[Graham was an English Benedictine monk and professor of theology who studied both Western and Eastern philosophies. Below, he praises No Man Is an Island, discussing Merton's views on spirituality.]

To judge from the Catholic press, the Church's activity today is as vigorous as it has ever been. The theologians, within the framework of the dogmatic formularies, continue to elucidate divine revelation; and the ecclesiastics, like good policemen, control and direct the spiritual traffic. When, however, mid-twentieth century man wishes to discover what it is all about he turns, more likely than not, to the mystics.

This is what gives to the writing of Thomas Merton its special importance. As his latest work [No Man is an Island] reveals signs of an all but completely achieved maturity, that importance is certain to grow. A rare and attractive combination of gifts display themselves: the readability of an accomplished writer, imaginative and intelligent, with a poet's ear for the music of words; an instinctive sense of the orthodox blended with the originality, not of one who must think differently from other people, but of one who thinks for himself. Added to these are perceptiveness, compassion, humility and an abounding common sense which relieves his uncompromising message of any suspicion of extravagance or ill-humor. The young scholastics at the Abbey of Gethsemani are fortunate in having so magnanimously sane, warmhearted and articulate a spiritual director as Father Louis.

As hitherto, he writes as the Trappist-Cistercian monk, while at the same time contriving to address himself to the world at large. The world would do well to pay heed:

A selfish love seldom respects the rights of the beloved to be an autonomous person…. God is more glorified by a man who uses the good things of this life in simplicity and with gratitude than by the nervous asceticism of someone who is agitated about every detail of his self-denial.

The former uses good things and thinks of God. The latter is afraid of good things, and consequently cannot use them properly…. We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony….

The arguments of religious men are so often insincere, and their insincerity is proportionate to their anger. Why do we get angry about what we believe? Because we do not really believe it. Or else what we pretend to be defending as the "truth" is really our own self-esteem. A man of sincerity is less interested in defending the truth than in stating it clearly, for he thinks that if the truth be clearly seen it can very well take care of itself.

How simple yet how admirably acute all this is. The book as a whole treats, as its author justly says, of "some of the basic verities on which the spiritual life depends." In a series of penetrating reflections Father Louis unfolds the theme, old yet perennially new, of man's response to reality; that is to say, how we are to bring ourselves into harmony with God and our fellow creatures. In this adjustment lies man's destiny and his sole hope of happiness. The goal ultimately to be achieved—not merely by those who live in monasteries but by all men alike—is the unitive knowledge of God in loving contemplation together with selfless good will towards the world around us.

The process of spiritual growth, as Father Louis makes clear in continuing flashes of insight, can be summed up in the Gospel paradox of surrendering self in order to gain the truer and deeper Self. "I live, now, not I, but Christ liveth in me." This "self-naughting" moves in a different dimension from that of mere virtue—hence we have to be on our guard against being righteous overmuch—even while what is involved is the totality of the "good life." Self-knowledge and an awareness of the motives for our actions are among the conditions of success. Its enemies are "fear, anxiety, greed, ambition," since by these we become preoccupied with the ego and so distort our vision of reality. "Most of the moral and mental and even religious complexities of our time go back to our desperate fear that we are not and cannot really be loved by anyone."

Father Louis, perhaps for the first time within the pages of a single book, has overlooked none of the positive elements that make for Christian holiness; both its counterfeits and the impediments to its achievement are ruthlessly exposed. Nevertheless, in the mind of one reader at least, a lingering doubt remains—more, it is true, a question of emphasis than of anything substantive. If it is here ventilated, it is in no spirit of carping criticism, but with a view either to having it dismissed or providing an occasion for one of the ablest spiritual writers of our time to clarify his thought.

Father Louis' later writings, and this book in particular, show him as aware as any man could be that Christian perfection has nothing to do with sanctified egoism. But has he been able, even here, to express that awareness in a consistently articulated doctrine? For example, the two kinds of love, eros and agape, to which he alludes in his prologue deserve closer attention than they receive. (No one, incidentally, is better qualified than Thomas Merton to extract what is true and valuable from Nygren's great study Agape and Eros—a work highly relevant to his theme.) If Hope is a form of desire, as Father Louis holds with St. Thomas—in other words, Hope has the character of eros rather than agape—then how far is it spiritually profitable to develop the theme of the love of God precisely in these terms?

Hope, partaking of desire, though directed to God, is also, unlike charity (agape), a self-regarding virtue. We want our spiritual hunger satisfied. This, of course, is legitimate; but is it really what Father Louis wishes to stress so emphatically? At any rate, it would be interesting, in this connection, to have his comment on the story—a favorite of St. Francis of Sales—of the woman who carried a burning brand in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other. When asked her purpose, she replied that the brand was to burn up paradise and the water to extinguish the fires of hell. Then, she said, we shall know who are God's true lovers!

"… I exist in order to save my soul and give glory to God by doing so." Is not the inverse of this more in harmony with Father Louis's underlying thought? "I exist in order to give glory to God and save my soul by doing so." The difference here is worth considering. Would he agree that the most significant aspiration of the love of God ever spoken contained no element of self-regarding desire? "Not my will, but Thine be done"—a dramatic echo of the most selflessly loving prayer that we ourselves can ever say: "…. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done…."

Father Louis is still preoccupied with "asceticism," alive though he is to its pitfalls. Hope, he says, is asceticism's "living heart." The real danger of self-chosen austerities, or even of exceptional ascetic practices authorized for limited groups, is not so much that they can foster pharisaic pride. Though of this possibility there are abundant warnings in history, fiction and descriptive psychology. The danger is that they intensify our absorption in precisely that individual ego whose claims on our attention it is our business to ignore. How profoundly it has been remarked that humility does not consist in thinking little of self, but in not thinking of self at all. Calculated austerity not seldom merely exalts the more creditable side of the ego at the expense of the less creditable; whereas genuine holiness implies the complete self-naughting of the ego, in its creditable no less than its discreditable aspects, and the abandoning of the will to God.

Only the pure in heart can see God. For achieving such one-pointedness as is here implied a prudent disciplining of the bodily senses is indispensable. But this of itself need bring us no nearer the goal. Penintential practices can never touch the heart of the matter—which is the ordering, and very largely the elimination, of desire, the extinguishing within the human spirit of the hideous fires of lust, greed, envy, resentment and infatuation. Hence (I submit) the "heart" of asceticism is not hope or desire (even for God) but patience. Etymologically the Passion of Christ is simply the "patience" of Christ—in whose sufferings we ourselves similarly share, as St. Benedict observes in his Rule, "by patience."

In some later work Father Louis may perhaps consider a little more deeply the truth of man's essential passivity before God. Consciousness of our native energies and an aesthetic appreciation of the symbolism of the Liturgy, with its sacramental reenactment of Christ's sacrificial offering, should never be allowed to hide from view the existential realities of the human situation. To the question "What can I do for God?" the answer is simple enough, "Nothing at all." Our only contribution is to respond to the divine initiative and allow God to work His will in us by cooperating actively with Him from moment to moment. Radically this implies a certain desirelessness, a refusal to prefer, a non-attachment to the results of our work, what the saints call "holy indifference." If our aim, by God's grace is "to desire nothing and refuse nothing," we may safely leave asceticism to take care of itself. We shall find the duties of our state a sufficient school of selflessness. The object in view is not that by our austerities we should gain possession of God, but that by our submissiveness He should take possession of us.

Responsive to every call of duty, yet not anxiously striving, quietly alert in wise passiveness before God—patiens divina, in St. Thomas' phrase—we learn the deeper meaning of both contemplation and compassion. The contemplative is not one who prepares himself strenuously for some future vision; even now, if through a glass darkly, he has bridged the gap between time and eternity, and so enjoys "the sober certainty of waking bliss." To be compassionate is not to adopt an attitude, albeit a "Christlike" attitude, to the sinful and suffering; it is to recognize one's identity with them. "That art thou" is the basic thought of one of the world's great religions, echoing the "we are members one of another" of St. Paul. Remembering all this we shall, in our discourse, make use reluctantly of the separative "I;" just as in our prayer we shall recall, as members of the whole human family, that it was in the first person plural that we were taught to say "Our Father…."

These thoughts fall obviously within the scope of a book entitled No Man is an Island. If their special emphasis, for what that may be worth, is not always to be found there, it must at once be said that Father Louis is having nothing pointed out to him that he has not already noted for himself. The book as it stands is the author's most valuable achievement so far; it should find its place among the enduring works of Christian spirituality.

Aelred Graham, "The Mysticism of Thomas Merton," in The Commonweal, Vol. LXII, No. 6, May 13, 1955, pp. 155-59.