This iconic quote from the Synod of Bishops on Justice in 1971 has led the Church to a program of unprecedented social involvement in the four and a half decades to the present. Justice and peace have become an important component of all Church life. This social involvement, when authentic, is an important part of the central mission of evangelization.
Thirteen years before the Synod on Justice, Thomas Merton came out of his “Louisville Experience” as a prophet calling for recognition of the social consequences of the Gospel.
In describing this experience Merton said, “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers…The sense of liberation from the illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud…thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others….Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their being, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more greed.” (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, pp 156-8)This deep mystical event led Merton to a dramatic escalation of involvement with his contemporary reality. The walls of the abbey could not contain his prophetic response against war and the nuclear arms race. Nor could they restrain his uncompromising support for the civil rights movement.
Merton’s pursuit of the contemplative life drew him into the Gospel’s call for the transformation of the world, the return to the innocence, joy and freedom of the initial Paradise experience. The gift of contemplation gives a new consciousness of our oneness with all our brothers and sisters. There is a powerful invitation to transform all reality to the original plan of God. Merton experienced this as a call to resist violence and hatred, to embrace God’s unconditional love.
Merton’s need for social responsibility was simple. His contemplative life and experience of God drew him steadily deeper into the mystery that is God. This opened new horizons in sharing God’s love for creation and all people. This drew him into a new recognition of his contemporary reality. Merton expressed his insight in a 1966 Commonweal article, “That I should be born in 1915, that I should be a contemporary of Auschwitz, Hiroshima and the Watts riots are things about which I was not first consulted. Yet they are the events in which, whether I like it or not, I am deeply and personally involved.” (Contemplation in a World of Action, p. 161)
For all who accept the Gospel call, our historical reality is our call to involvement. Our search for God will not find enlightenment sitting on the sidelines as a spectator. In The Joy of the Gospel Pope Francis is emphatically concrete. “We may not always be able to reflect the beauty of the Gospel, but there is one sign which we should never lack: the option for those who are least, those who society discards.” (Joy of the Gospel: #195)
II
As Merton opened up to the historical he found himself in one of the more fascinating decades, the Sixties. It is difficult to understand the Sixties if you do not realize that each year was similar to a decade of social
change in more normal times. Vietnam, the continuing nuclear race, the civil rights movement, the pill and the sexual revolution along with the women’s movement all contributed to the radical social change. Vatican II added to the turmoil but also nurtured a profound sense of hope. All these events energized a strong counteraction that just made the tumultuous mix more unmanageable. In the midst of all this there was an added delight, the Beatles took center stage.
Rational dialogue soon gave way to the hunger for power. The panorama of various causes rapidly became a classic expression of the Gospel insight of the “weeds and the wheat.” (Mt 13:24-30)
With this onslaught of social change and the Church’s call to involvement new problems quickly surfaced. Many went overboard in action without much reflection and even less spirituality. Numerous divisions developed. One was between the activists and those promoting a more traditional privitized spirituality. Confusion reigned.
The search for justice on many fronts soon surfaced negative consequences: raw and conflictive political actions that demonized the opponents, a withdrawal from the Gospel search for inclusion that reduced the encounter to “the good guys” and the “bad guys”, and helping the poor proved way beyond the simplistic efforts that just added to the problem.
As a young priest, I personally was drawn into many of these distortions as a community organizer. Some years later I described this experience “as being robbed of the Gospel.”
Helping the poor soon evolved into a “feel good” philanthropy that denied their dignity. It further hindered the poor from participating in their own liberation. It slowly became clear that working with the poor in an honest way was a truly complex process.
The reaction to the distortions of the passionate hunger for change soon led many to abandon the struggle. One of the pathways some took was a spirituality unconnected to history and its brokenness. For others, transformation of the world and the needs of the poor faded to inconsequential elements of their new search for God.
Yet the problems still remained. While Vietnam eventually ended, the need for peace has not. While the Civil Rights Act was passed, racial justice remains an elusive goal. While Liberation Theology made a great contribution, poverty and isolation still remain more the norm than the exception throughout Latin America. Romero witnessed to the beauty of the Gospel in an extraordinary way but today’s powerful gangs display daily just how hidden its transforming power still is for many.
Since the fading dreams and hopes of the Sixties, the Church has been in a search for a trustworthy integration of spirituality and justice. This has been a continual issue from the time of Merton and his untimely death in late 1968 to the explosion of joy and hope with the arrival of Pope Francis.
In Pope’s opening statement that is The Joy of the Gospel, Francis explained the problem and the search for an answer to the life-giving effort to balance spirituality, faith and justice.
“Any authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always considers a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave the earth somehow better than we found it. We live on this magnificent planet in which God has put us, and we love the human family which dwells here, with all its tragedies and struggles, its hopes and aspirations, its strengths and weaknesses. The earth is our common home and all of us are brothers and sisters. Indeed the just ordering of society and of the state is a central responsibility of politics. The Church cannot and must no remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice. All Catholics, their pastors included, are called to show concern for the building of a better world.” (Joy to the World: #183)
III
Thomas Merton lived at a time when this search for an integrated spirituality was just beginning. Yet his prophetic vision has made an invaluable contribution to this important mission. The depth of his contemplative insights quickly set the tone. The true searchers of a spirituality that embraces a transformative justice on the way to Gospel integrity found themselves returning to Merton’s huge reservoir of writings again and again.
In 1966, some tired, frustrated and struggling workers for peace came to him for guidance. He spoke to their hearts with a message of hope. His words laid out the way of growth and inclusion that have set the pattern for the next five decades.
“All the good you will do will not come from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you will be more open to the power that will work through you without you knowing it. If you can get free of the domination of causes and first serve Christ’s truth, you will be able to do more and be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments. The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in the process. But, we will not necessarily know about it beforehand.” (Sojourners: December, 1979, p. 18)
Merton had this to say about action that is not rooted in deep personal prayer. “He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusion about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.” (Contemplative in the World: p. 160)
These two brief selections of Merton’s writings hold the seeds of wholeness that was his gift to following generations. His contemplative encounter with God made it clear. Prayer and action are not in conflict. They support each other in mutual balance.
The “Louisville experience,” empowered Merton, momentarily, to see people as they really are. He concluded his description with these words, “If only they could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more greed.” (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 158)
This was the root experience that pushed Merton into a new and deeper intensity of social involvement. This effort finally led Merton to embrace nonviolence. It was all of a piece. Contemplation led to more intense experience of God. This opened up the oneness with others. The response was unconditional love that called for nonviolence.
His journey into his personal truth drew him closer to the initial harmony of Paradise. His growing awareness of his oneness with God exposed the oneness with all his brothers and sisters. Nonviolence enlightened his heart to see how to respond to the reality of that oneness hidden by a layer of the messiness of a corrupt world. Merton was clear that nonviolence flows from a heart connected to the unconditional love revealed in Jesus Christ.
For Merton, contemplation nurtured nonviolence and unconditional love. This led to a transformative justice on the passage back to the beginning in the Garden. In his final days he was pushing this point in his dialog with the East. “We are already one. But we imagine we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.” (Asian Journal, p. 308)
Thomas Merton surely has not been the only voice of consequence in these decades of growth in spirituality and justice. He has, however, been one of the most profound and enduring.
