New Releases by Thomas Merton

A short but profound presentation of the demands and purposes of God''s Word, it is written with such effective technique that the reader will be impelled to further study of the Bible.

"In May and October of 1968, Thomas Merton offered two extended conferences at Our Lady of the Redwoods Abbey, a Cistercian women''s community in Northern California. It is comprised of previously unpublished letters and over twenty-six hours of conference talks"--

This critical edition makes available for the first time Thomas Merton''s novitiate conferences on liturgy. Though dating from the period just before the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, Merton''s commentaries remain pertinent for their insights on his own commitment to this central dimension of Christian life, on his work introducing students to the patterns that would mark their lives as monks, and on the perennial meaning of the key events of the liturgical year. The thoroughly annotated text is preceded by an extensive introduction situating this material in the context of Merton''s lifelong writing on liturgy. As Merton''s former student Br. Paul Quenon writes in his foreword: "Nowhere in all of Merton''s writings can one find such an extended demonstration of the hermeneutical approach he took in commenting on Scripture. This was focused intensely on finding the meaning Scripture had for our life in God . . . These notes . . . take us into one man''s lifetime of reflection and seasoned experience of the Church Year."

Come into the Silence is an easy-to-use devotional for all those seeking peace, stillness, and solitude in a busy and noisy world. Part of the bestselling Great Spiritual Teachers series, this book invites you into the contemplative life through the words of Thomas Merton, one of the most popular spiritual masters of the twentieth century. In his journals, letters, and spiritual writings such as New Seeds of Contemplation, Merton explored the tension between the human longing for both connection and solitude. Merton, a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani, offered a model of contemplative life that allowed him to be deeply engaged with pressing issues of the time, including the nonviolent civil rights movement. Requiring only a few minutes each day, Come into the Silence helps you realize how God sees you and to embrace his divine vision of you and each person you encounter. This devotional also allows you to reflect deeply on the fundamental longings for meaning, belonging, and intimacy as well as the call to service and social justice in your life. Each book in the Great Spiritual Teachers series provides a month of daily readings from one of Christianity''s most beloved spiritual guides. For each day there is a brief and accessible morning meditation drawn from the mystic''s writings, a simple mantra for use throughout the day, and a night prayer to focus one''s thoughts as the day ends. These easy-to-use books are the perfect prayer companion for busy people who want to root their spiritual practice in the solid ground of these great spiritual teachers.

Among the numerous sets of conferences that Thomas Merton presented to young prospective monks during his decade (1955-1965) as novice master at the Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani is a wide-ranging introduction to biblical studies, made available for the first time in the present volume. Drawing on church tradition, teaching of recent papal documents, and scholarly resources of the time, he reveals the central importance of the Scriptures for the spiritual growth of his listeners. The extensive introduction situates material of these conferences in the context of Merton''s evolving engagement with the Bible from his own days as a student monk through the mature reflections from his final years on the biblical renewal in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. For Merton, at the heart of any meaningful reading of the Scriptures, not only for monks but for all Christians, is the invitation to respond not just intellectually but with the whole self, to recognize the gospel as "good news," as a saving, liberating, consoling, challenging word, reflecting his fundamental belief that "the Holy Spirit enlightens us, in our reading, to see how our own lives are part of these great mysteries--how we are one with Jesus in them."

Poet, Trappist monk, religious philosopher, translator, social critic: the late Thomas Merton was all these things. This classic selection from his great body of poetry affords a comprehensive view of his varied and progressively innovative work. Selected by Mark Van Doren and James Laughlin, this slim volume is now available again as a wonderful showcase of Thomas Merton’s splendid poetry.

Thomas Merton’s deep roots in his own Cistercian tradition are on display in the two sets of conferences on the early days of the Order included in the present volume. The first surveys the relevant monastic background that led up to the foundation of the Abbey of Cîteaux in 1098 and goes on to consider the contributions of each of the first three abbots of the “New Monastery” that would become the epicenter of the most dynamic religious movement of the early twelfth century. The second set investigates the arc of medieval Cistercian history in the two centuries following the death of Saint Bernard, in which the Order moves from being ahead of its time, in its formative stages, to being representative of its time in its most powerful and influential phase, to becoming regressive with the rise of new religious currents that begin to flow in the thirteenth century. Merton stresses the need to respect the complexity of the actual lived reality of Cistercian life during this period, to “beware of easy generalizations” and instead consider the full range of factual data. The result is a richly nuanced picture of the development of early Cistercian life and thought that serves as a fitting concluding volume to the series of Merton’s novitiate conferences providing a thorough “Initiation into the Monastic Tradition.”

An inspiring gift-edition of poetry and prose from the world''s favorite monk-poet In this day of mindless distraction, we’re desperate for reasons to put down our phones and reconnect with our spiritual selves. In time for the 50th anniversary of Thomas Merton''s death in 1968, Silence, Joy is an invitation to slow down, take a breath, make a space for silence, and open up to joy. Poet, monk, spiritual advisor, and social critic, Thomas Merton is a unique—and uniquely beloved—figure of the twentieth century, and this little rosary brings together his best-loved poems and prose. Drawn from classics like New Seeds Of Contemplation and The Way Of Chuang Tzu as well as less famous books, the writings in Silence, Joy offer the reader deep, calming stillness, flights of ecstatic praise, steadying words of wisdom, and openhearted laughter. Manna for Merton lovers and a warm embrace for novices, this slim collection is a delightful gift.

Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal were both poets and priests, wholly committed to a life of spiritual contemplation which was never far from the gritty work that lead them to risk life and reputation in order to raise worldwide consciousness concerning issues of social justice and the abuse of human rights. From the Monastery to the World collects the complete correspondence between these spiritual men and dedicated activists, translated into English for the first time. The letters in this book, written between Merton and Cardenal from 1959–1968, give us fascinating insights into the early spiritual and political awakenings of eventual Sandinista and exponent of liberation theology Ernesto Cardenal, who was then a novice leaving the Trappist Monastery in Kentucky where he first met Merton. While making the long trip home to Nicaragua to build a utopian artist''s commune on the Island of Solentiname, Cardenal rubs elbows with some of Latin America''s greatest writers and artists of that time. In From the Monastery to the World, Cardenal is still a hungry pupil, years away from becoming the internationally renowned poet–statesman and Nicaraguan Minister of Culture. Here we see the poet and monk Thomas Merton as a wise, patient, and sometimes even humbled mentor, during the years when he was still shaping and collecting the raw materials for such writings as: "The Way of Chuang Tzu", "Raids on the Unspeakable", and "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander". Merton and Cardenal''s correspondence grants readers an audience to conversations between two men deeply connected by their vigorous endeavors toward spiritual freedom, voracious intellectual appetites, and artistic exploration despite the cultural differences, language barriers, and geographic distances which divide them.

A treasury of wisdom from the influential Christian contemplative, political activist, social visionary, and literary figure. Thomas Merton (1915–1968) was spiritual parent to a generation—and his influence, through his many books, has only increased in the half-century since his death. He was a hermit who maintained a compelling correspondence with some of the most influential thinkers of his age; he was a social and political activist whose ideas had a seminal influence in the world beyond his monastic cloister; and he was a Christian who saw through the boundaries of religious identity in a way that was truly ahead of his time. This collection of short excerpts from his voluminous writings covers all of the famous Trappist monk’s main themes, thus serving as a perfect short introduction to his work in his own words. This book is part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series. The Shambhala Pocket Library is a collection of short, portable teachings from notable figures across religious traditions and classic texts. The covers in this series are rendered by Colorado artist Robert Spellman. The books in this collection distill the wisdom and heart of the work Shambhala Publications has published over 50 years into a compact format that is collectible, reader-friendly, and applicable to everyday life.

Thomas Merton''s lectures to the young monastics at the Abbey of Gethsemani provide a good look at Merton the scholar. A Course in Christian Mysticism gathers together, for the first time, the best of these talks into a spiritual, historical, and theological survey of Christian mysticism—from St. John''s gospel to St. John of the Cross. Sixteen centuries are covered over thirteen lectures. A general introduction sets the scene for when and how the talks were prepared and for the perennial themes one finds in them, making them relevant for spiritual seekers today. This compact volume allows anyone to learn from one of the twentieth century''s greatest Catholic spiritual teachers. The study materials at the back of the book, including additional primary source readings and thoughtful questions for reflection and discussion, make this an essential text for any student of Christian mysticism.

These conferences, presented by Thomas Merton to the novices at the Abbey of Gethsemani in 1963-1964, focus mainly on the life and writings of his great Cistercian predecessor, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153). Guiding his students through Bernard''s Marian sermons, his treatise On the Love of God, his controversy with Peter Abelard, and above all his great series of sermons on the Song of Songs, Merton reveals why Bernard was the major religious and cultural figure in Europe during the first half of the twelfth century and why he has remained one of the most influential spiritual theologians of Western Christianity from his own day until the present. As James Finley writes in his preface to this volume, "Merton is teaching us in these notes how to be grateful and amazed that the ancient wisdom that shimmers and shines in the eloquent and beautiful things that mystics say is now flowing in our sincere desire to learn from God how to find our way to God."

As master of novices for ten years (1955-1965) at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton was responsible for the spiritual formation of young men preparing for monastic profession. In this volume, three related sets of Merton''s conferences on ancient and contemporary documents governing the lives of the monks are published for the first time: * on the Carta Caritatis, or Charter of Charity, the foundational document of the Order of Cîteaux * on the Consuetudines, the twelfth-century collection of customs and regulations of the Order * on the twentieth-century Constitutions of the Order, the basic rules by which Merton and his students actually lived at the time These conferences form an essential part of the overall picture of Cistercian monastic life that Merton provided as part of his project of "initiation into the monastic tradition" that is evident in the broad variety of courses that he put together and taught over the period of his mastership. As Abbot John Eudes Bamberger, ocso, himself a former student of Merton, notes in his preface to this volume, "The texts presented in this present book eventually gave rise to the Cistercian way of spiritual living that continues to contribute to the Church''s witness in this new millennium. This publication is a witness to the process of transformation that ensures the continuity of the Catholic monastic tradition that witnesses to the God who, as Saint Augustine observed is ''ever old and ever new.''"

2014 Reprint of 1950 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The gifted Trappist, Thomas Merton, here gives a sympathetic interpretation of the interior and mystical experiences of St. Lutgarde, a thirteenth-century Trappist. Merton gives to St. Lutgarde wider significance than is normally provided her by pointing out that she was the forerunner of St. Margaret Mary and the institution of the Feast of the Sacred Heart. This claim is based upon her mystical vision of the pierced Heart of the Savior. The story of St. Lutgarde as related by Merton abounds in mystical visions, stigmata and miracles. For Catholic readers interested in hagiography the name of Merton may elicit the interest of a wider group.

Shortly after entering the monastic life in December 1941, a relatively unknown Trappist monk called Frater Louis-who would later be known to the world by his given name, Thomas Merton-began to pen biographical sketches of early Cistercian blessed and saints. These were initially collected, printed, and bound inexpensively, with no mention of the author, by the Abbey of Gethsemani. They are now published here for a wide audience for the first time. This work of the very young Merton perhaps takes on added significance when one considers the writing that lay just ahead of him at the time. In 1948, his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, was published and soon became an unexpected national bestseller. This long-awaited publication of In the Valley of Wormwood offers a window into Merton''s thinking and his spiritual life just a few years before his phenomenal autobiography would see the light of day. Thomas Merton (1915–1968) was a monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky. He was a renowned writer, theologian, poet, and social activist. Patrick Hart, OCSO, a native of Green Bay, Wisconsin, entered the Abbey of Gethsemani in 1951 and served as secretary to Thomas Merton during the last year of his life. He has edited many books by and about Thomas Merton during the thirty-eight years since the latter''s death on December 10, 1968. He has served on the board of directors for Cistercian Publications for the past thirty years.

This early work by Anglo-American Catholic writer Thomas Merton is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. It contains a wealth of information on spiritual direction and how to learn the art of meditation. This fascinating work is thoroughly recommended for anyone with an interest in spiritual life. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Now in paperback, revised and redesigned: This is Thomas Merton''s last book, in which he draws on both Eastern and Western traditions to explore the hot topic of contemplation/meditation in depth and to show how we can practice true contemplation in everyday life. Never before published except as a series of articles (one per chapter) in an academic journal, this book on contemplation was revised by Merton shortly before his untimely death. The material bridges Merton''s early work on Catholic monasticism, mysticism, and contemplation with his later writing on Eastern, especially Buddhist, traditions of meditation and spirituality. This book thus provides a comprehensive understanding of contemplation that draws on the best of Western and Eastern traditions. Merton was still tinkering with this book when he died; it was the book he struggled with most during his career as a writer. But now the Merton Legacy Trust and experts have determined that the book makes such a valuable contribution as his major comprehensive presentation of contemplation that they have allowed its publication.

A compendium of spiritual guidance in a beautiful special edition. “Every moment and every event in every man’s life on Earth plants something in his soul,” wrote Thomas Merton. A Trappist monk, Merton was both a poet and a theologian who pondered monastic life. He was praised for his meditations and conversations with God, as well as interfatith dialogue, tolerance, and non-violent activism during the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War. On Christian Contemplation, edited by Merton scholar Paul Pearson, is a collection of the great monk’s work, compiled into a gift-size edition. With poems, reflections, and social commentary, this is the perfect book to nurture the spirit of faith and duty guided by one of the twentieth century’s leading voices of theology and social justice.

A great introduction to the religions of the East by a monk from the West. Merton’s biographer, George Woodcock, once wrote that “almost from the beginning of his monastic career, Thomas Merton tentatively began to discover the great Asian religions of Buddhism and Taoism.” Merton, a longtime social justice advocate, first approached Eastern theology as an admirer of Gandhi’s beliefs on non-violence. Through Gandhi, Merton came to know the great Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita and in time came to have dialogues with the Dalai Lama and Taoist leader D. T. Suzuki. Merton then became deeply interested in Chuang Tzu and Zen thought. On Eastern Meditation, edited by Bonnie Thurston (author of Merton and Buddhism), gathers the best of his Eastern theological writings into a gorgeously designed gift book edition.

As novice master of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton presented weekly conferences to familiarize his charges with the meaning and purpose of the vows they aspired to undertake. In this setting, he offered a thorough exposition of the theological, canonical, and above all spiritual dimensions of the vows. Merton set the vows firmly in the context of the anthropological, moral, soteriological, and ecclesial dimensions of human, Christian, and monastic life. He addressed such classical themes of Christian morality as the nature of the human person and his acts; the importance of justice in relation to the Passion of Christ, to friendship and to love; and self-surrender as the key to grace, prayer and the vowed life. Merton''s words on these topics clearly spring from a committed heart and often flow with the soaring intensity of style that we have come to expect in his more enthusiastic prose. The texts of these conferences represent the longest and most systematically organized of any of numerous series of conferences that Merton presented during the decade of his mastership. They may be the most directly pastoral work Merton ever wrote.

Thoughtful and eloquent, as timely (or timeless) now as when it was originally published in 1956, Thoughts in Solitude addresses the pleasure of a solitary life, as well as the necessity for quiet reflection in an age when so little is private. Thomas Merton writes: "When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, the society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate." Thoughts in Solitude stands alongside The Seven Storey Mountain as one of Merton''s most uring and popular works. Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, is perhaps the foremost spiritual thinker of the twentiethcentury. His diaries, social commentary, and spiritual writings continue to be widely read after his untimely death in 1968.

Having embraced a life of solitude in his own hermitage, Thomas Merton finds his faith tested beyond his imagination when a visit to the hospital leads to a clandestine affair of the heart. Jolted out of his comfortable routine, Merton is forced to reassess his need for love and his commitment to celibacy and the monastic vocation. This astonishing volume traces Merton''s struggle to reconcile his unexpected love with his sacred vows while continuing to grapple with the burning social issues of the day—including racial conflicts, the war in Vietnam, and the Arab-Israeli conflict—visiting and corresponding with high-profile friends like Thich Nhat Hanh and Joan Baez, and further developing his writing career. Revealing Merton to be ''very human'' in his chronicles of the ecstasy and torment of being in love, Learning to Love comes full circle as Merton recommits himself completely and more deeply to his vocation even as he recognizes ''my need for love, my loneliness, my inner division, the struggle in which solitude is at once a problem and a ''solution''. And perhaps not a perfect solution either'' (11 May, 1967).

Merton, one of the rare Western thinkers able to feel at home in the philosophies of the East, made the wisdom of Asia available to Westerners. "Zen enriches no one," Thomas Merton provocatively writes in his opening statement to Zen and the Birds of Appetite—one of the last books to be published before his death in 1968. "There is no body to be found. The birds may come and circle for a while... but they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the ''nothing,'' the ''no-body'' that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey." This gets at the humor, paradox, and joy that one feels in Merton''s discoveries of Zen during the last years of his life, a joy very much present in this collection of essays. Exploring the relationship between Christianity and Zen, especially through his dialogue with the great Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki, the book makes an excellent introduction to a comparative study of these two traditions, as well as giving the reader a strong taste of the mature Merton. Never does one feel him losing his own faith in these pages; rather one feels that faith getting deeply clarified and affirmed. Just as the body of "Zen" cannot be found by the scavengers, so too, Merton suggests, with the eternal truth of Christ.

A book which traces the development of the thoughts and writings of the 20th-century Cistercian monk, Thomas Merton, on the subject of contemplation.

Thomas Merton wrote The Silent Life a decade after he took orders. In his Prologue, Merton describes the book as "a meditation on the monastic life by one who, without any merit of his own, is privileged to know that life on the inside . . . who seeks only to speak as the mouthpiece of a tradition centuries old." It is a remarkable work-one that combines a lucid and informative description of the nature and forms of monasticism, communal and solitary, with a passionate defense of the contemplative''s quest for God. The intense beauty of Merton''s meditation, radiating from beneath its surface calm, makes The Silent Life a classic of its kind.

The whole problem of our time is the problem of love. How are we going to recover the ability to love ourselves and to love one another? We cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God. There is a distinction between a contrite sense of sin and a feeling of guilt. The former is a true and healthy thing, the latter tends to be false and pathological. The man who suffers from a sense of guilt does not want to feel guilty, but at the same time he does not want to be innocent. He wants to do what he thinks he must not do, without the pain of worrying about the consequences. The history of our time has been made by dictators whose characters, often transparently easy to read, have been full of repressed guilt. They have managed to enlist the support of masses of men moved by the same repressed drives as themselves. Modern dictatorships display everywhere a deliberate and calculated hatred for human nature as such. The technique of degradation used in concentration camps and in staged trials are all too familiar in our time. They have one purpose: to defile the human person.

The writings in this work were precipitated by a variety of events during the last decades of Merton''s life - the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s among them. His timeless moral integrity and tireless concern for nonviolent solutions to war are eloquently expressed.

Classic writings from the great Zen master in exquisite versions by Thomas Merton, in a new edition with a preface by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Working from existing translations, Thomas Merton composed a series of his own versions of the classic sayings of Chuang Tzu, the most spiritual of Chinese philosophers. Chuang Tzu, who wrote in the fourth and third centuries B.C., is the chief authentic historical spokesperson for Taoism and its founder Lao Tzu (a legendary character known largely through Chuang Tzu’s writings). Indeed it was because of Chuang Tzu and the other Taoist sages that Indian Buddhism was transformed, in China, into the unique vehicle we now call by its Japanese name—Zen. The Chinese sage abounds in wit and paradox and shattering insights into the true ground of being. Thomas Merton, no stranger to Asian thought, brings a vivid, modern idiom to the timeless wisdom of Tao.

In this set of novitiate conferences from the late 1950s, Thomas Merton provides a vivid and detailed introduction to the traditional pattern and practices of the monastic day during the period immediately preceding the momentous changes that would be introduced in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Combining practical instruction with spiritual and theological reflection, this fifth volume of Merton''s teaching notes brings the reader into the choir and chapter room, scriptorium and cloisters of the Abbey of Gethsemani, and provides insight into the ecclesial, contemplative, paschal, and Trinitarian dimensions of Cistercian life. Patrick F. O''Connell is professor in the departments of English and theology at Gannon University, Erie, Pennsylvania. A founding member and former president of the International Thomas Merton Society, he edits The Merton Seasonaland is coauthor (with William H. Shannon and Christine M. Bochen) of The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia. He has edited four previous volumes of Thomas Merton''s monastic conferences for the Monastic Wisdom series: Cassian and the Fathers; Pre-Benedictine Monasticism; An Introduction to Christian Mysticism; and The Rule of Saint Benedict.