| Author Quoted | Hans Urs von Balthasar |
| Title Quoted | Herrlichkeit. Eine theologische Ästetik. |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1964/09/27 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1961 |
| Quotation | The wonderful package of books has arrived, and I am reading the first volume of Herrlichkeit, not without a little difficulty, but I think I am getting most of it. At any rate there are parts that make me very happy, even though I have to read slowly and can only do a few pages a day. Really I am most grateful, as this is exactly what I have been looking for: a truly contemplative theology, for which we have been starved for so many centuries (though of course there have been little intervals of refreshment and light with people like Scheeben). I think I am going to enjoy your second volume even more. I am so grateful to you for daring to launch out into this fruitio [enjoyment] and intellectus [understanding]. How can there really be any other theology? Actually, I see that the attraction of things like Buddhism today resides in the "hidden" sapiential quality which is absent from our purely "scientific" theology and Scripture study. Underneath all the apparent ambiguities of Buddhism about suffering (they do in some cases seek to avoid it) there is actually a deep wisdom and admiratio [wonder] at the mystery of truth and love which is attained only when suffering is fully accepted and faced. |
| Quotation Source | The School of Charity: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Renewal and Spiritual Direction.; Selected and edited by Brother Patrick Hart. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1990, p. 241 |
| Letter to | Father Hans Urs von Balthasar |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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