MICHAEL PLEKON 390 MERTON’S MONASTIC RENEWAL AND THE DESERT MOTHERS AND FATHERS Michael Plekon THE DESERT MONASTICS AND MERTON In the last years of his life, Thomas Merton had much to say about the renewal and reform of monastic life. This came from at least three sources. One of these was from his connection to those urging such renewal in the 1950s and 1960s and experimenting with it. His correspondence with these monastic renewers trying to implement the spirit of Vatican Council II’s decree on religious life, Perfectae caritatis, and the “return-to-the-sources” of monasticism taught him a great deal. A second source was his own experience living as a monk at Gethsemani Abbey since 1941. In his writings, Merton had much to say about monastic life as he knew it there. He ranged from exuberant wonder at the silence, the arduous practices and fasting to sometime biting criticism of entrenched patterns and attitudes. There was yet a third source of importance. In 1957 and 1960, he published selections in translation from the desert mothers and fathers. He spoke about these desert monastics to the novices and student monks in his conferences, as Patrick O’Connell has made clear both in the Merton talks he has edited and in an article. 1 In his introduction to the selections in The Wisdom of the Desert, Merton sought to identify the men and women whose sayings he had translated. They were both hermits and community dwellers who did not so much flee the world Michael Plekon is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Religion and Culture at the City University of New York-Baruch College. He has published on persons of holiness and the parish in our time and served parishes in ordained ministry for 40 years. 1 Patrick O’Connell, “Across the Invisible Frontier: Thomas Merton’s ‘Two Desert Fathers’,” American Benedictine Review 73, no. 2 (June 2022): 204–226. I am indebted to Patrick O’Connell for sharing some of the notes from this article documenting Merton’s use of the desert monastics in conferences for novices: Thomas Merton, Cassian and the Fathers: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition, ed. Patrick F. O’Connell, (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2005), 29–39, 71–96 and Thomas Merton, Pre-Benedictine Monasticism: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 2, ed. Patrick F. O’Connell, (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2006), 17–40. O’Connell also points out other places where the desert monastics are used: “The Spiritual Father in the Desert Tradition,” in Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1973), 282–305, and “The Cell,” 265–272, as well as “Macarius and the Pony” and “Macarius the Younger,” in Thomas Merton, The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, (New York: New Directions, 1977), 317–18; 319–21. Also see O’Connell, “More Wisdom of the Desert: Thomas Merton’s Macarius Poems,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 40, no. 3 (2005): 253–78.