A groundbreaking work that introduces the West to Eastern Christian spirituality through the “lens” of Thomas Merton—to the “Prayer of the Heart”—as practiced from the time of the Desert Fathers.

 “Merton’s spirituality would not be what it is without his devoted and careful study of Greek patristic thought and the Desert Fathers.”  from One Yet Two, 

- Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

 Following the best-seller, Merton and Sufism, the Untold Story, a complete compendium of materials revealing the king of spiritual nourishment Merton gained from Islam and his profound friendship with the Muslims, Merton and Hesychasm: The Prayer of the Heart brings to light what inspired the monk’s captivation with the Oriental mystic tradition. Among the riches presented are: Key explanatory essays by Oxford’s Bishop Kallistos Ware (translator of the Philokalia) on this spiritual methodology, including “Praying with the Body”; illuminating writings on the subject by other authorities such as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and a transcription of Merton’s lectures on the Prayer of the Heart delivered at Gethsemani.

 Edited by Jonathan Montaldo, president of the International Thomas Merton Society and author of extensive works on Merton including The Intimate Merton.  

“Kyrie Jesu Christe, Elaison….

Learn it in Russian, learn it in Greek.  Say it.  Pep up your spiritual life with the Jesus Prayer in the various languages.  It’s a fine prayer. “ 

“It’s simply opening yourself to receive.  The presence of God is like walking out of a door into the fresh air.  You don’t concentrate on the fresh air, you breathe it.  And you don’t concentrate on the sunlight, you just enjoy it. It’s all around you.”  from Thomas Merton’s recorded lectures at Gethsemani.

In the Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander  Merton wrote “If I can unite in myself the thought and devotion of Eastern and Western Christendom, the Greek and the Latin Fathers, the Russians with the Spanish Mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided Christians….If we want to bring together what is divided, we cannot do so by imposing on e division upon another or absorbing one division into another.  We must contain all the divided worlds in ourselves and transcend them in Christ.”   This is precisely what Merton has done, containing the divisions within himself and transcending them in the unity which is in Christ.  This is unity that is cosmo-theatric.  I dislike technical terms but this one has its uses.  It brings together God, humankind and the world into a single focus.  It speaks of the worship of the whole creation, the huge chorus of living beings.

Merton’s whole effort of mastering the tradition of Christian East and West, or rather of letting himself be mastered by it, was anything but antiquarian.  It was motivated by an urgent desire to enter more deeply into the life and death and rising of Christ for the sake of the world today.  In the introduction to the Lectures on Ascetical and Mystical Theology he writes, “the mystical tradition of the Church-a collective memory and experience of Christ living and present within her.  This tradiditon forms and affects the whole person: intellect, memory, will, emotion, body, skills (arts), all must be under the sway of the Holy Spirit.

  ----A. M Allchin.  “The Worship of the Whole of Creation: Merton & The Eastern Fathers.”  The Merton Annual,  Volume 5, 1992, p. 191

B. Table of Contents

PART I. HESYCHASM: THE GIFT OF EASTERN CHRISTIANITY  TO SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

Bishop Kallistos Ware            How Do We Enter the Heart, and What Do We Find After Entering?

Silence in Prayer: The Meaning of Hesychia

The Power of the Name: The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality

Dr. James Cutsinger                    The Ladder of the Divine Ascent: The Yoga of Hesychasm

Hieromonk Symeon                       The Spiritual Teaching of Staretz Silouan

Gray Henry                              A Sufic Perspective of St. Seraphim of Sarov

PART II. THOMAS MERTON AND EASTERN CHRISTIANITY

Canon A.M. Allchin             The Worship of the Whole Creation: Merton and the Eastern Fathers

Our Lives, A Powerful Pentecost: Thomas Merton and Russian Christianity

Monastic Life: Unity in Christ

Abbot John Eudes Bamburger            Thomas Merton and Eastern Christianity

M. Basil Pennington.                             Thomas Merton and Byzantine Spirituality

Patrick F. O’Connell                                Articles on “Heart” and “Hesychasm”

Rowan Willams                        Bread in the Wilderness: The Monastic Ideal in Thomas Merton and      

            Paul Evdokimov

Jonathan Montaldo                         The Art of Prayer marginalia, edited and introduced

Jim Forest                                           Thomas Merton and Icons

“Hagia Sophia”…poem

Susan McCaslin                                 “Merton and “Hagia Sophia” (Holy Wisdom)

PART III. HESYCHASM IN THE WRITING OF THOMAS MERTON

Thomas Merton The Climate of Monastic Prayer

                                    Introduction to The Wisdom of the Desert

                                    The Spiritual Father in the Desert Traditions

Contemplation in a World of Action

                                    Mount Athos

The Spiritual Ladder of John Climacus

Russian Mystics, Mystics & Zen Masters

An Introduction to The Russian Mystics by S.Bolgakov

            The People with Watch Chains" (On the spiritual practice of

Boris Pasternak

“Pasternak Affair”

Correspondence with Boris Pasternak

Canon A. M. Allchin            The Prayer of the Heart and Natural Contemplation: A Brief Introduction to Thomas Merton’s Lecture Notes on St. Maximus

Thomas Merton.             ‘I am a Hesychast’: Reflections of Eastern Christianity in

Merton's Journals

Bernadette Dieker            Transcriptions and commentary from Thomas Merton’s lectures on Hesychasm at the Abbey of Gethsemani

Thomas Merton            Orthodoxy and the World—Book Review

Illustrations:

The Icon in Merton’s Hermitage

Relevant illustrations of Eastern Christian Saints and Icons

Appendix:

Rama Coomaraswamy. “The Role of the Mother of God in Hesychastic Prayer”

B. Further Details.

Thomas Merton was Roman Catholic and a member of one of Catholicism’s strictest monastic orders. Nonetheless, throughout his religious life he was influenced by Christian traditions best preserved within the Eastern Orthodox Church: iconography, the Jesus Prayer, and the apophatic spiritual path linked with Mt. Athos and Sinai. He treasured the sayings and stories of the Desert Fathers and was familiar with the Philokalia.

Merton studied and wrote extensively on Greek and Russian Orthodox traditions.  His writing on Hesychasm, the practices surrounding the Prayer of Jesus (that have as their aim preparing the spiritual seeker for union with the Godhead) are of particular contemporary importance. Many western seekers have looked to Buddhism and the East for a thoroughly psychological and spiritual method of meditation, when in fact, a Christian tradition, just as analytic and developed and more carefully palatable to the West, exists and is readily available in the Hesychast tradition.

Merton’s commentary is accompanied by major new essays by scholars in the fields of Eastern Christianity and Merton studies such as Bishop Kallistos Ware, Father Donald Allchin of England and James Forest of the U.S. and Holland, among others. Both Allchin and Forest, who knew Merton personally, brings us salient details of his interest in the Christian East together with a view of the monk and his writing.

see The Fons Vitae Thomas Merton Series

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