It was wonderful to experience some of New Seeds of Contemplation with this group! These past 3 months went by very quickly. In this time we shared Merton's insights into Contemplation, the True Self/false self and Love as the image and essence of God. As we went from one chapter to the next, Merton took us on a journey from a focus on ourselves (false self) to our deepest relationship with and to God (Contemplation and True Self) and finally to the unity we share through God and with others (Love). At the end of this journey, we saw that God, at the deepest level, remains as Mystery. That God is beyond all images we can possibly hold or imagine but that God can be experienced through Love.
It was fitting that we explored Merton's reflections on Trinity only a few days before Trinity Sunday. His writings reveal what most contemporary contemplatives such as Fr. Richard Rohr, Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault and Fr. Thomas Keating teach about the Trinity. All these teachers agree that the Trinity is a circle of relationships between the persons of God and that, through Christ in us, we are all invited to participate in that single flow of Love. At our very centers we are all Christ and we all compose the mystical Body of Christ. In this way, as Merton puts it:
We all become doors and windows through which God shines back into His own house. When the Love of God is able to love you through me and you are able to love God through me.
Merton contends that we will one day live entirely in God (and therefore in the flow of perfect Love) and in one another as the Persons of God live in One another. But until that day our current human experience is that of a Body of Broken Bones:
In the whole world, throughout the whole of history, ... Christ suffers dismemberment... All over the face of the earth the avarice and lust of men breed unceasing divisions among them, and the wounds that tear men from union with one another widen and open out into huge wars, murder, massacres... Christ is massacred in His members, torn limb from limb.
Because of this human condition, our experience of love is imperfect and painful, like the "resetting of a Body of broken bones." Based on this experience, it is difficult for us to understand love and it is the folly of the false self to try to define it. However, as we discussed by example, we can all recognize genuine Love when we experience it. It is in that experience of genuine Love that we come to recognize and experience God.
It was fitting that we explored Merton's reflections on Trinity only a few days before Trinity Sunday. His writings reveal what most contemporary contemplatives such as Fr. Richard Rohr, Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault and Fr. Thomas Keating teach about the Trinity. All these teachers agree that the Trinity is a circle of relationships between the persons of God and that, through Christ in us, we are all invited to participate in that single flow of Love. At our very centers we are all Christ and we all compose the mystical Body of Christ. In this way, as Merton puts it:
We all become doors and windows through which God shines back into His own house. When the Love of God is able to love you through me and you are able to love God through me.
Merton contends that we will one day live entirely in God (and therefore in the flow of perfect Love) and in one another as the Persons of God live in One another. But until that day our current human experience is that of a Body of Broken Bones:
In the whole world, throughout the whole of history, ... Christ suffers dismemberment... All over the face of the earth the avarice and lust of men breed unceasing divisions among them, and the wounds that tear men from union with one another widen and open out into huge wars, murder, massacres... Christ is massacred in His members, torn limb from limb.
Because of this human condition, our experience of love is imperfect and painful, like the "resetting of a Body of broken bones." Based on this experience, it is difficult for us to understand love and it is the folly of the false self to try to define it. However, as we discussed by example, we can all recognize genuine Love when we experience it. It is in that experience of genuine Love that we come to recognize and experience God.