Thomas Merton on Love

As I surfed in the web, there was an article that suddenly caught my attention. The writer says, there are four steps of self in relation to love. First self-lack. Second, selfish. Third, self-love. Four, selfless. These are the chains of progression, and we are all in process to be in the last stage. As I read this, I was reminded on the idea of love brought by Thomas Merton in his work, No man Is an Island. Very deep and profound. He articulate the idea on how love is selfless. The main thesis of love that he propose is that "love can be kept only by being given away". At first, me might think how to reconcile kept and give? This is a dubious paradox yet beautiful If we venture to ponder deeper again and again. There are three vital things that support that thesis that we can formulate from his notion of love.

First, to love is its own reward 

For Merton, the reward of love is not the appreciation of love or love in return. To be able to deliver a selfless act of love through giving, is actually a reward. For we are able and has given a chance to replicate God's selfless love in this world. Merton believes that Love does not waiting for the joy as the effect but to love is actually is the joy in itself. Love teaches us that our satisfaction is more than "the satisfaction of my own desire", Merton wrote. By giving the best freely, our love is perfected. Merton says, "selfless love consents to be loved selflessly for the sake of the beloved. I so doing, it perfect itself. Thus, when we love selflessly, there is no so called vain love for the opportunity and the exercise of love is its own reward. 

Second, love bring good of the one loved.

Love, for Merton does not divide but identify. The gap between Me-You has been broken through the act of love, the ultimate self-giving. Hence, the good things that people received has became mine as well. He said, "Love seeks one thing only: The good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves." When I love others, I am actually love myself. When we love someone, and they grow and blessed as the result, our love is actually was kept, in the being of others. People will be transformed for the selfless love will bring them out from the "Lamentable error" that we are all prone to fall. When people received love regardless of any return, and the grow, love stays. 

Third, Love corresponded to the truth

When we love others selflessly, love echoes the eternal truth of God. That is why Merton says, to love others well, we need to first love the truth. By love the truth, love will flow in us, and enables us to love others with the love that comes from God. We love others as God's love them as Merton put, "I am to love my brother, I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God's love for him". Our love will be graced and echoes the designs of God to all man. Therefore, as we give away all the best, love is not gone. Love has been absorbed into the truth of God that now has been applied and poured out practically, concrete and alive through the act of love. 

When someone know and embrace these notions of love that love is its own reward. Love bring goods to loved one. And, Love corresponded to the truth. Indeed, the paradox of love now unfolds. love is kept fully when it is being given away fully!

After pondering  Merton's idea of love for a moment, lot of questions comes in my mind, how could one love easily without focusing the return? How can we practice such selfless love in reality toward our enemy? Insane! However, the word in the Scripture suddenly comes out in my mind, "Love one another...as I have loved you" (John 13:34). This idea of love is actually not original of Merton. Merton expounded the Scripture, the selfless love is the love of God and the love that God want us to project in life. The downward mobility of Christ as God who loves us, fallen human being concludes to us that His love is definitely selfless. Thus, we cannot lower our standard just because we found it laborious to do so. Perhaps, the reason I reluctant and uncomfortable with the idea of selfless love because I am not in that stage yet. I am probably somewhere between one to three (self-lack, selfish, self-love). 

This is our goal in life, to be able to love like him, Christ Jesus our Lord. Only God can help. "the sick cannot help the sick", Paul Tillich once said. Through practice of love between people, we are still unable to reach the capacity and ability of moving toward selfless love. Merton puts it near the end of the chapter "...receiving from God the gift of Himself, becomes able, by the fact alone, to love with perfect purity. For God himself creates the purity and the love of those who love him..."