Merton at his best...

The real difficulty in defining a Christian conscience is that it is neither collective nor individual. It is personal, and it is a communion of saints.

From the point of view of prayer, when I say conscience, I am talking of this consciousness that is deeper than the moral conscience. When I pray, I am no longer talking to God or myself loved by God. When I pray, the Church prays in me. My prayer is the prayer of the Church.

This does not apply only to liturgy: it applies also to private prayer because I am a member of Christ. If I am going to pray validly and deeply, it will be with a consciousness of myself as being more than just myself when I pray. In other words, I am not just an individual when I pray, and I am not just an individual with grace when I pray. When I pray, I am in a certain sense, everybody. The mind that prays in me is more than my own mind, and the thoughts that come up in me are more than my own thoughts because this deep consciousness when I pray is a place of encounter between myself and God and between the common love of everybody. It is the common will and love of the Church meeting with my will and God's will in my consciousness and conscience when I pray.

Thomas Merton. Thomas Merton in Alaska. New York: New Directions Publishing Corp., 1988: 134-135.

This is Thomas Merton at his staggering best. When I read something like this I realise I'm reading the words of a man who was so steeped in the life of the Church that his every breath was a known movement of the Body of Christ.

Thinking about this post, it is really the validation I've known was there for the whole life and practice of contemplative prayer, but I've somehow never been able to find the words to truly understand it, let alone express it. "When I pray, I am in a certain sense, everybody." Yes! That is what happens!

"The mind that prays in me is more than my own mind, and the thoughts that come up in me are more than my own thoughts because this deep consciousness when I pray is a place of encounter between myself and God and between the common love of everybody." Now that is just what I keep trying to say when I continually quote (here and on The Mercy Site) Romans 8.26-27: "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." It finds another echo in another of my favourite quotes: "The secret of Christian contemplation is that it faces us with Jesus Christ toward our suffering world in loving service and just action..." (Catherine of Siena)