"Everything that is, is Holy"
by Thomas Merton
Seeds of Contemplation
It is not true that all the Saints and the great contemplatives never noticed created things, and had no understanding or appreciation of the world and its sights and sounds and the people living in it.
Do you think that their love of God was compatible with a hatred of things that reflected Him and spoke of Him on every side?
You will say that they were supposed to be absorbed in God, and they had no eyes to see anything but Him. Do you think they walked around with faces like stones and did not listen to the voices of men speaking to them, or understand the joys and sorrows of those who were around them? Then you do not know what a contemplative is.
It was because the Saints were absorbed in God that they were truly capable of seeing and appreciating created things, and it was because they loved him alone that they alone loved everybody.
Do you think that a saint has to excuse his interest in created things by tripping himself up in his language and introducing a lot of uselessly explicit references to God whenever he talks or thinks about the world and what is in it? A saint is capable of talking about the world without any explicit references to God, in such a way that his statement gives greater glory to God and arouses a greater love for God that the observations of someone less holy, who has to strain himself to make an arbitrary connection between creatures and God through the medium of hackneyed analogies and metaphors that are so stupid they make you think there is something the matter with religion.
And the reason for the difference is that the saint knows the world and everything made by God is good, while those who are not saints either think that created things are unholy, or else they don't bother about the question one way or the other because they are only interested in themselves.
The eyes of the saint make all beauty holy, and the hands of the saint consecrate everything they touch to the glory of God, and the saint is never offended by anything and is scandalized at no man's sin because he does not know sin. He knows nothing but the love and the mercy of God, and he is on earth to bring that love and that mercy to all men. . . .
The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of our own self-hood. (I do not say the body, because the body is God's temple and therefore it is holy), and enter by love into union with the Life Who Dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls. In His love, we possess all things and enjoy the fruition of them, finding Him in them all. And thus, as we go about the world, everything we meet and everything we see and hear and touch, far from defiling, purifies us and plants in us something more of contemplation and of heaven.
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