A PROVIDENTIAL GATHERING OF SPIRITUAL GIANTS

RICHARD Rohr is another spiritual hero of mine. He tells an amazing story about how, as a young man, he asked his parents to stop off at the monastery where Thomas Merton lived.

He was heading home on holiday from the seminary while studying to become a Franciscan priest. He was shocked to see Merton walking in front of him with two other monks as they showed a young nun around the monastery. The nun was relatively unknown then. In later life, though, she became the world’s best-known and most famous nun who is now a saint. In Merton’s time, she was simply Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Merton and Mother Teresa shaped Christianity in the 20th century. Both uniquely embodied contemplation and action.

Richard Rohr (right) is now the most-read spiritual writer in the Western world. In an age when respect for religion has declined, Rohr has become as influential as Merton and Mother Teresa were.

He makes Christianity credible to a sceptical generation. Just think about it: On that day in a remote Trappist monastery in Kentucky, three of the spiritual giants of the 20th/21st centuries stood in a dark corridor in a relatively unknown monastery.

It’s easy to see that it was a providential meeting of spiritual giants. Merton, the contemplative who was so active; Teresa, who was so active learning contemplation; and Rohr, carrying on their legacies. God’s ways are inscrutable.

Today, take a moment to think about one of Rohr’s own mind-blowing insights: “God is just another word for everything,” Rohr wrote. “Don’t say you love God if you don’t love everything.”

I want to finish with my favourite prayer. This is in response to the many readers who continually ask me to print Thomas Merton’s prayer of faith and hope:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

“But I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please you. I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know if I do this, you will lead me down the right path, though I may know nothing about it.

“Therefore, I will trust you always, though I may seem lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” (Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude.)