Thomas Merton quotes

I found a place that I hoped would be obscure, over on one side, in the back, and went to it without genuflecting, and knelt down. . . . Before I knew it, the priest was in the sanctuary with the two altar boys . . . . And then the next thing I knew there was someone in the pulpit. . . . It all 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."

(SSM, pp. 207, 208, 210)

Sept. 1938, requesting instruction:

We sat in the little parlor by the door. And I said: "Father, I want to become a Catholic."

(SSM, p. 240)

Oct. 1938, parish mission:

. . . the strong, cheap, black wooden [rosary] beads made for workmen and old Irish washwomen which I had bought for twenty-five cents in the basement of Corpus Christi during the mission.

(SSM, p. 277)

Nov. 16, 1938, baptism, first confession & first Communion:

First of all, I knelt at the altar of Our Lady [now also the Blessed Sacrament altar] where Father Moore received my abjuration of heresy and schism. Then we went to the baptistry, in a little dark corner by the main door. . . .

After that, I went into the confessional . . . .

Now he was at the altar, in his white vestments, opening the book. I was kneeling right at the altar rail [now removed]. . . .

I left the altar rail and went back to the pew where the others were kneeling . . . .

Father Moore had caught us just as we were going out the door and rushed us into the rectory for breakfast . . . . We all sat around the table . . . .

(SSM, pp. 222, 223, 224, 227)

1939:

At about three in the afternoon I was in the habit of going to Corpus Christi . . . and doing the Stations of the Cross.

(SSM, p. 267)

June 15 & 17, 1964, said Mass:

For two mornings in New York, I said Mass entirely by myself at Corpus Christi, without a server. Deeply moved to say Mass at the altar of Our Lady, before which I made my profession of faith twenty-six years ago. No one recognized me or discovered who I was. At least I think not.

(Vow of Conversation, p. 58)

I remember also the side altar in the Lady Chapel at Corpus Christi with its lovely primitive Italian triptych, its painted wooden Mexican candlesticks, its rich antependium . . . .

(Seasons of Celebration, p. 238)

God speaks to Merton:

. . . and you shall . . . find all things in My mercy which has created you for this end and brought you from Prades [Merton's birthplace] . . . to New York to Columbia to Corpus Christi . . . to the Cistercian Abbey . . . .

(SSM, pp. 422-423)

The words, songs, ceremonies, signs, movements of worship are all designed to open the mind and heart of the participant to this experience of oneness in Christ. One reason why I am a Catholic, a monk and a priest today is that I first went to Mass, and kept going to Mass, in a Church where these things were realized. . . . There was nothing new or revolutionary about it; only that everything was well done, not out of aestheticism or rubrical obsessiveness, but out of love for God and His truth. It would certainly be ingratitude of me of I did not remember the atmosphere of joy, light, and at least relative openness and spontaneity that filled Corpus Christi at solemn High Mass.

(Seasons of Celebration, p. 237)

It was a gay, clean church with big plain windows and white columns and pilasters and a well-lighted, simple sanctuary. Its style was a trifle eclectic, 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 sort of an American colonial tinge of simplicity.

(SSM, p. )

SSM references are to Harcourt Brace's 1948 edition of The Seven Storey Mountain.