LOVE WINTER WHEN THE PLANT SAYS NOTHING
Praying When Our Hearts Are on Ice
AN ONLINE LECTURE AND INTERVIEW ON THOMAS MERTON
FEATURING
JONATHAN MONTALDO, EDITOR and WRITER
& THE REV. VINCENT PIZZUTO, Ph.D
THEOLOGY PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO &
VICAR OF ST. COLUMBA’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
INVERNESS, CALIFORNIA
Jonathan Montaldo leads us in two sessions on contemplative prayer, grounded by emptiness of heart but not of hope when “It’s dark and the dragons come and there is no more beer” [Merton], followed by Fr. Vincent Pizzuto interviewing Jonathan Montaldo on Merton’s legacy as an exemplary practitioner of contemplative prayer and social commentator.
Jonathan Montaldo served as Director of the principal archive of the monk and writer’s works at the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. He also served as the Associate Director of The Merton Institute for Contemplative Living, directing Bethany Spring (the Institute’s retreat center) one mile from Merton’s monastery, the Abbey of Gethsemani, in Trappist, Kentucky. He created the ten-booklet series for small group discussion, Bridges to Contemplative Living with Thomas Merton and coedited The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals. His many renditions of Merton’s writing include A Year with Thomas Merton and Thomas Merton’s Dialogues with Silence. He narrated five Merton audiobooks and continues his twenty-year service as the Co-General Editor of the nine-volume Fons Vitae series, Thomas Merton & World Religions. He presents retreats internationally based on Merton’s legacy for mentoring our spiritual formations. More information on Thomas Merton at https://Merton.org and on Jonathan Montaldo at http://MonksWorks.com.
Father Vincent Pizzuto, Ph.D. is Professor of New Testament Studies and Christian Mysticism in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the (Jesuit) University of San Francisco. As an Episcopal priest, Fr. Vincent serves as Vicar of St. Columba’s Episcopal Church and Retreat House in Inverness, California. Working for the advancement of contemplative Christianity, he has reinvigorated the mission and ministry of St. Columba’s through the introduction of contemplative eucharistic liturgies, public lectures, online courses, directed retreats, thought provoking sermons, an online blog and a weekly online study of his book through the Meditation Chapel. Entitled Contemplating Christ: The Gospels and the Interior Life, his book seeks to bring his readers into a lived realization of the Christian doctrine of deification – that is, the affirmation that through the Incarnation, we have all been made partakers of the Divine Nature.
