SIGN OF JONAS, THE by Thomas Merton ($12.00)
10.00
HB 0-15-682529-5
Begun five years after he entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, The Sign of Jonas offers an extraordinary view of Merton's day-to-day life in a Trappist monastery, and serves as well as a spiritual
log recording the deep meaning and increasing sureness he felt in his
vocation. Spanning the years 1946 to 1952, the book takes the sign of
Jonas the prophet both as a symbol of resurrection and a reflection
of Merton's feeling that he was traveling toward his destiny in the
belly of a paradox. Concluding with an account of Merton's ordination as a priest, this diary documents the growth of a mind that found in its contracted physical world new intellectual and spiritual dimensions.
"I can see The Sign of Jonas as a continuation of The Seven Storey
Mountain, but I see it as a turn from that book, an immersion in a
world that is, quite patiently and quite joyfully, a daily world ....I feel that no literary form could better contain the astonishing energiesof Cistercian life." -- Commonweal
"This book is made unmistakably real and almost, at times, unbearably poignant by the fact that the exuberance of youth so often wells
up through it with rapture, impatience and even bluster." -- The New York Times
"A stirring book--the most readable and on the whole, most illuminating of the author's writings. Its pages radiate something of that divine simplicity which makes Angelico's paintings immortal." -- Catholic World
