Saturday, April 20, 2019

Easter Thoughts from Thomas Merton


While reading his book, No Man is an Island, I found the following from Thomas Merton to be rather apropos for this Easter season: 

Only the sufferings of Christ are valuable in the sight of God, who hates evil, and to Him they are valuable chiefly as a sign. The death of Jesus on the Cross has an infinite meaning and value not because it is a death, but because it is the death of the Son of God. The Cross of Christ says nothing of the power of suffering or of death. It speaks only of the power of Him who overcame both suffering and death by rising from the grave.

The wounds that evil stamped upon the flesh of Christ are to be worshipped as holy not because they are wounds, but because they are His wounds. Nor would we worship them if He had merely died of them, without rising again. For Jesus is not merely someone who once loved men enough to die for them. He is a man whose human nature subsists in God, so that He is a divine person. His love for us is the infinite love of God, which is stronger than all evil and cannot be touched by death.

Suffering, therefore, can only be consecrated to God by one who believes that Jesus is not dead. And it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the Resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning. (Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island [London: Burns and Oates, 1955], 68-69)