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The specific value that draws a Christian into the “dessert” and “solitude” (wheter or not he remains physically “in the world”) is a
deep sense that God alone suffices. The need to win the approval of society, to find a recognized place in the world, to achieve a temporal ambition,
to “be somebody” even in the Church seems to them irrelevant. They realize themselves to be called to a totally different mode of existence,
outside of secular categories and outside of the religious establishment. This is the very heart of monasticism; hence a firmly “established”
monasticism is a self-contradiction.
Thomas MERTON, Contemplation in a World of Action, Doubleday & Co, New York, 1971, blz. 22-23.
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