Merton, Thomas

1915 – He was born this year in Prades, France to Owen Merton, a New Zealand painter active in Europe and the USA, and Ruth Jenkins, an American Quaker and artist.

1917 – His family moved into an old house in Flushing, NY.

1922 - Owen and Tom traveled to Bermuda, having left John Paul with the Jenkins family in Douglaston, Long Island.

1923 – He returned to Douglaston to live with the Jenkins Family and John Paul.

1926 – At age eleven, Merton and Owen parted ways again.

1928 - Owen came and took Tom out of Lycée, informing him that they were headed to England.

1931 – Just as the term at Oak ham had restarted, Owen died.

1933 – He entered Clare College in Cambridge as a freshman, a place where he came very close to losing himself. He took a boat from Italy to America to visit his grandparents in Douglaston for the summer, before entering Clare College in Cambridge.

1935 – He enrolled as a sophomore at Columbia University in Manhattan, NY while living with the Jenkins family in Douglaston and taking a train to the Columbia campus each day.

1936 – His grandfather, Samuel Jenkins, died.

1937 – He read a book that opened his mind to Catholicism.

1938 – He graduated from Columbia with a B.A. in English. He was baptized at Corpus Christi Church and received Holy Communion.

1939 – He received his M.A. in English from Columbia University.

1940 - Merton was given an application, as well as Fr. Murphy's personal invitation to become a Franciscan friar. Merton began to have doubts about whether he was fit to be a Franciscan.

1941 – He arrived at the Abbey of Gethsemani and spent three days at the monastery guest house, waiting for acceptance into the Order.

1942 - During the first Sunday of Lent, Merton was accepted as a novice monk at the monastery.

1943 – He was tasked to translate religious texts and write biographies on the saints for the monastery.

1944 – He made his temporary profession vows and was given the white cowl, black scapular and leather belt.

1947 – He was more comfortable with his role as writer. On March 19 of this year he took his solemn vows, a commitment to live out his life at the monastery.

1949 – He took a train to Louisville and applied for U.S. citizenship. Thomas Merton was ordained as a priest, saying his first mass that following day in honor of Our Lady of Cobre.

1960s He had arrived at a frankly human viewpoint, one deeply concerned about the world and issues like peace, racial tolerance, and social equity.

1968 - He died in Bangkok on the 10th day of December this year, having touched a poorly grounded electric fan while stepping out of his bath. His body was flown back to Gethsemani where he is buried.

• "Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
• "Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward."
• "The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt."
• "The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt."
• "A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book."