The Sign of Jonas

by Thomas Merton

The fire of love for the souls of men loved by God consumes you like the fire of God’s love, and it is the same love. It burns you up with a hunger for the supernatural happiness, first of people that you know, then of people you have barely heard of and finally of everybody. This fire consumes you with a desire that is not directed immediately to action, but to God. And in the swift, peaceful, burning tide of that desire you are carried to prayer rather than to action; or rather action seems to flow along with prayer and with desire, as if of its own accord—you do not think so much of what you are to do and write and say for souls: you are carried away to God by hunger and desire. And this hunger is exactly the same as the hunger for your own personal union with God, but now it includes someone else; and it is for God’s own sake above all, though you do not reason and separate. Here is a great hunger, and it has a direct reference to persons, to individuals rather than to abstract groups. Or if it is for groups, it is for groups concretized in a typical representative who is individual, real. In this hunger there is pain and emptiness and there is joy and it is irresistible—and somehow it is full of the strong assurance that God wants to hear all your prayers. Sometimes you get the feeling that when you are carried away by this desire of love for souls, God is beginning to pour out everything upon you, to deluge you with all that you need, to overwhelm you with spiritual ...

The purity of heart needed to connect with people in songs of praise and devotion