Living with other people and learning to lose ourselves in the understanding of their weakness and deficiencies can help us to become true contemplatives. For there is no better means of getting rid of the rigidity and harshness and coarseness of our ingrained egoism, which is the one insuperable obstacle to the infused light and action of the Spirit of God.
Even the courageous acceptance of interior trials in utter solitude cannot altogether compensate for the work of purification accomplished in us by patience and humility in loving other men and sympathizing with their most unreasonable needs and demands.
- Thomas Merton “New Seeds of Contemplation”
One Comment
Very good, but Blessed Seraphim Rose is better (and St. Maximos the Confessor is mindblowing). All the same, a fascinating examination by someone who really didn’t want to accept the very notions of St. Gregory Palamas that he clearly needs to accept to say this.
P.S. – Love y’all’s music, and that’s coming from a trad.