It had completely escaped my attention, but Doc Mac notes that it was on this day in 1948 that one of the great autobiographies of the 20th century was released, Thomas Merton’s “The Seven Storey Mountain.” 

The book had a powerful impact on countless men in the years after World War II, and launched thousands of vocations to the religious life.  It had no small effect on my own life and vocation, too, and to this day Merton remains one of my great heroes;  it’s not an exaggeration to say that reading this book altered the course of my life.

I remember visiting Merton’s hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky (he’s pictured there on the left) and sitting at that very desk and gazing out that window in front of it, looking out at the world that Merton saw, and feeling profoundly grateful, and humbled. 

You never know how God is going to work on you, or who He’s going to use.   God used Tom Merton to guide me where He wanted me to go, and now nothing can ever be the same.   

Sadly, too many Catholics today don’t know this book, or its author, and it’s fallen out of fashion.  But those who visit this work, or revisit it, will discover a haunting and powerful testimony to grace.

As Merton writes near the end of the book:

We all add up to something far beyond ourselves.  We cannot yet realize what it is.  But we know, in the language of our theology, that we are all members of the Mystical Christ, and that we all grow together in Him for Whom all things were created.

In one sense, we are always travelling, and travelling as if we did not know where we were going.

In another sense, we have already arrived. 

We cannot arrive in the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness.  But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. 

But oh!  How far I have to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!