Quote of the Day (Thomas Merton, on the ‘Immense Mercy of God’)

“This morning, coming down, seeing the multitude of stars above the bare branches of the wood, I was suddenly hit as it were with the whole package of meaning of everything: that the immense mercy of God was upon me, that the Lord in infinite kindness had looked down on me and given me this vocation out of love, that he had always intended this, and how foolish and trivial had been all my fears and twistings and desperation….It does not matter how I may or may not be classified. In the light of this simple fact of God’s love and the form it has taken in my life, classifications are ludicrous.”—Thomas Merton, journal entry of December 9, 1964, in The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, edited by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo (1999)