Ash Wednesday is full of joy...The source of all sorrow is the illusion that of ourselves we are anything but dust.
Thomas MertonCuriously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of professional or pious duty, can often manage to evade a radically involved dialogue with the book they are questioning.
Thomas MertonWe have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real...and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists. (295)
Thomas MertonPrayer is an expression of who we are...We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment.
Thomas MertonEach individual Christian and each new age of the Church has to make this rediscovery, this return to the source of Christian life.
Thomas MertonThe pleasure of a good act is something to be remembered - not in order to feed our complacency but in order to remind us that virtuous actions are not only possible and valuable, but that they can become easier and more delightful and more fruitful than the acts of vice which oppose and frustrate them.
Thomas Merton