Make ready

Make ready for the Christ whose smile like lightning sets free the song of everlasting glory that now sleeps in your paper flesh like dynamite!
- Thomas Merton
    I received that little message on a Christmas card a number of years ago and liked it so much it has remained on my bedroom mirror ever since. I like Thomas Merton, but have always been a bit hesitant because so many on the liberal side of the Church went gaga over him in the 70's and 80's. His earlier writing are rock solid, but I am not so certain about his later writings. My hunch is that he was swept along with the false enthusiasms that so dominated the western world in the 1960's. In all fairness, had I grown up in the 50's there is a fair chance that I may have been swept along in that societal adolescence that typifies the 1960's and and early 70's. When we are young I think many of us long for a life without consequence because of a misunderstanding of personal freedom, as we get older I think we realize that a life without consequence is hardly worthy living and incapable of any measure of achievement or contributing to the greater good of humanity.