Merton makes a momentous decision . . .
I cannot say what caused it: it was not a reaction of especially strong disgust at being so tired and so uninterested in this life I was still leading, in spite of its futility. It was not the music, not the fall air, for this conviction that had suddenly been planted in me full grown was not the sick and haunting sort of a thing that an emotional urge always is. It was not a thing of passion or of fancy. It was a strong and sweet and deep and insistent attraction that suddenly made itself felt, but not as movement of appetite towards any sensible good. It was something in the order of conscience, a new and profound and clear sense that this was what I really ought to do.
How long the idea was in my mind before I mentioned it, I cannot say. But presently I said casually:
“You know, I think I ought to go and enter a monastery and become a priest.”
Gibney had heard that before, and thought I was fooling. The statement aroused no argument or comment, and anyway, it was not one to which Gibney was essentially unsympathetic. As far as he was concerned, any life made sense except that of a business man.
As we went out the door of the house I was thinking:
“I am going to be a priest.”
When we were on the Chicken Dock, my mind was full of the same idea. Around three or four in the afternoon Gibney left and went home to Port Washington. Peggy and I sat looking at the dirty river for a while longer. Then I walked with her to the subway. In the shadows under the elevated drive over Tenth Avenue I said:
“Peggy, I mean it, I am going to enter a monastery and be a priest.”
She didn’t know me very well and anyway, she had no special ideas about being a priest. There wasn’t much she could say. Anyway, what did I expect her to say?
I was glad, at last, to be alone. On that big wide street that is a continuation of Eighth Avenue, where the trucks run down very fast and loud—I forget its name—there was a little Catholic library and a German bakery where I often ate my meals. Before going to the bakery to get dinner and supper in one, I went to the Catholic library, St. Veronica’s. The only book about religious Orders they seemed to have was a little green book about the Jesuits but I took it and read it while I ate in the bakery.
Now that I was alone, the idea assumed a different and more cogent form. Very well: I had accepted the possibility of the priesthood as real and fitting for me. It remained for me to make it, in some sense, more decisive.
What did that mean? What was required? My mind groped for some sort of an answer. What was I supposed to do, here and now?
I must have been a long time over the little book and these thoughts. When I came out into the street again, it was dusk. The side streets, in fact, were already quite dark. I suppose it was around seven o’clock.
Some kind of an instinct prompted me to go to Sixteenth Street, to the Jesuit Church of St. Francis Xavier. I had never been there. I don’t know what I was looking for: perhaps I was thinking primarily of talking to some one of the Fathers there—I don’t know.
When I got to Sixteenth Street, the whole building seemed dark and empty, and as a matter of fact the doors of the church were locked. Even the street was empty. I was about to go away disappointed, when I noticed a door to some kind of a basement under the church.
Ordinarily I would never have noticed such a door. You went down a couple of steps, and there it was, half hidden under the stairs that led up to the main door of the church. There was no sign that the door was anything but locked and bolted fast.
But something prompted me: “Try that door.”
I went down the two steps, put my hand on the heavy iron handle. The door yielded and I found myself in a lower church, and the church was full of lights and people and the Blessed Sacrament was exposed in a monstrance on the altar, and at last I realized what I was supposed to do, and why I had been brought here.
It was some kind of a novena service, maybe a Holy Hour, I don’t know: but it was nearly ending. Just as I found a place and fell on my knees, they began singing the Tantum Ergo.... All these people, workmen, poor women, students, clerks, singing the Latin hymn to the Blessed Sacrament written by St. Thomas Aquinas. I fixed my eyes on the monstrance, on the white Host.
And then it suddenly became clear to me that my whole life was at a crisis. Far more than I could imagine or understand or conceive was now hanging upon a word—a decision of mine.
I had not shaped my life to this situation: I had not been building up to this. Nothing had been further from my mind. There was, therefore, an added solemnity in the fact that I had been called in here abruptly to answer a question that had been preparing, not in my mind, but in the infinite depths of an eternal Providence.
I did not clearly see it then, but I think now that it might have been something in the nature of a last chance. If I had hesitated or refused at that moment—what would have become of me?
But the way into the new land, the promised land, the land that was not like the Egypt where I persisted in living, was now thrown open again: and I instinctively sensed that it was only for a moment.
It was a moment of crisis, yet of interrogation: a moment of searching, but it was a moment of joy. It took me about a minute to collect my thoughts about the grace that had been suddenly planted in my soul, and to adjust the weak eyes of my spirit to its unaccustomed light, and during that moment my whole life remained suspended on the edge of an abyss: but this time, the abyss was an abyss of love and peace, the abyss was God.
It would be in some sense a blind, irrevocable act to throw myself over. But if I failed to do that ... I did not even have to turn and look behind me at what I would be leaving. Wasn’t I tired enough of all that?
So now the question faced me:
“Do you really want to be a priest? If you do, say so...”
The hymn was ending. The priest collected the ends of the humeral veil over his hands that held the base of the monstrance, and slowly lifted it off the altar, and turned to bless the people.
I looked straight at the Host, and I knew, now, Who it was that I was looking at, and I said:
“Yes, I want to be a priest, with all my heart I want it. If it is Your will, make me a priest—make me a priest.”
When I had said them, I realized in some measure what I had done with those last four words, what power I had put into motion on my behalf, and what a union had been sealed between me and that power by my decision.
I don't think that I have ever had a moment of clarity like this. Merton is absolutely sure in his decision. It may have come after years of being faithless. False starts and ignored signs. Yet, here Merton finally is: hearing God's voice and answering with an emphatic "yes."
I ruminate. Ponder. Weigh options. Think. Think about it again. Then, I may seek out advice from one or two people. Sometimes more. After I have done all this, I'm usually no closer to an answer than when I started the whole process.
I wish a lived in Biblical times. Aside from wide-spread leprosy and some plagues of locusts, things were a lot simpler back then. If you prayed and prayed for something, eventually God sent down an angel who knocked on your door, asking for some food and lodging. If you were smart enough to be a hospitable host, in the morning, that angel would answer your prayer. Your barren wife would be with child. Your possessed child would be unpossessed. Your terminally ill mother would get out of bed and make breakfast for everyone in the house.
God was a lot more transparent back then. Miracles more plentiful. Angels as common as sheep.
These days, God doesn't write answers on walls or send seraphic messengers. Cities don't get destroyed by pillars of fire, and, the last time I checked the weather forecast, the meteorologist wasn't predicting 40 days of rain. Miracles have been replaced by metaphors.
That means that poets have become the prophets of our time. They deal in truth, even if they tell it slant. The best poems--the ones that take my breath away--have the power of prophecy in them. Think about it. Even Rodney Dangerfield got inspired by Dylan Thomas in Back to School to not go gentle into that good night.
I think that's why, when I'm really churning over a really difficult question or problem, I pick up a collection of poems. For me, it's a sacred act. Words elevated to God's breath. My favorite gospel text, as my one Constant Reader already knows, is John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
Tonight has been a struggle for me. Without delving into the details, let me just say that I reached for a little Seamus Heaney, from his poem "Digging":
. . .The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
Life can be difficult sometimes, full of mold and squelch and slap. Hard earth that needs to be turned by a spade, over and over and over, until it yields something living. Something that can feed and sustain you.
Tonight, I'm digging with my pen, looking for answers.
Saint Marty will let you know when something green starts to grow.
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