Thomas Merton Quotes About Christ

Quotes about: Christ

• Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.

  Thomas Merton

  Disappointment, Eye, Heart

  Thomas Merton (1990). “The School of Charity: The Letters Of Thomas Merton On Religious Renewal & Spiritual Direction”, p.292, Macmillan

• It is my belief, that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in that part of humanity that is most remote from our own.

  Thomas Merton

  Humanity, Belief, Awareness

• We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.

  Thomas Merton

  Faith, Believe, Struggle

• True encounter with Christ liberates something in us, a power we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life, a resilience, an ability to bounce back when we thought we were completely defeated, a capacity to grow and change, a power of creative transformation.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Encounters, Christ

  "He is risen".

• To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law - the law of grace and love - but that one must do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Religious, Mean

  Thomas Merton (1975). “He is risen”, Tabor Pub

• The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man's life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Attitude, Men

  Thomas Merton (1960). “Spiritual Direction and Meditation”, p.16, Liturgical Press

• Christ is born to us today, in order that he may appear to the whole world through us.

  Thomas Merton

  Order, World, May

  Thomas Merton (2010). “Seasons of Celebration”, p.98, Macmillan

• Merely to resist evil with evil by hating those who hate us and seeking to destroy them, is actually no resistance at all. It is active and purposeful collaboration in evil that brings the Christian into direct and intimate contact with the same source of evil and hatred which inspires the acts of his enemy. It leads in practice to a denial of Christ and to the service of hatred rather than love.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Wisdom, Hate

• Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ.

  Thomas Merton

  Teaching, Unique, Doors

  John C. H. Wu, Jingxiong Wu, Thomas Merton, Kenneth Kraft (2003). “The Golden Age of Zen: Zen Masters of the T'Ang Dynasty”, p.21, World Wisdom, Inc

• The Christian life, and especially the contemplative life, is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Contemplative Life, Discovery

  Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.294, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• To know the Cross is not merely to know our own sufferings. For the Cross is the sign of salvation, and no man is saved by his own sufferings. To know the Cross is to know that we are saved by the sufferings of Christ; more, it is to know the love of Christ Who underwent suffering and death in order to save us. It is, then, to know Christ.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Men, Order

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.92, Shambhala Publications

• As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or a piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the rays of God's light and fire to a point that sets fire to the spirit of man. ... Through the glass of His Incarnation He concentrates the rays of His Divine Truth and Love upon us so that we feel the burn, and all mystical experience is communicated to men through the Man Christ.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Men, Fire

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.150, New Directions Publishing

• It is the will of God that we live not only as rational beings, but as "new men" regenerated by the Holy Spirit in Christ. It is His will that we reach out for our inheritance, that we answer His call to be His sons. We are born men without our consent, but the consent to be sons of God has to be elicited by our own free will.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Son, Men

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.60, Shambhala Publications

• Show us your Christ, Lady, after this our exile, yes: but show Him to us also now, show Him to us here, while we are still wanderers.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Christ, Exile

  Thomas Merton, M. Basil Pennington (2005). “Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings”, p.58, New City Press

• The married man and the mother of a Christian family, if they are faithful to their obligations, will fulfill a mission that is as great as it is consoling: that of bringing into the world and forming young souls capable of happiness and love, souls capable of sanctification and transformation in Christ.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Mother, Men

• This is the crucifixion of Christ: in which He dies again and again in the individuals who were made to share the joy and freedom of His grace, and who deny Him.

  Thomas Merton

  Crucifixion Of Christ, Joy, Grace

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.158, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• It is by the Holy Spirit that we love those who are united to us in Christ. The more plentifully we have received of the Spirit of Christ, the more perfectly we are able to love them: and the more we love them the more we receive the Spirit. It is clear, however, that since we love them by the Spirit Who is given to us by Jesus, it is Jesus Himself Who loves them in us.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Jesus, Able

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.187, Shambhala Publications

• Teach me to take all grace / And spring it into blades of act, / Grow spears and sheaves of charity, / While each new instant, (new eternity) / Flowering with clean and individual circumstance, / Speaks me the whisper of [God's] consecrating Spirit. / Then will obedience bring forth new Incarnations / Shining to God with the features of [the Lord's] Christ.

  Thomas Merton

  Spring, Shining, Grace

• It is not merely our own desire but the desire of Christ in His Spirit that drives us to grow in love. Those who seldom or never feel in their hearts the desire for the love of God and other men, and who do not thirst for the pure waters of desire which are poured out in us by the strong, living God, are usually those who have drunk from other rivers or have dug for themselves broken cisterns.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Strong, Heart

  Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.206, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The whole world has risen in Christ... If God is 'all in all,' then everything is in fact paradise, because it is filled with the glory and presence of God, and nothing is any more separated from God.

  Thomas Merton

  World, Paradise, Facts

  Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.822, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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