Agape in THOMAS MERTON’s “New Seeds of Contemplation”

And again, in those places in his book of inspiration, New Seeds of Contemplation, where Thomas Merton uses ‘love’ in a spiritual way that the meaning is ‘agape,’ the word was changed to ‘agape’ in accordance with biblical tradition.

"It seems that the deep movements of the Spirit of God’s agape keep striving, at least lightly, to impress themselves on every one that God draws into this joyous and tranquil light. What you experience is the emptiness and purity of your own faculties, produced in you by a created effect of God’s agape. These effects are intensified by the light infused into your soul by the Spirit of God and raising it suddenly into an atmosphere of dark, breathless clarity.”


THREE MODES OF CONTEMPLATIVE BEGINNINGS: 

      (1) "a sudden emptying of the soul in which images vanish, concepts and words are silent, and clarity suddenly opens out until your whole being embraces the emptiness and unfathomable incomprehensibility of God;

      (2) "you learn to rest in an inner desert of aridity in which you can find a kind of stability and peace and the assurance of a comforting and mighty presence of God in a light that is painful;  

      (3) "you learn to find a tranquility full of savor and unction in which, although there is nothing to feed and satisfy either the senses or the imagination or the intellect, the will rests in a deep, luminous and absorbing experience of agape. This agape is like the shining cloud that enveloped the Apostles on Tabor so that they exclaimed: “Lord, it is good for us to be here!” You realize, at least in some obscure fashion, that this beautiful, deep, meaningful tranquility that floods your whole being with its truth and its substantial peace is a sign of the mission of Christ."

Agape in THOMAS MERTON’s Mystics and Zen Masters 

“Existential theologians look for a transformation of communal life by the leaven of Christian freedom and agape.

“To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Agape is the reason for my existence … Agape is my true identity … Agape is my true character. Agape is my name.”