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Thomas Merton
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Widely regarded as a spiritual master and peerless religious writer, Thomas Merton was born in France in 1915 to an American mother and New Zealander father. His parents died when he was young, and he was educated in England and the United States; at Columbia University, he was influenced by literature professor Mark Van Doren. After a dramatic conversion experience in 1938, Merton joined the Catholic Church and three years later took vows with the contemplative Trappist Order. As a young monk, he published his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, in 1948. It became an instant best seller, and established his name as a writer. Over the next two decades, he became a prolific and influential author on the contemplative life and prayer. In the 1960s, his concerns turned to conditions in the world around him; he was active in the anti-war movement and became a vocal social critic, writing on Christian responsibility, race relations and economic injustice. Merton's pioneering interest in inter-religious dialogue made him one of the first interpreters of Asian religions to the West. In this context, he traveled to a conference in Bangkok in 1968, where in a freak accident he was electrocuted by the fan in his hotel room. |
Dorothy Day
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Born in Brooklyn in 1897, Day began her career as a radical journalist for socialist publications prior to the First World War. She converted to Catholicism after the birth of her daughter, and thereafter sought ways to interpret her social convictions in a religious context. In 1932 she was sought out by Peter Maurin, a social philosopher who was convinced he had finally found the person who could bring his ideas for a just social order based on Catholic social teaching into reality. Together they founded the newspaper the Catholic Worker, gaining a circulation of 100,000 by the end of the first year. They also opened houses of hospitality, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless in the depths of the Depression. There are now 175 Catholic Worker communities worldwide. Day's main philosophical contribution to the Catholic Worker movement was the articulation of a specifically Catholic basis for pacifism and conscientious objection to all war. In the 1960s, she was sought out by a younger generation of radical anti-war Catholics, and has been acknowledged as having in many ways anticipated liberation theology by several decades. She remained outspoken until her death in 1980. |
St. John of the Cross
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St. John of the Cross was born in Spain in 1542. His father had been disowned by his wealthy family when he married a weaver's daughter, and he died when his children were very small, leaving his family homeless and destitute. John showed great compassion from an early age; at 14, he took a job nursing hospital patients suffering contagious diseases. He joined the Carmelite order, but although he excelled at academics at seminary he found himself hungry for a purely contemplative life. In 1567 he met the formidable prioress Teresa of Avila, who urged him to help her reform the Carmelites to follow a rule centered around small egalitarian monasteries, poverty, fasting, silence and enclosure. These Carmelites were called "discalced" (from the Latin for "barefoot") because they wore sandals instead of shoes. Together, John and Teresa were quite successful at drawing a following from within the Order, but poor communications also brought alarm and discipline from the Carmelite leadership. In 1577, John was abducted, accused of rebellion against his superiors, and imprisoned in a windowless cell for nine months, where he was beaten and starved. In these conditions of torture, he found himself left with God alone, and out of that experience he composed some of the most sublime and impassioned lyric poetry in all of Spanish literature. He finally escaped, and was hidden and brought back to health by Teresa's nuns. He devoted the rest of his life to spiritual direction, with a particular concern for those suffering dryness or depression in their religious life, offering them the encouragement that God was leading them deeper into faith. His classic work on this subject is Dark Night of the Soul, which has become a common expression for an experience of being lost and forsaken by God. |
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