Merton encounters a possible angel . . .
In the big meditation on the “Two Standards,” where you are supposed to line up the army of Christ in one field and the army of the devil in the other, and ask yourself which one you choose, I got into too much of a Cecil B. De Mille atmosphere to make much out of it, but in the considerations on a choice of a state in life which followed, a strange thing happened, which scared me a little. It was the only incident that savored of externally supernatural intervention in the retreat.
I had already made my choice of a state of life. I was going to be a Franciscan. Consequently, I embarked on these thoughts without too much personal concern. I was meandering around in considerations of what a man ought to do with his earthly possessions—a meditation that might have been useful to someone who really had some possessions to dispose of—when my doorbell rang. I pressed the button that opened the street-door below, and went to the head of the stairs, thinking that perhaps it was Gibney or somebody like that.
It was a little man in a mouse-colored overcoat, whom I had never before seen.
“Are you Thomas Merton?” he said to me, as he arrived on my landing.
I did not deny it, and he entered my room and sat down on the bed.
“Did you write that review of that book about D. H. Lawrence in the Times book section last Sunday?” he asked me.
I thought I was in for it. I had favorably reviewed a book on Lawrence by Tyndall, under whom I had done my thesis at Columbia. He had written just the kind of a book that was calculated to drive all the people who had made a Messiah out of Lawrence clean out of their wits with pain and rage. I had already got an angry letter in the mail for even reviewing such a book, and I thought that now somebody had come around to shoot me if I did not recant.
“Yes,” I said, “I wrote the review. Didn’t you like it?”
“Oh, I didn’t read it,” said the little man, “but Mr. Richardson read it, and he told me all about it.”
“Who is Mr. Richardson?”
“You don’t know him? He lives in Norwalk. I was talking to him about your review only yesterday.”
“I don’t know anybody in Norwalk,” I said. I could not figure out whether this Mr. Richardson liked the review or not, and did not bother. It did not seem to have any bearing on the man’s visit after all.
“I have been travelling around all day,” he said, thoughtfully. “I was in Elizabeth, New Jersey; then in Bayonne, New Jersey; then in Newark. Then, when I was coming back on the Hudson Tube I thought of Mr. Richardson and how he had been talking about you, and I thought I would come and see you.”
So there he was. He had been in Elizabeth and Bayonne and Newark and now he was sitting on my bed, with his mouse-colored overcoat and his hat in his hand.
“Do you live in New Jersey?” I said, out of politeness.
“Oh, no, of course not, I live in Connecticut,” he said quickly. But I had opened out only an avenue to further confusion. He went into intricate geographical details about where he lived and how he happened to be associated with this Mr. Richardson of Norwalk, and then he said:
“When I saw the ad in the paper, I decided to go over to New Jersey.”
“The ad?”
“Yes, the ad about the job I was looking for in Elizabeth, and didn’t get. And now I haven’t even enough money to get back to Connecticut.”
I finally began to see what it was all about.
The visitor was stumbling around in a long, earnest, and infinitely complicated account of all the jobs he had failed to get in New Jersey, and I, with a strange awe and excitement, began to think two things: “How much money have I got to give him?” and “How did he happen to walk in here just when I was in the middle of that meditation about giving all your goods to the poor?...”
The possibility that he might even be an angel, disguised in that mouse-colored coat, struck me with a force that was all the more affecting because it was so obviously absurd. And yet the more I think about it, the more I am convinced of the propriety of God sending me an angel with instructions to try and fool me by talking like a character in one of those confusing short stories that get printed in the New Yorker.
Anyway, I reached into my pockets and started emptying them, putting quarters and pennies and nickels on the desk. Of course, if the man was an angel, then the whole affair was nothing but a set-up, and I should give him everything I had on me, and go without supper. Two things restrained me. First, the desire of supper, and, second, the fact that the stranger seemed to be aware that I was somewhat moved with secret thoughts, and apparently interpreted them as annoyance. Anyway, figuring that I was in some way upset, he showed himself to be in a hurry to take the little I had already collected for him, as if that were plenty.
He hastened away, stuffing a dollar bill and the change into his pockets, leaving me in such a state of bewilderment that I positively could not sit down cross-legged and continue the meditation. I was still wondering if I should not run down the street after him and give him the other dollar which I still had.
But still, applying St. Ignatius’ standard to the present circumstances, I had done fairly well. I had given him about three-fifths of my liquid capital.
Perhaps, in a way, it is better that I didn’t give him everything and go without supper. I would have preened myself with such consummate and disgusting vanity—assuming I did not die of fear, and call up one of my friends to lend me something—that there would have been no merit in it at all. For all that, even if his story was disconnected and very silly, and even if he was not an angel, he was much more than that if you apply Christ’s own standard about whatsoever you have done to the least of His little ones.
Anyway, it certainly put some point into that meditation.
I don't think angels are recognized very much these days. They still walk around, knock on doors, ask for money on the subway, hold signs outside Walmart that read "Haven't Ate in 3 Days." They may be sitting at the desk six feet away in your office. Or they may be sleeping in your house, right in the next room.
It isn't a matter of snow-white wings and harps and halos. Angels are those people who put you to the test--to see whether you'll share your last piece of pizza, hand them your hat and gloves, put your arms around them when they are breaking in two. That's what Merton recognizes in the passage above. He sees an angel in a mouse-colored overcoat, and he gives that angel enough money to find his way home.
That's also the job of angels. They teach us things about ourselves, push us to be better people. I am moving forward tonight, thankful for the chance to redeem myself. Prove to that young angel that I can do better. Be better.
That's what this messy life is all about. It's pretty simple. When you feel anger, reach toward understanding. When you're feeling poor or hungry, share what you have anyway. And when you are in despair, look for hope.
Saint Marty gives thanks tonight for a little angel with a big message.
And a poem to make you smile tonight . . .
Fezziwigging
by: Martin Achatz
I've always loved how your calvesflash like comets as the fiddler saws
"Sir Roger de Coverly" across
his strings, and you and Mrs.
Feizziwag march across warehouse
floor, flush other dancers away,
startled partridges before hungry
hounds. How your face gleams
with goose grease, figgy pudding,
pockets filled with crumbs of mince
meat. How at home, you peel off
breeches, stockings, unbutton, unbuckle,
shrug on nightshirt, climb into bed.
Mr. Fezziwig, she coos.
Mrs. Fezziwig, you growl.
As if you don't know her
first name, she forgotten yours.
That you have just met
at that yule revel, spied
her by the wassail bowl, decided
she would be your gold
and frankincense and myrrh
that holy night. How you coax
her with lip, mouth, tongue
until she finally remembers
your name, sighs it over
and over and over and over:
Francis, oh, Francis, oh,
Frank, yes, Frank, yes, Frank
until bells begin to peal
in the steeples on that cold,
clear Christmas morning.
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