“The Seven Storey Mountain,”

Thomas Merton, the Monk Who Became a Prophet

Fifty years after his death, Merton’s contradictions have made his work all the more instructive.

By Alan Jacobs

December 28, 2018

Merton was the person in motion who seeks stillness; the monk who wants to belong to the world; the famous person who wants to be unknown.

Photograph by Sibylle Akers / Merton Legacy Trust / Thomas Merton CenterOn December 10, 1941, a young man named Thomas Merton was received as a novice by a monastery in Kentucky, the Abbey of Gethsemani. Precisely twenty-seven years later, he died by accidental electrocution in his room at a retreat center in Bangkok, Thailand. He entered the monastery three days after Pearl Harbor; he died a month after Richard Nixon was elected to his first term as President. It had been an eventful time./.../