Merton on ‘The old and the new.’

Thomas Merton’s thoughts below, made just after I was born, remind me of the cry of Jesus’s heart as he taught them how to pray: “Your kingdom come (now), your will be done (now) ON EARTH, as it is in heaven.” It’s a cry for eternity to be made real right now – heaven on earth, in fact.

I get so frustrated with Christians who pray the Lord’s Prayer like this: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done. On earth. As it is in heaven.” There’s no sense of connection between the eternal aspect of heaven and what we experience here on earth – nor does there seem to be any expectation of God’s will being done NOW. I keep trying to get our congregation to pray it as I’ve shown in the top paragraph (and will continue to keep trying – some actually get it), but it seems that the old habits of saying a formal prayer have overcome the heart of engaging with the words as a cry to God for heaven to be experienced here, right now. No murder in heaven, no murder on earth. No abuse in heaven, no abuse on earth. No deceit in heaven, no deceit on earth.

This part of the Lord’s Prayer is about seeing the hope of heaven becoming a concrete reality today. The old idea of heaven being ‘pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die’ sounds very thin when placed alongside Jesus’s idea (which is older still, but needs to be heard anew) of the fulness of heaven being called into the concrete experience of everday life so that in effect, life get lived in all its fulness (John 10:10).

“For the “old man”—everything is old—he has seen everything or thinks he has. He has lost hope in anything new. What pleases him is the “old” he clings to, fearing to lose it, but certainly not happy with it. And so he keeps himself “old” and cannot change; he is not open to any newness. His life is stagnant and futile. …
For the “new man”—everything is new. Even the old is transfigured in the Holy Spirit and is always new. There is nothing to cling to, there is nothing to be hoped for in what is already past—it is nothing.
The new man is he who can find reality where it cannot be seen by the eyes of the flesh—where it is not yet—where it comes into being the moment he sees it. And would not be (at least for him) if he did not see it.
The new man lives in a world that is always being created, and renewed. He lives in this realm of renewal and creation. He lives in life.
The old man lives without life. He lives in Death, and clings to what has died precisely because he clings to it. And yet he is crazy for change, as if struggling with the bonds of death. His struggle is miserable, and cannot be a substitute for life.
Thought of these things after [holy] communion today, when I suddenly realized that I had, and for how long, deeply lost hope of “anything new.” How foolish when in fact the newness is there all the time.” [March 18, 1959]

Thomas Merton. A Search for Solitude. Journals, Volume 3. Lawrence S. Cunningham, ed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997: 268-269.