We must liberate ourselves in our own way, from involvement in a world that is plunging into disaster. But our world is different from theirs. Our involvement in it is more complete. Our danger is more desperate. Our time, perhaps, is shorter than we think. We cannot do exactly what they did. But we must be as thorough and as ruthless in our determination to break all spiritual chains, and cast off the domination of alien compulsions, to find our true selves, to discover and develop our inalienable spiritual liberty and use it to build, on earth, the Kingdom of God. This is not the place to speculate what our great and mysterious vocation might involve. That is still unknown. Let it suffice for me to say that we need to learn from these men of the fourth century how to ignore prejudice, defy compulsion and strike out fearlessly into the unknown.
T. Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, London: Hollis & Carter, 1961: 23
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