John Anderson

“So to listen to God means, first of all, to recognize our helplessness, our stupidity, our blindness and our ignorance. How can we ever hear Him if we think of ourselves as experts in religion?”
― Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas

“God, my God, God Whom I meet in darkness, with You it is always the same thing! Always the same question that nobody knows how to answer! I have prayed to You in the daytime with thoughts and reasons, and in the nighttime You have confronted me, scattering thought and reason. I have come to You in the morning with light and with desire, and You have descended upon me, with great gentleness, with most forbearing silence, in this inexplicable night, dispersing light, defeating all desire. I have explained to You a hundred times my motives for entering the monastery and You have listened and said nothing, and I have turned away and wept with shame. Is it true that all my motives have meant nothing? Is it true that all my desires were an illusion? While I am asking questions which You do not answer, You ask me a question which is so simple that I cannot answer. I do not even understand the question. This night, and every night, it is the same question.”
― Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas

“discovery of God and of all things in Him. This is a wine without intoxication, a joy that has no poison hidden in it. It is life without death.”
― Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas

“Thus by loving we know God in God and through God for in love the Three Divine Persons are made known to us, sealing our souls not with a static likeness but with the impression of their infinite Life. Our souls are sealed with the character of God as the air is full of sunshine. Glory to God in the highest, who has sealed us with His holiness, sealed us all together, brothers, in His Christ. Amen. Amen.”
― Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas