Thomas Merton
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Course In Desert Spirituality
$19.95Add to cartThomas Merton’s sessions with the young monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani showcase Merton’s brilliant ability to survey the key figures, and synthesize their writings, inspiring his listeners and readers with what it means for the spiritual life. Like its companion volume A Course in Christian Mysticism, this book is a collection of fifteen lectures that get to the heart of Merton’s belief that monastic wisdom and spirituality are applicable for everyone. 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 desert spirituality.
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Medieval Cistercian History
$44.95Add to cartThomas 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 Citeaux 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.”
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Life Of The Vows
$44.95Add to cartAs 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.
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Alfred Delp SJ
$22.00Add to cartAlfred Delp (1907-1945) was a German Jesuit condemned to death by the Nazis for anti-Hitler activities. While awaiting execution Delp composed this series of meditations on Advent, the Lord’s Prayer, the tasks of the future, the meaning of happiness, and other spiritual themes.
Written on the edge of eternity, Delp’s reflections continue to bear a special power and poignancy. His words snow the ongoing relevance of the Gospel in an age of idolatrous power and capricious violence.
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Dialogues With Silence
$16.99Add to cartAn intensely personal devotional book from Thomas Merton, the ultimate spiritual writer of our time, showing his contemplative and religious side through his prayers and rarely-seen drawings. The only Merton gift book available.
Dialogues with Silence contains a selection of prayers from throughout Merton’s life–from his journals, letters, poetry, books–accompanied by all 100 of Merton’s rarely seen, delightful Zen-like pen-and-ink drawings, and will attract new readers as well as Merton devotees. There is no other Merton devotional like this, and the paperback edition will be elegantly designed and packaged.
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Thomas Merton On Saint Bernard
$29.95Add to cartThe best-known Cistercian of the twentieth century reflects on the teaching and life of the most reknown Cistercian of the twelfth century. Three essays written in the 1950s explore the relation of contemplation and action in the monastic vocation and in the life of Christians.
