Thomas Merton (31 January 1915- 10 December 1968)
Thomas Merton was an American Catholic monk of the Roman Catholic Church, theologian, social and religious-themed writer and poet. He is seen as one of the most prolific and influential writers of the Roman Catholic Church in America during the 20th century.
Thomas was born in Prades, France, to Owen Merton and Ruth Jenkins Merton. He was baptised in the Church of England but received no religious education. During World War I, his family relocated to the United States in 1917, from where his mother died of stomach cancer when Merton was just six.
Starting from age 11 I attended boarding schools in France and England. He earned a Bachelor of art degree (1938) and a Master of Science degree (1939) from Columbia University, New York City. During his time at Columbia, he converted to and began nursing the idea of entering the religious life. He started following his desire to become a Cistercian monk by entering the Trappist Abbey Gethsemane after teaching English at Columbia (1938–39) and St. Bonaventure University (1939–41) near Olean, New York. He was accepted as a novice in March 1942 and later ordained a priest in 1949. While in the Trappist monastery, Merton became a mystic and pursued imaginative spiritual quests through dozens of writings. He had at one point viewed his writing as a contrast to his religious life and planned on quitting it but seeing that he had a great writing intellect, his superior encouraged him to pursue his writing. His early works were entirely spiritual. He later tended towards criticism and social issues of the time, including civil rights, nonviolence and pacifism, and nuclear armament. He first published works on a collection of poems. Thirty Poems (1944), A Man in the Divided Sea (1946), and Figures for an Apocalypse (1948). With the. He gained critical acclaim after the release of the autobiographical “Seven Storey Mountain”, which was written within two hours as a personal project. In 1948, “The Seven Storey Mountain” was published to critical acclaim and cemented his place as a gifted writer. He became an American citizen on 5 January 1949, the same year he became a priest. Many of his later works reveal a profound understanding of Eastern philosophy and mysticism unusual in a Westerner. Toward the end of his life, he became more inclined to reflective writing and poetry and was deeply interested in other faiths, notably Buddhism, and promoted interfaith dialogue. During a trip to Asia in 1968, he met with the Dalai Lama on different occasions, who praised him for having more insight into Buddhism than any other Christian he knew. During this trip, he was found dead from fatal electrocution by a faulty wire after giving a talk at the morning session. His writings are a subject of interest from his vocation, with whom he had a constant struggle during his lifetime, and from the Catholic Church and its practice. Moreover, his congregation benefited from the royalties of his literary works.
My Argument with the Gestapo, Merton’s lone novel, was released posthumously in 1969. His other works include The Waters of Siloe (1949), a Trappist history; Seeds of Contemplation (1949); and The Living Bread (1956), a meditation on Eucharistic. Contemplation in a World of Action (1971), The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (1973), seven volumes of his private journals, and numerous volumes of his correspondence were also published posthumously.
The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University, Bellarmine campus, is an official repository for his archives.