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Let us continue with excerpts from Thomas Merton’s book, “Life and Holiness,” where Christian holiness involves a deep spiritual connection with God through Christ and the practice of virtues and love.Chapter 3 – Christ, the Way Sanctity in Christ“The Christian life of virtue is not only a life in which we strive to unite ourselves to God by the practice of virtue. Rather it is also a life in which, drawn to union with God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, we strive to express our love and our new being by acts of virtue. Being united to Christ, we seek with all possible fervor to let Him manifest His virtue and His sanctity in our lives. Our efforts should be directed to removing the obstacles of selfishness, disobedience, and all attachment to what is contrary to His love.”“But this all demands our own consent and our energetic cooperation with Divine grace. Jesus Christ, God and man, is the revelation of the hidden sanctity of the Father, the immortal and invisible King of Ages whom no eye can see, whom no intelligence can contemplate, except in the light which He Himself communicates to whomever He wills. Hence, Christian ‘perfection’ is not a mere ethical adventure or an achievement in which man can take glory. It is a gift of God, drawing the soul into the hidden abyss of the Divine mystery, through the Son, by the action of the Holy Spirit. To be a Christian then is to be committed to a deeply mystical life, for Christianity is pre-eminently a mystical religion. This does not mean, of course, that every Chris tian is or should be a ‘mystic’ in the technical modem sense of the word. But it does mean that every Christian lives, or should live, within the dimensions of a completely mystical revelation and communication of the Divine being. Salvation, which is the goal of each individual Christian and of the Christian community as a whole, is participation in the life of God who draws us ‘out of darkness into His marvelous light’ (Book of First Peter 2:9).”
