Show us your Christ, Lady, after this our exile, yes: but show Him to us also now, show Him to us here, while we are still wanderers.
Interpretation
Merton expresses a desire for spiritual guidance in the present, not just in a future hope.
In this quote, Thomas Merton conveys a deep yearning for the presence of Christ in our earthly lives. He recognizes the struggles of existence and the feeling of being lost or in exile, and he implores for a manifestation of the divine that can help guide and comfort us in our current state, rather than only in a distant future or afterlife.
In practice
In a sermon discussing faith during difficult times.
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.
Even before 9/11 I was gripped by a sense of dread: our lack of criticism about what we were doing in the Middle East - the slagging off of a whole religious tradition.
Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.
Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.
The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.
We are building together a nation in which there are no second-class Australians.
Each of us has a soul, but we forget to value it. We don't remember that we are creatures made in the image of God. We don't understand the great secrets hidden inside of us.
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