Thomas Merton

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Thomas Feverel Merton OCSO (born January 31, 1915 in Prades , Département Pyrénées-Orientales , † December 10, 1968 in Bangkok ) was an American Trappist , writer and mystic .

Life

The interior of the Thomas Mertons Hermitage

Thomas Merton was born on January 31, 1915 in Prades (Eastern Pyrenees) as the son of the artist couple Ruth and Owen Merton. Before moving to the Pyrenees, the parents met in Paris . Merton's coming from the United States Mother Ruth Calvert Jenkins († 1921) was an interior designer, and his from Christchurch ( New Zealand derived) father († 1931) was a painter in the field of visual arts . The paternal grandfather had worked as a music teacher in Christchurch. Thomas Merton's father was a member of the Anglican Church and he also arranged for his son to be baptized in Prades. The family moved to the United States in 1916 because of World War I and concern about the maternal grandparents who lived in Douglaston, Long Island . There the Merton family moved into a house in Flushing on Long Island, where his brother John Paul was born in November 1918.

After his mother's death in 1921, Thomas Merton grew up in different places: partly with his grandparents on Long Island , partly - as a result of his father's unsteady travels - in British and French boarding schools. Finally, they stayed in Somerset Island (Bermuda) for months . Her voyage to France began on August 25, 1925. Here they settled in Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val .

In 1931 Merton came into the care of his godfather Thomas Izod Bennett, a surgeon in London . There Merton was briefly enrolled at Cambridge University in 1933 . He then moved to his grandparents in New York , where he studied journalism at Columbia University from the winter of 1935 . During his studies, Merton wrote for the literary magazine The Columbia Review and for the humorous magazine Jester . He celebrated parties, was passionate about watching movies and saw himself more as an atheist . He finished his studies in 1939 with a master's degree in English literature with a thesis on the poet and painter William Blake .

Merton's grandfather died in 1937, plunging him into a deep internal crisis. Through his interest in medieval philosophy , Merton approached the concept of God and, although a Protestant , began to be interested in Catholicism . On November 16, 1938, after previous convert lessons at the New York parish Corpus Christi , he was accepted into the Roman Catholic Church by the sub conditione donated baptism . At this point he began to grapple with the question of his calling to the priesthood and religious life.

After contacts with the Franciscans , where he did not enter the novitiate , Merton taught English for some time at St. Bonaventure University and worked as a volunteer in the Friendship House founded by Baroness Catherine de Hueck in Harlem. During this time he withdrew several times for a few days to retreat to Trappist abbeys and made a pilgrimage to Cuba, before he decided to enter the Trappist Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani near Louisville in Kentucky.

Entry into the Order

On December 13, 1941, Thomas Merton entered the Trappist Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky as a postulant and received the religious name M. Louis upon entry . In 1942, the year in which he made his first profession , Merton was baptized in Gethsemani by his younger brother John Paul , who fell as an aviator on a mission in early 1943 during World War II .

In the abbey, after some time, Merton received permission to write. In 1946 he wrote his autobiography The Mountain of Seven Steps on behalf of the Abbot of Gethsemani . His first work became a bestseller. In total, Merton had seventy publications. Posthumously his letters were published in five volumes and his diaries in seven volumes.

Merton often felt inwardly torn between his calling as a religious priest and that of a writer. He was also repeatedly concerned with the question of whether he should not have joined the Carthusians after all , which was prevented by the war. At that time there was no Charterhouse in America. From later correspondence it emerges that from around the mid-1950s a trial transfer to the Italian Camaldolese was considered. His superiors saw this as problematic at that time, since Merton would have had to change in the middle of the formation of the order's own clerics.

In 1949 Merton was ordained a deacon in Gethsemani and was ordained a priest some time later. Further publications followed. Merton became an internationally known and sought-after author and maintained extensive correspondence.

In 1951 he became prefect for the scholastics , in 1955 novice master . His preference for seclusion and meditation led him to study Buddhism and Zen . From 1956 an acute health crisis loomed, both physically and mentally. Only with the abbot's admission that he was allowed to retire as a hermit in a hermitage was his inner tension released.

From 1963 onwards, Merton became more and more concerned with current political events: protests against nuclear armament , support for black equality, against the Vietnam War and other engagements made him appear suspicious in the United States' incitement to communists during the Cold War .

When Ernesto Cardenal , who was a novice under Merton's direction for two years , went to South America, Merton also supported the revolutionary forces in Nicaragua . At the same time he rediscovered the contemplative life : not as a retreat from the world, but as a special kind of sympathy and turning to possible solutions to worldly problems. In 1966 Merton retired permanently into a life as a hermit, but continued to write numerous works, entertain correspondence and receive visits.

In 1968 Merton was allowed to leave the monastery for a long time to take part in a conference of Asian monks in Bangkok , to which he was invited as a guest speaker. He set out on a large-scale trip to Asia. His stations were Bangkok, Calcutta , New Delhi , Madras , Polonnaruwa and again Bangkok. In a series of encounters, including several conversations with the Dalai Lama , he experienced a great expansion of his horizons and at the same time an inner confirmation of his experiences and reflections. Thomas Merton's work is considered the link between Buddhism and Christianity.

death

Thomas Merton's grave in the cemetery of Gethsemani Abbey

On December 10, a few minutes after his guest lecture in Bangkok, Merton died of an electric shock in the hotel. On December 17th he was buried in Gethsemani Abbey. The Thomas Merton Award , an award from the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh , is named after Thomas Merton .

Works (selection)

  • Thirty poems. New Directions, Norfolk 1944
  • The seven storey mountain. Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York 1948
    • German edition: The mountain of seven levels. Translated from American English by Hans Großrieder. Benziger, Einsiedeln 1950
  • Seeds of contemplation. Hollis & Carter, London 1949
    • German edition: Promises of silence. Räber, Lucerne 1951
  • The sign of Jonah.
    • German edition: The sign of Jonas. Benziger, Einsiedeln 1954
  • Bread in the wilderness. Hollis & Carter, London 1954
    • German edition: The wisdom of the desert . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-14255-5 .
  • No man is an island. Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York 1955
    • German edition: Nobody is an island. Benziger, Einsiedeln 1979
  • Silence in heaven.
    • German edition: Silence in Heaven. A book about the life of the monks. Rheinische Verlags-Anstalt, Wiesbaden 1957
  • The living bread.
    • German edition: Who lives with you. Reflections on the Eucharist. Translated from American English by Irene Marinoff. Benziger, Einsiedeln 1958
  • Life and holiness.
    • German edition: Holy in Christ. Together with Eugen Kende. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1964
  • The secular journal. (Secular diary 1939–1941)
  • The black revolution.
    • German edition: The black revolution. About human brotherhood. Translated from American English by Hans Schmidthüs. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1965
  • What is contemplation.
    • German edition: From the sense of contemplation. Translated from American English by Alfred Kuoni. Arche, Zurich 1955
  • Contemplation in a world of action.
    • German edition: In harmony with yourself and the world. Translated from American English by Georg Tepe. Diogenes, Zurich 1986, ISBN 978-3-2570-1721-2 .

literature

in order of appearance

  • Monica Furlong: Everything a person is looking for. Thomas Merton, an exemplary life. Herder, Freiburg 1982, ISBN 3-451-19627-1 .
  • Anne Carr : A Search for Wisdom and Spirit. Thomas Merton's Theology of Self . University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame 1988, ISBN 0-268-01727-1 .
  • Johann Hoffmann-Herreros: Thomas Merton. A mystic seeks answers for our time. Matthias Grünewald Verlag, Mainz 1992, ISBN 3-7867-1662-5 .
  • Reiner Fuchs: Violence and Contemplation. Thomas Merton's contribution to the peace problem. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-631-44582-2 .
  • John Howard Griffin : Follow the ecstacy: The Hermitage Years of Thomas Merton. Orbis Books, Maryknoll 1993, ISBN 0-88344-847-5 .
  • Anand Nayak:  Merton, Thomas. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 5, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-043-3 , Sp. 1339-1341.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Patrick Hart, Jonathan Montaldo (ed.): Thomas Merton - the monk of the seven levels. A life in self-testimonies. Patmos-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2000, ISBN 3-491-70328-X .
  • Iris Mandl-Schmidt: Biography - Identity - Belief Culture. On the development of religious-spiritual identity using Thomas Merton's example. Matthias Grünewald Verlag, Mainz 2003, ISBN 3-7867-2455-5 .
  • Wunibald Müller , Detlev Cuntz (Ed.): Contemplative life. Memories of Thomas Merton . Vier-Türme-Verlag, Münsterschwarzach 2014, ISBN 978-3-89680-915-5 .
  • Marcelo Timotheo da Costa: Thomas Merton. In: Concilium, issue 5, December 2017, pp. 621–623
  • Dirk Doms: Thomas Merton, one person for all people . In: Cistercienser Chronik 125 (2018), pp. 555-566.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Merton: The mountain of seven steps. Benziger, Einsiedeln 1950, pp. 10–15.
  2. ^ A b Marcelo Timotheo da Costa: Thomas Merton. In: Concilium, issue 5, December 2017, p. 621
  3. ↑ Thomas Merton: The mountain of seven steps. Benziger, Einsiedeln 1950, p. 35 u. 44.
  4. ↑ Marcelo Timotheo da Costa: Thomas Merton. In: Concilium, issue 5, December 2017, p. 622
  5. ^ Donald Grayston, Thomas Merton and the Noonday Demon: The Camaldoli Correspondence. Cascade Books, Eugene OR, 2015, p. 107ff.
personal data
SURNAME Merton, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Merton, Thomas Feverel (full name); Merton, M. Louis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Trappist, mystic
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Prades (Pyrénées-Orientales) , France
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 1968
Place of death Bangkok , Thailand