Prophetic Mission/Message

Last week I found a new Merton book in the second hand bookshop, it's a gem entitled "Contemplation in a World of Action".  A great read for anyone digging into thoughts on modern monasticism.  This is a series of essays by the man who gave a lifetime to considering and living that topic.

Thomas Merton writes about the contemplative life as a 'special dimension of inner discipline and experience, a certain integrity and fullness of personal development, which are not compatible with a purely external, alienated, busy-busy existence.  This does not mean that they are incompatible with action, with creative work, with dedicated love.  On the contrary, these all go together.  A certain depth of disciplined experience is a necessary ground for fruitful action'.

The quote below is from the introduction, written by Jean Leclercq O.S.B who gives us a wonderful insight into Merton, but also something each of us could consider in the light of how we walk out our own lives.

“If Merton was convinced that he had a mission it was because he knew that he had a message.  A message is not necessarily a scholarly lecture – and when Merton spoke from a platform he was not at his best.  He was not dealing, after all, with abstract knowledge, timeless science, a course which could be given again and again, unchanged, each year.  According to its etymology, which is the same as that of mission, a message is always composed of truths sent (missus) to a person, a group, a period in time, to satisfy an expectation and sometimes to answer a call to help.  Those who receive it may not even have understood their need, but even before they recognize it and are able to express it in words, they have been looking for that message and hoping that someone will come to help them and that God will send them a messenger.  A message is, therefore, something prophetic, mobile, running, even flying – St. Bernard used the word praevolare (to fly) – to fulfil man’s hopes.  They take it for granted that it’s author, or messenger, has had a glimpse of the solution for their problem; prophecy implies the gift of anticipation.  But each time the pace quickens, each time that anyone sees farther than the “man of the actual moment”, as Kierkengaard put it, there is bound to be opposition.  A message is something for which one must suffer and occasionally die.  Certainly a message cannot remain a personal possession:  definitely it must be “delivered”.“

Our capacity to be more of His message is expanded in the time spent walking and talking with the Lord, guided and instructed by His Word and His Spirit.  Out of this place He can send out the message to be delivered, whether it be in personal presence, letter, book, or spoken word.  May God grant us the grace and capacity to be the messengers of truths that  run and fly to fulfil man's hopes.