Epiphany: Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. He was a monk in the Trappist Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.

Merton became a keen proponent of interfaith understanding, exploring Eastern religions through study and practice. He pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures including the Dalai Lama, Japanese writer D. T. Suzuki, Thai Buddhist monk Buddhadasa, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

From his journal of April 29th 1940, Camaguey Cuba

(Merton was attending a mass and a group of children had entered the church and filled the first 5 or 6 rows of pews.)

High up behind the altar Saint Francis raised his arms up to God, showing the stigmata in his hands. The children began to sing. Their voices were very clear, they sang loud, their song soared straight up into the roof with a strong and direct flight and fill the whole church with its clarity. Then when the song was done and the warning bell for consecration chimed in with the last notes of the hymn, and the church filled with the vast rumour of people going down on their knees everywhere in it, then the priest seemed to be standing in the exact centre of the universe. 

The bell rang again three times.

Before any head was raised again, the clear cry of the brother in the brown robe cut through the silence with the words Yo Creo, “I believe”, which immediately all the children took up after him with such loud and strong and clear voices and such unanimity and such meaning and fervour that something went off inside me like a thunderclap and without seeing anything, or apprehending anything extraordinary through any of my senses, (my eyes were open only on precisely what was there in the church) I knew with the most absolute and unquestionable certainty that before me, between me and the altar, somewhere in the centre of the church, up in the air (or any other place, because in no place) but directly before my eyes, or directly present to some apprehension or other of mine, which was above that of the senses, was at the same time God in all his essence, all his power, God in the flesh and God in himself, and God surrounded by the radiant faces of the thousands and millions, the uncountable numbers of saints contemplating His glory and praising His holy name. The unshakable certainty, the clear and immediate knowledge that Heaven was right in front of me struck me like a thunderbolt and went through me like a flash of lightning and seemed to lift me clean up off the earth.