Thomas Merton Quotes

Prayer is nothing else than a sense of God's presence

The one thing you absolutely need is the one thing you can never lose: God's presence and love for you. Just have to talk to him.

You can see God from anywhere if your mind is set to love and obey Him.

Whether one is Marian or Charismatic or both, or prays in one or more of the many other ways open to us, it is all a flow of love, if the heart is truly speaking to and listening to the Holy Trinity. Personally, I pray the Divine Mercy chaplet every day. We pray the Rosary every day in our family.

When I was a little child, my parents taught me by example to pray. I began with a picture in my mind of Heavenly Father being far away. As I have matured, my experience with prayer has changed. The picture in my mind has become one of a Heavenly Father who is close by, who is bathed in a bright light, and who knows me perfectly.

I live and love in God's peculiar light.

Ask those who love Him with a sincere love, and they will tell you that they find no greater or prompter relief amid the troubles of their life than in loving conversation with their Divine Friend.

There is no greater distance than that between a man in prayer and God.

God is love and if you are ready, he always is.

I just thank God I'm still here and the main thing is to try to get closer and closer to Him as much as I can so that I can treat my friends and my family the way they should be treated.

When we pray, instead of trying to produce love in our souls toward God, we should be basking in God's love for us. How foolish to stay indoors in the cold, dark little room off the self, trying to turn on the light and turn up the heat, when we can just go outside into God's glorious Sonlight and receive his rays! How silly to fuss with artificial tanning salons and lotions and lights when the Son is out!

God is near whether you sense His presence or not.

Heavenly Father hears your prayers, He loves you. He knows your name. He loves you beyond your ability to comprehend.

We must love prayer. It widens the heart to the point of making it capable of containing the gift that God makes of himself. Ask and seek, and your heart will be widened to welcome him and to keep him within itself.

When man is with God in awe and love, then he is praying.

Prayer enters the pool of God's love and widens outward.

I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other.

Don't wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him... so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God.

Where there is love, there is God also.

If we would have God in the closet, God must have us out of the closet. There is no way of praying to God, but by living to God.

No matter what I go through today, I need not fear. For God is all-powerful and God is here. I am never separate from the One who created me. There is nothing I can do to make Him turn his face away from me. I am loved, I am cared for, and I am totally safe in the arms of God.

God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away. God lies in wait for us with nothing so much as love.

Let's dare to enter into an intimate relationship with God without fear, trusting that we will receive love and always more love.

Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished.

If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be a slothfulness in prayer.