Merton & Hesychasm: The Prayer of the Heart & the Eastern Church (The Fons Vitae Thomas Merton series) (Paperback)

~ Gray Henry (Editor), Jonathan Montaldo (Editor), Bernadette Dieker (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Thomas Merton was Roman Catholic and a member of one of Catholicism's strictest monastic orders. Nonetheless, throughout his religious life one sees the remarkable influence of Christian traditions best preserved within the Eastern Orthodox Church: iconography, the Jesus Prayer, and the apophatic spiritual path linked with Mt. Athos and Sinai. He treasured the sayings and stories of the Desert Fathers and was familiar with the Philokalia.

Merton and Hesychasm: The Prayer of the Heart collects all of Merton's writing on topics in Eastern Christianity. He studied and published on the writings that emanated from the Greek and Russian Orthodox traditions, both in the early centuries of the Church and during revival of the monastic traditions of Orthodoxy on Mount Athos during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

His writing on Hesychasm, the practices surrounding the "Prayer of Jesus" that have as their aim preparing the spiritual seeker for union with the Godhead, are of particular contemporary importance. Western seekers have looked to Buddhism and the East for a thoroughly psychological and spiritual method of meditation. But, in fact, a Christian tradition, just as analytic and developed and more culturally palatable to the West, exists and is readily available.

Merton's commentary is accompanied by major new essays by scholars in the fields of Eastern Christianity and Merton studies: Bishop Kallistos Ware, Father Donald Allchin of England, and James Forest of the U.S. and Holland, among others. Both Allchin and Forest knew Merton personally and bring salient details of his interest in the Christian East together with a view of the man and his writing.

Merton and Hesychasm: The Prayer of the Heart is the second in a multi-volume series that exposes Thomas Merton's dialogues with traditions other than his own. The first volume, Merton and Sufism: The Untold Story, has met with critical success and found a wide audience among those interested in Merton, arguably one of the twentieth-century's top writers in the field of religion and spirituality.

About the Author

Jonathan Montaldo is president of the International Thomas Merton Society and the Immediate past director of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. A former Jesuit seminarian, Montaldo studied Merton at a graduate level and has published extensively on him. Montaldo is co-editor with Brother Patrick Hart (a monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani) of The Intimate Merton and is sole editor of the second volume of the Thomas Merton Journals, published by HarperSanFrancisco. Other forthcoming works include Dialogues with Silence: Thomas Merton's Prayers & Drawings.

Product Details

• Paperback: 507 pages
• Publisher: Fons Vitae; illustrated edition edition (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887752455
• ISBN-13: 978-1887752459
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,091,737 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gem for deeper prayer life, March 24, 2005

By	matt (the reading room) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This is one of the best books for those seeking a deeper understanding of the Eastern Orthodox approach to reality, the Holy Trinity, and themselves, along with the strong connection to the life and writings of Thomas Merton. The contributors to this fine collection include Bishop Kallistos Ware, James Cutsinger, A.M. Allchin, Rowan Williams and many many other fine writers on the spiritual life. In fact, "The Power of the Name", the not too easy to find introduction to the Jesus Prayer by Bishop Kallistos Ware, is included as a chapter, alone worth the modest price of this thick book.

This is also an excellent introduction to Thomas Merton and his connection to the fathers from the East.

This is one of the best books on the subject around! Amazingly detailed.

Contents of some of the chapters:
1. How do we enter the heart? Kallistos Ware
2. Silence in prayer: the meaning of hesychia Ware
3. The power of the Name Ware
4. The Ladder of divine ascent: the yoga of hesychism Custinger
5. A sufic perspec6tive on St. Seraphim of Sarov Gary Henry
6. Merton and the eastern fathers: the worship of the whole creation Allchin
7. Our lives, a powerful Pentecost: Merton and Russian spirituality Allchin
8. Merton and the Xpian East
9. Merton and Icons Jim Forest
10. Merton and Evdokimov

PLUS 21 other chapters, all of strong erudition and scholarship. Very nourishing for mind and soul.