The tremulous scrupulosity of those who are obsessed with pleasures they love and fear narrows their souls and makes it impossible for them to get away from their own flesh. They have tried to become spiritual by worrying about the flesh, and as a result they are haunted by it. They have ended in the flesh because they began in it, and the fruit of their anxious asceticism is that they "use things not," but do so as if they used them.
In their very self-denial they defile themselves with what they pretend to avoid. They do not have the pleasure they seek, but they taste the bitter discouragement, the feeling of guilt which they would like to escape. This is not the way of the spirit. For when our intention is directed to God, our very use of material things sanctifies both them and us, provided we use them without selfishness or presumption, glad to receive them from Him who loves us and whose love is all we desire."
-----Thomas Merton, "No Man Is An Island"
2 comments:
Nice shot of the Mert.
I agree. When you forget your true identity, materialism takes over and it does it insidiously. Deceptively. I guess that's the same thing; it's just downright sneaky.
I saw this more as warning against removing oneself from the world too much---a message that was almost militantly preached where I grew up---as opposed to a warning against materialism taking over when we forget our true identity. Maybe that's the same way of saying it, but I'm not sure. I think he's saying that to the extent we try to avoid things on our own steam, rather than embracing them under God's grace, we get defiled by the very things we attempt to avoid. Whereas the saint waltzes through the midst of the world.
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