‘A tidal wave of truths’: Thomas Merton on the power of the Mass reliving the crucifixion

The Mass wields enormous power through its connection to Christ’s death on the cross, wrote Thomas Merton, the American Trappist monk, writer, theologian and mystic.

“O my God, with what might You sometimes choose to teach a man’s soul Your immense lessons!” Merton wrote in his memoir the Seven Storey Mountain about his spiritual journey to finding God in his life.

“Here, even through only ordinary channels, came to me graces that overwhelmed me like a tidal wave, truths that drowned me with the force of their impact: and all through the plain, normal means of the liturgy – but the liturgy used properly, and with reverence, by souls inured to sacrifice.”

One of the most influential Catholic authors from the US of the twentieth century, his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, has sold over one million copies and has been translated into over fifteen languages, notes the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. He wrote over sixty other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence and the nuclear arms race.

Continuing in his memoir to describe the immense power of the Mass and liturgy when properly and sincerely conducted, Merton wrote: “What a thing Mass become, in hands hardened by gruelling and sacrificial labour, in poverty and abjection and humiliation! ‘See, see,’ said those lights, those shadows in all the chapels. ‘See Who God is! Realise what this Mass is! See Christ here, on the Cross! See His Wounds, see His torn hands, see how the King of Glory us crowned with thorns!

“Do you know what Love is? Here is Love. Here on this Cross, here is Love, suffering these nails, these thorns, that scourge loaded with lead, smashed to pieces, bleeding to death because of your sins and bleeding to death because of people that will never know Him, and never think of Him and will never remember His Sacrifice.

“Learn from Him how to love God and how to love men! Learn of this Cross, this Love, how to give your life away to Him.”

Photo: Trappist Father Thomas Merton is pictured with Dalai Lama in 1968, whom Merton met during a trip to Asia. (Photo courtesy the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University.)

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