Because Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk, in those places in his book, No Man is an Island, where he uses ‘love’ in a spiritual way that the meaning is ‘agape,’ the word was changed to ‘agape’ in these quotes in accordance with biblical tradition.
“If I am to share agape with my brother, I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God’s agape for him. I must be moved not only by human sympathy but by that divine sympathy which is revealed to us in Jesus and which enriches our own lives by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. I must seek the life of the Spirit of God breathing in him. And I can only discern and follow that mysterious life by the action of the same Holy Spirit living and acting in the depths of my own heart.
“My sharing agape with them must be to them the ‘sacrament’ of the mysterious and infinitely selfless agape God has for them. My action of sharing agape must be for them the minister not of my own spirit but of the Holy Spirit.
“Only agape, which is as strong and as sure as the Spirit of God, can save us from the lamentable error of pouring out on others a love that leads them into error and urges them to seek happiness where it can never be found.
“What all look for in life is our own salvation and the salvation of those we live with. By salvation I mean first of all the full discovery of who I really am. Then I mean something of the fulfillment of our own God-given powers, in having agape for others and for God. I mean also the discovery that we cannot find ourselves in ourselves alone, but that we must find ourselves in and through others. This is summed up in two lines of the Gospel: 'If any man would save his life, he must lose it,” and, “Have agape for one another as I have agape for you.'
“The discovery of ourselves is always a losing of ourselves— a death and a resurrection.
“To find 'ourselves' then is to find not only our poor, limited, perplexed souls, but to find the power of God that raised Christ from the dead and 'built us together in Him unto a habitation of God in the Spirit' (Ephesians 2: 22).
“True happiness is found in unselfish agape, which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of agape, and, therefore, the potential happiness of agape is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God’s inner life.
“The gift of agape is the gift of the power and the capacity to share agape, and, therefore, to give agape with full effect is also to receive it. So, agape can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.
“In order to let agape flow to others I must be true to them, to myself, and to God.
“Only agape, that senses the designs of Providence, can unite itself perfectly to God’s providential action upon souls. Faithful submission to God’s secret working in the world will fill our sharing agape with piety, that is to say with supernatural awe and respect. This respect, this piety, gives our sharing agape the character of worship, without which our acts of sharing agape can never be quite complete. For agape must not only seek the truth in the lives of those around us; it must find it there. But when we find the truth that shapes our lives we have found more than an idea. We have found a Person. We have come upon the actions of One Who is still hidden. And in that One we also find ourselves.”
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