Thomas Merton

The whole earth depends on them. Nobody seems to realize it. These are the ones for whom it was all created in the first place. They shall inherit the land.

They are the only ones who will ever be able to enjoy life altogether. They have renounced the whole world and it has been given into their possession. They alone appreciate the world and the things that are in it.

They are the only ones capable of understanding joy. Everybody else is too weak for joy. Joy would kill anybody but these meek.

They are the clean of heart. They see God. God does their will.

Because God's will is their own. God does all that they want. Because God is the one who desires all their desires.

They are the only ones who have everything that they can desire. Their freedom is without limit.

They reach out for us to comprehend our misery and drown it in the tremendous expansion of their own innocence that washes the world with its light.

Come, let us go into the body of that light. Let us live in the cleanliness of that song. Let us throw off the pieces of the world like clothing.

and enter naked into wisdom. For this is what all hearts pray for when they cry. Thy will be done.

Physical solitude, exterior silence and real recollection are all morally necessary for anyone wanting to lead a contemplative life.

But like everything else in creation,

They are nothing more than means to an end.

And if we do not understand the end, we will make a wrong use of the means.

We do not go into the desert to escape people, but to learn how to find them

We do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good.

But this is only a secondary end.

The one end that includes all others is the love of God.

How can people act and speak as if solitude were a matter of no importance in the interior life?

Only those who have never experienced real solitude can glibly declare that it makes no difference and that only solitude of the heart really matters.

One solitude must lead to the other.