Br. Patrick Hart, the Cistercian (Trappist) monk who was the last secretary to the 20th century spiritual writer Thomas Merton, died Feb. 21. He was 93.
Hart was also Merton’s literary executor, responsible for keeping Merton’s teaching and writing accessible for generations to come.
Merton died unexpectedly and violently in 1968 at the age of 53. From the time he published his spiritual autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain in 1948, Merton had captured the imagination of, first, Catholic believers and later spiritual seekers of many traditions. From the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery in Kentucky, which he entered in 1941, Merton wrote some 60 books and corresponded with hundreds, many (most) of the leading figures of the mid-20th century.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, has sold over one million copies and has been translated into over fifteen languages. He wrote over sixty other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race.
If you need an introduction to Thomas Merton, start at The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University.
Joseph McAuley, an assistant editor of America magazine, has an obituary of “Br. Hart: Patrick Hart, last secretary for Thomas Merton, dies at 93.”
I also found an extended interview with Br. Hart, conducted in 2004 by Benedictine Sr. Mary Margaret Funk, who at the time was executive director of the North American Commission of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue.
Funk sets the tone and direction of her interview with her very first question:
Funk: First of all, Patrick, I want to thank you for doing this. You have seen various “incarnations” of Thomas Merton, including his public personality as an artist and his more private life as a monk who was known to his confreres as Father Louis. What do you think was his major contribution to monasticism?
Hart: Well, I think it was his concern about getting past the rigidity and overemphasis on the ascetical and penitential character of Trappist life. … Merton felt that there was more to monasticism than that … his contribution was to get back to the pure sources of monasticism.
Hart also talks about Merton’s extensive correspondence, his exploration of Zen Buddhism through calligraphy and photography. Hart especially recommends reading Merton’s letter to the Sufi scholar Abdul Aziz; it is, Hart says, “it’s the only time when he talked about how he himself prayed.”
The whole interview is with reading.
Dennis Coday 