Thomas Merton's three epiphanies

Theology Today, Apr 1999 by Commins, Gary

Havana, Cuba, 1940: Thomas Merton goes to church and sees heaven. Louisville, Kentucky, 1958: He goes to town and sees the human race. Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka, 1968: He goes to Asia and sees creation. One experience came as a "thunderclap," another woke him "from a dream," the third "suddenly, almost forcibly" yanked him into a deeper level of awareness.1 The events and his interpretation of them are markers of his personal transformation, stations on his journey with Christ, icons through which to gaze into Merton's personal eternity.

Each epiphany revealed to Merton something of reality, Christ, his relationship with God, the human race, and creation. As he struggled to verbalize things too Other for amorphous words or theological precision, Merton unconsciously linked the three with the classical vocabulary of mysticism and his own spiritual lexicon. His experience in Havana, true of all mystical experiences, "disarmed all images, all metaphors, and cut through the whole skein of species and phantasms with which we naturally do our thinking."2 The relationship of doctrine to experience, he would write, was like that of a window frame to the light. Doctrine should neither be confused with nor obscure the light; it should only frame the light.3

According to Merton, every day is an epiphany. These three, however, stand out in Merton's writings as the most significant for him, underscoring the directions in his multifaceted life. Exploring these events in the context of Merton's writings and life, and discerning the meaning of each epiphany, can itself be revelatory.

THE FIRST EPIPHANY

The liturgy at St. Francis in Havana that Sunday in 1940 was filled with distractions that were not-on the surface-conducive to revelation. The church doors were left open during the service:. "the clanging of the trolleycar bells, the horns of the buses and the loud cries of the newsboys and the sellers of lottery tickets" nearly obscured the communion bell, almost sweeping away any aura of sacredness.4

Children entered through a side door, filling already crowded pews. Then, as the consecration began, "the priest seemed to be standing in the exact center of the universe."5 With the first words of the Creed, the strong, clear shout of the children's voices detonated something inside Merton "like a thunderclap."6 His "eyes were open on only precisely what was there, the church." Yet there was something else:

I knew with the most absolute and unquestionable certainty that before me, between me and the altar, somewhere in the center of the church, up in the air (or any other place because in no place), but directly before my eyes, or directly present to some apprehension or other of mine which was above that of the sense, was at the same time God in all His essence, all His power, God in the flesh and God in Himself and God surrounded by the radiant faces of the thousand million uncountable numbers of saints contemplating His Glory and Praising His Holy Name.7

"The clear and immediate knowledge that heaven was right in front of me," Merton wrote, "struck me like a thunderbolt and went through me like a flash of lightning and seemed to lift me clean up off the earth."8 He thought: "Heaven is right here in front of me: Heaven, Heaven!"9

The experience was "a sudden and immediate contact between my intellect and the Truth" on the altar. His later account in The Seven Storey Mountain speaks repeatedly of "light" and "brightness." Merton described himself as "illuminated by being blinded by the manifestation of God's presence." 10 He perceived in himself a new attainment of certainty: "love and knowledge were completely inseparable." He bubbled over with "love" and "delight," "joy," and "happiness" that lasted for hours.11

The experience that seemed to lift him from the earth, in which he saw heaven, was like Isaiah's vision of the hem of God's robe filling the temple. In this luxurious image of God-the divine presence revealed in part, hidden in its grandeur-Isaiah sees the hem in the temple, but is cognizant of the throne, and God, above.

In his journal, Merton reflects that God's splendor magnified the horror of his sinfulness. Like Christians throughout the ages, the experience of God's light had unveiled the full expanse of his own spiritual darkness. The illumination became an invitation to purgation. Again, there is a parallel between Isaiah's shame and Merton's feelings: "the horror . . . of our sins shows up with all the more ugliness compared with the beauty of the joy we feel for one instant of God's grace." 12

Merton experienced God's humility, and it humbled him. He felt joy, yet his fall-dominated dogmatism and the ontological uncleanness that clung to him at his conversion led him to force his experience like a square peg into a round hole, or like a window frame designed to define the scope of light.13

Merton advised his readers that the event had been God's gift of "kindness"; he had nothing (no special artistry in prayer) and he had done nothing (expended no spiritual effort) to enable him to see God in the eucharist in so satisfying a way. He was determinedly orthodox, modest, and honest. His experience had been ordinary, not "esoteric" at all, extraordinary merely in intensity, but available to all people. Years later he would write, "ordinary, everyday human existence [is the] material for a radical transformation of consciousness."14 That day he was awake to the opportunity. Others had the same certitude and joy in their daily faith without the aid of direct revelation. His certitude was common to all people of faith; his joy belonged to anyone "who has ever loved anybody or anything." 15 He interpreted the event eucharistically; he had experienced God's self-giving character; God belonged "to me."16 He had tasted heaven, what the eucharist signifies most self-consciously in the Orthodox tradition.