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Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Thomas Merton: Dread As A Form Of Infidelity


"(Dread is) an infidelity to a personal demand of which one is at least dimly aware: the failure to meet a challenge, to fulfill a certain possibility, which demands to be met and fulfilled. The price of this failure to measure up to an existential demand of one's own life is a general sense of failure, of guilt. This guilt is real; it is not necessarily a mere neurotic anxiety. It is the sense of defection and defeat that afflicts a (person)  who is not facing her/his own inner truth and is not giving back to life, to God, and to (humanity) a fair return for all that has been given her/him." From "Contemplative Prayer" by Trappist Monk, Fr. Thomas Merton

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