Thomas Merton was no saint. He himself would have balked at the notion of being called a saint since he was very aware of his own weaknesses and his need of God’s grace and sanctification. Perhaps it was this awareness, then, that made him a fearless proponent of the marvellous workings of God’s love on poor sinners, and our need to witness to this. In his book “Thoughts in Solitude” he writes, “A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.” In Merton’s thinking, we have to unify our life by allowing Christ’s merciful love to reach every corner of it, and then we have to joyfully witness to that love.

We are coming to the end of something of a sacramental conveyor belt at the moment. All the deferred celebrations of First Holy Communion and Confirmation have come in a glut. It is truly impressive. Many of them, particularly the confirmandi, are young people, children from our parish and school. Others are teenagers, some are adults, even fathers and sons have been confirmed together, and others are confirmed as they are received into the Church. Each brings their own story, and each brings something in common — a desire to know and love Christ more, and a desire to love the Church more. These joyful celebrations are an encouragement to all of us, and, please God, might put fresh heart into even the most battle-weary of souls.

Merton’s lines from “Thoughts in Solitude” could be taken in two ways. One might, on first glance, think that he is promoting a kind of gung-ho, absolutism, where it is all or nothing, and there is little space for doubts or fears or questions. Perhaps he is saying something else. If we are made in the image of what we desire, perhaps it is possible for all of us, even those who may have drifted a little, to be made anew, to be made a new creation by looking again to see what it is our hearts really desire. When the worries about what the world tells us, and the thoughts about getting our own way can be set aside for a moment, what is more desirable to us than a love that always forgives, that leads us on from good to better, that heals us and makes us anew? Whether we experience him in the Sacrament of Penance, or in silence as the ‘prisoner of the tabernacle’, that is precisely what our Lord holds out to us, and it shapes us, it gives our life new meaning.

The rule of St Benedict, which was the guide of Merton’s life, reminds us that with the Lord, always we begin again. Whether our confirmation was a few years ago or forty, perhaps we can call on that Spirit which has been poured into our hearts to awaken a new desire for the one who gave all in sacrifice for us, and then see where that will take us.

While we may all suffer from distractions in prayer and find them unhelpful, not all distractions in the spiritual life are bad.

When it comes to the moral life, we often feel that the way to deal with temptations — especially those that begin as a thought or feeling in our heads — is to pray about them. If we do find ourselves falling to temptation, giving in and allowing it to take over our thoughts or even our actions, so often we tell ourselves that if only we had prayed harder, or more, we would have found the strength to say ‘no’.

The trouble is that when it comes to the temptations that start in the mind, prayer is not always the answer. If we enter into prayer saying to God, ‘I will not think about X… I will not think about X… I will not think about X…’ It’s fairly obvious what we’re going to end up thinking about. It could be something that has upset us or someone who has made us angry, something we’re thinking about doing but know we shouldn’t, or doubts and anxieties that there’s just no point in revisiting.

St Philip used to say of such things, ‘Only cowards gain the victory; that is to say, those who fly.’ And while that advice was meant in the first place as literally avoiding bad company and the near occasions of sin, it applies just as much to all kinds of troublesome thoughts. When they occur, he says, ‘We ought immediately to make use of our minds, and fix them instantaneously upon something or other, no matter what.’ And it’s the ‘no matter what’ that is interesting. The solution is to distract ourselves — with almost anything.

When unhelpful thoughts occur, we should think about something else. We all of us have that topic we find completely absorbing — that specialist subject, that skill, that hobby, that TV show, book, or favourite film, that area of life that when someone mentions it around us, the people in the room who know us all roll their eyes because they know that once we get started, they won’t be able to stop us. Those are the things we should be thinking about. They’re not things that are, in themselves, holy or sacred, probably. But the wonderful thing with God is that he can use even the ordinary and everyday to sanctify us. Our hobbies and interests, which apparently have very little meaning in the grand scheme of our salvation, suddenly get elevated and turned into tools for our sanctification.

People used to complain to St Philip that he allowed his spiritual children too much freedom. They ran around playing games, they were allowed to do what they liked, they made too much noise while they were messing around, and they just weren’t serious enough. His response was: ‘Let them chop wood on my back, so long as they do not sin.’ Chopping wood, playing games, even watching TV — these can all become tools to make us holy, if we allow them to distract us at the right time.