7 Quotes by Thomas Merton about christian

  • Author Thomas Merton
  • Quote

    Mere sitting at home and meditating on the divine presence is not enough for our time. We have to come to the end of a long journey and see that the stranger we meet there is no other than ourselves—which is the same as saying that we find Christ in him. For if the Lord is risen, as He said, He is actually or potentially alive in every man.

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  • Author Thomas Merton
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    To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law - the law of grace and love - but that one must do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism.

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  • Author Thomas Merton
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    The only influence that can really upset the injustice and iniquity of men is the power that breathes in the Christian tradition, renewing our participation in the Life that is the Light of men.

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  • Author Thomas Merton
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    The mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of a certain type of Christian thought has seriously impaired this capacity, which nonviolence must recover.

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  • Author Thomas Merton
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    To those who have no personal experience of this revolutionary aspect of Christian truth, but who see only the outer crust of dead, human conservatism that tends to form around the Church the way barnacles gather on the hull of a ship, all this talk about dynamism sounds foolish.

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  • Author Thomas Merton
  • Quote

    Each individual Christian and each new age of the Church has to make this rediscovery, this return to the source of Christian life.

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