad sense should normally be the fruit of fervent reception of the sacraments, at least sometimes. That is to say that the reception of

the sacraments should produce, once in a while, not only interior and unfelt grace but also a certain dim awareness of the presence and the action of God in the soul, though this awareness may be very fleeting, tenuous, and almost impossible to assess. Nor should people trouble their

heads about whether or not they feel it, because some are not supposed to feel it: feelings are not important, and what they will experience,
without realizing it too clearly, is the fervor of love and the desire to dedicate themselves more perfectly to God. Such things we can call in a broad and improper sense "contemplative" experiences.

This
of
all

much

which grace indeed is the principle ordination of our acts, but in which the supernatural value and of the initiative belongs to our own powers, prompted and susis

active contemplation, in

contemplation properly so called:

tained by grace. This form of the contemplative life prepares us for the life of infused or passive or

mystical contemplation. Contemplation is the fullness of the Christian vocation

the full

flowering of baptismal grace and of the Christ-life in our souls. Christian contemplation is not something esoteric and dangerous. It is simply the experience of God that is given to a soul purified by

humility and faith. It is the "knowledge" of God in the darkness of infused love. "This is eternal life, that they should know Thee, the
or "But

One True God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent" (John 17:3) we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are

transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." (II Cor. 3:18.) St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews,

rebuked those who clung to the "first elements of the words of when they should have been "Masters," and he urged them to

God

1'

relin-

quish the "milk" of beginners and to desire the "strong meat" of the is the contemplation of Christ in the great Mystery in perfect, which which I Ic renews on earth the redemptive sacrifice of the Cross. "For
every one that
is

a partaker of milk

is

unskillful in the

word

of justice:

Art and Spirituality

for

he

is

little child.

But strong meat

is

for the perfect: for

them

who by custom have

and
evil"

good (Heb. 5:13-14). Omnis qui ad Dominum convertitur contemplativam vitam desiderat, said St. Gregory the Great, and he was using contemplation in our sense: to live on the desire of God alone; to have one's mind divested of all earthly things and united, in so far as human weakness permits, with Christ. And he adds that the contemplative life begins on earth in order to continue, more perfectly, in heaven. St. Thomas echoed him with his famous phrase: cyuaedam
inchoatio beatitudinis (Contemplation
is

their senses exercised to the discerning of

a beginning of eternal blessed-

ness). St. Bonaventure goes further than any of the other Doctors of the Church in his insistence that all Christians should desire union

with
the

And in his second conference on words in Matthew 12:42, he says that the Queen of the South who left her own land and traveled far to hear the wisdom of Solomon will rise up in judgment against our which refuses the treasure of divine wisdom, perferring the generation
in loving contemplation. Hexaemeron, applying Christ's
far lesser riches of worldly

God

wisdom and philosophy.

goodness "tasted"

a quasi-experimental knowledge of God's and "possessed" by a vital contact in the depths of the soul. By infused love, we are given an immediate grasp of God's own substance, and rest in the obscure and profound sense of His presence and transcendent actions within our inmost selves, yielding ourselves altogether to the work of His transforming Spirit. By the light of infused wisdom we enter deeply into the Mystery of Christ Who is Himself the light of men. We participate, as it were, in the glory that is radiated mystically by His risen and transfigured Humanity. Our eyes are opened to understand the Scriptures and the mystery of God's intervention in man's history. We become aware of the way in which the infinite mercy and wisdom of God are revealed to men and angels in the Mystery of the Church, which is the Body of Christ. The contemplative life is the lot of those who have entered most fully into the life and spirit of the Church, so that the contemat the very heart of the Mystery which they have begun platives arc and to "see" with the eyes of their soul. To desire understand to really the contemplative life and its gifts is therefore to desire to become in the highest sense a fruitful and strong member of Christ* But it means also, by that very fact, to desire and accept a share in His we may rise with Him in the participation sufferings and death, that
is

Infused contemplation

of His glory.

Vision

Now
thing
is

whether
evident:

we
it

speak of contemplation as active or passive, one with the one subbrings us into the closest contact

ject that is truly

worthy of a Christian poet: the great Mystery of His God, revealing mercy to us in Christ. The Christian poet should be one who has been granted a deep understanding of the ways of God and of the Mystery of Christ. Deeply rooted in the spiritual consciousness of the whole Church, steeped in the Liturgy and the
Scriptures, fully possessed as it were a voice of the

by the "mind of the Church/' he becomes Church and of the Holy Spirit, and sings out the wonder of again the magnolia Dei, praising God and pointing His ways. The Christian poet is therefore the successor to David and
the Prophets, he contemplates what was

announced by the poets of the

fire.

Old Testament: he should

be, as they were, full of divine

He

should be one who, like the prophet Isaias, has seen the living God and has lamented the fact that he was a man of impure lips, until God

Himself sent Seraph, with a live coal from the altar of the heavenly temple, to burn his lips with prophetic inspiration. In the true Christian poet in Dante, St. John of the Cross, St. we find it hard Francis, Jacopone da Todi, Hopkins, Paul Claudel
to distinguish

between the inspiration of the prophet and mystic, and

the purely poetic enthusiasm of great artistic genius.

II

CHRIST

is THE INSPIRATION of Christian poetry, and Christ is at the center of the contemplative life. Therefore, it would seem fairly evident that the one thing that will most contribute to the perfection of

writers

Catholic literature in general and poetry in particular will be for our and poets to live more as "contemplatives" than as citizens of a

This means first of all leading the full Christian in so far as they can in their state. and sacramental liturgical life This also means a solid integration of one's work, thought, religion, and family life and recreations in one vital harmonious unity with Christ at its center. The liturgical life is the most obvious example of
materialistic world.

"active contemplation/' sincere and efficacious desire to enter

more deeply

into the beauty

of the Christian mystery implies a willingness to sacrifice the things which are called "beautiful" by the decadent standards of a materialistic

to

world. Yet the Christian contemplative need not confine himself 11 models. He will, of religious, still less to professionally "pious

Art and Spirituality

course, read Scripture

443

Dylan Thomas, Garcia Lorca. One might add that a fully integrated vision of our time and of its spirit presupposes some contact with the genius of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, who are Christians turned inside out.
Contemplation has much
something
stressed
to offer
to offer

and above all the contemplative saints: John Theresa of Avila, John Ruysbroeck, Bonaventure, Bernard. But no one can be a poet without reading the good poets of his own time T. S. Eliot, Auden, Spender, Rilke, Pasternak,
of

the

Cross,

poetry.
is

And

poetry, in

its

turn, has

contemplation.

How

this so?

relation of poetry to contemplation the first is the essential dignity of aesthetic experience. It

In understanding the thing that needs to be

is,

in

itself,

though only in the natural order. It is a gift which very many people have never received, and which others, having received, have allowed to spoil or become atrophied within them through
a very high
gift,

neglect and misuse.

To many people,
and emotional

thrill.

the enjoyment of art is nothing more than a sensible They look at a picture, and if it stimulates one or

another of their sense appetites they are pleased. On a hot day they like to look at a picture of mountains or the sea because it makes them
feel cool.

They

like paintings of
tire

naturally they soon

aside to pat a real movie, to give their senses another series of

dogs that you could almost pat. But under those circumstances. They turn dog, or they go down the street to an air-conditioned
of art,
jolts.

This

is

not what

one can legitimately

call the

"enjoyment of Art/'
is

A GENUINE AESTHETIC experience

something which transcends not

only the sensible order (in which, however, it has its beginning) but also that of reason itself. It is a suprarational intuition of the latent
of reasoning and perfection of things. Its immediacy outruns the speed leaves all analysis far behind, In the natural order, as Jacques Maritain

has often insisted, it is an analogue of the mystical experience which it resembles and imitates from afar. Its mode of apprehension is that the inner it reaches out to of "connaturality" reality, the vital grasp
substance of
its

object,

by a kind of

affective identification of itself

with

it.

It rests in

the perfection of things by a kind of union which

sometimes resembles the quiescence of the soul in its immediate affective contact with God in the obscurity of mystical prayer. So close is the resemblance between these two experiences that a poet like Blake
could almost confuse the two and make them merge into one another as if they belonged to the same order of things.

444

Vision

This resemblance between the experiences of the artist and of the article mystic has been extensively discussed in the long and important Dictionnaire the in M. "Art Fr. on and Spirituality/' by Leonard, S.J.,
de S^iritiudite. This theologian pushes the dignity of the aesthetic institution practically

to its limit.

stand.

He

insists that the highest

no only beyond but even beyond that

ontologically able to artist penetrates of the experience the sensible surface of things into their inmost reality,
gives
it

He

everything that

it is

to

God
is

Himself.

More than
still

that,

the analogy

with mystical experience

deeper and

closer

because, he says, the

intuition of the artist sets in motion the very

same psychological proc-

esses which accompany infused contemplation. This fits in with the and the latter's psychology of St. Augustine and St. Bonaventure

notion of contemplation yer speculum, passing through the mirror of created things to God, even if that mirror may happen to be our own
soul. It also fits in

with the ideas of the Greek Fathers about theoria

God through the fhysica or "natural contemplation" which arrives at inner spiritual reality (the logos) of the created thing. which forms the traditional substratum The
Augustinian psychology,

Western Church, distinguishes between an inferior and superior soul. Of course, this is only a manner of speaking. There is only one soul, a simple spiritual substance, unof Christian mystical theology in the

divided and indivisible.

faculties,

And

yet the soul in so far as

it

acts

through

its

practical judgments concerning temporal external tilings, is called "inferior." The "superior" soul is the same soul, but now considered as the principle or actus frimm of these other

making

decisions

and

and multiple acts of the faculties which as it wore flow from inner principle. Only the superior soul is strictly the image of God within us. And if we are to contemplate God at all, this internal image
diverse
this

must be re-formed by grace, and then we must enter into this inner sanctuary which is the substance of the soul itself, This passage from the exterior to the interior has nothing to do with concentration or introspection. It is a transit from objectivization to knowledge by intuition and cormaturality* The majority of people never enter into
this

inward

self,

which

is

an abode of silence and peaee and where the

diversified activities of the intellect

into

one intense and smooth and spiritualized

its its

ceeds in

will are collected, so to speak, which far exactivity fruitfulncss the plodding efforts of reason working on

and

external reality with

analyses

and

syllogisms.

Art and Spirituality

IT is

445

HERE that mystical contemplation begins. It is into this substance or "center" of the soul, when it has transcended its dependence on
sensations

and images and

contemplation will be
tact,

concepts, that the obscure light of infused poured by God, giving us experimental contact

with Himself without the

medium

of sense species.

And

in this con-

no longer facing God as an "object" of experience or as a concept which we apprehend. We are united to Him in the mystery of love and its transcendent subjectivity, and see Him in ourselves by losing ourselves in Him. Yet even in the natural order, without attaining to God in us, and
are

we

without perceiving

this "inner spiritual light," the aesthetic experience introduces us into the interior sanctuary of the soul and to its inexpressible simplicity. For the aesthetic intuition is also beyond objectivity

it

it contemplates. Obviously, then, when the natural contemplation of the artist or the metaphysician has already given a man a taste of the peaceful intoxi-

"sees"

by identifying

itself

spiritually

with what

cation

which

is

interior self, the

If

experienced in the suprarational intuitions of this way is already well prepared for infused contemplation.

God

ter

should grant that grace, the person so favored will be much betprepared to recognize it, and to cooperate with God's action within

him. long

The mere
to

him by

fact of the artist's or poet's good taste, which should bevirtue of his art, will help him to avoid some of the
it

evils that

tend to corrupt religious experience before

has a chance to

take root

and grow

in the soul.
Ill

MYSTICAL CONTEMPLATION is absolutely beyond the reach of man's natural activity. There is nothing he can do to obtain it by himself. It is a pure gift of God. God gives it to whom He wills, and in the way and degree in which He wills. By cooperating with the work of ordinary grace we can and, if we really mean to love God, we must
seek

Him and

even find

Him

obscurely by a love that gropes

life.

humbly

for truth in the darkness of this

But no amount of generosity on

our part, no amount of

mystics.

effort,

That

is

work

that
is

no amount of sacrifice will make us into must be done by God acting as the ''prinJohn of the Cross).
If

term cipal agent" (the

principal agent, there

that of St.

He

is

the

another agent: ourselves. But our part is to consent, to listen, and to follow without knowing where we simply are going. All the rest that we can do amounts to the more or less
is

44 6

Vision

negative task of avoiding obstacles and keeping our own prejudiced judgments and self-will out of His way. St. Bonaventure tells us in

many

this gift,

places that prayer and ardent desire can persuade God to give us and that industria on our part can open the way for His

action.

The

term industria stands for active purification, the active

emptying of the soul, clearing it of all images, all likenesses of and attachments to created things so that it may be clean and pure to
receive the obscure light of God's own presence. It is the common doctrine of Christian mystical theologians that a or "affective" knowledge of great obstacle to "unitive" or "connatural"

God by
his

infused contemplation (the terms are those of St. Thomas and followers) is attachment to objectivized human reasoning and

abstraction from sense images, analysis and discourse that proceeds by and by syllogizing, to conclusions. In other words, a man cannot at the same time fly in an airplane and walk along the ground. He must do one or the other. And if he insists on walking along the ground it is no sin. But it will take him much longer and cost him all right, much more effort to get to his destination, and he will have a much more limited view of things along his way. What the Holy Spirit demands of the mystic is peaceful consent, and a blind trust in Him:
for all this time, since the soul does not act of itself,
it

remains blind

and in darkness, having no idea where it is going or what is being done, and tasting satisfaction that is, at first, extremely tenuous and ineffable and obscure, The reason is, of course, that the soul is not
yet sufficiently spiritualized to be able to grasp

and appreciate what

is

going on within

it.

It

remains with nothing but the vaguest and most

general sense that God is really and truly present and working there a sense which is fraught with a greater certitude than anything it has ever experienced before. And yet if one stops to analyze the experience,
or if one makes a move to increase its intensity by a natural act, the whole thing will evade his grasp and he will lose it altogether.

Now

it is

precisely here that the aesthetic instinct changes

its

colors

and, from being a precious gift, becomes a real danger. If the intuition of the poet naturally leads him into the inner sanctuary of his soul,
it is for a special purpose in the natural order; when the poet enters into himself, it is in order to reflect upon his inspiration and to clothe it to it with a special and splendid form and then return to displuy

those outside.

And

here the radical difference between the

artist

and

the mystic begins to be seen. The artist enters into himself in order to work. For him, the "superior" soul is a forge where inspiration kindles

Art and Spirituality

a
fire

447

of white heat, a crucible for the transformation of natural images new, created forms. But the mystic enters into himself, not in order to work but to pass through the center of his own soul and lose himself in the mystery and secrecy and infinite, transcendent reality of
into

God

living

and working within him.

if

Consequently,

when

prayer

calls

him within himself

the mystic happens to be, at the same time, an artist, to the secrecy of God's presence,

experience. And therefore immediately the whole thing runs the risk of being frustrated and destroyed. The artist will run the risk of a losing gift of tremendous supernatural worth, in order to perform a work of far less value. He will let go of the deep,
spiritual grace which has been granted him, in order to return to the reflection of that grace within his own soul. will withdraw from the

his art will be tempted to start the "creative" possibilities of this

working and producing and studying

He

mystery of identification with Reality beyond forms and objectivized concepts, and will return to the realm of subject and object. He will

and seek to exploit and employ it for its and return to himself, and in so doing, though he follows his natural instinct to "create" he will, in fact, be less creative. For the creative work done directly in the soul and on the

objectivize his own experience own sake. will leave God

He

by God Himself, the infinite Creator Sfiritus, is beyond all comparison with the work which the soul of man itself accomplishes in
soul

imitation of the divine Creator.

Unable fully to lose himself in God, doomed by the restlessness of talent to seek himself in the highest natural gift that God has given
artist falls from contemplation and returns to himself as artist. Instead of passing through his own soul into the abyss of the infinite to actuality of God Himself, he will remain there a moment, only of multiple created things whose exterior world into the emerge again

him, the

variety once

more dissipates his energies until they are lost in perplexity and dissatisfaction. There is, therefore, a likelihood that one who has the natural gift of artistic intuition and creation may be unable to pass on to the superior and most spiritual kind of contemplation, in which the soul rests in
without images, without concepts, without any intermediary. The artist may be like the hare in the fable, who far outstrips the tortoise without talent in die beginnings of the contemplative life, but who, in

God

the end,

is left behind. In a word, natural gifts and talents may be of in the beginning, but contemplation can never depend on value great

them.

448

Vision

IV
WHAT, then,
is the conclusion? That poetry can, indeed, help to bring us rapidly through that early part of the journey to contemplation that is called active: but when we are entering the realm of true contempla-

tion,

may

where eternal happiness is tasted in anticipation, poetic intuition " ruin our rest in God "beyond all images.

In such an event, one might at first be tempted to say that there is only one course for the poet to take, if he wants to be a mystic or a saint: he must consent to the ruthless and complete sacrifice of his art.
infinite distance

Such a conclusion would seem to be dictated by logic. If there is an between the gifts of nature and those of grace, between the natural and the supernatural order, man and God, then should not
reject the natural for the supernatural, the temporal for the human for the divine? It seems to be so simple as to defy

one always
eternal, the

contradiction.

And

yet,

situdes of the inner

when one has experience in the strange vicislife, and when one has seen something of the

ways of God, one remembers that there is a vast difference between the logic of men and the logic of God. There is indeed no human logic in the ways of interior prayer, only Divine paradox. Our God is not a
Platonist.

Our

Christian spirituality

is

not the intellectualism of Plotinus

or the asceticism of the stoics.

oversimplifications.

must therefore be very careful of The Christian is sanctified not merely by always

We

making the choice of "the most perfect thing." Indeed, experience teaches us that the most perfect choice is not always that which is most perfect in itself. The most perfect choice is the choice of what God has willed for us, even though it may be, in itself, less perfect, and indeed
less "spiritual," It is quite true that aesthetic

experience
it

is

only a temporal thing,

temporal things passes away. It is true that mystical enriches a hundredfold in time and in eternity. It purifies man prayer the soul and loads it with supernatural merits, enlarging man's powers

and

like all other

and
day

capacities to absorb the infinite rivers of divine light which will one be his beatitude. The sacrifice of art would seem to be a small

enough price to lay down for this "pearl of great price." But let us consider for a moment whether the Christian contemplative poet is necessarily confronted with an absolute clean-cut "either/or" choice between "art" and "mystical prayer." It can of course happen that a contemplative and artist finds himself in a situation in which he is morally certain that God demands of him

Art and Spirituality

the sacrifice of his
art,

449
in order that

the contemplative life. In such a case, the sacrifice because this is a general law all

he may enter more deeply into must be made, not artist-contemplatives, but bebinding

cause

it is

the will of

God

in this particular, concrete case.

But it may equally well happen that an artist who imagines himself to be called to the higher reaches of mystical prayer is not called to them at all. It becomes evidence, to him, that the simplest and most
obvious thing for him is to be an his aspirations for a deep mystical
artist,

life

and that he should sacrifice and be content with the lesser

gifts with which he has been endowed by God. For such a one, to insist on spending long hours in prayer frustrating his creative instinct would, in fact, lead to illusion. His efforts to be a contemplative would be fruitless. Indeed, he would find that by being an artist and at the same time living fully all the implications of art for a Christian and

for a contemplative in the broad sense of the far deeper and more vital interior life, with a

word

he would enjoy a

richer appreciation of the mysteries of God, than if he just tried to bury his artistic talent and be a professional "saint." If he is called to be an artist, then his art
will lead

much

him

to sanctity, if

he uses

it

as a Christian should.

To
as
it

take yet another case: it might conceivably be the will of certainly was in the case of the Old Testament Prophets

God

John of the Cross that a man should remain at <poet and ascend to the greatest heights of poetic creation and of mystical prayer without any evident contradiction between them. Here again, the problem is solved not by the application of some abstract, a priori principle, but purely by a practically
that of St.

and in the same

time a mystic and a

are dealpractical appeal to the will of God in this particular case. can when of as which God with God, pleases, give gifts ing to pleases. It is futile for us to lay down laws which pleases,

We

He

He

whom He
how

say
to

when

or

God's

whom

they must be
life,

in the interior
conflict

must be given, to whom they can be given, refused. It remains true that at a certain point the instinct to create and communicate enters into
gifts

with the

call to

mystical union with God.

does.

resolve the conflict.

And He
is

Nor

does

He

But God Himself can need any advice from

he has a vocation
to

us in order to do
If

so.

the unsearchable mystery of the love of the Spirit of Christ. And his "manifestain he must do so then Christ, tion of the Spirit" not only springs from a kind of contemplative
intuition of the mystery of Christ, but
is

the Christian poet make known to other

truly a Christian poet, if

men

"given to

him

for his profit"

45

Vision
will therefore

and

Christian poet and

deepen and perfect his union with Christ. The one who grows not only by his contemplation but also his declaration of the mercy of God. If it is clear open by that he is called to give this witness to God, then he can say with St.
artist is

Paul:

"Woe

to

me

if I

preach not the Gospel/'

SELECTED POEMS

Four:

POEMS

THE LANDFALL

We are beyond the ways of the far ships

Here
in this coral port,
fliers,

Farther than the ways of

Because our destinies have suddenly transported us Beyond the brim of the enamel world.

O Mariner, what is the name of this uncharted Land?

On
these clean shores shall stand

what sinless voyager,

What angel breathe the music of this atmosphere?

Look where the thin flamingoes Burning upon the purple shallows with
their rare, pale flames,

Stand silent as our thought, although the birds in the high rock Rinse our new senses with no mortal note,

What are these wings whose silks amaze the traveler?

The flowering palms charm all
With
their supernal scent.

the strand

The oleander and the wild hibiscus paint The land with blood, and unknown blooms Open to us the Gospel of their five wild wounds* And the deep ferns sing this epithalame:
"Go
up, go up! this desert
safe mountain,
flesh,
is

the door of heaven!

soul's miracle!

And it shall prove your frail

Climb the
Disarm your labored

and

taste the treasure of these silences

In the high coral hermitage,

45*

Vision

While the clean winds bemuse you

in the clef ted rock;

trees!

Or find you

there

some leafy Crusoe-castle: dwell in

Take down the

And And To fill you with their fortitude:

Because
this island is

and crimson fruits flagons of the blue hand has sown, reap the everlasting wheat that no man's strike the rock that runs with waters strong as wine
your Christ, your might, your
fort,

your paradise.

And lo! dumb time's gray, smoky argosies

Will never anchor in this emerald harbor Or find this world of amber,
silver sea Spoil the fair music of the these Or foul chiming amethysts: Nor comes there any serpent near this isle trenched in deep ocean And walled with innocent, flowering vines.

But from beyond the cotton clouds, Between those lovely, white cathedrals full of sun, The angels study beauty with their steps And tread like notes of music down the beamy air

To gain

this

new world's virgin shore:

While from the ocean's jeweled floor

The long-lost divers, rising one by one, Smile and throw down their dripping fortunes on

the sand,

And sing us

the strange tale

Of the drowned king (our nature), his return!

FIGURES BOB. AN APOCALYPSE

THE SOWING OF MEANINGS

See the high birds!
Is theirs

the song

among the wood-light Wounding the listener with such bright arrows? Or do they play in wheeling silences
flics

That

Defining in the perfect sky The bounds of (here below) our solitude,

Where

To glow in

spring has generated lights of green clouds upon the somber branches?

Art and Spirituality

Is
it

full of

sky and stillnesses

heavy summer

er the
e

songs still sleep rushes at your brim? tawny

)ur

than a season will be born here, nature, world of gravid mirrors!

quiet air awaits one note,

one ray, and it will be the angels' spring: one glance upon the shiny pond, and then jrges me! sweet wilderness, and lo! we are redeemed!
light,
flash,

like a grain of fire

Idering in the heart of every living essence

plants His undivided power es His thought too vast for worlds
jed
il,

and root and blade and

flower,

in the amazing light of April, Charging the religious silence of the spring, ition finds the pressure of His everlasting secret
terrible to bear.

n every way we look, lo! rocks and trees ures and hills and streams and birds and firmament our own souls within us flash, and shower us with light, ile the wild countryside, unknown, unvisited of men,
.

:s

sheaves of clean, transforming

fire.

then, oh then the written image, schooled in sacrifice,

deep united threeness printed in our being, t by the brilliant syllable of such an intuition, turns within, and oblivion, plants that light far down into the heart of darkness
[

2$ after,

and

discovers flame.

FIGURES FOR AN APOCALYPSE

UNGER
.en

no one

listens

the quiet trees ,en no one notices

;

sun in the pool

454

Vision

Where no one feels The first drop of rain Or sees the last star
Or hails the first morning Of a giant world Where peace begins

And rages end:

One bird sits still
Watching the work of God:

One turning leaf,

Two falling blossoms,

Ten
circles

upon the pond.

the hillside,
the valley

One cloud upon

Two shadows in

And the light strikes home.

Now dawn commands the capture Of the tallest fortune, The surrender Of no less marvelous prize!
Closer and clearer

Than any wordy master, Thou inward Stranger

Whom I have never seen,

Deeper and cleaner

Than
Seize

the clamorous ocean,

up my silence Mold me in Thy Hand!

Now act is waste

And suffering undone
Laws become
prodigals Limits are torn down

And

For envy has no property passion is none.

still

Look, the vast Light stands

Our cleanest Light

is

One!

THB STEANGE ISLANDS

Poems

455
ST.

A PRELUDE: FOR THE FEAST OF

small St. Agnes, dressed in gold

AGNES

With

fire and rainbows round about your face: Sing with the martyrs in my Mass's Canon!

Come home, come home, old centuries Whose soundless islands ring me from within, Whose saints walk down a winter morning's iris,
Wait upon this altar stone CSome of them holding palms But others hyacinths!).
1

speak your
feet

name with wine upon my lips

the singing of the quiet catacomb.
forget-me-nots the Blood of silence

Drowned in

My

upon

I sink this little frigate in

And put my pall upon

the cup

Working the mystery of peace, whose mercies must Run down and find us, Saint, by Saint John's stairs.

No lines, no globes, No compasses, no staring fires No candle's cup to swing upon

My night's dark ocean.

There the pretended horns
of time

grow dim.

No tunes, no signals claim us any more.

The cities cry, perhaps,
But the cloud has come.
I

like peacocks.

kneel in this stone corner having blood upon

my wrist

And blood upon my breast,

With
fire

O small St. Agnes, dressed in martyrdom

and water waving in your hair. THE STRANGE ISLANDS

456

Vision

A RESPONSORY,

1948
their wit

Suppose the dead could crown

With some intemperate

exercise,

Spring wine from their ivory

Or roses from Or if

their eyes?

the wise could understand

And the world without heart

That the dead

And that

are not yet dead the living live apart

And the wounded are healing,

Though in a place of flame. The sick in a great ship
Are
riding.

They are riding home,

Suppose the dead could crown their -mt With some intemperate exercise,
Spring wine from their ivory

Or roses from

their eyes?

Two cities sailed together

For many thousand years, And now they drift asunder. The tides of new wars

Sweep the sad heavens, Divide the massed stars,

The black and white universe The booming spheres.

Down, down, clown The white armies fall
Moving Toward
their ordered

snows

the jaws of hell

their wit

Suppose the dead could crown

Spring wine from their ivory

With some intemperate exercise,

Or roses from their eyes?

THE TBAH8 OP TUB BLIND LIONS

Poems

457

THE CAPTIVES A PSALM

Quomodo cantabimus canticum Domini in terra aliena?
Somewhere
a king walks in his gallery the gorges of a fiery city.

Owning
Brass
It is

traffic

shakes the walls.

The windows

shiver with business.

the bulls' day. The citizens Build themselves each hour another god And fry a fatter idol out of mud.

They cut

themselves a crooked idiom

To the winged animals, upon their houses.

Prayers are made of money, songs of numbers, Hymns of the blood of the killed.

Old ladies

are treasured in sugar.

Young The flesh

Blessed

ones rot in wine.

of the fat organizers smiles with
oil.

is

the army that will one day crush you, city,

Like a golden spider.

That dash your brats

Blest are they that hate you. Blest are they against the stones.

The children of God have died, Of thy wild algebra.

Days, days are the journey From wall to wall. And miles

O Babylon,

Miles of houses shelter

terror.

And we lie chained to

Our bodies

their dry roots,

O Israel!

are grayer than

mud.

There, butterflies are born to be dancers And fly in black and blue along the drunken river Where, in the willow trees, Assyria lynched our song!

May my bones burn and ravens eat my flesh

If I forget thee, contemplation!

May language perish from my tongue

If I

do not remember

thee,

O Sion, city of vision,

Whose heights have windows finer than the firmament When night pours down her canticles And peace sings on thy watchtowers like the stars of Job.
THE TEARS OB THE BLIND LIONS

45 8

Vision

SENESCENTE
Shrivels

MUNDO
when
the hot globe

Senescente muncto,

and cracks

And uninhibited atoms resolve

Earth and water, fruit and flower, body and animal soul, All the blue stars come tumbling down. Beauty and ugliness and love and hate

Wisdom and politics are all

alike

undone.

Toward that fiery day we run like crabs With our bad-tempered armor on. 'With blood and carpets, oranges and ashes,
Rubber and limes and bones/' (So sing the children on the Avenue) "With cardboard and dirty water and a few flames for the Peacelover's
ghost,

We know where the dead bodies are

Studying the ceiling from the
floors of their

homes.

With smoke and

roses, slate

and wire
fire."

And crushed fruit and much

Yet in the middle of
this

murderous season

Great Christ, ray fingers touch Thy wheat And hold Thee hidden in the compass of Thy paper sun.

There is no war will not obey this cup of Blood, This wine in which I sink Thy words, in the anonymous dawn!
hear a Sovereign talking in my arteries Reversing, with His Promises, all things That now go on with fire and thunder.
I

His Truth is greater than disaster. His Peace imposes silence on the evidence against
though the world, at
has swallowed her

us,

And last, And has condemned herself to hell: Suppose a whole new universe, a great clean Kingdom Were to rise up like an Atlantis in the East, Surprise this earth, this cinder, with new holiness!

own solemn

laughter

my hands I hold that secret Easter, Tomorrow, this will be my Mass's answer, Because of my companions whom the wilderness has
in

Here

eaten,

Crying

like Jonas in the belly of

our whale.

THE TBARS OF TUB BLIND LIONS

Five:

SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION

MOMENT

anil every event of every

man's
carries

life

on

earth

plants something in his soul. For just as the

wind

thousands of

winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not
prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up

anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity, and love. This is no new idea. Christ in the parable of the sower long ago told us that "The seed is the word of God" We often think this applies only to the word of the Gospel as formally preached in churches on Sundays (if indeed it is preached in churches any more!). But every expression of the will of God is in some sense a "word" of God and
of

new life. The ever-changing reality in the midst should awaken us to the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God. By this I do not mean continuous "talk/' or a frivolously conversational form of affective prayer which is sometimes cultivated in convents, but a dialogue of love and of choice. A
therefore a "seed" of

which we

live

dialogue of deep wills. In all the situations of

life

the "will of

God" comes

to

us not merely

as an external dictate of impersonal law but above all as an interior Invitation of personal love. Too often the conventional conception of

"God's will" as a sphinx-like and arbitrary force bearing down upon us with implacable hostility, leads men to lose faith in a God they cannot find it possible to love. Such a view of the divine will drives human weakness to despair and one wonders if it is not, itself, often the expression of a despair too intolerable to be admitted to conscious consideration. These arbitrary "dictates" of a domineering and insensible Father 459

460
are

Vision

of hatred than of love. If that is our concept of cannot possibly seek the obscure and intimate myswill desire tery of the encounter that takes place in contemplation. Face forever. from His hide and to Him as as from far possible only fly

more often seeds

the will of God,

we

We

So

much depends on

our idea of God! Yet no idea of Him, however

is.

pure and perfect, is adequate to express Him as He really of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.

Our

idea

We must learn

to realize that the love of

God

seeks us in every situ-

ation, and seeks our good. His inscrutable love seeks our awakening. True, since this awakening implies a kind of death to our exterior self, we will dread His coming in proportion as we are identified with this exterior self and attached to it. But when we understand the dialectic of life and death we will learn to take the risks implied by faith, to make the choices that deliver us from our routine self and open to us the door

of a

new being, a new reality. The rnind that is the prisoner of conventional ideas, and the will that the seeds of an unfamiliar is the captive of its own desire cannot accept truth and a supernatural desire. For how can I receive the seeds of freedom if I am in love with slavery and how can I cherish the desire of God if I am filled with another and an opposite desire? God cannot plant
I lis

liberty in
I

be free.

love

me because I am my captivity and

a prisoner
I

and

do not even desire

to

my things that I hate, and must learn therefore to let go of the familiar and the usual and consent to what is new and unknown to me. I must learn to "leave myselP in
order to find myself by yielding to the love of God, If for God, every event and every moment would sow, in
of
I

imprison myself in the desire for the heart against true love. I I have hardened

were looking
will, grains

my

His
For

life
it is

that

would spring up one day

in a

tremendous harvest.

God's love that warms

It is

me

in the sun

and God's love

It is

that

sends the cold rain.

God's love that feeds

me

in the bread I eat

and God

that feeds

me

also

by hunger and

fasting*

the love of

God
sum-

that sends the winter days when I am cold and sick, and the hot mer when I labor and my clothes are full of sweat; but it is God

Who

with light winds off the river and in the breezes out of the wood. His love spreads the shade of the sycamore over my head and
breathes on

me

sends the waterboy along the edge of the wheatfield with a bucket from the spring, while the laborers are resting and the mules stand
tinder the tree.
It is

God's love that speaks to

me

in the birds

and

streams; but also

Seeds of Contemplation

461
city

behind the clamor of the

all

God

speaks to

me

in

His judgments, and

would grow from my freedom, I would become the love that He is, and my harvest would be His glory and my own joy. And I would grow together with thousands and millions of other freedoms into the gold of one huge field praising God, loaded with increase, loaded with wheat. If in all things I consider only the heat and
the cold, the food or the hunger, the sickness or the beauty or Jabor, the success and failure or the or material evil pleasure, my works good

these things are seeds sent to me from His will. If these seeds would take root in my liberty, and if His will

have

won

for

my own
be

will, I will find

ness, I shall not

fed, I shall

not be

full.

Him Who made me

to

only emptiness and not happiFor my food is the will of

and

Who

made

all

things in order to give Himself

me through

them.

My
life or

chief care should not be to find pleasure or success, health or money or rest or even things like virtue and wisdom still less

my

their opposites, pain, failure, sickness, death. But in all that happens, one desire and one joy should be to know: "Here is the thing

my

that

God

has willed for me. In this His love

is

found, and in accepting

this I

can give back His love to

I shall

For in giving myself

find

Him and give myself with it to Him. Him and He is life everlasting."
it

By
love

consenting to
I

His will with joy and doing

heart, because

have His love in

my
the

my

will

is

now
is,

with gladness I the same as His

Love.

and

am on
all

way

to

becoming what

He

Who is

And

things from Him I receive His joy into because things are what they are but because God is His love has willed my joy in them all.

by accepting

my soul, not Who He is, and

is

HOW AM

to

know

the will of

God? Even where

there

no other more

on my obedience, such as a legitimate command, the very explicit claim nature of each situation usually bears written into itself some indication
of God's will. For whatever or
is

demanded by
to

truth,

by

justice,

by love
is,

must surely be taken

be willed by God.

To

by mercy, consent to His

will
it.

To

obey

then, to consent to be true, or to speak truth, or at least to seek Him is to respond to His will expressed in the need of

another person, or at least to respect the rights of others. For the right of another man is the expression of God's love and God's will. In de-

manding

that I respect the rights of another

to

God

is

not merely asking

is

me

to

conform

some

abstract, arbitrary law:

He

enabling

me

to

46 z
share, as

Vision

the rights

His son, in His own care for rny brother. No man who ignores and needs of others can hope to walk in the light of contemplation, because his way has turned aside from truth, from compassion, and therefore from God. The requirements of a work to be done can be understood as the will of God. If 1 am supposed to hoe a garden or make a table, then I will be obeying God if I am true to the task I am performing. To do the work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself to God's will in my work. In this way I become His instrument. He works through me. When I act as I lis instrument my labor cannot become an
obstacle to contemplation, even though it may temporarily so my rnind that I cannot engage in it while I am actually doing Yet my work itself will purify and pacify my mind and dispose

occupy

my job. me for

contemplation.
or fear or

Unnatural, frantic, anxious work, work done under pressure of greed any other inordinate passion, cannot properly speaking be dedicated to God, because God never wills such work directly. He may per-

mit that through no fault of our own we may have to work madly and in which we distractedly, due to our sins, and to the sins of the society
live.

In that case

we must

tolerate

it

and make the

best of

what we can-

us not be blind to the distinction between sound, and unnatural toil. work healthy In any case, we should always seek to conform to the logos or truth

not avoid. But

let

work to be done, or our own God-given naobedience and abandonment to the will of God Contemplative can never mean a cultivated indifference to the natural values imof the duty before us, the
ture.

planted by Him in human life and work. Insensitivity must not be confused with detachment. The contemplative must certainly be detached, but he can never allow himself to become insensible to true

human
does
root.
so,

values,

whether in society, irx other men or in himself. If he then his contemplation stands condemned as vitiated in its very

NEW

SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION

Six:

THE WIND BLOWS WHERE

IT

PLEASES

V~JoD,

Who

is

times to be present, sometimes absent. If

everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems somewe do not know Him well, we

do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present. There are two absences of God. One is an absence that condemns us, the other an absence that sanctifies us. In the absence that is condemnation, God "knows us not" because we have put some other god in His place, and refuse to be known by

Him. In the absence that sanctifies, God empties the soul of every image that might become an idol and of every concern that might stand between our face and His Face.
In the first absence, He is present, but His presence is denied by the presence of an idol. God is present to the enemy we have placed between ourselves and Him in mortal sin. In the second absence He is present, and His presence is affirmed and adored by the absence of everything else. He is closer to us than we are to ourselves, although we do not see him. Whoever seeks to catch Him and hold Him loses Him. He is like
the

wind

that blows

where

it

pleases.

You who

love

Him

must love

from where you do not know and as going where you do not know. Your spirit must seek to be as clean and as free as His own Spirit, in order to follow Him wherever He goes. Who are we to call ourselves either clean or free, unless He makes us so?
as arriving
If

Him

He

should teach us

how

to

follow

Him

into the wilderness of

His own freedom, we will no longer know where we are, because we are with Him Who is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Those who love only His apparent presence cannot follow the Lord

464
wherever

Vision

He

goes.

They do not

love

Him

perfectly

if

they do not allow

be absent. They do not respect His liberty to do as He pleases. think their prayers have made them able to command Him, and They to subject His will to their own. They live on the level of magic rather

Him

to

than on the level of religion. Only those men are never separated from the Lord who never questhem. They never lose Him tion His right to separate Himself from

because they always realize they never deserve to find Him, and that in spite of their unworthiness they have already found Him.

For

He

has

first

found them, and

will not let

them

go.

GOD APPROACHES our minds by receding from them.

can never fully know Him if we think of Him as an object of of our own ideas. capture, to be fenced in by the enclosure

We

We know Him better

Lord travels in
all

after

our minds have

let

Him

go.

The The Lord arrives from all directions at once. Wherever we are, we find that He has just departed. Wherever we go, we discover that He has just arrived before us. Our rest can be neither in the beginning of this pursuit, nor
directions at once.

in the

pursuit

itself,
is

Heaven,

apparent end. For the true end, which is an end without end. It is a totally new dimension, in which

nor in

its

we come

to rest in the secret that

He must

arrive at the

moment

of His
is

departure; His
fixed in time.

arrival is at every

moment and His

departure

not

MAN becomes the image of the God he adores. He whose worship is directed to a dead thing becomes a dead thing. He who loves corruption rots. He who loves a shadow becomes, himself, a shadow. He who loves things that must perish lives in dread of their perish* in & The contemplative also, who seeks to keep God prisoner in his heart,
EVERY
becomes a prisoner within the narrow limit s of his own heart, so that the Lord evades him and leaves him in his imprisonment, his confines

ment, and his dead recollection.

The man who

Lord in
I

leaves the

Lord the freedom of the Lord adores the

is

lis

freedom and receives the liberty of the sons of God*

loves like

This

man

God and

carried away, the captive of the

Lord's invisible freedom.

The Wind Blows Where

It Pleases

465

god who

remains immobile within the focus of

my own

vision

is

hardly even a trace of the True God's passing.

II

EACH TRUE CHILD

of God is mild, perfect, docile, and alone. His consciousness springs up, in the Spirit of the Lord, at the precise point where he feels himself to be held in being by a pure gift, an act of
love, a divine

command. The freedom

response of our

own freedom

crecy of our deepest being. life in the depths of ourselves.

We

of God's gift of life calls for the an act of obedience, hidden in the sefind the Lord when we find His gift of

We

are fully alive in

Him when

the

deepest roots of life become conscious that they live in Him. From this consent to exist in dependence upon His gift and upon His freedom springs the interior life.

LET THE COMMAND

of

His love be

felt at the roots of

my

existence. Let

these roots themselves consent to His creative and redemptive will. Then let me understand that I do not consent in order to exist, but
that I exist in order to consent.

This is the living source of virtuous action: for all our good acts are acts of consent to the indications of His mercy and the movements of

His

grace.
this

we can come to perfection: to the love which consents in seeks nothing but to respond, by goodness, to Goodness, and by love, to Love. Such love suffers all things and is equally happy in action and inaction, in existence and in dissolution.
From
all things,

Let us not only exist, but obey in our existing. this fundamental obedience, which is a fundamental gift, and the fit return of His gift, all other acts of obedience spring up into life

From

everlasting.

For the full fruitfulness of spiritual life begins in gratitude for life, in the consent to live, and in the greater gratitude that seeks to be dissolved and to be with Christ.

NO MAN

IS

AN ISLAND

Seven:

FALSE MYSTICISM

"ignorance" of the true mystic is not unintelligence but to be a desuperintelligence. Though contemplation sometimes seems nial of speculative thought it is really its fulfillment. All philosophy, all the true order of things, theology that is vitally aware of its place in

IKE

mountaintop may aspires to enter the cloud around hope to meet the Living God. All true learning should therefore be
the
alive
vital

where man

with the sense of

its

own

limitations

and with the

instinct for a

experience of reality which speculation alone cannot provide. Just as there is a Pharisaism of knowledge, so also there is a Pharisaism of studied ignorance, for one perverse instinct can feed on everything under the sun. The man who is proud of an abstruse and techni-

pleased with a sweet religious that him feel makes complacently superior to all learning, ignorance Each of these two men is proud of the same thing. Each thinks he has reached a peak of secret wisdom which is closed to all but a few* But the ignorant Pharisee is perhaps more obnoxious than the other, since he is proud of what he conceives to be his humility, and this is a great
is

cal doctrine, difficult to acquire the same way as another man

and acquired by few, may be proud

in

who

when false mysticism is a much greater danIt has now perhaps become easier to play on men's than rationalism. ger emotions with a political terminology that sounds religious than with one that sounds scientific. This is all the more true in an age in which the religious instincts of millions of men have never received their proper fulfillment. A nation that is starved with the need to worship
.something will turn to the
4 66
first

perversion. are living in a time

We

false

god that

is

presented to it

False Mysticism

467
ersatz mysti-

Hitler

showed the world what could be done with an

cism of "race" and "blood."

to

Communism, while prebe and unemotional, is no less romantic in its broad objective tending outlines. Marx's vision of a dialectic between economic forces that was
of
to

The mythology

end

in the

classless society

emergence of the proletariat and the establishment of a was a nineteenth-century adaptation of Old Testament

themes

Kapital imperialism is a new expression of an old Tsarist ideal the "salvation" of the world by Holy Russia. There is always a danger that the darkness of faith, which is meant
to perfect

owed much

the Promised Land, the Chosen People, the Messiah. Das to the subconscious heritage of the Jew. Stalinist

man's intelligence on a level that transcends man's nature,

may be exploited as it has been exploited for instance by Fascists to bring man's intelligence into subjection to powers below his nature.
There
are

many Dark Nights

of the soul, only one of

which

is

a purifi-

cation. All the others are a defilement of

man's

spirit.

And

their im-

purity is all the greater when they seem to be the real thing. False mysticism is often viciously anti-intellectual. It promises

man

a fierce joy in the immolation of his intelligence. It calls him to throw his spirit into the hands of some blind life force, considered sometimes

Sometimes this mysticism almost political, always exalts emotion above to intellectual argument is sometimes a program and its thought, reply of systematic violence the suppression of schools, the destruction of all this? Because the books, and the imprisonment of learned men.
as
is

beyond man, sometimes

as within himself.
It

sometimes religious.

Why

intelligence itself

is

regarded with suspicion.

II

brings us to the problem that is our main concern: false soul. False mysticism is most mystical experiences in a truly religious it is a deviation of when grace. And, since grace is given us dangerous

AND THIS

high supernatural perfection which He has our bestow upon nature, false mysticism ends also in a planned perversion even of nature. nature we seek truth. God's grace can give us an intimate experi-

by God

to bring us to the

to

By

ence of

is infinite Truth. False mysticism turns us aside from Him the true path to that end. It leads us away after a mirage and leaves us to die in the desert, locked in the embrace of an illusion. This can hap-

Who

pen in many

different ways,

but they

all

follow a few characteristic

Vision
patterns.

That

the abstract.

is why it is quite easy to talk about And yet, in concrete cases, the discovery

false

of illusion

mysticism in is some-

times extremely difficult, often impossible. In the abstract, false mysticism can fall under two characteristic headings. Both of these situate the private mystical experience in an incorrect relation to the Truth which God has revealed publicly to the

Church. One of these incorrect definitions says that the mystic has no need whatever of any conceptual knowledge of God, revealed or otherwise. In order to enter into "contemplative union" with God the "spiritual
soul of

form of spiritual activity, empty his As soon as the soul is empty, it and affection. thought filled with "acquired" contemplaand becomes automatically naturally without in it "knows" which God tion, experiencing the fact that it knows anything at all. Since this is supposed to be the nature of true
cease from every
all

man" must

contemplation, it follows that theological knowledge of God is by very nature an obstacle to contemplation and that the theologian

its is

professionally ill-equipped to become a mystic, while an ignorant man is naturally best disposed for contemplation. Such were the errors of

Quietism condemned by the Church in the seventeenth century. The danger of these errors is speculative rather than practical, because in actual fact it is very laborious to empty your mind of all thought, and few there are who will be disposed to attempt it. However, this is the
error that

most concerns us here because

the true doctrine

it

resembles, in

ficial respects,

which we

are going to

some superdraw from the

pages of Saint John of the Cross. I should like to point out, parenthetically, that Oriental mysticism at large has no more in common with the Quietism of Molinos than does
the mysticism of Saint John of the Cross. It is a very great mistake to think that Yoga seeks absorption in the Absolute by a mere relaxation
of the mind and stoppage of activity. The techniques and disciplines of meditation practiced in the Orient are far more laborious and exacting than anything known in the West, The Oriental contemplative is no more indifferent to conceptual knowledge than his Christian counter-

part Divine "revelation" plays a part in Oriental mysticism, and "knowledge" is one of the foundation stones of Yoga, Oriental mysticism is far more intellectual and speculative than the mysticism of the

West, and

this

is,

in fact, one of

its

deficiencies. It

is

too intellectual. It

tends to depend too exclusively on the

work

of man's

own
I

intelligence

and on human techniques*

I said that false

mysticism came under two headings*

have described

False Mysticism

469

the

first

kind of

false mysticism,

which

literally substitutes
is

ignorance for

knowledge. The
it

second kind of false mysticism

much more common:

claims to arrive at special supernatural knowledge by means other than those normally ordained by God. The most common illusion of well-meaning religious souls is to imagine that they hear heavenly voices, see visions, fall into ecstasies, and swoon away with rapture

when

by the work made. Locutions, visions, ecstasies, and other extraordinary experiences can quite easily be supernatural. Such things can and do come from God, although not every vision is from heaven. The important thing to remember is that even when they are supernatural, these experiences are not of the essence of true mysticism. They are only accidental to it.
of their
in actual fact they are fabricating these experiences own imagination. However, a distinction must be

This means that mystical contemplation in the strict sense is an experience of God which is directly achieved, under the inspiration of grace, without the medium of anything that is seen or heard or "understood."

In mystical contemplation

God

is

known

to the soul

without the me-

dium

And

species or image, whether of the mind or of the senses. therefore it follows that all visions and locutions are in a certain

of

any

sense opposed to true contemplation, at least in so far as they diminish its purity and its perfection. According to the language of the Christian apophatic theologians, in the tradition of Saint Gregory of Nyssa and the Pseudo-Dionysius, if you have a vision in which you think you see God clearly, you have not seen God. Saint John of the Cross devotes a large part of The Ascent of Mount Carmel to proving the thesis that visions and locutions and other experiences which purport
to give

us a precise supernatural knowledge of the divinity should never

be either sought
thing,

no

clear idea, can

after or positively accepted, since no created and visible as is in convey to us the full reality of

God

He

Himself.
Ill

TRUE CONTEMPLATION

is

soul. It is the experience of

not produced by images or ideas formed in the an immediate spiritual union with God, a

union which can only be effected by God and which is essentially a union of supernatural charity. Needless to say, no spirit other than Gocl Himself can unite himself immediately to the soul, and no one but

God

can infuse supernatural charity into the

soul.

True contemplation

and perfectly superis, then, the experience of a union that is so purely natural that no created nature could possibly bring it about. Indeed, no

47
spirit less

Vision

than the Spirit of God can possibly produce even a plausible imitation of true mystical union. Imitations are of course foisted upon souls, and sometimes with great success. But, as Saint Theresa some-

where
at

anyone who has experienced true mystical union can see once the infinite distance that lies between it and the false article
says,

produced by the Devil or by our own imagination. No such clear division between truth and error exists in the case of imaginary visions, locutions, and other such "distinct" experiences of the
supernatural.
tives to

That is why Saint John of the Cross advises contemplaremain negative toward them all, without even bothering to discover whether they come from God or from the Devil. They are all,
indiscriminately, to be refused. It is significant that the opinion of Saint

John of the Cross,

is

far

more cautious than that of most authorities. Catholic theologians commonly agree that no contemplative soul should ordinarily be allowed,
still

less

encouraged, to seek after visions, locutions, and other such

that one who shows signs of experiences. Incidentally, they also agree sufficient spiritual advancement and of proper dispositions should nor-

mally be allowed to aspire to true contemplation and to mystical union, and even encouraged to do so, if mystical union be understood first of
all

as a

union with God in perfect

are

much more
are

tolerant than Saint

to accept visions, locutions,

and

However, many theologians the Cross in allowing souls of John the rest, once they are given*
charity.

What

we
may

to conclude? Visions, apparitions, locutions, prophetic

inspirations

ternatural, or natural.

be, in particular cases, true or false, supernatural, preEach case must be judged on its own merits.
classified, in general, as

Such experiences cannot be

true or essentially false. It
is false to
is

not false mysticism

to

being essentially have visions, but it

is

make mysticism

consist essentially in visions. It

certainly

mysticism to follow a road that leads to spectacular experiences rather than to obscure union with God y as if spiritual perfection consisted in having such experiences and as if no one could become a
false

saint

without them.

All false mysticism misconceives the proper roles of

knowledge and

love in contemplation, as well as the essence of contemplation itself. It either discards all knowledge of God or else aspires to a "marvelous"

knowledge of I lim which falls outside the orbit of faith and is actually no knowledge of Him at all. False mysticism tends to treat contemplation either as if it were all love and no knowledge, or all knowledge and

False Mysticism

471

no

love. Finally, false mysticism turns us away from our true end and seeks the enjoyment of flattering and glorious experiences rather than the perfect gift of our whole to God alone.

being

THE ASCENT TO TRUTH

Eight:

THE SHADOW OF THY WINGS

IT CAN SOMETIMES HAPPEN

love into the dust of death.
it is

that we are brought down by Christ's Then we know, somewhat as lie knew, what
It is

to

be "poured out like water."

the terrible experience of seeing

oneself slowly turned inside out. It is the frightful taste of a humility that is not merely a virtue but the very agony of truth. This ghastly emptying, this inexorable gutting of our own appalling nonentity, takes

the light of infinite place under the piercing light of the revealed word, Truth. But it is something far more terrible still: we find ourselves

under the eyes of Mercy. to one who once thought he had a had once who he virtue, "degree of prayer," who once thought, thought and was God's good friend and who that loved God he indeed, perhaps, then, one day, is brought up for judgment, to be purified of all that is too human in his dream. For he has been cornered and accused, pierced and emptied by the shame of remembering who he really is. God seems to turn away His face. God seems to withdraw His protecting hand, and all the things he treasured, that were not God, have wasted away like shadows with the loss of His presence. This emptiness, this sense of spiritual annihilation which is due to us all as men bom in sin and grown old in sin, Christ took upon Himself when it was not due to I lim at all and He emptied Himself of all His power and glory in order to descend into the freezing depths of darkness where we had crawled to
eviscerated
ingratitude,

by our own

This

is

the experience that will

come

hide ourselves, cowering in blind despair. But because Christ came down into this no man's land of

sin, to find

us and bring us back to His Kingdom, we arc able to discover the living God in the very darkness of what seems to be His utter absence* And

472

The Shadow
what
So
is

of
it

more,

Thy Wings may be that we

473

we thought we saw Him

it

can happen

there more truly than when find in the of our own dim day. light that a soul enters upon the recital of a Psalm ap-

Him

let us plicable to Christ's Passion say Psalm 87. It is a day on which we seem to be buried alive under an inhuman burden of temptation. Per-

haps

we may

But the worst thing of

also sutler sickness, physical as well as moral desolation. all remains the inescapable vision of our own

almost infinite capacity for pettiness and degradation. "O Lord my God, 1 cry by day, in the night I weep before thee. Let my prayer come before
thee, incline thy ear to my cry. For my soul is full of evils and my life is on the verge of the grave. Thou hast laid me in a deep pit, in darkin the Thine ness, abyss. indignation weighs upon me and with all thy thou waves dost overwhelm me. Thou hast taken away my friends from
.

longer go forth."

me; thou hast made me abominable to them; I am shut up, I can no 1 This is practically the only Psalm that ends on a note
beaten

of complete dejection.

There is a faint flame of hopeful prayer, but it is the cold darkness of apparent refusal, and here is how the Psalm ends: "Thy wrath has swept over me and thy terrors have

down by

destroyed me.
all

together.
is

They surround me like water all the time: they assail me Thou hast taken from me friend and companion; The
intimate."

darkness

my

And

that

is all.

Yet

at

such a moment, and in such a Psalm, the

its

soul, catching

and

comprehending in
tion, is

confronted in
is

own black mirror the fearful darkness of revelaits own depths with the countenance of the murmore than a meeting.
It is

dered Christ. This

an

identification.

We

have entered into a Baptism of darkness in which we are one with His death. But to die with Christ is to rise with Him, for we cannot be dead
with
in God. 2 Although there remains a formal difference between the grace of the Passion of

Him

without our

life

being hidden with

Him

and the grace of His Resurto us, nevertheless in communicated rection in which supernatural fact both are poured out in the wonderful night of which the Liturgy 3 which we rise from death sings in the Eocultet. This night of Mystery in with the hidden Christ is the spiritual Red Sea of which the Psalms have it in truth and have sung to us all along. Now we have entered into
Christ by which
are delivered from sin,
life is

we

passed through
ness.

it to

be nourished by

God with His Body

in the wilder-

This
truth,

is

a death in
life.

which we have found

Him Who

is

the way, the

to

and the

We

now know

that this darkness,

which seems

474
annihilate us,
is

Vision not the darkness of death but,

if

such an expression can

be understood, the darkness of life. The tides of light that pour down is the soul of the upon the whole Church from the mountaintop which Risen Saviour, blind us by their intense purity and drown us in darkness although they are essential Light, and so the Night of the Spirit is If the paradox may be allowed, already a sharing of the Resurrection.
this frightful

death

is

our

first taste

of glory.

Then we

begin

to discover that the

night in which
4

we seem

to

be

lost

of God's wings. If God has brought us is the protection of the shadow wishes to guard us with extreme care He because it is darkness this into of the Psalm, "like the apple of His words the in and tenderness, or,
of the soul united Christ in His Mystery is sometender to be let loose in a crowd that may contain and thing too delicate God has isolated the soul in a soundless and therefore hidden enemies, of His own Heart where there is solitude the and vast interior solitude, can no longer even see itself. soul the where no human spectator and and close in a flash: but the soul True, the depths of that solitude open
5

eye."

The new

life

remains enveloped and penetrated with divine emptiness, saturated with the vastness of God, charged with the living voice of silence in which
is eternally uttered. darkness and silence is extremely necessary for the protection of soul that begins to burn with these touches of the Spirit of God. If it is Life without being enclosed and hidshould come close to Him

His

Word

The

Who

den

in

His
it

life, it

will find itself

itself

stand and

will

burn

charged with more power than it can out with an ardor that it cannot control. For

when

the soul has thus

is

known God

counter

sometimes
it

stirred

up by the

divinely, the memory of the enlines of Psalms, to a blaze that

unnerves

beyond

its

this degree of prayer there capacity to bear. In

mind with the weight from God to tackle this have no we But demand. help superhuman demand. It is not the wave of His present power, but an undertow that follows after His passing. Caught in the clenched fist of this bullying sea of love that is neither human nor divine and which seems to be someare drawn under and seem to drown thing elemental in its brutality, we until God catches us again and holds us under, not under the sea but

may
of a

arise

the high seas of inspiration that destroy

under the Mystery of His eternity, where alone there is breathing, This undertow, too, flows through the Psalms, It tends to attack us most where there arc appeals made to our mind and will by the word of God, by ceremony and liturgy and chant These aids to prayer which were a help to us at the very beginning and which went unnoticed as

The Shadow

of

Thy Wings

475

we advanced in living faith and in the prayer of quiet, which were sources of light and brought us into intimate union with Christ in His Mysteries, now turn against us like Goliath and we have no stones and
with which to fight back. This is the time when every line of the Psalms bursts forth with lights that we no longer need, spurious and tremendous inspirations that exhaust the soul and contribute nothing to
sling
its

peace.

And

the soul seems to find

it

no refuge where

it

may

flee

them.

They come upon

an army from every side and there is no resistance. The only safety is in darkness, the protection that can only be extended over us by the outstretched hand of God. need that prolike

We

tection,

and more and more we sense our need. For the

devils, too,

un-

derstand our position. They stand to profit if they can destroy and exhaust us with false lights and raptures of their own devising. This is the stage when the soul that is too tough for its own good, too well able to stand the overpowering sweetness of half-natural ecstasies, will be in

danger of entering the ways of false mysticism. Prayer will become debauchery, the Liturgy a
of all this falsity
brutality
is

riot of

violence. It

prophecy and carnal exaltation. The mark is sealed with the seal of contention and

and strain. These are the spiritual footprints of the devil who, he cannot deceive the soul with false raptures, soon tears off his mask and lets loose against us a jungle full of terrors and we live in nightmare on the threshold of the deepest darkness that alone can save us.
if

In this tribulation the Lord

God

is

we

fear.

Cum

i<pso

sum

in tribulatione.

ever with us, no matter how much These are words from Psalm 90

which arc chanted every night in the monastic Compline when the shadows fall upon the cloister and the monks are ending their day of I will rescue him and honor prayer. "I will be with him in trouble,
liim,"

The

angels are at our side, holding us

up

lest

we

should dash

could not travel through the forest that the our foot against a stone. life has now become unless His power carried us onward, where spiritual

We

and never asp and basilisk and never feel their sting, have made the Altissimum yosuisti refugium tuum. Most High God our refuge. The scourge will never touch us.

we

tread

upon the

suffer harm!

We

Psalm 87; i -4, 7-9. "Colossians 3; 3.

8 4

The Roman

Missal, Blessing of the Paschal Candle,

also:

Holy Saturday.

Psalm 1 6: 8, * Psalm 16:8. Compare "Psalm 90:15.

The

Cistercian Breviary: Versicle for Compline.

BREAD IN THE WILDBHNESS

Nine:

SHARING THE FRUITS OF

CONTEMPLATION

E BO NOT SEE God in contemplation we know Him by love: pure Love and when we taste the experience of loving God for His own sake alone, we know by experience Who and what He is. True mystical experience of God and supreme renunciation of everything outside of God coincide. They are two aspects of die same thing. For when our minds and will are perfectly free from every created attachment, they are immediately filled with the gift of God's love: not because things necessarily have to happen that way, but because this is His will, the gift of His love to us. "Everyone who has left his home or his father, or his mother, or his wife for my sake shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess eternal life." We experience God in proportion as we are stripped and emptied of attachment to His creatures. And when we have been delivered from every other desire we shall taste the perfection of an incorruptible joy. God does not give His joy to us for ourselves alone, and if we could possess Him for ourselves alone we would not possess Him at all. Any joy that does not overflow from our soul and help other men to rejoice in God does not come to us from God. (But do not think that you have to see how it overflows into the souls of others. In the economy of His grace, you may be sharing His gifts with someone you will never know
for

He

W
is

until

you get

to

heaven.)

w WE

EXPERIENCE God in contemplation,

we

experience

Him

not for

ourselves alone but also for others.

Yet if your experience of God comes from God, one of the signs may be a great diffidence in telling others about it. To speak about the gift
given us would scern to dissipate it and leave a stain on the pure emptiness where God's light shone. No one is more shy than a con-

He has

476

Sharing the Fruits of Contemplation

477

templative about his contemplation. Sometimes it gives him almost physical pain to speak to anyone of what he has seen of God. Or at least it is intolerable for him to speak about it as his own experience.

At the same time he most

peace and his world of men.
joy.

He

earnestly wants everybody else to share his His contemplation gives him a new outlook on the looks about him with a secret and tranquil surmise
to

which he perhaps admits

no one, hoping to find in the faces of other some sign of vocation and potentiality for the same deep happiness and wisdom. He finds himself speaking of God to the men in whom he hopes he

men

or to hear in their voices

has recognized the light of his own peace, the awakening of his own secret: or if he cannot speak to them, he writes for them, and his contemplative
life is still

imperfect without sharing, without companion-

ship, without communion.

AT NO TIME in the spiritual life is it more necessary to be completely docile and subject to the most delicate movements of God's will and His
grace than

men. them

It is

when you try to share the knowledge of His love with other much better to be so diffident that you risk not sharing it with

at all, than to throw it all away by trying to give it to other people before you have received it yourself. The contemplative who tries to preach contemplation before he himself really knows what it is, will

prevent both himself and others from finding the true path to God's
place he will substitute his own natural enthusiasm and and imagination poetry for the reality of the light that is in him, and he will become absorbed in the business of communicating something that is some benefit in is practically incommunicable: and although there this even for his own soul (for it is a kind of meditation on the interior life and on God) still he runs the risk of being drawn away from the simple light and silence in which God is known without words and conand language and metaphor. cepts, and losing himself in reasoning
first

peace. In the

The

highest vocation in the

Kingdom

of

contemplation with others and bringing other

knowledge of God that

is given to those the possibility of mistake and error is just as great as the vocation itself. IB the first place the mere fact that you have discovered something of contemplation does not yet mean that you are supposed to pass it on

God is that of sharing one's men to the experimental who love Him perfectly. But

to

somebody

else.

The

vocations: one to be a contemplative, and another templation. Both of them have to be verified.

sharing of contemplation with others implies two still to teach con-

47$

Vision
as soon as

But then,
to others,

you think of yourself

as teaching contemplation

except

you make another mistake. No one teaches contemplation God, Who gives it. The hest you can do is write something or
someone
else to realize

say something that will serve as an occasion for

what God wants

of

him.
II

ONE

of the worst things about an ill-timed effort to share the knowledge of contemplation with other people is that you assume that everybody else will want to see things from your own point of view when, as a matter of fact, will not. They will raise objections to everything

they

will find yourself in a theological controversy and nothing is more useless for a or worse, a pseudo-scientific one than controversy. There is no point whatever in trying to

that

you

say,

and you

contemplative

make people with a different vocation get excited about the kind of interior life that means so much to you. And if they are called to contemplation, a long, involved argument full of technicalities and abstract to get there, principles is not the thing that will help them must think too to who Those are go out and share their they quick
contemplation with other and give false notions of it

men

tend to ruin their

own

contemplation

to others,

by

language and discourse

to

do the work

words and trusting too much in that can only be accomplished

light of

in the depths of man's soul

by the infused

God*

much more to make men contcmplativcs by leaving them alone and minding our own business which is contemplation itself than by breaking in on them with what we think we know about the interior life. For when we are united with God in silence and darkness and when our faculties are raised above the level of their own
Often we
will

do

natural activity, and rest in the pure, tranquil, incomprehensible cloud that surrounds the presence of God, our prayer and the grace that is given to us tend of their very nature to overflow invisibly through the

Mystical Body of Christ, and we who dwell together invisibly in the bond of the One Spirit of God affect one another more than we can
ever realize

by our own union with God, by our

spiritual vitality in

Him.
has a very little of this prayer, the mere beginning of conand who scarcely even realizes anything of what he has, can templation, do immense things for the souls of other men simply by keeping himself quietly attentive to the obscure presence of God, about which he could not possibly hope to formulate an intelligible sentence. And if he

One who

Sharing the Fruits of Contemplation

did try to start talking about
lose the little that
it

479

he had of
to

and reasoning about it, he would at once it and would help no one, least of all

himself.

Therefore the best way

of sharing contemplation with other

prepare ourselves for the possible vocation men is not to study how to talk

and reason about contemplation, but withdraw ourselves as much as we can from talk and argument and retire into the silence and humility of heart in which God will our love of all its human purify imperfections. Then in His own time He will set our hand to the work He wants us
to do,

and we

will find ourselves

doing
it all

it

realize

work

got there, or will not absorb us in a

how we

how
way

started.

without being quite able to And by that time the

that will disturb our minds.

We will

be able to keep our tranquillity and our freedom, and above all we will learn to leave the results to God, and not indulge our own vanity by
insisting

on quick and
it

visible conversions in

everyone

we

talk to.

on paper, and perhaps it would really be easy if we were altogether simple and made no difficulties about letting God work in us and through us. But in actual practice one of the last barricades of egoism, and one which many saints have refused to give up entirely, is this insistence on doing the work and getting the results and enjoying them ourselves. are the ones who want to carry off the glory for the work done. And perhaps that was why some saints did not get to the highest contemplation: they wanted to do too much
Perhaps
looks easy

We

for themselves.

And
to

And God let them get away with it. therefore although contemplation like all good things

demands

be shared and will only be perfectly enjoyed and possessed by each one of us when it is possessed in common by all who are called to it, we must not forget that this perfect communion belongs only to heaven.

Be careful, then, of assuming that because you like certain people and are naturally inclined to chose them for your friends and share with them your natural interests, that they are also called to be contemplatives and that you must teach them all how to become so. The aptitude may
not be there. Perhaps there is a strong likelihood that it is if it is, be content to let God take care of its development in them. Be glad if He uses you as an occasion or as an instrument, but be careful not to get in His way with your own innate instinct for it is not good to be too eager for the companionship. For in this world of the best of even achievement of ends; and one who knows by
or

may

there; but

any,

God is always present everywhere and always ready to make Himself known to those who love Him, will not quickly prefer
experience that

480
the uncertain value of
of this infinite

Vision

human

activity to the tranquillity

and certitude

and

all-important possession.
Ill

SUPPOSE A

MAN

were once in

his life to vanish into

God

for the space

of a minute.

and

All the rest of his life has been spent in sins and virtues, in good evil, in labor and struggle, in sickness and health, in gifts, in
fear.

and regretting, in planning and hoping, in love seen things, considered them, known them; made judgments; spoken; acted wisely or not. He has blundered in and out of the contemplation of beginners. He has found the cloud, the obscure sweetness of God. He has known rest in prayer.
sorrows, in achieving

and

He has

In

all

these things his

life

has been a welter of uncertainties. In the

them he may have sinned. In his imperfect contemplation he found sin, have may But in the moment of time, the minute, the little minute in which he was delivered into God (if he truly was so delivered) there is no he gave glory to God; question that then his life was pure; that then of that then he did not sin; that in that moment pure love he could not
best of
sin.

Can such union with God be the object of inordinate desire? Not if you understand it. Because you cannot inordinately desire God to be God. You cannot inordinately desire that God's will be done for His own sake. But it is in these two desires perfectly conceived and fulfilled that we are emptied into Him and transformed into His joy and it
is

in these that
It is

we

cannot

sin.

in this ecstasy of pure love that

we

arrive at a true fulfillment

of the First

Commandment,
all

loving

God

with our whole heart and our

it

whole mind and

our strength. Therefore

is

something that

all

men who
half an

not for a minute, nor for desire to please God ought to desire hour, but forever. It is in these souls that peace is established

in the world.

They
of

God

are the strength of the world, because they are the tabernacles in the world. They are the ones who keep the universe from

being destroyed.
selves.

They are the little ones. They do not know themThe whole earth depends on them. Nobody seems to realize it.

These are the ones for shall inherit the land

whom
who

it

was

all

created in the

first

place*

They

They

are the only ones

will ever

be able

to

enjoy

life altogether,

Sharing the Fruits of Contemplation

481

They have renounced the whole world and it has been given into their possession. They alone appreciate the world and the things that are in it. They are the only ones capable of understanding joy. Everybody else is too weak for joy. Joy would kill anybody but these meek. They are the clean of heart. They see God. He does their will, because His will
is

their

own.

He

does

all

desires all their desires.

They

that they want, because He are the only ones who

is

the

One Who

have everything

that they can desire. Their freedom

for us to

is without limit. They reach out our tremendous exit in the and drown comprehend misery of their own that the world with its light. washes innocence, pansion Come, let us go into the body of that light. Let us live in the cleanliness of that song. Let us throw off the pieces of the world like clothing

and enter naked

they cry:

into wisdom. For this

will

is

what

all

hearts pray for

when

"Thy

be done."

NEW

SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION

E-pilogv

THE CLIMAX of mystical perfection, which is the consummation of perfect charity in so far as it can be attained on this earth, love cries
satiation of perfect vision.

/\T

out with a more and more ardent hunger and sweetly demands the Here there is no darkness. The dawn has

The first rays of the morning sun, the Divine Word, have penetrated the pure depths of the soul transformed in His Light, The soul stands on the bank of another Jordan the bright calm
come.
river of death. It looks across the river

and

sees clear light

upon the

mountains of the true promised land. It begins to be ravished to the depths of its being by the clean scent of forests full of spice and balsam. It stands upon the riverbank with the wonderful soft wind of the New World playing upon its cheeks and upon its eyelids and in its hair. And now it knows that the country it once took to be Canaan, the poor indigent earth of early contemplation, was nothing more than a a waste of dry rock to which it had escaped, at great cost, from desert

wisdom that is Egypt. But here is God. He is the Promised Land. Nothing is lost in Him. The whole world shines in His bosom. Creatures of all kinds spring forth without end from the bright abyss of His Wisdom. The soul itself sees itself in Him, and Him in itself, and in them both, the whole world. It sees all things, all men living and dead, the great semis and the little souls, the saints, the glorious Mother of God, and it is one with them all for they are all One, and Christ, God, is this One. He is the Promised Land, He is the Word, He is the Beloved, Here, in Him, all the articles of faith have converged their rays and have burst open and showered the mind with fire. From Him they came, through Him they came, to Him they return, bringing with
the vain

Epilogue

483
raised

them the minds they have

vain learning. In substance. There

up

in radiance

from the sepulcher of

prophesy

Him
is

the articles of faith have disappeared. He is their no further need for them to in part, for
is

when
away.

that

which

is

perfect

come, that which

is

in part shall be

done

And

so the soul, transformed in

its

heaven, sings

desire for

God and waiting His theology.

at the threshold of

THE ASCENT TO TRUTH

PART SEV

The
Sacrec

Land

And you must know

where yon
arc, is

that th& sacred land

full of every

seed

and has

fruit

not flucked in your world.

Epigraph

WHAT
God
and

in heaven?
light,

ARE THE HORIZONS that lie ahead, in the ascent to the City of There are high peaks before xis now, serene with snow
above the level of tempest.

never see them, they are so high. But

for there the saints dwell:

They are far away. We almost we lift up our eyes toward them,

and these are the mountains of holiness

BREAD IN TUB WILDERNESS

whence cometh our

help,

One:

SILENCE

JLHE RAIN CEASES, and a bird's clear song suddenly announ< the difference between Heaven and hell.

GOD otJK CREATOR and Savior has given us a language in which He c be talked about, since faith cometh by hearing and our tongues are t keys that open Heaven to others. But when the Lord comes as a Bridegroom there remains nothing be said except that He is coming, and that we must go out to m< Him. Ecce Sponsus venitt Exite obviam ell 1 After that we go forth to find Him in solitude. There we commu
-

cate with

pericnced on a level that can be clearly analyzed. We know that it mi not be told, because it cannot. But before we come to that which is unspeakable and unthinkab the spirit hovers on the frontiers of language, wondering whether or i to stay on its own side of the border, in order to have something bring back to other men. This is the test of those who wish to cr< the frontier. If they arc not ready to leave their own ideas and th own words behind them, they cannot travel further.
IF

Him alone, without words, without discursive thoughts, the silence of our whole being* When what we say is meant for no one else but Him, it can hare be said in language. What is not meant to be related is not even
<

you GO
But
if

into solitude

with a

silent tongue, the silence of

mute

beir

will share with

you you go into solitude with a

their rest*

silent heart, the silence of creati

will speak louder than the tongues of

men

or angels.

488

The Sacred Land

THE SILENCE

of the tongue and of the imagination dissolves the barrier between ourselves and the peace of things that exist only for God and not for themselves. But the silence of all inordinate desire dissolves the barrier between ourselves and God. Then we come to live in Him alone. Then mute beings no longer speak to us merely with their own silence. It is the Lord Who speaks to us, with a far deeper silence, hidden in the midst of our own selves.

noise are impatient of everything else. They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains silent nature in every direction with bore and the sea.

THOSE

WHO

LOVE

their

own

They

their machines, for fear that the

through calm world might accuse them of their

own

movement seems to ignore emptiness. The urgency of their swift the tranquillity of nature by pretending to have a purpose. The loud plane seems for a moment to deny the reality of the clouds and of the
by
its

of the sky remains

its noise, and its pretended strength. The silence when the plane has gone. The tranquillity of the clouds will remain when the plane has fallen apart It is the silence of the world that is reaL Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all

sky,

direction,

our fatuous statements about our purposes, or business, and our noise:
these are the illusion,

God is present, and His thought is alive and awake in the fullness and depth and breadth of all the silences of the world* The Lord is watching in the almond trees, over the fulfillment of His words (Jcr.
i:n).
the plane pass by tonight or tomorrow, whether there be on the winding road or no cars, whether men speak in the field, whether there be a radio in the house or not, the tree brings forth
cars

Whether

her blossoms in silence.

Whether
off to

the house be

empty or

full of children,

town or work with

tractors in the fields,

whether the men go whether the liner enters

the harbor full of tourists or full of soldiers, the

forth her fruit in silence.

almond

tree brings

THEEE ABE SOME MEN

of cutting
it

down,

for

for whom a tree whom an animal

has no value until

has no reality until they think it enters the

slaughterhouse,

men who

never look at anything until they decide to

to destroy* silence of love; for their love is the

abuse

it

and who never even notice what they do not want

These men can hardly know the

absorption of another person's silence into their own noise. And because they do not know the silence of love, they cannot know the silence

Silence
of

God, Who is Charity, Who cannot destroy what He loves, Who is bound, by His own law of Charity, to give life to all those whom He draws into His own silence.
EXIST in our lives merely for its own sake. It is ordered to something else. Silence is the mother of lifetime speech. of silence is ordered to an ultimate declaration, which can be put into words, a declaration of all we have lived for. Life and death, words and silence, are given us because of Christ. In Christ we die to the flesh and live to the In Him we die to spirit.

SILENCE DOES NOT

illusion

and

live to truth.

in order to meditate
is

on

Him

at

once the silence of

speak to confess Him, and we are silent and enter deeper into His silence, which death and of eternal life the silence of Good

We

Friday night and the peace of Easter morning.

WE

RECEIVE Christ's silence into our hearts

faith.

when
life.

first

we

our heart the word of

in hope. Silence
is

We

speak from

work out our

salvation in silence

and

the strength of our interior

Silence enters into

the very core of our moral being, so that if we have no silence we have no morality. Silence enters mysteriously into the composition of all the virtues, and silence preserves them from corruption.
IF

WE

FILL

OUR LIVES with

confess

silence,

then

we

live in hope,

and Christ
the time

lives in

us and gives our virtues

much

substance.

Then, when

comes, openly before men, and our confession has much meaning because it is rooted in deep silence. It awakens the silence of Christ in the hearts of those who hear us, so that they themselves fall silent

we

Him

and begin

to

wonder and

to listen.

For they have begun

to discover their true selves* If

We

and speaks in silence. the when the time comes for will never be anything, and in end, be found us to declare who and what we are, we shall speechless at the moment of the crucial decision; for we shall have said everything
in
lives

poured out in useless words the depths of our hearts, where Christ
our
life is

we

will never hear anything

and exhausted ourselves in speech before we had anything

to say.

THBKE MUST BE a time of day when the man who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all. There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls more propositions, and he asks himvery silent. And his mind forms no a have self: Did they meaning) There must be a time when the man of prayer goes to pray as if it

The Sacred Land

were the
first

time in his

resolutions puts his resolutions aside as if they had all and he learns a different wisdom: distinguishing the

moon, the

stars

he had ever prayed; when the man of been broken, sun from the from the darkness, the sea from the dry land, and the
life
hill.

night sky from the shoulder of a

IN SILENCE,
also

we

learn to

make

distinctions.

Those who

fly silence, fly

from

distinctions.

They do not want

to see too clearly.

They

prefer

confusion.

man who loves God necessarily loves silence also, because he fears the noise that takes the fears to lose his sense of discernment.

He

experience of reality. He avoids the unending movesharp edge ment that blurs all beings together into a crowd of undistinguishaHe
off every

things.

The

saint

is

indifferent in his desires, but

by no means indifferent

in his attitudes toward different aspects of reality.

HERE LIES a dead man who made an idol of indifference. His prayer did not enkindle, it extinguished his flame. His silence listened to nothing and, therefore, heard nothing, and had nothing to say. Let the swallows come and build their nests in his history and teach their young to fly about in the desert which he made of his soul, and thus he will not remain unprofitable forever,
LIFE
is

NOT

to

be regarded as an uninterrupted flow of words which

is

finally silenced by death. Its rhythm develops in silence, comes to the surface in movements of necessary expression, returns to deeper silence,

of

culminates in a final declaration, then ascends quietly into the silence Heaven which resounds with unending praise,

Those who do not know there

is

another

life after this

one, or

who

cannot bring themselves to live in time as if they were meant to spend their eternity in God, resist the fruitful silence of their own being by
continual noise. Even
chatter without

when their own tongues are still, their minds end and without meaning, or they plunge themselves

into the protective noise of machines, traffic, or radios. their own noise is momentarily exhausted, they rest in the noise of other men*
that they who have nothing to express are continlike nervous gunners, firing burst after themselves, ually expressing burst of ammunition into the dark, where there is no enemy. The reason for their talk is; death, Death is the enemy who seems to confront them
tragic
it is

When

How

Silence
at

every

moment

So they keep shouting

stun their

in the deep darkness at death.

and silence of confound their They

their
lives

own
with

being.
noise.

ears with They meaningless words, never discovering that their hearts are rooted in a silence that is not death but life.

own

They

chatter themselves to death, fearing

life as if it

were death.

OUR WHOLE

LIFE should be a meditation of our

decision: the choice

We
make
If,

must

all

die.

last and most important between life and death. But the dispositions with which we face death
life.

of our death a choice either of death or of

during our life we have chosen life, then in death we will pass from death to life. Life is a spiritual thing, and spiritual things are silent. If the that the of flame spirit kept physical life burning in our
bodies took care to nourish
itself

with the

oil

that

is

found only in the

spirit

silence of God's charity, then when the body dies, the spirit itself goes, on burning the same oil, with its own flame. But if the has

burned

when

along with the base oils of passion or egoism or pride, then death comes the flame of the spirit goes out with the of light
all
fill

the body becatise there is no more oil in the lamp. must learn during our lifetime to trim our lamps and

We

them

with charity in silence, sometimes speaking and confessing the glory of Clod in order to increase our charity by increasing the charity of
others,
iff,

and teaching them

also the

ways

of peace

and of

silence.

AT THE
it

MOMENT
will

of our death, death

comes to us as an unwelcome

be because Christ also has always been to us an unwelcome stranger. For when death comes, Christ comes also, bringing us the everlasting life which lie has bought for us by His own death.
stranger,

Those who
Their

love true

life,

life is full of a silence

therefore, frequently think about their death. that is an anticipated victory over death.
friend.

Silence, indeed,

makes death our servant and even our

Thoughts

and prayers

grow tip out of the silent thought of death are like trees growing where there is water. They are strong thoughts, that overcome the fear of misfortune because they have overcome passion
that

and

desire.

They

turn the face of our soul, in constant desire, toward

the face of Christ.

i SAY that a whole lifetime of silence is ordered to a final utterance, do not mean that we must all contrive to die with pious speeches on our lips. It is not necessary that our last words should have some of being written down. Every special or dramatic significance worthy

IF

The Sacred Land

good death, every death that hands us over from the uncertainties of this world to the unfailing peace and silence of the love of Christ, is itself an utterance and a conclusion. It says, either in words or without
them, that it is good for life to come to its appointed end, for the body to return to dust and for the spirit to ascend to the Father, through the

mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ. A silent death may speak with more eloquent peace than a death punctuated by vivid expressions. A lonely death, a tragic death, may yet have more to say of the peace and mercy of Christ than many
another comfortable death.

For the eloquence of death is the eloquence of human poverty coming face to face with the riches of divine mercy. The more we are aware that our poverty is supremely great, the greater will be the meaning of our death: and the greater its poverty. For the saints are
those

who wanted
supreme

to

be poorest in

life,

and who, above

all else,

exulted

in the
1

poverty of death,

"Behold the Bridegroom coraeth, go yet forth to meet

Him"
IS

(Matt. 25:6).

NO MAN

AN ISLAND

Two:

ATLAS AND THE FAT

MAN

farthest

V-/N THE LAST DAY of a rough but fortunate voyage, near the end of the known world, I found my way to the shores of a
of lucky rain: a

sentient mountain.

There stood the high African rock in the shadow

serious black crag, at the tip of the land mass, with a cloud balanced on its shoulder. silent man of lava, with feet in the surf, watching the

green high stream of days and years! saw the clouds drift by the face of that tame god, and held our as the ship was beached placed our feet on the hot sands peace. on the edge of night and of summer. This was Atlas at his lonely work! I never thought I would have

We

We

seen his face!

His head was hidden in sky. His eyes were staring darkness. His waters. His heart was safe at the thoughts were full of inscrutable bottom of the green ocean. His spirit stood silent and awake in the
center of the world.

held everything in massive silence. In one deep thought without words he kept the continents from drifting apart. The seas obeyed not his eyes, not his words, but the beating of his heart. His only utterance was one weak light in a lighthouse. Small sharp left the words, no commentary on the pure mystery of night, they

He

it and left it alone. mystery alone: touched From time to time he spoke (but only to the distance) with the short bass clangor of a bell. The neutral note was uttered, and said nothing. Yet it was this dim bell in the heavens that moved the weather and

493

494
changed
tlie

The Sacred Land

seasons.

eyes, closely followed

grew upon the ocean, before our by autumn, then winter. The waves moved by with white hair. Time rode the secret waves, commanded only by Atlas and by his bell. There were ages passing by as we watched. Birds skimmed the white-haired ages. Young birds kept the morning young. The silence of this unvisited shore embraced the beginning of history and its end. made believe that it was five o'clock. made believe that it was six o'clock. We made believe that it was it midnight. Atlas must have deigned to smile on our efforts, since

A new summer

We We

was now

dark.

His eyes gave hope

to the

tumbling ocean. Once again,

rain began to

fall.

WHEN
in the

IT is EVENING,

when

night begins

to

darken,

when

rain

is

warm

summer darkness and rumors come up from the woods and from the banks of rivers, then shores and forests sound around you with

a wordless solicitude of mothers. It is then that flowering palms enchant the night with their sweet smell. Flowers sleep. Thoughts become simple. Words cease. The hollows of the mind fill with dreams as with
water.

In the sacred
speaks
to the

moment between sleeping and staying awake Atlas night as to a woman* He speaks freely to the night he
?

loves, thinking no one is at hand. I le speaks of his heart at the bottom of the ocean. I Ic
spirit

speaks of his

at

the center of the world.

He
fires

woman do
the

not understand. Green

speaks of fires that night and that are extinguished by intel-

ligence, that night

damp warm

possess. Golden fires of spirit that are in roots of the earth. White fires that are clear rocky

and woman

outside of earth and sky which night and woman cannot reach. And waters that are common to night and to woman and to Atlas, ruled by

a bell in the
fires

moon and by
bell,

with his one

and looks

a bell in the sun. Atlas puts out all those at nothing. This Is the work that

supports the activity of seasons; Atlas looking at nothing. "How lonely is my life as a mountain on the shore of ocean with

and my spirit at the center of the where no one can speak to me. 1 ring my bell and nobody listens. All 1 do is look at nothing and change the seasons and hold up the sky and save the world* "No one will come near to one so tall, no one will befriend one so strong as I and I am forgotten forever. It is right that 1 be forgotten, for if 1 were not forgotten where would be my vigilance, and if I

my

heart at the bottom of the sea

earth

Silence

453

could understand

were not vigilant where would be the world? And if night anu where would be my thoughts, my strength? My thoughts would draw up my spirit from the center of the earth and the whole world would fall into emptiness.

"My stability is without fault because I have no connections. I have not viewed mankind for ages. Yet I have not slept, thinking of man and his troubles, which are not alleviated by the change of seasons. I wish well to mankind. I give man more seasons and pray that he be not left to himself. I want him not to see my far lights upon the ocean (this is impossible) or hear my dim bell in the heavens (this
not expedient). But I want him to rest at peace under a safe sky that I am here with and knowing my lights my bell and that the ends of the world are watched an and overseer the seas taken care of. by
is

easily, for this is the work I am used to. Though it is sometimes I hate it. I bear with loneliness for the sake of man. Yet to be constantly forgotten is more than I can abide. "Thus I intend not only to watch, but to move watching, and I
"1

do not

tire

child's play,

continents heaved

world and the and down like the of a scale, as all the up trays countries were Atlas the in middle of the great suddenly weighed by of lands and were the of the lands Asia night: Europe weighed in the hands of a tall hidden power, and knew nothing of it. The shores of America waited in the mist to be weighed in the same balance. It was Atlas, the guardian of nights and seas moving and watching. We expected movement only after it had already begun and we looked for power when the strong were already overthrown. We saw the dance begin secretly in genteel houses, under the kitchen oilcloth and leap to the tops of the most public monuments. Some buildings woke and walked downhill and would not stop until they came to water, Churches and banks begged pardon as they slipped and fell. People In the unsafe doors set out for earth that escaped them, and trod too late cm streets that hurried away. It was more than most men could afford hut far more than they could avoid. It was a lame evening,
taxi would take any man to the right place. This was what happened everywhere when the movement began. The title of the earthquake was "Atlas watches every evening/
1

shall begin by moving the theaters." At this there was a stir in all the distant cities of the

No

Tt IBM

JUMPED a great fatman in one of the stadiums. I le thought he was that god and that he could stop everything from moving, lie out loutl. I Ic swore thought that since he could, he had to. He cried

496
at the top of his voice.

The Sacred Land

roared and he boasted

He
into

gun and made the people listen. and made himself known. He blew back the wind and stamped on the rolling earth and swore up and down
fired off a

He

he could make it all stop with his invention. He got up in the teeth of the storm and made a loud speech which everybody heard. And the first thing he said was this:
"If
I

am

anything moves, I am the one to move the one to stop it. If anything shakes
is

it:

and

if

anything

stops,
it,

am

the one to shake

and not one thing

going

to

budge

unless pushed."

At

that

moment

at the

edge of the sea

had heard the dim bell everything stopped. No one (which Atlas had struck, in his dream, at this

in the dark at the edge of the very moment). No one saw the lights ocean (which had gone on and off with a passing memory in that far
place).

No

one thought of anything, the fatnian had

all their

attention.
his

NOW

THIS

BATMAN had been brought up on

secret.

oats

and meat and

His father was a grocer and his mother was a butcher. His father was a tailor and his mother ran a train. His father was a brewer and his mother was a general in the army. lie had been born

name was

with leather hands and a clockwork mind in order to make a lot of money. He hated the country and loved stadiums: a perfect, civilized

hundred and sixty-six and he worked hard had destroyed* building up All the people brought him money and played music to him because he was rich. And the music was so loud no one heard the bell ring
man! His number was
six

the stadium Atlas

Once again the houses began to tremble, one looked at anything, but fixed their eyes only on the fatman in his rage. No one heard Atlas far off thinking in the smoke. All they knew was that the city began to fall again and the fatman roared in
again.

No

the

tumbledown

theaters: "If

had

my way

there

would

lx*

RAIN/

a black mountain.

hands and had his way. Rain came clown as sudden as The clock struck ten. The world stopped moving* attributed this to the fatman whose name was secret, Everyone
lie hold

up

his

Then

in tlw holes of the broken city the sergeants amiled safe and gum became a thing of the present. Gas was mercy then to many a Jew mother ami a quick end came to more than a few as a gift of the popular state. "Here comes a chemical death* with the smile of the public father. You
shall

your hair

he cheaply made, extinct a$ a present from economy and we will save and teeth. Cyanide hopes are the face of a popular tomorrow with
>

Atlas and the Fat

Man
is

497

ever more fun in the underwears. Everybody has dollars in the well-run Demos , and more for cars than for Sunday. But Sunday
also

home

of

public

where Fatman has his office. Only a different name, that's all. "Here comes chemical Sunday, with a smile of the Fatman's ghost

father.

take the girth of the Fat Father's marsh, in the name of a new culture.

They

own

gas,

on top of the ancient

of every cradle

Toy thugs jump out

with weapons in their hands. They swing by hard and mean in the name of popularity and hoy, that popularity is going to make you jump. It is already famous what they can do with guns, and more so with a piece of small invented pipe, all for the fame and benefit of the new police. Fatman,

Mow us a gassy kiss from the four chimneys of your new heavenl" the four sides of the wind there came together in trolleys a set of delegations in the name of Dad. "Not forgetting Mom" they blowed, "we
Fatman,

From

come

to hail the Fatman in the name of Dad." And old Dad sat up high in the memories of the police, a nineteenth-century legend, a corncob angle measuring the west. piece of trueblue old gold faked-up fortune. True

Dad

is all

fixed

the Fatman)
toe to toe,

Mom

up

in the
is

mind

like a piece of

Real Estate,

real heart

and

all soft

in the easies.

"but Mom (cries Mom is fat from

and slimmer than an ankle. Good old American Maw is Father's on wedding-cake afternoon, in the days of Coca-Cola. Maw is safe in the new car and Paw cares for corners. The eyes of the innocent sergeant salute Maw with pride as they draw Jewish Hood. And we will have a clean America for our "boys, clean as the toy toughs punished in rugged Lux.
boast

Tomboy

Maw

is

the magic of Patman*s perpetual boast.

Then
and

the fatman

moved by

intuition placed his feet in the water

established contact with the spirit of night and the waves thrashed about his knees. All at once he began to grow. gave up meat to

He

become an
dealt with

ascetic.

woman

drank only the most inexpensive mouthwasL He only by mail He tried out his hands on the sky and

He

He would hold up the sky and preach he was suddenly religious* He began to list all the dates of history and to tell men another word for love and another word for death. He said he himself was the eldest child of love and death, but principally of death* At this he returned to his meat and dropped his letters and dealt with woman once again directly. He said
began
to

hold up the firmament,

for

at the

same time,

he could

also tell

down

notes of

them another name for woman* The people took what he said next, and he told them his own real name
African night^ we who we knew who had rung the bell knew who had sent rain. We knew
tears of the

was god.

WE wno

STOOD

far off

amid the

stood with our feet on a hot land,

and changed the weather.

We

498

The Sacred Land

which was power and which was image, which was light and which was legend. And we knew which of the two had his heart at the bottom of the ocean. We knew who watched and who moved under the theaters every time the bell rang. We listened intently to the cloud and
the darkness.

we

lived upon distance, and leaned upon emptiness until heard our mountain think plain in his own cloud. "Smoke is not measured by clocks" said Atlas. 'Time is not told by

We

disasters.

are not

What

Years are not numbered by the wars that are in them, days marked on the calendar for the murders that take place on them. is it that you are measuring, fatman? What is it that you are
is
it

What interpreting with your machine, meatman? of death? counting, you square, serious stepson
"I take

that

you are

my own

time/' said Atlas,

"which

is

the time of the sea.

The

sea tells
clock.
life;

its

The

own long time, not by the moon or by the sun or by any time of the sea is infinitely various, and out of it comes all

but only when the time of the sea is the time of the sun. Not the time of rising and setting, but the time of light itself, which has no
hours.

"The
of

sea's

time

is

many

rains.

The
are

the time of long life. The jungle's time is the time the trees takes time out of tine slow earth spirit of

and the leaves

life still

made

The

life

undersea, for invisible Tritons* of spinning suns.

gocls of the sea tell

of this earthtime turning Into light Longer The long life of the earth.

"The

no

time.

They

are busy with their

own

music. I Atlas improve the world with mists, evenings, and colors. 1 have my own music of clouds, skies, and centuries, I strike music from
far continents. Others

do not hear. They have heard nothing of

this

a long time. They have heard clock and cannon, not my music. They have eaten smoke and gone clown by train to the last mute home of
welfare,

which

is

the end.

the city of the fatman, for all his industry. Snow cannot make the softer city of the fatman, which is always black in its own breath.

"Sad

is

Rain cannot wash clean the

gray with his

own

despair.

city of the mercenary, which is always Light cannot make fair their houses or

wine

their faces, though they swim in millions they have won. The 1 fatman with his inventions is propping up a Fallen heaven/ Shall we forget the periods of his earthly mischief* not with regret? Shall we forget the fatman and his false rain? The people in that city
4
,

shuddered and the rain ran

with his stadium*

down

their necks

and the fatman struggled

Atlas and the Fat

Man

499

buzzers. I

Tatrnan" said Atlas, "you are a faithless mad son of clocks and do not know what apparatus was your sire, you bastard of two machines, born with another million. Your mother is not the

ocean, your father has not the sun in his heart, you do not know the smell of the earth, your blood is not your own, it is taken from armies. red flash goes on and off for every thought in your head and a buzzer announces your latest word. I abhor the traffic that comes from such a

mad, convulsive mouth.

It is the mouth of a horde, the mouth of a the mouth a of system, garage, the mouth of a commission." Atlas stopped speaking and the rain ended. The fatman raged in his
all

place and

fatman

to stand

the people sweated under attack. Crowds expected the up for his honor and for the first time to move the world

with his invention. Instead he only argued with himself and though he bragged he instantly called himself a liar. But in the same breath he accused Atlas of the most shameful infamies. "Adas is responsible/' he said, "for cloors and windows, stairs, chimneys, and every other form of evil." In attacking Atlas he ended by moving no one but himself, was the and this burden of his display: "Thirteen is an unlucky number and there are thirteen in this theater" (This was his first bravery and very nearly his last, the heart of his argument. For though he said much more, he barely moved beyond this point: oh lucky thirteen!) "Do you see," he cried, "do you see around me the thirteen beards of Victor Hugo and Karl Marx? Do you see around me the spectacles of Edison, Rockefeller, and behind me the comforting pokerfaces of Stakhanov and Patton ? Do you see above niy head the thirteen mustaches of Hitler and of Stalin? You who see these thirteen see me and
1

my fathers. "Now I have fought the elements for thirteen days and my invention. The elements will never be the same again.
,

nights with

thirteen thirteen

There were floods when the world was destroyed for the first time and sat together at supper in one room when very big business was

clone

by

my

cousin Judas,

(My

cousins

all

prosper in business.

We are

not lucky in love.)

"Now
and
I

myself the work of the atheist Atlas, I stand here to defy walls, fires, earthquake and enemy, 1 stand here to defy Atlas, Yes I stand here in the name of clean government to defy this upsquirt downpush four-fivc-six
confu$ion of aliens. Yes I maintain this

that the fates are measuring more fires for the cities of men, am inventing more of them, and walls begin to shake at

Adas

is

no longer

public,

and

500
never was mechanical.
Is

The
he insured? Has he
a license?

Sacred

Land
for

Ask him

his card, his thumbprint, and his serial number. Has he been registered? Has he been certified? I have been all these things not once but

thirteen times,

is fourteen stars on my best stripe. I am the the lucky winner and and the end, auspicious beginning prosperous the marvelous defeat. I am alone in the public eye on thirteen counts.

which

Mine
"I

is

the middle of the stadium*

I

alone shall shake walls in the future.

or more, or
less. I

alone shall light thirteen

alone shall determine right and wrong; establish fires, time and season; plan day and night as I please, and the sex and the future of children. I alone shall spite or command sea, wind and ele-

ment. And now by God I hear thirteen allegedly just under the oilcloth and if they don't stop I'LL FIRE!"

men walking

WELL, AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT, the citizens came out with bands to hail the fatrnan, since this had been arranged. But the fatman by now was lost in his own smoke. The strength ebbed out of his invention,

hands fell slack; his eyes popped out and his fat began to get him in all die heat he had caused with his speech. The men from away in the bands continued to perspire and blow. Their horns would shiver till the drums fell in. There was no rain and the fatman xvas smaller

and

his

than a baby.
fall

Winds were still as death; buildings swayed for Everyone knew the fatman would not get out of the way
all

the last
in time.

to

Generals cried to the fatman as they left by jump, but nobody heard his answer.

windows,

telling

him

Then

wall of clear ice and the fatman

Atlas stood over the world holding saw Atlas

up

the sky like a great

his friend.
his eyes

fatman was blinded by the glare of the ice world that had been made hateful by his own

was not and closed

folly.

The

upon a

So winter comes

to the

upon helmets of ice* It sun, a time of more bitter cruelty than before, though the fatman
gone. For even the just
it is

ocean and the quiet city wears plumes of smoke is a time of golden windows and of a steel
is

man now

kills

without compunction, because

duty to be hard and to destroy is mercy. Justice is a myth made of numbers. Mercy is love of system, Christmas goes by without a sound because there are no sinners any more, every one is just.

NO NEED

No

one needs

of feast days when everyone is just; no one needs to be saved, to think* No one needs to confess*

The cold saints of the new age count with their machine the bitter, methodical sacrifices they are making in the Eatmn's mcmoxy, and

Atlas

and the Fat

Man
is

5 01

stand in line before his tomb. Sacrifice

counted in drops of blood (where blood is still left, for many can do without it). Minutes are counted like Aztecs walking a man to his death with

on top of a bad pyramid: such is order and justice. the beauty of system. So the children of scandal sit all day in the icy windows and try in vain to shed one tear: but in a time of justice tears are of no avail.
his heart out

Such

is

For the just man there is no consolation. For the good there is no pardon. For the holy there is no absolution. Let no man speak of anything but Law, and

let

no work support

anyone but the

order.
.
.

police.

These are the

.

saints the

fatman has

left

us in the kingdom of his

Yet Titans under the sea must once again move. When warmth comes shall wake. Life shall wake underagain to the sea, the Titans of spring and under sea. The fields will laugh, the woods will be drunk

ground with flowers of rebellion, the night will make every fool sing in his will make them stand up in the sun and cover and the
sleep

morning

There is another kind of justice light. neither forgive nor be forgiven. can which number, the than of kind another There is mercy of Law which knows mercy worlds which cannot be newborn of a no absolution. There is justice
themselves with water and with

than the justice of

that spring into being without arc reason, and their mercy is without reason. They just rewards beyond description received without explanation. They have described. be to themselves refuse because They arc virtuous in

counted. There

is

mercy of individual things

they the sight of God because their names do not identify them. Every plant that stands in the light of the sun is a saint and an outlaw. Every tree that brings forth blossoms without the command of man is powerful in the sight of (Joel Every star that man has not counted is a world of an angel singing in a and Every blade of grass is
sanity
perfection.

shower of glory. These are worlds of themselves. No man can use or destroy them. Theirs is the life that moves without being seen and cannot be underhopeless to hope of a for what cannot be gained because you already have it. The fire wild white sun has eaten up the distance between hope and despair. and dance in the clarity idiot Wake Dance in this sun
stood. It
is

useless to look for

what

is

everywhere.

It is

you tepid

up

of perfect contradiction,

502

The

Sacred

Land

You fool, it is life that makes you dance: have you forgotten^ Come out of the smoke, the world is tossing in its sleep, the sun is up, the land is bursting in the silence of dawn. The clear bell of Atlas rings
once again over the sea and the animals come to the shore at his feet. The gentle earth relaxes and spreads out to embrace the strong sun.

The

grasses

and flowers speak

their

own

secret

names.
spill

With

his

and birds great gentle hands, Atlas opens the clouds land out of Paradise.

back onto the

You

fool, the prisons are

was only

his

own

open. The fatman is forgotten. him. Atlas never nightmare. Atlas never knew

The fatman knew

earth and of the ocean. anything but the ways of the stars, of the Atlas is a friendly mountain, with a cloud on his shoulder, watching

the rising sun.

THE BEHAVIOR OF TITANS

TJwee:

THE WISDOM OF THE DESERT

JLN

THE FOURTH CENTURY

A.D,

the deserts of Egypt, Palestine,

Arabia, and Persia were peopled by a race of men who have left behind them a strange reputation. They were the first Christian hermits, who abandoned the cities of the pagan world to live in solitude. Why did they do this"? The reasons were many and various, but they can all be summed up in one word as the quest for "salvation." And what was salvation? Certainly it was not something they sought in mere exterior conformity to the customs and dictates of any social group. In those days men had become keenly conscious of the strictly individual character of "salvation/' Society which meant pagan society, limited by the horizons and prospects of life "in this world" was regarded by them as a shipwreck from which each single individual man had to swim for his life. We need not stop here to discuss the fairness of this view: what matters is to remember that it was a fact. These were men who
believed that to
let

oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets

what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster. The fact that the Emperor was now Christian and that the "world" was coming to know the Cross as a sign of temporal power* only strengthened them in their resolve. It should seem to us much stranger than it does, this paradoxical flight from the world that attained its greatest dimensions (1 almost said frenzy) when the "world" became officially Christian, These men seem to have thought, as a few rare modem thinkers like Bcrclyaev have thought, that there is really no such thing as a "Christian state." They seem to have doubted that Christianity and politics could ever be mixed to such an extent as to produce a fully Christian society. In other words, for them the only Christian society was spiritual and

and values

of

504

The Sacred Land

and
almost scandalous to recall them in a time like ours

extramundane: the Mystical Body of Christ. These were surely extreme

views,
it is

when

withdrawal

and Christianity is accused on all sides of preaching negativism of having no effective way of meeting the problems of the age. But let us not be too superficial. The Desert Fathers did, in
meet the "problems of their time" in the sense that they were among the few who were ahead of their time, and opened the way for the development of a new man and a new society. They represent what modern social philosophers (Jaspers, Mumford) call the emergence of the "axial man," the forerunner of the modern personalist man. The
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with their pragmatic individualism axial man with its degraded and corrupted the psychological heritage of

fact,

debt to the Desert Fathers and other contemplatives, and prepared the way for the great regression to the herd mentality that is taking place

now.
desert was neither purely negative nor flight of these men to the were not rebels against society. The Desert individualistic. They purely declined to be ruled Fathers by men, but had no desire to rule over

The

others themselves.

Nor

did they

fly

from human fellowship

the very

fact that they uttered these "words" of advice to one another is proof that they were eminently social. The society they sought was one where
all men were truly equal, where the only authority under Clod was the charismatic authority of wisdom, experience, and love. Of course, they acknowledged the benevolent, hierarchical authority of their bishops: but the bishops were far away and said little about what went on in the

desert until the great Origenist conflict at the

end

of the fourth century.

What the Fathers sought most of all was their own true self, in Christ. And in order to do this, they had to reject completely the false,
fabricated under social compulsion in "the world They sought a way to God that was uncharted and freely chosen, not inherited from others who had mapped it out beforehand. They sought

formal

11

self,

God whom

they alone could find, not one

who was

"given" in a

stereotyped form by somebody else. Not that they rejected any of the dogmatic formulas of the Christian faith: they accepted and clung to them in their simplest and most elementary shape. But they were slow (at least in the beginning, in the time of their primitive
set,

wisdom)

arid horizons of the desert

to get involved In theological controversy. meant also a refusal to be

Their

flight to

the

content with argu-

ments, concepts, and technical verbiage* Obviously such a path could only be traveled by one

who was

very

The Wisdom
alert

of the Desert

505

and very sensitive to the landmarks of a trackless wilderness. The hermit had to be a man mature in faith, humble and detached from
himself to a degree that is altogether terrible. The spiritual cataclysms that sometimes overtook some of the presumptuous visionaries of the

show the dangers of the lonely life like bones in the sand. The Desert Father could not afford to be an whitening illurmnist He could not dare risk attachment to his own ego, or the
desert are there to

could not retain the slightest identifidangerous ecstasy of self-will. cation with his superficial, transient, self-constructed self. He had to
lose himself in the inner,

He

hidden

mysterious, half known, and lost in Christ. of transient existence as Christ had died to

reality of a self that was transcendent, had to die to the values

He

them on the Cross, and

rise

from the dead with

Hence

in the light of an entirely the life of sacrifice, which started out from a

Him

new wisdom.
clean break,

separating the

monk from
to

the world.

A life continued in

"compunction"

which taught him

lament the madness of attachment

to unreal values.

life of solitude and labor, poverty and fasting, charity and prayer which enabled the old superficial self to be purged away and permitted the gradual emergence of the true, secret self in which the Believer and Christ were "one Spirit" Finally, the proximate end of all this striving was "purity of heart" a clear unobstructed vision of the true state of affairs, an intuitive

grasp of one's

own

through Christ, The nor even fixation of

light.

inner reality as anchored, or rather lost, in God fruit of this was quics: "rest," Not rest of the body,

The

or summit of the, exalted spirit upon some point Desert Fathers were not, for the most part, ecstatics. Those
left

who were have

to

some strange and misleading stories behind them The "rest" which these men sought was simply the sanity and poise of a being that no longer has to look at itself because it is carried away by the perfection of freedom that is in it. And carried where? Wherever Love itself, or the Divine Spirit, sees no-mindcdfit to go, Rest, then, was a kind of simple no-whereness and ncss that had lost all preoccupation with a false or limited "self." At
confuse the true
issue.

in peace in the possession of a sublime "Nothing" the spirit laid hold, is know what to "All" without the secret, upon possessed trying In many respects, therefore, these Desert Fathers had much in

common with Indian Yogis and with Zen Buddhist monks of China and we Japan. If we were to seek their like in twentieth-century America,
would have
tragically
to look in strange, out-of-the-way places*
rare.

They obviously do not

flourish

Such beings are on the sidewalk at

506

The

Sacred Land

Forty-second Street and Broadway. might perhaps find someone like this among the Pueblo Indians or the Navahos: but there the case

We

would be entirely different You would have simplicity, primitive wisdom: but rooted in a primitive society. With the Desert Fathers, you
have the
void.
characteristic of a clean break
social context in order to

swim

for one's life Into

with a conventional, accepted an apparently irrational

Though I might be expected to claim that men like this could be found in some of our monasteries of contemplatives, I will not be so
bold.

With

us

it is

often rather a case of

fit

the "world" in order to

men leaving the society of themselves into another kind of society, that

of the religious family which they enter. They exchange the values, of the other. And since we concepts, and rites of the one for those

behind us, this puts the whole thing "norms" of a monastic family are also a leap apt to be conventional, and to live by them does not involve of and standards. customs a The radical into the void change only
centuries of monasticism
in a different light.

now have

The

social

words and examples of the Desert Fathers have been so much a part of monastic tradition that time has turned them into stereotypes for us,

have and we are no longer able to notice their fabulous originality. buried them, so to speak, in our own routines, and thus securely insulated ourselves against any form of spiritual shock from their lack of
conventionality.

We

The Desert Fathers were pioneers, with nothing to go on but the example of some of the prophets, like St John the Baptist, Elias, Eliscus, and the Apostles, who also served them as models. For the rest, the life they embraced was "angelic" and they walked the untrodden
paths of invisible
spirits*

Their

cells

were the furnace of Babylon

in

which, in the midst of flames, they found themselves with Christ. They neither courted the approval of their contemporaries nor sought to provoke their disapproval, because the opinions of others had ceased,
for them, to be matters of importance. They had no set doctrine about freedom, but they had in fact become free by paying the price of free-

dom.
In any ease these Fathers distilled for themselves a very practical and unassuming wisdom that is at once primitive and timeless, and which enables us to reopen the sources that have l>een polluted or blocked up altogether by the accumulated mental and spiritual refuse of our technological barbarism* Our time is in desperate need of this

kind of simplicity.

The Wisdom

of the Desert

507

gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it all the rest are not only useless but disastrous. Proof: the great travelers and colonizers of the Renaissance were, for the most men who were

What

can

we

part,

perhaps

capable

of the things they did precisely because they were alienated from themselves. Jn subjugating primitive worlds they only imposed on them, with the force of cannons, their own confusion and their own alienation. Superb exceptions like Fray Bartolome de las Casas, St. Francis Xavier, or Father Matthew Ricci, only prove the rule.

THE DESEBT FATHERS

This may seem
a
to

moment, we
is

insisted on remaining human and "ordinary," be a paradox, but it is very important. If we reflect will see that to into the desert in order to be extraorfly
to

dinary

you as an implicit standard of comparison. self-contemplation, and with the of standard the world one had self-comparison negative abandoned. Some of the monks of the Desert did this, as a matter of fact: and the only fruit of their trouble was that they went out of their
only

carry the world with

The

result

would be nothing but

simple men who lived their lives out to a good old age and sands only did so because they had come into the the rocks among desert to be themselves, their ordinary selves, and to forget a world that
heads.

The

divided them from themselves. There can be no other valid reason for

seeking solitude or for leaving the world. And thus to leave the world, is, in fact, to help save it in saving oneself. This is the final point, and

an important one. The Coptic hermits who left the world as though escaping from a wreck, did not merely intend to save themselves. They knew that they were helpless to do any good for others as long as they floundered about in the wreckage. But once they got a foothold on solid
it is

ground, things were different Then they had not only the power but even the obligation to pull the whole world to safety after them.

This

is

their paradoxical lesson for our time. It

would perhaps be

too

much
which

to

another movement such as that say that the world needs drew these men into the deserts of Egypt and Palestine. Ours is

certainly a time for solitaries

and

for hermits.

But merely

to reproduce

die simplicity, austerity, and prayer of these primitive souls is not must transcend them, and trana complete or satisfactory answer.

We

scend

all

those who, since their time, have gone beyond the limits

which

must liberate ourselves, In our own way, from Involvement they set In a world that Is plunging to disaster. But our world is different from

We

508
theirs.

The Sacred Land

Our involvement in it is more complete. Our danger is far more desperate. Our time, perhaps, is shorter than we think. We cannot do exactly what they did. But we must be as thorough
and
as ruthless in

our determination to break

all

spiritual chains,

and

cast off the

domination of alien compulsions, to find our true selves, to discover and develop our inalienable spiritual liberty and use it to build, on earth, the Kingdom of God. This is not the place in which to speculate

what our great and mysterious vocation might involve. That is still unknown. Let it suffice for me to say that we need to learn from these

men
and

strike

of the fourth century how to ignore prejudice, defy compulsion, out fearlessly into the unknown.

THE WISDOM OF THH DBSEET

Four:

THE RECOVERY OF PARADISE

Dostoevski's "saints," the Staretz Zosima who speaks as a typical witness to the tradition of the Greek and Russian Church,

o,

OF

makes an astonishing

life is paradise, for it suffices

He says: "We do not understand that only to wish to understand it, and at once paradise will appear in front of us in all its beauty." Taken in the condeclaration.

text of the Brothers

blasphemy, and murder which

Karamazov, against the background of violence, fill the book, this is indeed an astonishing statement. Was Zosima perfectly serious? Or was he simply a deluded idiot, dreaming the frantic dreams inspired by the "opium of the people"?

Whatever the modern reader may think of this claim, it was certainly something basic to primitive Christianity. Modern studies of the Fathers have revealed beyond question that one of the main motives that impelled men to embrace the "angelic life" Qyios angelikos') of solitude and poverty in the desert was precisely the hope that by so doing they might
return to paradise*
dise
this concept must be properly and accurately understood. Paranot "heaven," Paradise is a state, or indeed a place, on earth, Paradise belongs more properly to the present than to the futxire life,
is

Now

In some sense

it

belongs to both.

It is

the state in which

at

man was
kind of

originally created to live

on

earth. It is also conceived as a

antechamber

to

heaven after death

as for instance

the

end

of

Dante's Ptirgatorio. Christ, dying on the cross, said to the good thief at His side; "This day them shalt be with me in Paradise," and it was clear that this did not mean, and could not have meant, heaven,

We
ure* It

must not imagine Paradise as a place of ease and sensual pleasis a state of peace and rest, by all means. But what the Desert

Fathers sought

when

they believed they could find "paradise" in the 509

io
desert

The Sacred Land

was the lost innocence, the emptiness and purity of heart which had belonged to Adam and Eve in Eden. Evidently they could not have expected to find beautiful trees and gardens in the waterless desert, burned by the sun. Obviously they did not expect to find a place, among the fiery rocks and caves, where they could recline at ease in shady was paradise within groves, by cool running water. What they sought themselves. or and rather above themselves, They sought parabeyond dise in the recovery of that "unity" which had been shattered by the
"knowledge of good and
In the beginning,
into "a multitude*" Christ
evil."

"one man." The Fall had divided him had restored man to unity in Himself. The men could Mystical Christ was the "New Adam" and in Him all return to unity, to innocence, to purity, and become "one man." Omnes

Adam was

in Christo
one's

of course, living not by one's own will, and selfish spirit, but being "one own limited one's ego, who with "Those are united to the Lord," says St. Paul, Christ. spirit" Union "are one spirit.'' with Christ means unity in Christ, so that

unum. This meant,

own

in Christ can say, with Paul "It but Christ that lives in me." It is the same Christ

each one

who

is

is

now not I who lives in

that live
all.

The

individual has "died" with Christ to his "old man," his exterior, egotistical self, and "risen" in Christ to the new man, a selfless and divine
being,

who

is

the one Christ, the

same who

is "all

in all,"

great difference between Christianity and Buddhism arises at this juncture. From the metaphysical point of view, Buddhism seems
to take "emptiness" as a complete negation of all personality, whereas Christianity finds, in purity of heart and "unity of spirit/* a supreme and transcendent fulfillment of personality* This is an extremely com-

The

plex and difficult question which I am not prepared to discuss. But it seems to me that most discussions on the point, up to now, have been

completely equivocal. Very often, on the Christian side, we identify "personality" with the illusory and exterior ego-self > which is certainly

On the Buddhist side there seems to be no positive idea of personality at all: it is a value which seems to he completely missing from Buddhist thought. Yet it is certainly not
not the true Christian "person."
absent from Buddhist practice, as is evident from Dr. Suzuki's remark that at the end of Zen training, when one has become "absolutely naked," one finds himself to he the ordinary "Tom, Dick, or Harry** that lie has been all along* This seems to me, in practice, to correspond
to

the idea that a Christian can lose his "old

man" and

find his true

self "in Christ/*

The main

difference

is

that the language

and

practice

The Recovery of Paradise of Zen are much more radical,

the

511
austere,

Zen-man
to

says

"emptiness" he

leaves

and ruthless, and that where no room for any Image or

concept

confuse the real issue.

The

Christian treatment of the subject

makes

free

use of richly metaphorical expressions and of concrete

imagery, but we must take care to penetrate beyond the exterior surface and reach the inner depths. In any case the "death of the old man" is

not the destruction of personality but the dissipation of an illusion,

and the discovery

all
is

of the

new man

is

the realization of

what was there

along, at least as a radical possibility,

by reason of the fact that

man

the image of God. These Christian themes of

'life

in Christ"

and "unity in Christ"

are familiar enough, but one feels that today they are not understood in all their spiritual depth. Their mystical implications are seldom dwell with much rather, explored. greater interest, on their social,

We

economic, and ethical implications. said about "emptiness" ought not

wonder

if

what Dr. Suzuki has

help us to go deeper than we usually do into this doctrine of our mystical unity and purity in Christ. Anyone who has read St. John of the Cross and his doctrine of "night"
to

will be inclined to ask the

we arc to die to ourselves we must somehow find ourselves "dead" and "empty" with regard to our old self? If we are to be moved in all things by the grace of Christ should we not in some
same question.
not
If

and

live "in Christ," does that

mean

that

of the pure freedom

sense realize this as action out-of-emptincss, springing from the mystery which is "divine love," rather than as something
egotistical,

produced in and with our desires and referred to our

own
the

exterior self, springing spiritual interest?

from our
the
it is

St John
light of

of the Cross compares

is

man

to a

window through which

is

God

shining, If

windowpane

clean of every stain,

completely transparent, we do not see it at all: it is "empty" and nothing is seen but the light. But if a man bears in himself the stains of spiritual
egotism and preoccupation with his illusory and exterior self, even in "good things," then the windowpane itself is clearly seen by reason of the stains that are on it. Hence if a man can be rid of the stains and
his fixation upon what is good and bad he will be transformed in God and will be "one with God," In the terms of St John of the Cross:

dust produced within

him by

in reference to himself,

In thus allowing

God

to

work
is

in

it,

the soul (having rid

itself

of every mist

ami
of

stain of creatures,

which
i$

consists in

having

its

that of God, for to love

all

to labour to detach

and

will perfectly united with strip itself for God's sake

that

is

not God),

at

once illumined and transformed in God, and

512

The

Sacred Land

God communicates to it His supernatural being in such wise that the soul All the appears to be God Himself, and has all that God Himself has. and the in and are one the soul of God transformation; participant things soul seems to be God rather than the soul, and is indeed God by participa.

tion. 1

This, as
it

we

shall see,

is

what the Fathers

corresponds

to a recovery of the

innocence of

called "purity of heart," Adam in Paradise,

and

The

many

Desert Fathers in which they are shown to have exercised an extraordinary control over wild animals were originally
stories of the

undestood as a manifestation of this recovery of paradisiacal innocence. As one of the early writers, Paul the Hermit, declared: "If anyone
to acquires purity, everything will submit 2 paradise before the Fall."
If

him

as

it

did to

Adam

in

we admit
it

Staretz Zosima's statement that paradise

all, it is
still

is

attainable because, after

present within us and

we

something have only to

discover

there,

we may
to

ment: "one has only

wish

pause to question one part of his stateto understand it, and at once paradise

will appear before us in all

to be a little too its beauty," That seems a simple velleity. Anyone can make than required easy. a wish. But the kind of "wishing" that Zosima refers to here is some-

Much more

is

thing far beyond daydreaming and wishful thinking.

course, a complete upheaval and transformation of one's has to "wish" for this one realization alone and give
else.

It means, of whole life. One

up wishing

for

has to forget the quest of every other "good." One anything has to devote himself with his whole heart and soul to the recovery of his "innocence." And yet, as Dr. Suzuki has so well pointed out, and

One

as the Christian doctrine of grace teaches us in other terms, this cannot be the work of our own "self." It is useless for the "self" to try to "purify itself," or for the "self" to "make a place in itself" for God. The inno-

cence and purity of heart which belong

tiness of self in

which
lis
is

all is

the

expression of innocence, all

Uw.% the

to paradise are a complete empwork of God, the free and unpredictable work of grace. In the purity of original

clone in us but without us, in nokts ct $lttc nobis*

level, we must also learn to work on the other snettffawhere "knowledge" grace works in us but "not without us" it; itotris sal nmi siwe noltis*

But before we reach that

of

level

Dr. Su/uki has, in his

own

terms, very aptly pointed out that

it

would be
!>v

a serious error to think that

his

mvn

bootstraps into the state

one could hoist himself hack of innocence and go on blissfully

life.

with no further concern alxnit the present

Innocence does not

The Recovery

of Paradise

513

cast out or destroy knowledge. The two must go together. That, indeed, was where many apparently spiritual men have failed. Some of them were so innocent that they had lost all contact with everyday reality of life in a struggling and complex world of men. But theirs was not true innocence. It was fictitious, a perversion and frustration of the real life. It was the spiritual emptiness of the quietist, an emptiness that was blank and merely silly: an absence of knowledge without the presence of wisdom. It was the narcissistic ignorance of the baby, not the empti-

ness of the saint

who

is

moved, without

reflection or self-consciousness,

by the grace of God,

II

ONCE WE FIND OURSELVES

evil"

in the state of "knowledge of good

and
it

we have

to

accept the fact and understand our position, see

in

which we were created, which we have lost and which we can regain. But in the meantime it is a question of and innocence as complementary realities. This was treating knowledge the most delicate problem confronting the Desert Fathers, and for many of them it led to disaster. They recognized the difference between "knowledge of good and evil" on the one hand, and innocence or emptiness on the other. But, as Dr. Suzuki has wisely observed, they ran the risk of oversimplified and abstract solutions. Too many of them wanted to get along simply with Innocence without knowledge. In our Sayings* John the Dwarf is a case in point. He wants to reach a state in which there is no temptation, no further stirring of the slightest
relation to the innocence for
3 passion, All this is nothing but a refinement of "knowledge." Instead of leading to innocence, it leads to the most quintessentially pure love

of

self. It

purified self that is so perfect that it

trace of cracle reflection.
"self" that
is

leads to the creation of a pseudo emptiness, an exquisitely can rest in itself without any

Yet this is not emptiness: there remains a the subject of purity and the possessor of emptiness. And this, as the Desert Fathers saw, is the final triumph of the subtle in his pure self, a clever tempter, It leaves a man rooted and imprisoned

diseerner of good and evil, of self and nonself, purity and impurity. But he is not innocent, He is a master of spiritual knowledge. And

he is still subject to accusation from the devil Since he is he is subject to the greatest deception of all. If he were innocent, perfect, he would be free from deception. The man who has truly found his spiritual nakedness, who has
as such t
realized

he

is

empty,

is

not a

self that

has acquired emptiness or

fee-

514

The

Sacred

Land

come empty.

observed. Or, to put

empty from the beginning," as Dr. Suzuki has more affective terms of St. Augustine and St. Bernard, he "loves with a pure love/' That is to say he loves with a purity and freedom that spring spontaneously and directly from the fact that he has fully recovered the divine likeness, and is now is one with God, and fully his true self because he is lost in God. He 4 identified with God and hence knows nothing of any ego in himself. All he knows is love. As St. Bernard says: "He who loves thus, simply loves, and knows nothing else but love." Qul amat, amat et aliud novit
just "is
it

He

in the

nihil.

Ill
this is most important, remains to be said. Purity of not the ultimate end of the monk's striving in the desert. It is have said above that Paradise is not yet only a step toward it. not the final heaven. Paradise is goal of the spiritual life. It is, in fact,

ONE THING, and

is

heart

We

only a return to the true beginning. It is a "fresh start." The monk who has realized in himself purity of heart, and has been restored, in some

measure, to the innocence

lost

by Adam, has

still

not ended his journey*

He is only ready to begin. He is ready for a new work "which eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." Purity of heart, says John Cassian, is the intermediate
end of the
This
is

spiritual life.

a dimension

But the ultimate end is the Kingdom which does not enter into the realm of Zen,

of

God,

One might argue that this simply overturns all that has been said about emptiness, and brings us back into a state of dualism, and there*
fore to
etc.

Such

a state
is

"knowledge of good and evil," duality between man and God* is by no means the case. Purity of heart establishes man in of unity and emptiness in which he h one with God, But this

evil,

the necessary preparation not for further struggle between good and but for the real work of God which is revealed in the Bible: the
of the

work

new

creation, the resurrection

tion of all things in Christ.

This

is

from the dead, the restorathe real dimension of Christianity,

the eschntalogieal dimension which is peculiar to it, and parallel in Buddhism, The world was created without

new God

creation
in

which is the* and through man*

of

true

Kingdom
be the

of CJod

is

to

which has no man, but the be the work of

It is to

work of the Mystical Person** or one "Son

Christ, the

New

great, mysterious, thcandric all men as "one Adam, in

whom

God

11

will transfigure the

cosmos and offer

it

resplendent to the Father.

Here, in this transfiguration, will take place

The Recovery

of Paradise

515

creation, the final and consummation of which no mortal perfect mysticism is able to dream and which is barely foreshadowed in the symbols and images of the

the apocalyptic marriage between

God and His

last

pages of the Apocalypse. Here, of course, we are back in the realm of concept and image. To think about these things, to speculate on them, is, perhaps, to depart from "emptiness." But it is an activity of faith that belongs to our realm of knowledge, and conditions us for a superior and more vigilant in-

nocence: the innocence of the wise virgins who wait with lighted lamps, with an emptiness that is enkindled by the glory of the Divine Word

and enflamccl with the presence of the Holy Spirit. That glory and that presence are not objects which "enter into*' emptiness to "fill" it. They are nothing else but God's own "suchness."
1

John of the Cross, .Ascent to Mount Carmel t II, v. Peers trans, vol. i, p. 82* Quoted in Stolz, Dom Ansekn, Theologie de la Mystique, Chevetogne, 1947, p.
St.

Sia

"Abbot Pastor said that Abbot John the Dwarf had prayed to the Lord and the Lord had taken away all his passions, so that he "became impassible. And in this condition he went to one of the elders and said: You see before you a man who and pray is completely at rest and has no more temptations. The elder said: Go to the Lord to command some struggle to be stirred up in you, for the soul is matured only in battles. And when the temptations started up again he did not me pray that the struggle be taken away from him, but only said: Lord, give

The Wisdom of The Desert, strength to get through the fight." 4 Even when the soul is mystically united with God there remains, according to Christian theology, a distinction between the nature of the soul and the nature o God. Their perfect unity is not then a fusion of natures, but a unity of love and of experience. The distinction between the soul and God is no longer experienced as a separation into subject and object

XCL

when

the soul

is

united to

God

NEW

DIRECTIONS I/

Five:

POEMS

IN

THE RAIN AND THE SUN

Watch out for

this peeled doorlightl Here, without rain, without shame My noonday dusk made spots upon the walk: Tall drops pelted the concrete with their jewelry

Belonging

to the old world's bones.

Owning this view,

I

in the air of a hermit's weather, count the fragmentary rain In drops as blue as coal Until I plumb the shadows full of thunder,

My prayers supervise the atmosphere

Till storms call all

hounds home.

Out

of the towers of water

five

To see

mountains come walking monks' graves. Flying the neutral stones I dwell between cedars

Four or

the

little

And

see the countries sleeping in their beds:

Lands of the watermen, where poplars bend* Wild seas amuse the world with water: No end to all the surfs that charm our shores Fattening the sands with their old foam and

their old roar.

Thus

in the

Dogs and
() love

lions

Won by the bells of my Cistercian jungle,

In

boom of waves* advantage come to my tame home

which

the livid fringes their robes are drenched!

Poems
Songs of the
lions

and whales!

With my pen between my fingers Making the watcrworld sing!

Sweet Christ, discover diamonds

And sapphires
While
I

in

my verse

burn the sap of my pine house

For praise of the ocean sun.

I

have walked upon the whole days' surf Rinsing Thy bays with hymns. My eyes have swept horizons clean

Of ships and rain. Upon the lacquered swells my feet no longer run.

To

Sliding all over the sea I come the hap of a slippery harbor.

Dogs have gone back

to their ghosts

And the many lions, home.

But words fling wide the windows of Adam and Eve walk down my coast
I

their houses

Praising the tears of the treasurer sun hang Thy rubies on these autumn trees,
:

On the bones of the homegoing thunder.

THE TEAES OF THE BLIND LIONS

WISDOM
and it taught me nothing. and soon forgot everything else: Having forgotten, I was burdened with knowledge The insupportable knowledge of nothing.
1
I

studied

it

learned

it

low sweet

my life would be, if I were wise!

well

Wisdom is
Only then

known

When it is no longer seen or thought of.

is

understanding bearable.

THE STHANGK ISLANDS

518

The Sacred Land

ELIAS

VARIATIONS

ON A THEME

Under

the blunt pine In the winter sun

The pathway dies And the wilds begin.

Here the
bird abides

Where the ground is warm And sings alone.

Listen, Elias,

To the southern wind

Where
the grass
is

brown,

Live beneath this pine In wind and rain*

Listen to the woods. Listen to the ground,

O listexi, Elias
(Where
the bird abides

And sings alone), The sun grows pale Where passes One

Who bends no blade, no fern.

Listen to
I lis

word*

'Where

the fields

end

Thou shalt be My friend. Where the bird is gone Thmi shalt be My son/'

How the pine burns In the furious sun

When
the prophets

come

To Jerusalem.
(Listen,
lilias.

For the

fiery

wing)

To Jerusalem Where the knife Is drawn*

ins
>

her children run he covering wing?)

look,

k,

My son,

he smashed wood he bloody stone.

ere the fields
I

end

the stars begin

en, Elias,
:he

winter rain.
stone*
life

the seed sleeps

he sleeping
ile

the seed has

the stone has none,

there the fields end 'hou shalt he friend,

My
is

/here the hird

*hou shalt he

gone

My son,"
to

;re
:

were supposed

be

birds but spirits of flame und the old wagon*

ring

me my chariot")

TO were supposed
be fiery devices,

nd machines,
;h

all flame,

supernatural wings
full creek*

ond the
flame,

ring me my chariot of fire")

beyond the rotten

tree!

nc? This old wagon

ii

the wet, smashed wheels

etter*
s

("My chariot")
is

derelict
w

better.

>ffirc.
yif tor)
1

) It abides in the brown ferns

bums nothing.

Bring
it,

me ("Of fire")
and the rain

ter still

the old trailer

("My chariot")

th the

dead stove in

5*20

The Sacred Land

floor.

3omes down the pipe and covers the

Bring me my chariot of rain.

Bring me

Vly old chariot of broken-down rain. Bring, bring my old fire, my old storm,

My old trailer; faster and faster it stands still,

Faster

and

faster

it

stays

where

it

has always been,

Behind the felled oaks, faster, burning nothing. Broken and perfect, facing south, Facing the sound of distant guns, Facing the wall of distance where blue hills

Hide in

the fading rain.

are cut

Where the woods

(Against
all

down

the punished

Trailer stands alone

and becomes

the better intentions of the owners)

The House of God The Gate of Heaven.

CMy chariot of fire")

III

The seed,

as I have said, Hides in the frozen sod.

Stones, shaped by rivers they will Never care about or feel, Cover the cultivated soil.

The seed, by nature,

Fruit.

waits to

grow and bear

Therefore

it is

not alone

As stones, or inanimate things are: That is to say, alone by nature,

Or alone

forever.

Where do so many waters come from on an empty hill? Rain we had despaired of, rain Which is sent from somewhere else, descended To fix an exhausted mountain.
Listen to the waters,
if

possible,
11

And discern

the words "False prophet False prophet! "So much better is the water's message, So much more confident than our own. It is quite sure
false prophet, so

You are a

X3o back

Poews

521

Go back into

(You have not had the patience of a rock or tree) the cities. They want to receive you
to

Because you are not sent

them.

You

are a false prophet/

Go back where everyone, in

Is of a different

heavy hours, mind, and each is his own burden,

And each mind is its own division

With
sickness for diversion

and war

for

Business reasons.

Go where the
own

divided

Cannot stand

to

be too well. For then they would be held

misery.

Responsible for their

And I have been a man without silence, A man without patience, with too many Questions. I have blamed God Thinking to blame only men And defend Him Who does not need to be defended. I have blamed ("def ended") Him for Whom the wise
(Stones condemned) Waited in the patient Creek that is now wet and clean
I lately

stones

of all ruins.

So now,

if I

were
city

to return

To my own

(yes

my own city), I would be

Neither accepted nor rejected. For I have no message,

I

would be

lost together

with the others.

IV

U nder the blunt pine

I

who am not sent

dies,

Remain, The pathway

The journey has

I

begun.

lore the bird abides

Ami sings on top of the forgotten Storm, The ground is warm.

I
I

le sings
lis

no particular message. hymn has one pattern, no more planned,

planned

No less perfectly

And no more arbitrary

522

The Sacred Land

Than the pattern in the seed, the salt, The snow, the cell, the drop of rain.
(Snow says
Rain
says:
:

have

my own pattern;

no

arbitrary plan!

River says: I go my own way. Bird says: I am the same.

The pine tree says also: Not compulsion plants me in my

No, not compulsion!)

place,

The free man is not alone as busy men But as birds are. The free man sings
Alone
as universes do. Built

are

Upon his own inscrutable pattern

Clear, unmistakable, not invented by himself alone Or for himself, but for the universe also.

Nor does he make it his business to be recognized Or care to have himself found out
As if some
special subterfuge

were needed

To get himself known for who he is.

The free man does not float On the tides of his own expedition Nor is he sent on ventures as busy men are,
Bound to an inexorable result: But like the birds or lilies

He seeks first the Kingdom, without care.

Nor need the
free

man remember

Any keep campaigns In his head, or countries for that matter

Or any other economy*
Under
Elias

street or city, or

the blunt pine

becomes his own geography (Supposing geography to be necessary at all), Elias becomes his own wild bird, with God in the center, I Ih own wide field which nobody owns,

His own pattern, surrounding the Spirit By which he is himself surrounded:

For the free man's road
lias

neither beginning nor end.

TUB 8TKVANGB ISLANDS

Poems

523

"WHEN
When In
With
It is a

IN

THE SOUL OF THE SERENE

DISCIPLE

."

the soul of the serene disciple no more Fathers to imitate

is

Poverty

a success,
is

small thing to say the roof

gone:

He has not even a house.

Stars, as well as friends,

Are angry with the noble ruin.

Saints depart in several directions.

Be still: There is no longer any need of comment. It was a lucky wind That blew away his halo with his cares, A lucky sea that drowned his reputation. Here you
will find

Neither a proverb nor a memorandum.

There are no ways, No methods to admire Where poverty is no achievement.

I lis

God

lives in his

emptiness like an

affliction.

What choice remains?

Well,
It is

to be ordinary is not a choice: the usual freedom

Of men without visions.

THE STRANGE ISLANDS

SPRING STORM
When in
and haste the skies must Upon our white-eyed home, and blindly turn
their ignorance
fall

Feeling the four long limits of the wall,

How unsubstantial is our present state

In the clean blowing of those -elements Whose study is our problem and our fate?

524

The
the snow,
straits

Sacred Land

The intellects go mumbling in

And find the blurred, incredible sun (and moon)

Jammed in the white door, and the troubled The dugout where the fallen sky lies down.

A mess of secret trumpets, with their weight

Of portents,
veil the

bluntness where

we

run.

How true a passion has this hour begun!

The sky melts on my patient animal

(My pointless self, the hunter of my home),

My breath burns in the open like a ton

In the blue waking of those elements

Whose study is our quibble and our doom.

O watch the woolen hundreds on the run!

THE STRANGE ISLANDS

DRY PLACES
No cars go by
Where
Yet
it is

dogs arc barking at the desert. not twenty years since many lamps

Shed

their juices in this

one time town

And stores grew big lights, like oranges and pears.

Now not one lame miner

Sits

on the

rotten verandah,

Works
Judas'

in the irons

where

shadow

dwells*

Yet

could

From

a city the side of their hill

hew

O deep stone covert where the dusk

Is full of lighted leasts

And the mad stars preach wars without end: Whose bushes and grasses live without water.
There the skinny father of hate
rolls in his

dust

And if the wind should shift one leaf The dead jump up and bark for their ghosts:
Their dry bones want our penniless
souls.

Poems
Bones, go back to your baskets. Get your fingers out of my clean skin.

525

own souls Come back in the appointed way and sort you out from your remains.
Rest in your rainless death until your

We who are
From

still

alive will

wring a few green blades

clay.
oasis,

the floor of this valley

Though plows abhor your metal and your

Rather than starve with you in rocks without

We will get up and work your loam

Until some prayer or some lean sentence Bleeds like the quickest root they ever cut.

For

Or

we cannot forget the legend of the world's childhood the track to the dogwood valley

And Adam our Father's old grass farm

Wherein they gave the animals names And knew Christ was promised first without scars

When all God's larks called out to Him

In their wild orchard.

THE TEAKS 0$ THE BLIND LIONS

THE HEAVENLY CITY

City,

when we sec you coming down, Coming down from God To he the new world's crown:
1

low

shall they sing, the fresh, unsalted seas

tearing your harmonics!

For there is no more death, No need to cure those waters, now, with any brine; Their shores give them no dead, Rivers no blood, no rot to stain them.
Because the cruel algebra of war now no more.

Is

And

the steel circle of time, inexorable,

Bites like a padlock shut, forever,

In the

smoke of the last bomb:

The Sacred Land

And in that trap the murderers and sorcerers and crooked leaders Go rolling home to hell. And history is done.
Shine with your lamb-light, shine upon the world:

You

are the new creation's sun. And standing on their twelve foundations, Lo, the twelve gates that are One Christ are wide as canticles: And Oh! Begin to hear the thunder of the songs within

the crystal

Towers,

While

all

And fly to
Oh,
City,

the saints rise from their earth with feet like light trcacl the quick-gold of those streets,
sailing

Sailing

when we see you down from God,

down,

Dressed in the glory of the Trinity, and angel-crowned In nine white diadems of liturgy.

SELECTED K)BMS

Six:

THEOLOGY OF CREATIVITY

who

attempts to is forced to fall

is no genuine creativity apart from God, the man be a "creator" outside of God and independent of him back on magic. The sin of the wizard is not so much that he usurps and exercises a real preternatural power, but that his postures travesty the divine by degrading man's freedom in absurd and

OINCE THERE

servile manipulations of reality. The dignity of man is to stand before God on his own feet, alive, conscious, alert to the light that has been

placed in him, and perfectly obedient to that light. Wizardry and idolatry obscure the light, dim man's vision, and reduce him to a state of infatuated self-absorption in which he plays at unveiling and
displaying powers that were meant to remain secret, not in the sense that they must be concealed from others, but in the sense that the artist

ought not

to

be wasting his

own

attention

upon them

or calling the

attention of others to them.

He

should be using them in an "empty"

and

disinterested

manner

for the

good of others and for the glory of

God instead of exploiting them to draw attention to himself. The commandment "to make no graven image" is designed first of all to protect man against his inveterate temptation to make gods in his own image,
gods in which he can objectify and venerate the divinely given powers he finds in himself. By this magic man seeks to enjoy in himself those

powers that were given him as means to find fulfilment beyond and above himself. This bending back upon self, this fixation upon the exterior self was, for St. Augustine, one of the principal elements in the
fall

of

Adam. 1

Man's true creativity is lost, then, with his loss of innocence, selflessness, and simplicity. Oblivious of his external self and empty of self, man was originally one with God his creator. So intimate was their
517

528

The Sacred Land

live

union that the creator could

created instrument.
is

Having

fallen,
this

once again able to recover

and act with perfect freedom in his and been redeemed in Christ, man state of innocence and union, in and

through Christ.

The

Spirit of

God, the Creator Spiritus who brooded

over the waters before the world

came

into being, dwells in

man and

broods over the abyss of his human spirit, seeking to call forth from it a new world, a new spiritual creation, in union with the liberty of man

redeemed in Christ, The theology of

theology of the

ing us from from the dead. 2

power very a theology of theology of creativity will also be the image and likeness of God in man. The restoration of our creativity to Cod in Christ, is simply one aspect of our recovery of our likeness

bo the creativity will necessarily of raisin likeness the us Christ, Holy Spirit re-forming which raised Christ same death to life with the

The

The image

of

Gregory of Nyssa.
man's freedom
consequently
is

God in man is his freedom, say St. Bernard and St The likeness of God in man is fully restored when
perfectly united acts in all things as

with the divine freedom, and when,

man

God

acts.

Or

rather
1*

when Cod

and man

act purely and simply as one. Since "God is love then for man to be restored to the likeness of God, all his acts must he pure and dis-

interested love, lacking all taint of that proprium which makes him aware of himself as a separate, insecure subject of inordinate needs which he seeks to satisfy at somebody else's expense. Creativity becomes
possible in so far as
lose himself in

man

can forget his limitations and his selfhood and

to the

abandonment

immense

creative

power of a love

some length on the few chapters of Genesis, the narrative of the creation ant the fall* Especially important is Genesis 2:15-24, in which Adam appears as God's collaborator in governing paradise and in which he is given the
first
I

too great to be seen or comprehended, theology of creativity might, then, meditate at

power to name the animals as he sees fit: "for whatsoever Adam called any living creature, the same is its name/* The most significant part of this passage would be sought in the typical sense of verses 11*24, on the creation of live. The mystery of Christ and his Church xvotikl be
the*

works

very heart of any fully developed theology of creativity, Patristic like St* Gregory of Nyssa's DC Ilomhiis Opiftcio might furnish

a rich variety of intuitions From which to start building a synthesis. would, of etmrse, have to ransack the works of Origen and St. Augustine.

We

Among

the scholastic sources,

we ought
St.

not

to neglect

the mag-

nificent (.lolhttfancs in
rials for

Hcxtwnn'rwt of

Bonavcnturc. Valuable route*

study can only be briefly indicated here.

Theology of Creativity
all be necessary to disentangle the various threads of about man's thought creativity as individual person and man's creativity in society. There can be no doubt that a theology of creativity would

It

would above

perspective to the distorted view produced by the exceptional personality of the "genius" and his complete independence from all ethical and aesthetic norms by virtue of his talented personality. But the theological view would do nothing

give an entirely

new

undue emphasis on

to diminish the value of the person: on the contrary, situating the person in his right place in relation to other men and to God, our theology would liberate in him the deepest potentialities of his nature and the

highest,

most

secret

creativity of the Christian person creative vocation of the new Adam,

The

endowments of divine grace. must be seen

in relation to die

Christ/'

The

creative will of

God

mystical person of the "whole has been at work in the cosmos since

he

said;

at the

dawn

"Let there be light" This creative fiat was not uttered merely of time. All time and all history are a continued, uninteract,

rupted creative

a stupendous, ineffable mystery in which

God

has

signified his will to associate man with himself in his work of creation, The will and power of the Almighty Father were not satisfied simply
to

make

the world and turn

it

over to

man

to

run

it

as best

he could.

The
it

met, at first, by the destructive and selfcentered refusal of man: an act of such incalculable consequences that
creative love of

God was

would have amounted to a destruction of God's plan, if that were possible. But the creative work of God could not be frustrated by man's sin. On the contrary, sin itself entered into that plan. If man was first called to share in the creative work of his heavenly Father, he now became involved in the "new creation/' the redemption of his own kind and the restoration of the cosmos, purified and transfigured, into the hands of the Father. God himself became man in order that in this way man eoukl be most perfectly associated with him in this great work, the fullest manifestation of his eternal wisdom and mercy.
Christian dimensions of creativity are, then, to be meditated in the light of such texts as Ephesians r:8-xo (the re-establishment of all

The

work of God building the things in Christ); Golossians 1:9-2.9 (the of every creature/' and "firstborn Church of stunts united in Christ, the

we

all things to himself). In this text, particularly, see the creative role of suffering. This is very important. It is the on the individual, his reply to tine secular and demonic overemphasis
its

through him reconciling

self-fulfillment in art for

own

sake.

that the cross

is

the center of the

new

Here, on the contrary, we see creation: the tree of life, instead

53 o
of the tree of the

The
knowledge of good and
evil.

Sacred

He who

has approached

the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has tasted the intoxicating the death of frustration. fruit of his own special excellence but he dies

becomes the prisoner of his own gifts and he sticks to his own excelfor him because he is if it were flypaper. There is no joy alienated from life, love, and communion in creativity by his own demonic self-assertion, which automatically involves a rejection of suffering, of dependence, of charity, and of obedience. On the contrary, it is the renunciation of our false self, the emptying

He

lence as

of self in the likeness of Christ, that brings us to the threshold of that true creativity in which God himself, the creator, works in and through

renounces his own limited ends and something greater than he can sec or understand means the sacrifice of immediate visible results. But it also means that the efficacy of his action becomes lasting as well as univerus.

The

fact that the Christian

satisfactions in order to achieve

sal.

Such

and

with a little ephemeral success here creativity does not stop there; it reaches out to the ends of time and to the limits of the

universe.
1

De Trinitata,

xii

ii

(PL, XLII, 1007),

The American

Benedictine Review

Seven:

NATIVITY
A

KERYGMA

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Christianity is not so much a body of doctrine as the revelation of a mystery. mystery is a divine action, something which God does in time in order to introduce men into the sanctuary of eternity. Being
a religion of mysteries, Christianity is a religion of facts actions.
first

divine facts, divine

In celebrating the mysteries of Christ as they recur in time, the Church

of all announces these events: "Christ is born!" "Christ is risen!" She proclaims them, as a herald proclaims the triumphal entrance of a victorious King into a city. Her announcement, her proclamation of the divine event, 1 is a work which she entrusts to her "heralds/ her apostles, her preachers. is thus the Christianity essentially kerygmatic: priest is a herald, kerux, an angel of the Lord of Hosts, a voice crying out in die desert: "Make straight the ways of the Lord/'

following lines are a proclamation, a kerygma, of the nativity of the of God, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. They announce the fact of his birth. They proclaim the presence of His mystery among us wow, this

The

Son

say, as the Church also says in her liturgy, "This day, Christ is day the Savior has appeared: this day the angels sing on earth and the archangels rejoice: this day the just exult, saying: Glory to God in

year.

They
this

bom:

the highest, alleluia/'

V-JiiMST
Christmas
is

is

BORN*

He

is

born to

t*s.

And,

He

is

born today. For

not merely a day like every other day. It Is a day made another day in and special by a sacred mystery. It is not merely holy the weary round of time. Today, eternity enters into time, and time, sanctified, is caught up into eternity. Today, Christ, the Eternal Word
of the Father,

was in the beginning with the Father, in whom all into the world things were made, by whom all things consist, enters were ungratecreatures who IBs to redeem order in I !e created which as the angels Church exults, ful for so great a Therefore, Holy

Who

gift.

announce not merely an old thing which happened long God the Father a new but thing which happens today. For, today, ago, makes all things new, in I Ks Divine Son, our Redeemer, according to His words: ccce 'nova facto omnfa*

come down

to

55*

532
Therefore, the

The

Sacred

Land

Church on earth joins with the Church in heaven to novum which the one same song, the new song, the canticum sing have been reshould the world all to after commanded Prophet sing deemed by the Christ, Whose ancestor he knew, by revelation, that he should be. When David cried out: "Sing unto the Lord a new song," he was thinking of the songs the Church would sing on this day in her the whole world the day of salvation and liturgy, as she proclaims to eternal bliss. For, as Saint Leo says: "Today there has shone upon us a a day day of new redemption, a day restoring that which was long lost,
of bliss unending/' So, with the Alleluia of victory, the triumphant cry of Easter on her the Church renews the mystery in which death is conquered, the
lips,

devil is broken forever, and sins arc forgiven the mystery and resurrection of the Savior Who is born to us on this Dies sanctipcatus illuxit twins, which day. Today, the Church sings: a of A means: salvation, day sanctified by mystery, a clay full of day divine and sanctifying power, has shone upon us. And she continues (let us see the whole text): "Alleluia, Alleluia: A sanctified clay hath shone upon us: come ye gentiles and adore the Lord; for this clay a

power of the
of the death

Church summons all great light hath descended upon the earth," The the world to adoration as she prepares with great solemnity to announce
words of the Gospel in her third Mass. This is the Prologue of him from God, the greatest Who was in the beginning with God, is made flesh, and dwells among us full of grace nn<l truth. At Christmas, more than ever, it is fitting to remember that we have no other light but Christ, Who is born to us today* Let its reflect that He came clown from heaven to be our light, and our life* I fe came, as He Himself assures us* to be our way, by which we may return to the Father, by which we may know Him, in the Father and ourselves in
the

John, in which with mighty power given Evangelist proclaims that the Word,

knowing and possessing Christ, we may have life everI lim in the Father* "For this is eternal life, that with lasting they may know Thee> Father, the one True God* and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent*' and again "As many as received Him He gave them the power

Him,

that thus

to

be made the sons of

realixetl*

("Joel*"

Who it is that comes to us, and having Having remembered that He alone is our light* let us hasten to reeeive Him and let us come together to celebrate the great mystery of charity which is the sacrament of our salvation and of our union in Christ* Let
once again,
us receive Christ that

we may

in all truth be "light in the

Lord

11

and

Nativity

Kerygma

533

may shine not only to us, but through us, and that we may burn together in the sweet light of His presence in the world: I mean His presence in us, for we are His Body and His Holy Church. As Saint Paul says (and we sing this in one or other of the Epistles today) "In these days, God hath spoken to us in His Son, Whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by Whom also He made the world:
that Christ
all
:

Who

being the brightness of His glory and the figure of His substance,
all things by the word of His power, making purgation on the right hand of the majesty." And in another place

and upholding
of sins, sitteth

the same Apostle says: "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the glory of God
in the face of Christ Jesus." Christ, light of light, is born today, and since He is born to us, is bom in us, and, therefore, we also are born today. That is to say, our

He
the

souls are born to

new

life

and new

light,

by receiving

lim

Who

is

Truth. For Christ, invisible in His own nature, has become visible in our nature. What else can this mean, except that, first, He has become
visible as

man, and secondly, lie has become visible in His Church? I Ic wills to be visible in u<>, and to live in us, and work in us, and save us through His secret action in our own hearts and the hearts of our brothers. So, we must receive the light of the newborn Savior by faith, in order to manifest it by our witness and by die works of our charity towards one another. These two things, this witness and this charity, are united together in the greatest of all our acts of worship in which we celebrate together the divine mysteries, thus proclaiming our faith, and receiving into our
In other words,
miclst
I

lim

Who

is

the fountainhead of our faith as well as

its

object,

and giving Him, as it were, to one another, in the fraternal charity which unites us in the bonds of peace. For after Christ has been born
in our hearts,
I

le reaches

the love of His

own
is

out to Himself in the heart of our brother by as lie is in us, with Spirit, and binding Himself,

Himself, as
1

He

in our brother,

He

restores us^ in that

same Holy

embrace of the heavenly Father, Spirit We are bom today in Christ, to this embrace and to this peace. Can it be surprising that we feel in our hearts the exultation of the divine
,

to tine

light

which streams into our spirit from the presence of the newborn Savior and transforms us from glory to glory in His image? This is the mystery of light which shines upon us today and which
the

Church everywhere proclaims

,

in her sacrecl chants

and

texts.

Ttt

tu splendor Patris she sings at Lauds, not only addressing

Him

The

Sacred Land

Who

before her mystically, but also pouring forth the light and her own heart. And splendor of God that radiates from Him within of every one of us heart in the shine indeed does this notice, splendor who has received Baptism, the Sacrament of light It shines more have come from the altar of God where we brightly in all of us who the sacred the fire of the inebriated with been have Spirit, filling
is

Holy

chalice,

from the most blessed Body have received into our hearts. Indeed, the chalice of salvation has come to us overflowing with divine fire and the and impurity of worldBody of the Lord has burned away the darkness dwells in the midst of Who One the us from liness that

and blinded by the glorious

light

of the Savior

Whom we

kept

seeing

us,

though

so often

we know Him

not. "X)ur

God

is

consuming

fire,"

Therefore, in her various orations, the Church prays in the following hast made this most holy night to shine forth words: "Q God, with the brightness of the true light, grant we beseech thee that we may

Who

of whose light we have enjoy His happiness in heaven, the mystery Grant that we who are bathed in the new light known on earth,
. .
,

which by Grant of thy bountiful grace that through this sacred communion in mystery Qmcc sactosancta cowinertia), we may be found conformed to I lim in whom our substance is united to Thee. May our gifts, we beseech Thee t) Lord, be and ever pour down to the mysteries of this day's Nativity, agreeable as He Who was born Man shone forth also that us even peace: upon as God, so these earthly fruits may bestow upon us that which is
of

Thy Word made

flesh,

may show
* . ,

forth in our actions that

faith shineth in our minds.

divine.''

these prayers, the Church plunges us into the Light of God in the darkness of the world, in order that we may tie illumishining nated and transformed in the presence of the newborn Savior, and thus

In

all

that

le

may be

and actions

born and truly live in us by making light in Himself, What joy, then, that

alt

our thoughts
dwells

He who

eternally in the* inaccessible light

and peace of the Father has left the throne of f Us glory and descended to be one of us! Or ratlu*r without leaving the bosom of the Father, wiling the too brilliant light of His

glory hi the cloud of

human
alxxle

nature.

He who
us in a

is

enthroned alxive the

manger. This Child

cherubim takes up

I lis

among

ptx>r

whom
Child
of

the shepherds, dazzled by the brilliance of the angelie host, can scarcely svr in the darkness of the cave lit by Joseph's lantern, this
is

(by

lis

Heaven and

divinity) the Ancient of Days, the Creator and Judge the prophet Daniel wrote: *1 beheld earth, of

Whom

Nativity
till

Kerygma

535

as white as snow,

thrones were placed and the Ancient of Days sat, His garment was and the hair of His head like clean wool; His throne

like flames of fire: the

fire

wheels of

it

like

burning

fire.

swift stream of

issued forth before

Him: thousands

of thousands ministered to

Him

and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before Him." This,
indeed,
is the vision of the divinity of the Word Who, in His human nature, lies here helpless in the dark. But the Son of Man, who is here born, is Himself the Word, consubstantial with the Father. To this
is only-begotten Son, equal to the Father in all things as God, but less than the Father in so far as He is man, all power is given by the

Who

Father. So, Daniel says again: "I beheld therefore in the vision of the and lo like the one Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, night,

and he came even to the Ancient of Days and they presented Him beHim, and He gave Him power and glory and a kingdom, and all peoples, tribes and tongues shall serve Him, His power is an everlasting power that shall not be taken away and His kingdom that shall
fore

not be destroyed." This, then, is the King promised from the beginning of the world and of whose Kingdom there shall be no end.

God has emptied Himself and come to us who have not been saved by fear, but only we destroyed by it, may now take heart and be saved by confidence. In "emptying Himself" and taking the form of a servant that is human
not be afraid of Him.
as a child, in order that

Do

nature, the Lord laid aside His majesty and His divine power, in order to dwell among us with all His divine goodness and mercy. Hear what

God had appeared before in the creand His wisdom in the government of that which He had created: but the kindness of His mercy now appears most clearly of all in His humanity* lie had made Himself known to the But the Jews were crushed by His Jews in signs and wonders. and the who sought impudently to penetrate secrets philosophers power of His majesty were blinded by His glory," These are the words of
the Fathers say: 'The power of
ation of the world,
. .

Saint Bernard, Neither power nor glory, then, can save us: for if the power and glory of God reveal themselves to our naked eye, we will be

blinded by their light and consumed by their fire. What, then, can be done*? Saint Bernard cries, as the Church, too, cries out from age to

then appear, age; "Let Thy goodness ated in Thy image, may be conformed to
cul

Lord, that man,

it."

who

is cre-

Apfareat.

Domine

bonita$>

creates est, conformant qni ad imaginem have seen that God has indeed answered this prayer, for all His which we were unable to goodness and all His love and all His mercy,

fmnt homo

twm

We

53 6
see In the fearful storm

The
upon Sinai

Sacred

Land

or in the desert whirlwind that

punished sinners, In the time of Moses, all the gentleness of the great God has appeared to us In Christ Apparuit 'benlgnitas et humanitas salvatoris twstri Dcil

The Child that lies in the manger, helpless and abandoned to the love of His creatures, dependent entirely upon them to be feel and clothed and sustained, remains the Creator and Ruler of the universe.
For here
nature of His, He wills to he helpless, and truly so, no mere matter of appearances. The poverty of the Child and of I lis mother, their loneliness and dereliction at Bethlehem, their need for food and clothing and support, these are all as real as our own needs and our own limitations. And why? Above all, because of the of His love. I le has embraced our poverty and our sorrow out of reality love for us, In order to give us His riches and I Us joy. And He has become as poor as the poorest of us, that no man may be held back from Him by fear. For, the love with which this divine Child loves us is the love of our truly the love of a man-child, but also, and just as truly, Savior and of our God. The arms with which I Ic embraces us arc not strong enough to harm any man, though they arc the arms of God. What could be more evident than that God, Who loves us, and Who
Yet, In this

human

is

hates nothing that

will

He

anything but our good? No, struction by flying from His love.

has made, does not desire to hurt us? Can God it is we who plunge at our own de-

Let us, then, in the words of the Apostle, "deny ungodliness and worldly desires and live soberly, justly and godly in this world, looking for the blessed hope and coming of the great God and our Savior,
Jesus Christ;
all

Who

gave Himself for us that

He

might redeem us from

iniquity and might cleanse to Himself a people acceptable, a pursuer of good works/* But Sainr Paul speaks here of another coining of the

Lord, at the Last Judgment; for the Church would have us that without the consummation of Christ's work on earth, its

remember
beginning

would have no meaning. The Sacred Body which the Savior of the world took to I limsclf in the womb of the Virgin Mother has risen from death and reigns over heaven and earth, enthroned at the right hand of the Father* The Child whom we contemplate in mystery this clay lives in fuet in the bosom of the Father* where* He is ever begotten anew in the "day" ? eternity, and where* fir governs the course of the work! ami of men's lives with omnipotent mercy. I Ic Who is ait once a Child and ;i King! and an Infant and the Ancient of Days, kx>k with calm eyes upon the future day in which He shall give our flesh its

Nativity

Kerygma

537

share in His final victory over death. In that day, He who was once born to earth and time in a mortal Body will clothe our mortality with incorraption. For "the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall rise

again incorruptible and we shall be changed." For order that men might become gods.
If

God became man

in

we wish to see Christ in His glory, we must recognize Him now His humility. If we wish His light to shine on our darkness and His immortality to clothe our mortality, we must suffer with Him on earth
in

in order to be

crowned with Him in Paradise. If we desire His love to transform us from glory to glory into His perfect likeness, we must love one another as He has loved us, and we must take our places at that
blessed table

where

He

Living Bread, the Manna be the Life of the World.

Jesus,

Himself becomes our food, setting before us the which is sent to us from heaven, this day, to
spirit

Who

has come to nourish our

with His

own Body and

Blood, does so not to be transformed into us, but in order to transform us into Himself. He has given Himself to us in order that we may

belong to Him. For the center of

this great mystery is the Eternal Father's design to re-establish all things in Christ. This, says Saint Paul, is the "Mystery of His will ... in the dispensation of the fullness of

times, to reestablish all things in Christ, that are in

heaven and on

earth."

This Child and Redeemer Who comes amid the songs of angels to answer the prayers of all the Patriarchs and Prophets, and to satisfy the unrecognised longings of the whole lineage of Adam, exiled from Paradise, comes also to quiet the groanings of all creation. For the whole world has been in labor and in mourning since the fall of man. The

whole created universe, with

all its

manifold beauty and splendor, has

,

travailed in disorder longing for the birlh of a Savior* "Every creature for the expectagroancth and tnxvaileth in pain even until now . tion of the creature waiteth for the revelation of the sons of God/*

The
ation*

Bethlehem, and
heard, while

and Prophets prayed for the coming of Christ in coming did not silence the groanings of creFor, according to the words of the Apostle, which we have just
Patriarchs
this first

man

universe

still

waited for the birth of Jesus in Judaea, the rest of the waits for the revelation of Christ in His Church.

The

mystery of Christmas, therefore, lays upon us

to the rest of

obligation

men and

to the

all a debt and an whole created universe. We

who have

to grace that has been given us,

seen the light of Christ are obliged, by the greatness of the make known the presence of the Savior

The Sacred Land

to

the ends of the earth. This

we

will

do not only by preaching the glad

tidings of His coming, but above all by revealing Him in our lives. Christ is born to us today, my brothers, in order that He may appear to the gentiles through us. This one day is the day of His birth, but

every day of our mortal lives must be His manifestation. His divine Epiphany, in the world which He has created and redeemed.

NATIVITY KBRYGMA

Eight-

THE WINE OF

NEW LIFE

in the power of the Communion of Saints are the Lord has "hidden in His tent from the wrangling of l tongues." I am not here talking of exterior silence or of a vocation to an enclosed Order, but of the interior silence of the mystic, in no mat-

JLnosB

WHO DWELL

those

whom

ter what walk of life he may happen to find himself, for it may happen, and it should happen, that even one who has to preach and teach should remain protected from the inanity of vain speech, should keep His heart a sacred sanctuary for the word of God, hidden in the urn of contemplation like manna in the Ark* There is more than meets the eye in this Mystery which the Psalmist speaks of as the "wrangling of

tongues,"

The "wrangling of tongues'* symbolizes the confusion that was sent down by Clod upon the builders of Babel, who, seeking to scale heaven with a structure of their own devising, were darkened and scattered in

who

a division of tongues. 2 Babylon, the city of division, the city of those "love themselves unto the hatred of God,' a was born in a curse
1

of tongues; and the Church, the City of union, the City of those who love God unto hatred of themselves was bom of the gift of tongues. The I loly C Jhost was poured out at Pentecost in tongues of flame, and made the Apostles speak in all languages in order that men might be drawn

hack into union and that the division, laid open at Babel, might be and healed in Christ and in His peace. For there is only one language spoken in the City of God. That language is charity. Those who speak it best, speak it in silence. For the eternal Word of Truth is uttered in silence. If He is tittered in silence, He must be heard in deepest silence. And His Spirit, the Spirit of Love, is also
closed again

539

54

The

Sacred Land

poured out into our hearts, proceeding from the Father and the Son, in an everlasting silence.

more than language. They contain within themmountains and the silence of heaven. It is when we at bottom of the mountain that it is hard for stand the only us to distinguish the language of the Psalter from the tongues of this earth: for Christ must still perforce travel among us as a pilgrim disare
selves the silence of high

The Psalms

guised in our

own

tattered garments.

The

Psalter only truly begins to

speak and sing within us when we have been led by God and lifted up by Him, and have ascended into its silences. When this is done, the Psalms themselves become the Tabernacle of God in which we are protected forever from the rage of the city of business, from the racket
of

human

which the ancient

opinions, from the wild carnival saints called "Babylon/'

we

carry in our hearts

and

The Liturgy of Heaven is a most perfect harmony which, like the music of the spheres, sees song transfigured into silence, The Psalter
the prelude to that Liturgy, A prelude is a real beginning. who chant the Psalms are standing in the courts of I leaven. That, indeed, is our chosen testimony* It is the Christian vocation: to begin on earth
is

We

the life and Liturgy of Heaven. St. John in his Apocalypse describes the songs of the four-and-twenty elders and of the blessed spirits. Their Liturgy is full of echoes of the Psalter, Theirs are the same themes for

which the Psalms foreshadow. They sing and in doing so they burn with glory because they see and love Him as I le really is. We have already entered with them, but obscurely, into this Mystery. We have tasted the wine of their wedding feast paid out to us in droplets in moments of our own earthly Liturgy, The wine of the Psalter and the wine of I leaven are the same, and
theirs is the perfect liberty

of the great

mercy of God

their liberator,

they are ours, because whether in

chalice,

Heaven
Heaven.

or

on

earth there

is

only one

and

that chalice itself

is

It is

the

His Disciples on the night when

I

He

said to them:

4 desired to cat this Paseh with There is you." Kingdom of heaven, which is the light of the Kingdom,

cup Jesus gave to "With desire have one Mystery in the

sun,

moon and

stars. It is
it

on earth, though

replacing the the light also of the Psalter ami of the Church shine in darkness* Its light h wine. It was of tlm

wine
I

chanted the Psalms of the HalM with His Apostle*. Blmxl would flow like silence through our Psalter*

that Jesus said: "I shall not drink the fruit of this vine again until tt drink it with you new in the leather/' had just Kingdom of

my

He He knew

Ills

The Wine
THE

of

New

Life

541

SPIKJT OF GOD, pouring out the charity of God in our hearts, makes us love the sanctity of God. He makes us reach out to receive the gift of holiness which is offered to us in Christ by The Father's infinite mercy. The deep fire of prayer which bums in the heart of the Psalter is therefore a fire of sacrifice, the same fire which consumed the Heart of Jesus Himself and brought Him to the Cross for us, and brings us gladly and triumphantly down into the gates of death for love of I lim. This love, this chaste and selfless passion that drives us out into

the desert, seeking holiness in the renunciation of all things, this is the the to of the Psalter it is itself the fulfillment because key understanding
of the Psalter.

Paul says that love is the fulfillment of the Law. Now the Old whole is a type or figure of the New. The "spiritual meaning" of the Old Law is therefore to be sought in the charity which is the
St.

Law

as a

very substance of the

New

Testament.

St.

Thomas

points out that the

It is grace itself in the hearts of faithful is the the It living acting Holy Spirit, present in the souls of those who have died together with Christ and have risen with Him from the dead. The Angelic Doctor quotes St.
is

New Law

something more than a written document.

and

says: "The Laws of God, written in our hearts, are e the presence of the Holy Spirit in us." nothing else but I Icncc we may dare to say that charity, not as a pale abstraction but as the flame breathed through our being by the presence and action of

Augustine,

who

the

loly Spirit, alone enables us to

plumb

the depths of the "spiritual

hidden beneath the literal meaning is not merely another and more hidden meaning) it is also a new and totally different nmllty: it is the divine life itself. This "meaning" of Scripture is never grasped if it is merely "known." It must be possessed and lived,
sense" of Scripture,
is

What

Clod

ing, lie

known when lie is only "known" by the understandknown by us when lie takes possession of our whole being and unites us to limsolf. Then we know Him not in an idea but
is

not fully
is

best

beyond

ideas, in a contact of love, in

a realisation that lie ami lie alone

we

are nothing. It

is

our joy to

an experience of Who He is, in our life and that without Him be nothing, and to know that He is all
is

St Augustine long ago brought out this aspect of the distinction between "letter and spirit" He knew that Paul's phrase; "the letter killcth but the spirit giveth life," was intended to tell us more than the obvious truth that some passages of Scripture had a figurative or typical sense. The 'letter*' kills us not only by tempting us to miss a meaning. Even

when

the meaning (whether

literal

or spiritual)

is

abundantly

clear,

542

The Sacred Land

it "kills"

when we fully grasp its implications, further than knowledge of what it means. The Law tells us: "thou shalt not covet/'
even
literal

us

if

we

get

no

No

hidden sense here.

The

meaning

is

plain enough.

Selfish desires are the root of all evil.

But, says St. Augustine: to know this truth without conforming our lives to the commandments not to covet, is to be killed, by that com-

mandment.

If

we had

never

known our

responsibility

we

could not

have been held guilty for not living up to it. In order to fulfill the law, we must be dead to the kind of life which the law intends lo kill, and live by the new life which the law sets before us. This is a matter not of knowledge but of love. Everyone knows the ten commandments. Few keep them, because few love them. Men do not love the law of God
because they cherish a contrary love, a contrary law, in their
flesh,

which defeats and denies the law of God. Knowing His law, they still fall short of knowing it, because they only possess the wisdom of the flesh, which cannot be subject to the law of God, It is foredoomed
to rebel against

Him

because

it

has refused, in advance, to love

lim.

The law was given by God to manifest the living death of sin, not to cure it. St. Augustine's tract "De Spiritu et Littera" Is therefore not a treatise on the senses of the Scripture but on the laxv and on Grace,
has most interesting implications for the meaning of Scripture, because charity is the fulfillment of the Law, The I^aw can only be understood when it is kept. It cannot be kept unless God drives out the

Yet

it

contrary law, the law of selfishness, of cupidity, and infuses into our hearts I lis selfless charity. Without grace, the "letter" of the Law, the
us, because even though we But the "spirit*" grace* fills us with charity, gives us the power to love what the Law tells us. I/wing the truth, we arc able to live by the truth. When we live by the truth our lives themselves become true. We become what we ought to be. We not only exist, we live. We not only hear the word* we keep it, ami therefore we fulfill it We live in Gtxl Owl lives in us. His will is done us, I !e is manifested in us. I !e is glorified in us* This was not possible until lie sent His Han to he a propitiation for our sins* St Augustine

truth of the Law, serves only to

it

condemn

understand

we do

not keep

it.

says:

Where the Holy Spirit dues not help f inspiring its with good desirea to replace evil 'Wrrs, that it to say pouring out Charity In our hearty U is evident that the hn%\ good as if may be, hy its very frahibl*
thn only Intensifies our evil desires? Without the Holy Spirit we can admire the goodness of

The Wine
His
truth.

of

New

Life

543

We

inspired

and directed by His

can even attempt to see Him. But a love that is not Spirit misses its aim, even though it be

aimed at Him: for only God can reach God. That is why He sent us His Son, to be the "way." We must then receive His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, Who will lead us to God by the power of a secret and spiritual delight in the things of God, by a taste for the hidden truth of God, by love that finds Him in the mystery of a presence that is only secret because it is too in its obviousness to be seen blinding by us, homo sanctum in anvmo delectatio dilecAcciyjiat Spiritum ejus quo fiat
tioque

summi atque incommutabilis boni quod Deus

outpouring of the Spirit
is

est,

The
after

the fulfillment of the

Law

the Psalms

and the Prophets.

His

When Jesus appeared to His resurrection, He told them that it

disciples in the cenacle was "necessary for all

things to be fulfilled which are written in the Law of Moses and in the Prophets and in the Psalms concerning me/' Then he "opened their understanding" and showed them the "spiritual meaning" of the Scriptures
as well as the letter.

What was

this fulfillment?

Not only

the
else,

death and Resurrection of Jesusto

I !is

these were ordered

to

something

was therefore written not only that Christ should "suffer and rise again from the dead the third day" but also that great effects should follow from these things; "that penance and remission of sins should be preached in His name unto all nations beginning at
life in us. It

Jerusalem/*
tures,

The

charity of the Saints

is

the fulfillment of the Scrip-

outpouring of the I loly Spirit makes this a fact, and enables those in whom He acts to understand what has happened, "And you are

The

witnesses of these things*

And

send the promise of

my

Father (the

Holy Spirit) upon you: stay you in the city until you be endued with lo power from on high*" We who chant the Psalms, hope to praise God, We praise Him best If we understand the things we sing* We understand them if we, too, are "endued with power from on high." When the Spirit of Divine Love sets our souls on fire with charity we realize, at last, that it is
not necessary for us to scale heaven to bring down Christ to us by some mysterious technique of contemplation, The Liturgy does not

have

to

ence and

bring Christ from heaven* It is the manifestation of His presIlls power on earth* It does not have to prepare our hearts
It tells
est. It is

for a future

Kingdom* Rcgtwun Dei intra vos

though we seem
to

us that His Kingdom has already come. established in full power in the midst
is

of a godless humanity,

Heaven

within us and

all

around

us,

even

be living in hell

544

Tfoe Sacred

Land

The Psalms
by prophets
before the
fulfilled
to

are the language of His Kingdom. They were spoken those who were able to understand them centuries

established. They were sung as they were Saviour He hung on the Cross, so that the voice of the as by the Psalms is the voice of Christ Himself. He lives in us, being both

Kingdom was

its King. And we, when we take His words upon our that the Spirt of His not our lips, speak thoughts but His, provided is the and in own lives our inspiration of our own song. spirit promise

the

Kingdom and

Therefore,
tian, that

when
say

a Christian chants the Office,

if

if

he

is

fully a Chris-

is to

he

is

one

who

has attained to the knowledge of

in the great

Christ,

of

who has experienced what it means to live Christ, who longs to see all things restored in

Christ, then

mystery he not

only understands the Psalms, but he fulfills them. The deep contemachieved by their fulfillment. plative penetration of the Psalms is only
It is

the realization of their fulfillment in us.

It

shows us our

own

plaice
is

in the Mystery of Christ,

and our own

vocation, to

make up what

wanting to His sufferings in our own moment of history. But the Psalms are the songs of eternity since His Kingdom is the Kingdom that will never end. In the simultaneous totality of possession, which out to possess the reward is what eternity means, the Psalms reach
together with the suffering, the victory in the midst of the* battle. have only begun to fight, and yet if we believe in ! lim Who overcomes the world, we have already won. "For whatsoever h lx>rn of Gocl overcomes the world: and this is the victory which overcomes the world,

We

our faith/ 111

Laws,

rules,

and methods are

for those

who

for themselves.

They

therefore savor of this earth

seek to get something and of its slavery,

although they are necessary even for those who would lx*gin to he children of the kingdom, But after all, it is not hy seeking to "#ct something out of the Psalms that we will finally arrive at an understanding of the Psalter or of our Canonical Office. Although the Psalms are given
us for our benefit
it
1

is

not enough to think only of our

the glory of OocL Clod
IK

own

!>eneftt:

they are

first

of

all for

who have given up everything for Him Him. The Psalms profit us most when they give Clod most Glory, This they do when we realr/e that the Liturgy Is not a search for something we have not, hut the celebration of what we already have. The Psalms arc* the new song, the ctMticiini w*uw, the. song of those who have been relwn in a new creation, the song of those for

glorified most in those and have found everything in

whom

there

Is

no law, because

in

them Christ

lias fulfilled

the Law,

The Wine

of

New

Life

545

How,
is

then, should the Psalms offer

them a method, a technique,

that

The true meaning of the Psalms is most fully apprehended by those who have been swept, by an experience of God's mercy, beyond the reach of any rule or any method. The new song of the Psalms is the song of God's children who live by no other rule than God their Father, Who is His own Rule. He is also
to say a 'law" of contemplation?

therefore theirs. His love

is

their
is

Him. Thus

for

them there
it

Law, They always do what is pleasing no law, not because the law has been
fulfilled.

abrogated but because

1

has been perfectly

Psalm, 30:21*
"Genesis, 11:7.
8 4

St Augustine: Luke, 22:15.

l

De

Civitate Dei,

XIV,

28,

Matthew, 26:29.
fl

Ike. Q,io6. A.I. and

St.

Augustine,

De

Spirits et Littera, 26.

7 H
u

DC

Spiritw et Litt&ra, Chapter iv.

Chapter iii. Luke, 24 44. 10 Luke, 24:48-49,

Ilnd.,
;

I John, 5:4-

BKEAD IN THE WILDERNESS

e;

THE GENERAL DANCE

JLHB Lord

merely
it

to

dominate

made His world not in order to judge it, to make it ol>ey the dictates of an

it,

not in order

inscrutable

and

all-powerful will,

not in order to find pleasure or displeasure in the way worked; such was not the reason for creation either of the world or of

man.

The Lord made the world and made man in order that I !c I limsclf might descend into the world, that He Himself might become Man. When He regarded the world He was about to make He saw His wisdom,
men."
times."
as a man-child, "playing in the world, playing before ! lim at all 4l reflected, delights are to be with the children of

And He

my

The world was

not

made

as a prison for fallen spirits

who were

re-

jected by God; this is the gnostic error. The world was made a temple, a paradise, into which God Himself would descend to dwell familiarly with the spirits He had placed there to tend it for Him.

The early chapters of Genesis (Far from being a psoutlo scientific account of the way the world was supposed to have come into Inntig) are precisely a poetic and symbolic revelation, a completely frw. though not literal, revelation of GcxFs view of the universe and of I Ik intentions for man. The point of these beautiful chapters is that Cud made the world as a garden in which I le himself took delight. 1 It* made man and gave to man the task of sharing in 1 Its own divine care* for created

things.

He made man
Adam

worker, himself

in His own image and likeness, us an artist, a homo falter, as the gardener of paradise. I Ic let man decide far haw created things were to be interpreted, umler*t<Ktl, and

used; for

names

tt all)

and what names

gave the animals their names (Got! gave them no Adam gave them, that they were. Thus

The General Dance

547

in his intelligence man, by the act of knowing, imitated something of the creative love of God for creatures. While the love of God, looking

upon

things, brought

them

into being, the love of

man, looking upon

man's
Logos,

things, reproduced the divine idea, the divine truth, in As God creates things them in His own

by seeing

own spirit. man brings

of the divine light, in the being of the object, with the divine in his own reason. The meeting of light these two lights in one mind is truth.

truth to life in his

mind by the marriage

But there is a higher light still, not the light by which man "gives names" and forms concepts, with the aid of the active intelligence, but
the dark light in which no names are given, in which God confronts not through the medium of things, but in His own simplicity. The union of the simple light of God with the simple light of man's spirit,

man

is contemplation. The two simplicities are one. They form, as it an were, emptiness in which there is no addition but rather the taking

in love,

away
this

of names, of forms, of content, of subject matter, of identities. In meeting there is not so much a fusion of identities as a disidentities.

appearance of

breeze after noon

paradise." It is after noon, in the declining light of created day. In the free emptiness of the bree'/c that blows from where it pleases and where no one

The Bible speaks of this very God came to walk with Adam in

simply: "In the

goes

can estimate,
syllables or
dise.

God and man are together, not speaking in words, or forms. And that was the meaning of creation and of Para*

But there was more.

of

The Word
"in

God Himself was

the "firstborn of every creature/'

He

Whom

all

breeze after

was not only to walk with man in the noon, but would also become Man, and dwell with man as
tilings consist*'

a brother.

The Lord would not only love His creation as a Father, but He would enter into Ills creation, emptying Himself, hiding Himself, as If I le were not God but a creature. Why should He do this? Because He loved His creatures, and because He could not bear that His creatures should merely adore Him as distant, remote, transcendent, and all powerful This was not the glory that He sought, for if He were merely adored as great, ! lis creatures would in their turn make themselves great and lord it over one another, For where there is a great God, then there are also godlike men, who make themselves kings and masters. And If God were merely a great artist who took pride in Ills creation* then men too would build cities and palaces and exploit other men for their own glory. This Is die meaning of the myth of Babel,

548

The Sacred Land

and of the tower builders who would be "as Gods" with their hanging in the gardens. gardens, and with the heads of their enemies hanging For they would point to God and say: "He too is a great builder, and has destroyed all His enemies/
7

do not laugh at my enemies, because I wish to make it with impossible for anyone to be my enemy. Therefore I identify myself own secret self.) my enemy's

(God

said: I

So God became man. He took on the weakness and ordinariness of man, and He hid Himself, becoming an anonymous and unimportant man in a very unimportant place. And He refused at any time to Lord it over men, or to be a King, or to be a Leader, or to be a Reformer, or to be in any way Superior to His own creatures. I le would be nothing else but their brother, and their counselor, and their servant, and their friend. He was in no accepted human sense an important person, though since that time we have made Him The Most Important Person. That is another matter: for though it is quite true that He is the King and Lord of all, the conqueror of death, the judge of the living and of the dead, the Pantokrator, yet He is also still the Son of Man,
the hidden one,

And when
dead,
1

the

unknown, unremarkable, vulnerable, ! !e can be killed, Son of Man was put to death, I le rose again from the
us, for

and was again with

He

said; "Kill

mc

it

does not mat-

ter/
I laving died, I le dies no more in His own Person. But because I le became man and united man's nature to Himself, and died for man, and rose as man from the dead, He brought it about that the sufferings of all men became His own sufferings; their weakness and defenselessness became His weakness and defenselessness; their insignificance became Ills, But at the same time His own power, immortality, glory, and happiness were given to them and could become theirs. So if the God-Man is still great, it is rather for our sakes than far His own that He wishes to Ixi great and strong. For to Him, strength and weakness, life and death are dualities with which He is not concerned, being above them in Ills transcendent unity. Yet lie would raise us also a hove these* dualities by making us one with Him* For though evil and death can touch the evanescent, outer self in which we dwell estranged from Him, in which we are alienated and exiled in unreality* it can never touch the real inner self in which we have been made one with Him. I'or in becoming man, Got! became not only Jesus Christ hut also potentially every man and woman that ever existed. In Christ, God

The General Dance

549

sense, yet

became not only "this" man, but also, in a broader and more mystical no less truly, "every man."

THE PRESENCE of God in His world as its Creator depends on no one but Him. His presence in the world as Man depends, in some measure, upon men. Not that we can do anything to change the mystery of the
Incarnation in
itself:

but

we

are able to decide whether

shall

we

ourselves,

and

that portion of the world

in its light. presence, consecrated by it, have the choice of two identities: the external mask

We

which is ours, and transfigured

a

become aware of His

to

be real and which

lives

ment

of earthly existence,

by shadowy autonomy and the hidden, inner person who seems

for the brief

which seems moto

us to be nothing, but

who can

whom

he

subsists. It is

give himself eternally to the truth in this inner self that is taken up into the mystery
Spirit, so that in secret

of Christ,

by His

love,

by the Holy

we

live "in

Christ"

YBT we must not deal

11

self,
tial is

This

self is

in too negative a fashion even with the "external not by nature evil, and the fact that it is unsubstanit

not to be imputed to

as

some kind
is

of crime. It

is afflicted

with

metaphysical poverty: but

all

that

poor deserves mercy. So too our

outward

self: as long as it does not isolate itself in a lie, it is blessed by the mercy and the love of Christ. Appearances are to be accepted for what they are. The accidents of a poor and transient existence have,

nevertheless, an ineffable value.

which we apprehend the presence

to

They can be transparent media in of God in the world. It is possible

is

speak of the exterior

it*

self as

a mask: to do so

not necessarily to

reprove
exile in

The mask

that each

man

wears

may

well be a disguise not

only for that man's inner self but for God, wandering as a pilgrim and

His own creation. Ami indeed, if Christ became Man, it is because He wanted to be any man ami every man* If we believe in the Incarnation of the Son of God* there should be no one on earth in whom we are not prepared to
see, in mystery, the

presence of Christ*

WHAT
most

is

swuoutf

to

men

is

often very trivial in the sight of Cod,

What

might appear At any rate the His of creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession garden think is the with what we meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance. We do
1

in CHIC!

to its as "play" is

seriously,

perhaps what He Himself takes Lord plays and diverts Himself in the

55

The Sacred Land

not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game, and of that dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we
see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really

when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Basho we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of solitary splash all values, the "newness/' the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.
children;
silence of the spheres
persist in

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The is the music of a wedding feast. The more we

misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity, and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us> for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not. Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds, and join in the general
dance,

NKW

SBBDS OF CONTEMPLATION

Epilogue:

MEDITATIO PAUPERIS IN SOLITUDINE

AY ONTO BAY uttercth speech. The clouds change. The seasons pass over our woods and fields in their slow and regular procession, and time is gone before you are aware of it
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

up

to

something

far

beyond

ourselves.

part of a mystery* We all We cannot yet realize what

add
it is.

Whom

in the language of our theology, that we are all bers of the Mystical Christ, and that we all grow together in all things were created*

But we know,

memfor

Him

In one sense we are always traveling, and traveling 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 traveling and in darkness. But we already possess lim by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are
I

dwelling In the light But oh! I low far have

arrived!

1 to

go

to find

You

in

Whom

have already

For now, oh

my

Cod,

it

nobody

else will understand. I

earth into the cloud

where

You alone that I can talk, because cannot bring any other man on this dwell in Your light, that is, Your darkness,
is

to

552

The
I

Sacred Land

where

anguish which

and abashed. I cannot explain to any other man the 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 I wish it were it myself and all I know is that I wish it were over

am

lost

is

begun.

You have contradicted everything. You have left me in no man's land. You have called me here not to wear a label by which I can recognize of a category. You do not want myself and place myself in some kind about what You are. Or rather, but me to be thinking about what I am, 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 what I am and where I am and why I am, how trying to figure out
will that
I

work be done?
I
all."

do not say; "You have Because 1 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
do not make a big drama of this business* asked me for everything, and I have renounced

knowledge of them, for they remind my They tell me something alxmt 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 1 would live alone, and out of them. O keata solitudol 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 1 am Beginning to understand. You have taught me, and have consoled mc% mid I have begun again to hope and learn,
things, to die to
to the

them and

me

of

distance from You*

hear

You saying
Iiy

"I will give

to me: ymt what you

desire,

will lead

you info

solitude. I will
I

lead

you
it

the

way

that

you cannot yossibty understand, because

t

want

he the quickest way, "Therefore all the things around you mil be armed against you to deny jwu, to hurt you> to gim you pain, and therefore to reduce yat* to
to

solitude*

Meditatio Pauperis in Solitiidine

553

"Because of their enmity, you will soon lye left alone. They will cast you out and forsake you and reject you and you will be alone.
will draw your "Everything that touches you shall burn you, and you hand away in pain, until you have withdrawn yourself from all things. Then you will he alone. with "Everything that can he desired will sear you, and brand you a cautery, and you will fly from it in pain, to be alone. Every created and be joy will only come to you as fain, and you will die to all joy and desire and left alone. All the good things that other people love

seek will come to you, but only as murderers to cut you off from the

world and Us occupations. 'Yew will be praised, and

will be loved,
desert.

it

and

it

will

murder your heart and drive you

will be like burning at the stake. You into the

"You

will have gifts,

will have pleasures of prayer,

and they will break you with their burden. You and they will sicken you and you will fty

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
shall begin to possess the solitude thing* a rejection. And in that day you will bear immense fruit you luwe so long desired. And your solitude

in the $ouh of "Do wot ask

wen you will never see on earth. when it will be or where it will

be or

how

it

will be:

On
or

a mountain or in a frison* in a desert or in a concentration camp a hospital or at Geth$cmanL It does not matter. So do not ask 1 am not going to tell you. You will not know until you because me,

are in

it,

"Bttf,

you

shall taste the true solitude of

and

you and fnul alt things In My mercy which has created you for this end and bronchi you from Pradcs to Bermuda to SL Antonin to Oafc1mm to London to Cambridge to Rome to New York to Columbia to to the Cistercian Abbey of the Corpus Chrhti to St. Konavcntum

shall lead

into the high

f laces of

my anguish and my poverty my joy and y(m shall die in

Me

foor

men who labor in Gcthsenmni: 'That ymi way become the brother of Christ of the burnt mcn>*
SIT FINIS UBIU,

God and

learn to

know

the

N0N

FINIS QlUHttENDX
STOttHY

THE 8BVBN

MOUNTAIN

THOMAS MERTON
was born In France in 1915, was educ* at Clare College, Cambridge, and Coliinc
University. He entered the Cistercian Ox In 1941* was ordained a priest in 1949, is now Father L-ouis ot the Cistercian. Or at the Abbey o Our Lady oC Gethsem in Kentucky. Fie has written many bo(
;

Storey Mountain., autobiography, and Seeds Co7ttffn.plat.ion The Waters of Siloe, j Ascent to Truth, Bread In the Wildcrn The Sign of Jonas, No Aian Is an Isla The Strange Islands , Selected Poems 9 Wisdom of the L>#$#rt f and The Behai

including

The Sewn
,

best -selling

of Titans.

jachrt tlrbi&n by Anita

WtUkvr S

130 891