| Author Quoted | Tyrannius Rufinus |
| Title Quoted | Historia Monachorum in Aegypto |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1963/01/26 |
| Imprint | |
| Quotation | Last day of retreat. Reading Rufinus Historia Monachorum and also Dialogues of Sulpicius Severus. Utterly ashamed and annoyed that I have never read the Hist. Monachorum before. What have I been doing? I have been under a kind of delusion that I was living as a monk all these years-and that I knew what the monastic life was and had read a great deal of the traditional source material. I haven't even scratched the surface, and my heart has not been that of a monk. The story of John of Lycopolis, the urgency of his lessons, the sweetness and simplicity of the style move me very deeply. |
| Quotation Source | Turning Toward the World: The Pivotal Years. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 4, 1960-1963.; Edited by Victor A. Kramer. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1996, p. 294 |
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| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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