In his slender volume, Bread in the Wilderness, Thomas Merton works out his theology of the Psalms, explaining their power and mystery as the song- and prayer-book of God’s people, both in Israel and in the Church. His writing is compact and nuanced, not so much because of highly technical language, but because of the intricate and almost lapidary expression of his thoughts.
So I’ve been reading the book slowly, in small doses, for almost a year. There are stretches when I spend a little time each morning with it, and then times when I set it aside. Today I returned to Merton’s book, reading a little section comparing the histories of Israel, the Church, and the individual Christian.
At one point, Merton writes, “The Mystery of Christ is the heart of all history and extends backwards and forwards to embrace all time“ (p. 112). This makes Jesus Christ—known to us through his Passion, death, and resurrection—the lens through which we view all history. I doesn’t seem to me that this denigrates the history and experience of Israel or the Church, but instead binds the whole history together and makes it resonate, one part with another.
Merton earlier had explained the notion of the “type” and the practice of seeking the connections that typology reveals. He said that the Flood, when God cleansed the world from sin, was a type of the redemption he worked through Christ’s death and resurrection. The bond between the events is more than symbolic. It also lives as a kind of harmony, a resonance, a sympathetic vibration, where the richness of each event increases by virtue of its ties to the other.
Merton also points to the connections that bind the life of each individual to this great sweep of history and future gathered up together in the “Mystery of Christ.” He writes:
The history of Israel—that is of the people of God, the Church—is also in some measure the history of each individual soul in the Church. As in the natural order each individual man is a microcosm, so in the supernatural order each individual soul is a little church, a miniature heaven and temple of God. Just as the whole people of God is still crossing the desert to the Promised Land, still passing through the Jordan, still building Jerusalem and raising God’s temple on Sion, so each individual soul must normally know something of the same journey, the same hunger and thirst, the same battles and prayers, light and darkness, the same sacrifices and the same struggle to build Jerusalem within itself.
This gives me comfort and hope. When I face the times in my life when the path before me grows indistinct, or when I am hurt and lost and alone, there is solace in knowing I’m not the first to feel this adversity.
For almost a year, since the weekend retreat with the Benedictines, I’ve used The Liturgy of the Hours as my devotions in the morning. This exposes me to the Psalms. I’ve found the heights and valleys of my spiritual life reflected in the expressions of the Psalms and felt comfort in knowing that countless others around the world are praying the same Psalms at the same times in their days.
I guess this is what, at least in part, Merton means when he writes, “…so each individual soul must normally know something of the same journey…:” (p. 113).
It’s alright to be a traveler, a sojourner, to follow a path blazed by others before us, to know we have companions on our pilgrimage, others who have gone before us, others who will come after us, but most of all, One whose death and resurrection harmonizes all people and places and times.
Ut in Omnibus Glorificetur Deus.