The great thing, and the only thing, is to adore and praise GOD.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing and appreciating a higher power.
Thomas Merton highlights the fundamental significance of adoration and praise towards God, suggesting that the essence of life lies in a deep reverence for the divine. In this perspective, acknowledging and honoring God's presence is presented as the ultimate pursuit in one's existence, transcending all worldly concerns.
In practice
In a sermon about faith, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of worship.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
The naked truth is always better than the best-dressed lie.
The real test of a man is not when he plays the role that he wants for himself but when he plays the role destiny has for him.
We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world.
You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; may be you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.
In America, to be ID'd - sorted, tagged, and permanently filed - is to lose a bit of one's soul. To die a little. This sounds like a subtle, poetic notion. It's not. In American legal and cultural tradition, one essential privilege of citizenship is not having to prove it on demand.
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
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