The Thomas Merton Archives at St. Bonaventure University
Thomas Merton at St. Bonaventure
Merton entered upon his life as a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani
in
Merton first came to
When Merton came to
He was a
combination of Hamlet and Elias. A potential prophet, but without rage ... A
mind full of tremendous and subtle intuitions, and every day he found less and
less to say about them ... [he has always had] a kind of natural, instinctive
spirituality, a kind of inborn direction to the living God ... I know now that
he was born so much of a contemplative that he will probably never be able to
find out how much. (p.181)
Merton goes on to speak a great deal about
Lax and his influence in matters concerning both writing and spirituality. And
again it was Lax who first brought Merton to
The first time the pair came to
When we got out
at
I did not stay
there for more than a week, being impatient to get back to
But one of the
things we happened to do was to turn off the main road, one afternoon on the
way to the Indian reservation, to look at the plain brick buildings of a
college that was run by the Franciscans. It was called St. Bonaventure's. Lax
had a good feeling about the place. And his mother was always taking courses
there, in the evenings; courses in literature from the
Friars. He was a good friend of the Father Librarian and liked the library. We
drove in to the grounds and stopped by one of the buildings.
But when Lax
tried to make me get out of the car, I would not. "Let's get out of
here," I said.
"Why? It's a
nice place."
"It's O.K.,
but let's get out of here. Let's go to the Indian
reservation."
"Don't you
want to see the library?"
"I can see
enough of it from here. Let's get going."
I don't know what
was the matter. Perhaps I was scared of the thought of
nuns and priests being all around me: the elemental fear of the citizen of
hell, in the presence of anything that savors of the religious life, religious
vows, official dedication to God through Christ. Too many crosses. Too many holy statues.
Too much quiet and cheerfulness. Too
much pious optimism. It made me very uncomfortable. I had to flee. (p. 200-201)
During that first summer the two stayed
mainly at the Olean House in town, which was owned by the Marcus family.
Between that summer and the next Merton had become a Roman Catholic, having
been baptized on November 16, 1938. Merton returned to
Fr. Irenaeus Herscher had come to St.
Bonaventure in 1934 as an assistant to Fr. Albert O'Brien. Fr. Albert had been
responsible for updating all the library operations and for securing the money
from the Friedsam Foundation to build a new building. When Fr. Albert died
suddenly in the summer of 1937, Fr. Irenaeus became the director of the
library. He held this position until his retirement in 1970. He remained on as
Librarian Emeritus until his death in January of 1981. The Merton Archival
collection in the University Library was founded by Fr. Irenaeus.
In the later part of 1939 and into 1940,
Merton was seeking admission into the Franciscan Order. In the summer of 1940
he decided to come to
The cottage was
crowded, and that meant that there were far more dirty dishes piling up in the
kitchen after those perilous meals of fried, suspicious meats. But everybody was busy with
something and the woods were quiet and the sun was bright as ever on the wide,
airy landscapes of rolling mountains before our faces. Presently
Meanwhile, in the
early mornings, outside the room where the girls lived, you would see Peggy
Wells sitting and reading one of those fancy editions of the Bible as
literature out loud to herself. And when Nancy Flagg
was there, she sat in the same sun, and combed her hair, which was marvelous
red-gold and I hope she never cut it short for it gave glory to God. And on
those days I think Peggy Wells read the Bible out loud to Nancy Flagg. I don't know. Later Peggy Wells walked through the
woods by herself puzzling over Aristotle's Categories.
Rice and Knight
and Gerdy sat apart, mostly in or around the garage,
typing or discussing novels or commercial short stories, and Lax grew a beard,
and thought, and sometimes put down on paper thoughts for a story, or talked
with Nancy Flagg.
For my own part,
I found a good place where I could sit on a rail of the fence along the stony
driveway, and look at the far hills, and say the rosary. It was a quiet, sunny
place, and the others did not come by that much, and you could not hear the
sounds of the house. This is where I was happiest, in those weeks in June.
It was too far
from town to go down for Communion every morning. I had to hitch-hike down. And
that was one reason why I asked one of my friends, Father Joseph [Vann], a
Friar who had come to St. Bonaventure's from New York to teach summer school,
if I could not come down there for a couple of weeks. Seeing I was going to
enter the Franciscans in August, it was not hard to persuade the Guardian to
let me come down and stay in the big, dilapidated room in Butler Gym that was
occupied by three or four poor students and seminarians who had odd jobs around
the place as telephone operators and garage hands, for the summer.
For my part, I
was already deciding in mind that I would make use of all these opportunities
to get away and read and pray and do some writing, when I was in my brown robe
and wearing those same sandals. Meanwhile, I got up when the clerics did (I
suppose it was not much earlier than six in the morning) and went to Mass with
them, and received Communion after them all, and then went to breakfast with
the farm hands, where a little nun in a white and blue habit brought us
cornflakes and fried eggs: for the cooking was done by some Sisters of those
innumerable little Franciscan congregations.
After breakfast,
I would walk over to the library, breathing the cold morning air as the dew melted
on the lawns. Father Irenaeus gave me the key to the philosophy seminar room,
and there I could spend the morning all alone reading St. Thomas, at my
leisure, with a big, plain wooden crucifix at the end of the room for me to
look at when I raised my eyes from the book. I don't think I had ever been so happy in my life as I was in the silent library, turning
over the pages of the first part of the Summa Theologica,
and here and there making notes on the goodness, the all-presence, the wisdom,
the power, the love of God. In the afternoons, I would walk in the woods, or
along the woody
Merton's dreams of entrance into the
Franciscan Order did not come true. Merton had been asked to withdraw his
application to join the Order after a series of unrecorded interviews. But in
the fall of 1940 Merton was still among the Franciscans, for he ended up taking
a position teaching English at St. Bonaventure College and for the second time
he moved onto campus. He writes,
In the second
week of September, with a trunkful of books and a
typewriter and the old portable phonograph that I had bought when I was still
in Oakham, I moved in to the little room that was
assigned to me on the second floor of the big, red-brick building [Devereux
Hall] that was both a dormitory and a monastery. Out of my window I could look
beyond the chapel front to the garden and fields and the woods. There was a
little astronomical observatory out there behind the greenhouses, and in the distance you could tell where the river was
by the line of trees at the end
of the pasture. And then, beyond that, were the high, wooded hills,
and my gaze traveled up
And as the months
went on, I began to drink poems out of those hills. Yet the room was not quiet,
either. It was right on a corner next to the stairs, and when anybody on our
floor was wanted on the telephone, someone would rush up the stairs and stick
his head into the corridor right by my door and yell down the echoing hall. All
day long I heard those voices bellowing, "Hey, Cassidy! Hey Cassidy!"
but I did not mind. It did not stop me from doing twice as much work in that
room, in one year, as I had done in all the rest of my life put together. (p.
304)
In 1940 the campus of St. Bonaventure College consisted of six major buildings. To
the west was Devereux Hall, which served as both dormitory and Franciscan
friary. There was also a chapel attached to the west wing whose entrance faced
the inside court. Next to this was Butler Gymnasium that housed not only the
gym but also had office areas for athletics and various student groups. On the
south side of Hickey Dining Hall there was a convent for the sisters who ran
the food service.
Friedsam Library was the newest building on
campus. The president's office overlooked the library's main reading room. The
basement of the Library had a number of separate study rooms containing various
subject collections. East of the Library was De la Roche Hall which was the
classroom building but which also housed the bookstore and post office. At the
east end of campus was Alumni Hall which contained recreation rooms and a large
auditorium where films were often shown.
To the south of De la Roche and Alumni
Halls lay a pathway that led to a small shrine dedicated to St. Therese of Lisieux. Just beyond this shrine there was a grove of trees
and a grotto dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. To the west and south of
these sites were the McGraw-Jennings Athletic Fields. Beyond all these to the
south lay the line of trees that marked the path of the
According to his own testimony Merton's
room would have been on the southeast corner, facing the inner court formed by
the wings of Devereaux Hall. The second floor housed
both single faculty members and students. The first floor served as the friary
where the Franciscans lived.
The hills in the back of campus proved to
be a favorite place for long, meditative walks. There was at that time a
railroad bridge that went across the river on the west end of the campus that
Merton used often. His walks took him over the hills and through the various
valley roads. He would even at times walk up to the Marcus cottage where he had
spent the last two summers in the company of
Years later Fr. Irenaeus promulgated the
notion of 'Merton's Heart', which is the bare spot you can see on the central
hill when looking across the river from the back end of campus. The bare spot
was formed by clearing off trees for the purpose of drilling for oil. The site
was already abandoned by the time Merton first visited the
During Easter of 1941 Merton visited the Trappists at Gethsemani, and from
that point on he was continually drawn towards life in the monastery. Merton
stayed on at St. Bonaventure. Of the summer of 1941 he writes,
In the cool
summer nights, when the road behind the powerhouse and the laundry and the
garages was dark and empty, and you could barely see the hills, outlined in the
dark against the stars, I used to walk out there, in the smell of the fields,
towards the dark cow-barns. There was a grove along the west side of the
football field, and in the grove were two shrines, one of the Little Flower and
the other a grotto for Our Lady of Lourdes. But the grotto wasn't complicated
enough to be ugly, the way those artificial grottos are. It was nice to pray
out there, in the dark, with the wind soughing in the high pine branches.
Sometimes you could hear one other sound: the laughter of all the nuns and
clerics and Friars and the rest of the summer school students sitting in Alumni
Hall, which was at the end of the grove; and enjoying the movies, which were
shown every Thursday night. On those
nights, the whole campus was deserted and the Alumni Hall was crowded. I felt
as if I were the only one in the place who did not go to the movies-except for
the boy at the telephone switchboard in the Dormitory building. He had to stay there, he was being paid for that. Even my friend Father Philotheus [Boehner], who was editing fourteenth-century
philosophical manuscripts, and who had taught me St. Bonaventure's way to God
according to the Itinerarium, and with whom I
had studied parts of Scotus' De Primo Principio, even he went to the movies in the hope that
there would be a Mickey Mouse. But as soon as all the comedies were over, he
left. He could not make anything much out of all those other dramas and adventures. (p.337)
In the Fall of
1941 Merton was given a different room in Devereux Hall, this time on the north
side of the building where he says, "you could see the sun shining on the
green hillside which was a golf course. And all day long you could hear the
trains in the
It was during this time that Merton's
vocation to join the Trappists was confirmed. He
describes the evening in this way,
Finally, on the Thursday
of that week, in the evening, I suddenly found myself filled with a vivid
conviction: "The time has come for me to go and be a Trappist."
Where had the
thought come from? All I knew was that it was suddenly there. And it was
something powerful, irresistible, clear. I picked up a
little book called The Cistercian Life, which I had bought at Gethsemani, and turned over the pages, as if they had
something more to tell me. They all seemed to me to be written in words of
flame and fire.
I went to supper,
and came back and looked at the book again. My mind was literally full of this
conviction. And yet, in the way, stood hesitation: that old business. But now
there could be no delaying. I must finish with that, once and for all, and get
an answer. I must talk to someone who would settle it. It could be done in five
minutes. And now was the time. Now. Whom should I ask?
Father Philotheus was probably in his room
downstairs. I went downstairs, and out into the court. Yes, there was a light
on in Father Philotheus' room. All
right. Go in and see what he has to say. But instead of that, I bolted
out into the darkness and made for the grove. It was a Thursday night. The
Alumni Hall was beginning to fill. They were going to have a movie. But I
hardly noticed it: it did not occur to me that perhaps Father Philotheus might go out to the movies with the rest. In the
silence of the grove my feet were loud on the gravel. I walked and prayed. It
was very, very dark by the shrine of the Little Flower. "For Heaven's sake,
help me!" I said. I started back towards the buildings. "All
right. Now I am really going to go in there and ask him. Here's the
situation, Father. What do you think? Should I go and be a Trappist?" There
was still a light on in Father Philotheus' room. I
walked bravely into the hall, but when I got within about six feet of his door
it was almost as if someone had stopped me and held me where I was with
physical hands. Something jammed in my will. I couldn't walk a step further,
even though I wanted to. I made a kind of a push at the obstacle, which was
perhaps the devil, and then turned and ran out of the place once more.
And again I
headed for the grove. The Alumni Hall was nearly full. My feet were loud on the
gravel. It was in the silence of the grove, among wet trees. I don't think
there was ever a moment in my life when my soul felt so urgent and so special
an anguish. I had been praying all the time, so I cannot say that I began to
pray when I arrived there where the shrine was: but things became more
definite.
"Please help
me. What am I going to do? I can't go on like this. You can see that! Look at
the state I am in. What ought I to do? Show me the way." As if I needed
more information or some kind of a sign!
But I said this
time to the Little Flower: "You show me what to do."
And I added,
"If I get into the monastery, I will be your monk. Now show me what to
do."
It was getting to
be precariously near the wrong way to pray, making indefinite promises that I
did not quite understand and asking for some sort of a sign. Suddenly, as soon
as I made that prayer, I became aware of the wood, the trees, the dark hills,
the wet night wind, and then, clearer than any of these obvious realities, in
my imagination, I started to hear the great bell of Gethsemani
ringing in the night: the bell in the big grey tower, ringing and ringing, as
if it were just behind the first hill. The impression made me breathless, and I
had to think twice to realize that it was only in my imagination that I was
hearing the bell of the Trappist Abbey ringing in the
dark. Yet, as I afterwards calculated, it was just that time that the bell is
rung every night for the Salve Regina, towards the end of Compline. The bell seemed to be telling me where I
belonged-as if it were calling me home. (p.
363-365)
From this point on Merton's way was clear
in his mind and he began to make preparations to join the Trappists.
He left St. Bonaventure College in December, shortly before the end of the
semester. He gave books and notebooks to various friends and acquaintances on
campus, and other materials he sent to friends in
Merton did not make a big impact on campus.
His teaching was not memorable and he tended to be a somewhat solitary figure.
It was here that he found his way to his life's calling. His main sources for
advice came from friars: Fr. Irenaeus Herscher (the director of the library), Fr. Philotheus Boehner
(the founder of the Franciscan Institute and medievalist extraordinaire), and Fr. Thomas
Plassmann (the president of the
University).
Paul J. Spaeth
Director and Special
Friedsam Memorial Library
St.
Published
Sources for Further
About Merton
Thomas Merton.
Run
to the Mountain; The Story of a Vocation (The Journals
of Thomas Merton / vol. 1: 1939-1941)
The
The Secular Journal.
Michael Mott.
The
Monica Furlong.
Merton,
A Biography.
About St. Bonaventure University
Mark V. Angelo.
The History of St. Bonaventure University.
"The
Franciscan Institute Fiftieth Anniversary Edition." Franciscan Studies 51
(1991).