For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.
Thomas MertonThe Christian life, and especially the contemplative life, is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.
Thomas MertonWe do not pray for the sake of praying, but for the sake of being heard. We do not pray in order to listen to ourselves praying but in order that God may hear us and answer us. Also, we do not pray in order to receive just any answer: it must be God's answer.
Thomas MertonWhat is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?
Thomas MertonLife consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling: to do this one must recognize what is one's own-be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering valid.
Thomas Merton