Religion : Monasticism

The first of seven volumes of Thomas Merton's collected journals, these entries covers the years 1939-1941. They trace his life as a young, pre-monastic man, as a Greenwich Village graduate student, his ambitions to be published, and the probing questions that would lead him inexorably to find his true vocation. more...

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In the early 13th century the diocese of Liège witnessed an extraordinary religious revival, known to us largely through the abundant corpus of saints' lives from that region. Holy women were held up by their biographers as models of orthodoxy and miraculous powers. Less familiar but no less fascinating are the male saints of the region. In this volume the author has translated a trilogy of Cistercian lives composed by the same hagiographer, Goswin. more...

Price: $95.00

A study of religious silence and sign language in an early medieval abbey. more...

Price: $76.00

The fourth volume of Thomas Merton's complete journals, one of his final literary legacies, springs from three hundred handwritten pages that capture - in candid, lively, deeply revealing passages -- the growing unrest of the 1960s, which Merton witnessed within himself as plainly as in the changing culture around him. In these decisive years, 1960-1963, Merton, now in his late forties and frequently working in a new hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani, finds himself struggling between his longing for a private, spiritual life and the irresistible pull of social concerns. Precisely when he longs for more solitude, and convinces himself he could not cut back on his writing, Merton begins asking complex questions about the contemporary culture (''the 'world' with its funny pants, of which I do not know the name, its sandals and sunglasses''), war, and the churches role in society. Thus despite his resistance, he is drawn into the world where his celebrity and growing concerns for social issues fuel his writings on civil rights, nonviolence, and pacifism and lead him into conflict with those who urge him to leave the moral issues to bishops and theologians. This pivotal volume in the Merton journals reveals a man at the height of a brilliant writing career, marking the fourteenth anniversary of his priesthood but yearning still for the key to true happiness and grace. Here, in his most private diaries, Merton is as intellectually curious, critical, and insightful as in his best-known public writings while he documents his movement from the cloister toward the world, from Novice Master to hermit, from ironic critic to joyous witness to the mystery of God's plan. Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Trappist monk, writer and peace activist. His spiritual classics include New Seeds of Contemplation, The Sign of Jonas, Mystics and Zen Masters and The Seven Story Mountain. more...

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An apostolic lifestyle characterized by total material renunciation, homelessness, and begging was practiced by monks throughout the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Such monks often served as spiritual advisors to urban aristocrats whose patronage gave them considerable authority and independence from episcopal control. more...

Price: $15.95