In the first chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans which he probably wrote from Corinth, Paul castigates those who have failed to recognize God in creation. They instead have gone off to worship idols and wallow in their sin. Their salvation is in the Gospel—Christ crucified like a common criminal and resurrected to new life.

People are sometimes unaware that, besides The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton published another book in 1948—The Spirit of Simplicity: Characteristic of the Cistercian Order.  Scholars agree that Merton was the author. For him, in his early experience of Cistercian monasticism, simplicity was quite simple. Summing up the teaching of St. Bernard and the Little Exordium, Merton says:

[S]implicity consisted in getting rid of everything that did not help the monk arrive at union with God by the shortest possible way.

And the shortest possible way to arrive at union with God, who is Love, is by loving Him, in himself, and in our breather. (iii) Continue reading →