Manifesting the Invisible Thomas Merton's Vision Of

MANIFESTING THE INVISIBLE THOMAS MERTON’S VISION OF CONTEMPLATIVE CHRISTIANITY IN THE MODERN WORLD Pablo Christian Soenen TC 660H Plan II Honors Program The University of Texas at Austin December 8, 2020 __________________________________________ Dr. Martha G. Newman Departments of History and Religious Studies Supervising Professor __________________________________________ Dr. Robert C. Koons Department of Philosophy Second Reader ABSTRACT Author: Pablo Christian Soenen Title: Manifesting the Invisible: Thomas Merton’s Vision of Contemplative Christianity in the Modern World Supervising Professors: Dr. Martha G. Newman and Dr. Robert C. Koons The American Cistercian monk Thomas Merton was a tireless contributor to the 20th century conversations of the role of the monastic contemplative life in the modern world. His concept of the contemplative life’s openness to the world and service to modernity, and indeed his understanding of his own vocation, developed significantly throughout his life, to the point that some have found it helpful to distinguish between the “early Merton” and the “later Merton.” This thesis will track the changes in Merton’s thought as a guide to answering the questions that captivated Merton throughout his life: what is the relationship between contemplative interiority and active struggle for justice? What is the role and function of spirituality in the modern world? Are changes in religiosity indicative of insufficiencies in the content or communication of religion? Can the contemplative life exist today as it has for centuries? I will argue that Merton’s thought changed as he became immersed in a more secular modern society. The content of spiritual interiority remains the same, but its context must shift to the scene of modern alienation. Religious experience must be open to the modern collective consciousness, but the insights of modernity are not new: the mystics have always perceived God as absent, or at best mysteriously present. In the modern context, contemplative love will seek active expression in protest against the injustices of society if it is to remain authentic. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many who have supported me directly and indirectly throughout the process of writing this thesis. I am extremely grateful for the support of my family, who went out of their way on many occasions to ensure I had the space to write when a pandemic closed all the libraries. I am also grateful for the support of all of the friends who endured my undoubtedly excessive and enthusiastic conversations about this project. Their attentive (and patient) ears, along with their thoughtful remarks, helped me at every stage of the process of writing and thinking about this thesis. I would especially like to thank Dr. John Feather, who first introduced me to the writings of Thomas Merton. Finally, I would like to thank my professors who supervised this work. Dr. Koons, your creative remarks and keen observations about this project helped me think of things in ways I could not have otherwise considered. I greatly appreciate the time you put into reviewing and discussing this thesis. Dr. Newman, your guidance and enthusiasm made this process absolutely enjoyable at every step. I learned a great deal from your suggestions and recommendations for research and from our discussions. Your input and contributions were invaluable both to the course of the project and to my learning from it. Thank you for all the time and effort you invested in supervising this work. 3 CONTENTS Introduction……………………………………………….………………………………. 6 Chapter 1: Thomas Merton and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux……………………………… 9 Chapter 2: The Contemplative’s Service to the Modern World…………………….…… 26 Chapter 3: Religionless Modernity? …………………………………………….…….…. 41 Chapter 4: Contemplation in Action: Accounts of Christian Resistance………………… 53 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………… 72 4 Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 1 John 4:20 5 Introduction This work is the account of a series of internal questions that are certainly not only my own; in some sense, they are questions that are at the core of the self-definition of spirituality. What is the relationship between a contemplative interiority and an active form of love, between prayer and justice? How do we respond to the comparative realness of the visible and the invisible, the brother and sister whom we have seen and the God whom we have not? Is there a distinction to be made at all? Is it futile even to try to define a distinction? The Christian tradition, continuing from its Jewish predecessor, has always acknowledged a deep interaction between God and the material world, and emphasized that it is an interaction experienced by the very fact of being, in and through the self. The responses to this interaction, however, have varied greatly. There are those who have dedicated their lives entirely to an almost exclusive interiority, the hermits and monastics who “left the world” to pursue a total attention on God discovered in one’s being. Conversely, there are those who have rejected any ability to know or speak of God, such as the Radical Theologians of the 20th century, who claim that any hope for religious authenticity is total iconoclasm, and that one should live as though God had died and so embrace a godless modernity. The monastic concept, also termed the “contemplative life,” is most intriguing to me, and will be the focus of this thesis. Perhaps most important in the consideration of these questions among modern monastic writers is Thomas Merton, a monk of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, or Trappists, who, despite belonging to an Order known for its strict silence and seclusion, nonetheless became an important contributor to discourses on the political and social issues of the 1950s and 1960s. His writing has served as a guide for the contemplative in the modern world. His work is particularly helpful because Merton experienced a profound transformation in 6 his concept of contemplation as modernity largely unfolded around him while he was confined to a monastery, watching from a distance. As the world transformed following the effects of two World Wars, with the Catholic Church responding to global changes in thought, the monastic vocation would see a series of dramatic, though not essential, alterations in the course of the Second Vatican Council. Merton lived through this restructuring of the monastic life, much of which was centered on incorporating a new sense of openness to the world among strictly cloistered religious communities. Merton was a monk who consistently sought more solitude despite a seeming inability to distance himself from the pressing concerns of the world around him. Merton saw solitude as essential to properly loving the world, and proper love of the world was, to him, a deep, prayerful service to it. The thesis will track the changes in Merton’s thought throughout his life at the Abbey of Gethsemani and will describe his social writings as a voice influenced by and loyal to monastic tradition, particularly the 12th-century writings of one of Merton’s most important spiritual influences, St. Bernard of Clairvaux. I will follow Merton’s reading of Bernard through the lens of theological and philosophical developments of the 20th century, which also greatly influenced his thought. Chief among these developments are the elaboration of the concept of modern alienation by the existentialists, the rise of Radical Theology (termed also the “Death of God” theology), and the precursors of Catholic liberation theology, some iterations of which captured, after Merton’s death in 1968, what I take to be the spirit of Merton’s developing thought throughout his life. Ultimately, I will use Merton’s writings as a way to answer the broader question about the social role of a dedicated contemplative life and to elaborate a Christian spirituality responsive to the historical and social developments of modernity. 7 8 Chapter 1 | Thomas Merton and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux Thomas Merton’s principal early spiritual influence was the medieval Cistercian saint and Doctor of the Church, Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard’s corpus of mystical writing forms the foundation of Cistercian spirituality. In addition to his early fascination with Bernard’s insights, Merton’s responsibilities as master of novices at the Abbey of Gethsemani gave him ample reason to study Bernard in depth. Considering Bernard a saint “whom we must never dishonor by a partial or fragmentary appreciation,”1 Merton largely modeled his early monastic life on Bernard’s lessons, only later becoming even slightly distanced from Bernard in the context of his own unique vocational trajectory. Jean Leclerq notes that in addition to several biographical similarities between the two figures, Bernard and Merton shared, perhaps most importantly, a deep contemplative life that evolved into social and political involvement not characteristic of their monastic vocation, but nonetheless naturally driven by it.2 Two of Merton’s works primarily underpin this chapter. The first, “Action and Contemplation in St. Bernard,” is compiled from a series of Merton’s lectures to his students in 1953 and 1954. The second, written in 1948, is Merton’s commentary on various Bernardine texts concerning interior simplicity, a hallmark of monastic life. Together, these develop a view of Merton’s early spiritual understanding of the monastic life as a way to shed the artificial layers of life in the modern world, an artificiality essential to the suppression of genuine love. An important definitional distinction exists between the concept of the active life in Bernard’s writings (shared by Merton’s earlier evaluations of the question), and the politically 1 Thomas Merton, “Bernard of Clairvaux, Monk and Apostle” in Disputed Questions, (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1976), 274. 2 Jean Leclerq, “Thomas Merton and Bernard of Clairvaux,” The Merton Annual 3 (1990), 39.

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