....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.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that suffering and death are inherently meaningless, but the resurrection of Jesus gives them a new perspective.
Thomas Merton's quote highlights a fundamental aspect of Christianity, emphasizing that suffering and death, while negative in their own right, lose their inherent significance due to the hope and promise offered by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It presents a transformative view where the reality of resurrection provides believers with a framework to confront the harsh experiences of life and death, ultimately leading to a deeper understanding of existence beyond these trials.
In practice
A pastor might use this quote during a funeral service to provide comfort to grieving families.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.
The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.
Even if these stories are 3,000 years old, there's still so much about the characters, about the dilemmas, about their understanding of the universe that still resonates. The whole idea of order and chaos, which is really central to the ancient Egyptian understanding of the world, is still very much with us.
Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.
Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it.
And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks
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