My reflection on Life and Holiness by Thomas Merton
Ordinary perfection and holy humanism aren’t terms that mean much to the modern ears that may hear them. So why, when they sparkle between the lines of Thomas Merton’s Life and Holiness, do they nonetheless have the power to captivate? Perhaps we have a sense that our lives mean more than completing tasks, making money, providing for family and friends, creating art, and speculating about the future. These goals may mean a great deal to us, as they should. Yet, so much of what gives meaning in life also comes from the ordinary, chance encounters with people we know and people we don’t. We have the opportunity to be charitable or not to be, to witness to what we stand for or not to. We can be faithful to what we know to be true or not be. These ordinary choices matter.
Thomas Merton could be referred to as a saint of the unsaintly. He espouses the saintliness of the everyman. And he does it in a way that doesn’t cheapen sainthood. He doesn’t say you’re okay as you are. What he does is simply put sainthood within your grasp as an ordinary person. He says no matter how difficult it is to live a life of honest and pure faith, no one is exempt from the invitation to love. We all have the capacity and the responsibility to love as deeply as we can. Each must serve God and one another in the unique, irreplaceable manner only he or she can. Our lives – all our lives – are pedestals that honor the values we hold dearest or we have ignored the Christian vocation that has stared us in the face since baptism. He makes no bones about the sacrifice involved and the self-discipline required; it’s the ducking out of discipleship he flatly refutes.
Merton makes it clear there isn’t one way to be holy, just as there can’t possibly be only one way to do God’s will. No, God’s will for each of us is as particular to us as it is inescapably ordinary – meaning that it is ordained to apply to everyone. No matter how important society or the organizations we work for may consider us, there is an inner call to holiness that is absolutely direct in relation to us. Religious experiences mediated by the Church and others provide a surely very helpful road; however, the map to spiritual fulfillment is written in some ways more completely on the heart than anywhere else. And so, there are times we must question and challenge established conceptions – soul searching, some call it. Indeed, we hear Merton echo, searching the will of God for us in our souls is precisely the place we ought to look for it.
The type of perfection Merton describes is the ordinary kind, all the more impressive for its achievability. Perfection that exists only as a rarefied aspiration seldom does anyone any real good. Merton’s call to holiness is on the human level. His work of perfection is the everyday diligence that shines through our work life as readily as our spiritual life. we are caretakers of one another, just as we are caretakers of our souls. And it will often be in the ordinary caretaking we do that we get closest to the extraordinary perfection that we seek.
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