The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedJacques Guillet
Title QuotedThèmes bibliques. Etudes sur l'expression et le developement de la revelation
Date (Year/Month/Day)1957/11/12
Imprint[S.l.] : Aubier. 1950
QuotationNecessity of the Bible. More and more of it. A book like Gillet's Thèmes bibliques fantastically rich and useful. Every line has something in it you do not want to miss. Opens up new roads in the Old Testament. Extraordinary richness and delicacy of the varied OT concepts of sin-very existential concepts, not at all mere moralism! For instance sin as a "failur" to contact God. Peccavi tibi. "I have failed Thee-I have failed to reach Thee." And all that follows from that! Importance of reading and thinking and keeping silent. Self-effacement, not in order to be left looking at oneself but to be "found in Christ" and lost to the rest. Yet-not by refusing to take interest in anything vital. Politics vital-even for monks. But in this, due place and with right measure. To live in a monastery as if the world had stopped turning in 1905-a fatal illusion.
Quotation SourceA Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3, 1952-1960.; Edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1996, p. 135
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