Merton’s Encounter with God in Downtown Louisville
Tomas Merton, maturing as a Trappist monk, had grown into a contemplative state of prayer. This is the most advanced phase of deep personal prayer. This momentous spiritual development opened the way for him to have an extraordinary mystical experience. It involved a special experience and realization of the presence of God leading to an intense personal enlightenment.This mystical event in Merton’s life is a very helpful guide in understanding the acute need for deep personal prayer. This constant struggle with our sinful condition is our painful heritage of our first parents.
Merton was on his way to becoming a major international spiritual force in the Twentieth Century and beyond. On March 18, 1958 he was in Louisville, KY., a city close to his Gethsemani Abbey. He needed to get some printing done. Amid the large crowd of shoppers on the street, he had a great moment of illumination. Merton wrote:
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.
Merton’s special encounter with the divine light let him see beyond the crippling limits of Original Sin. He was seeing as God sees. He says if only they could see each person with God’s eyes. The consequences would lead to Paul’s declaration in Galatians 5:19-23. They would no long be driven by the works of the flesh but “the fruit of the Spirit that is love, joy, peace. Patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
As Merton said, this vision in the Spirit would draw the people beyond the burden and blindness of Original Sin. Now there “would be no more war, no more hatred, no more greed”
This enlightenment and commitment in love to peace and justice and the integrity of creation is the goal of the Christian life. It is the purification from the consequences of the “Fall” leading to transformation in Christ. This is the result of a life committed to spiritual growth through the regular practice of deep personal prayer.
Merton’s definition of prayer is this: yearning for the awareness of the presence of God, a personal understanding of God’s word, knowledge of God’s will and the capacity to hear and obey.
This type of prayer, centering on God, is the passageway to see in Jesus Christ God’s self-offering to humanity. This on-going encounter with Christ is the way of liberation from the consequences of Original Sin. This is the fundamental call of our Christian journey: our transformation in Christ. It is our return to original innocence.
Noteon future themes for this series of blogs on Original Sin and Deep Personal Prayer:
The following blogs in this series will address these themes that help us pursue the Christian Life as a deliverance from the affliction of our disabling and distorting heritage from Adam and Eve. Some of these themes are: purification and conversion, self-knowledge, transformation of consciousness and attachments and addictions as a product of Original Sin.
