Liturgical Feasts and Seasons: Novitiate Conferences on Scripture and Liturgy 3
Ebook
This critical edition makes available for the first time Thomas Merton's novitiate conferences on liturgy. Though dating from the period just before the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, Merton's commentaries remain pertinent for their insights on his own commitment to this central dimension of Christian life, on his work introducing students to the patterns that would mark their lives as monks, and on the perennial meaning of the key events of the liturgical year. The thoroughly annotated text is preceded by an extensive introduction situating this material in the context of Merton's lifelong writing on liturgy. As Merton's former student Br. Paul Quenon writes in his foreword: "Nowhere in all of Merton's writings can one find such an extended demonstration of the hermeneutical approach he took in commenting on Scripture. This was focused intensely on finding the meaning Scripture had for our life in God . . . These notes . . . take us into one man's lifetime of reflection and seasoned experience of the Church Year."
“This readable emolument is a timely reminder of how Merton was shaped by the liturgical year and his own immersion in the monastic offices. It is wonderful to have it available to a new audience.”
—Lawrence S. Cunningham, University of Notre Dame
“In these conferences, Thomas Merton exhorts his novices to ‘absorb the meaning’ of the chants they sing and to participate in the liturgy ‘with intelligent faith and enlightened love.’ The text consists of the notes Merton used to prepare the novices to celebrate various liturgical feasts and seasons. Patrick O’Connell’s meticulous scholarship and comprehensive familiarity with Merton’s thought is evident throughout his extensive introduction to the book and in the notes he provides to the text.”
—Theresa Sandok, former director of the Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University
“Introduced with meticulous care by Patrick O’Connell, Liturgical Feasts and Seasons is a wonderful opportunity to journey with Merton through the liturgical year as his novices once did—to be guided by Merton not only as a monastic teacher but also as a contemplative teacher for all of us. Merton’s explication is at once deep and clear, but also at times strikingly personal and immediate—as much as he illuminates the liturgical seasons and their biblical roots, he connects them to who we are and our own spiritual journeys.”
—Tom Del Prete, former president, the International Thomas Merton Society
- Title: Liturgical Feasts and Seasons: Novitiate Conferences on Scripture and Liturgy 3
- Authors: Thomas Merton, Patrick F. O'Connell, Paul Quenon
- Publisher: Cascade Books
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Logos Release Date: 2022
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781725253148, 9781725253131, 1725253135, 9781725253124, 1725253127, 1725253143
- Resource ID: LLS:9781725253148
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-07-10T07:41:37Z
Thomas Merton (1915–1968)—Catholic convert, Cistercian monk, hermit, poet, contemplative, social critic, and pioneer in interreligious dialogue—was a seminal figure of twentieth-century American Christianity. Among his many books are his best-selling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain and the modern spiritual classic New Seeds of Contemplation. The present volume is the third and last in the series of his Novitiate Conferences on Scripture and Liturgy.
Patrick F. O’Connell, a founding member and former president of the International Thomas Merton Society, edits its quarterly publication, The Merton Seasonal, and is coauthor of The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia (2002). He has edited many volumes of Merton’s writings, including most recently for Cascade Books A Monastic Introduction to Sacred Scripture (2020) and Notes on Genesis and Exodus (2021), the two previous volumes in the Novitiate Conferences trilogy.