Thursday, August 21, 2008

The created order is good

God is more glorified by a man who uses the good things of this life in simplicity and with gratitude than by the nervous asceticism of someone who is agitated about every detail of his self-denial. The former uses good things and thinks of God. The latter is afraid of good things, and consequently cannot use them properly. He is terrified of the pleasure God has put in things, and in his terror thinks only of himself. He imagines God has placed all the good things of the world before him like bait in a trap. HE worries at all times about his own "perfection." His struggle for perfection becomes a kind of battle of wits with the Creator who made all things good. The very goodness of creatures becomes a threat to the purity of this virtuous one, who would like to abstain from everything. But he cannot. He is human, like the rest of men, and must make use like them of food and drink and sleep. Like them he must see the sky, and love, in spite of oneself, the light of the sun! Every feeling of pleasure fills him with a sense of guilt. It has besmirched his own adored perfection. Strange that people like this should enter monasteries which have no other reason for existing than the love of God!

- Thomas Merton

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