Paths change. Like jobs, choices of faith persuasions.
More.
Hearts do also.
People are like that.
Unless they're satisfied, they move, search and seek something, Someone else.
Take, for example, the Trappist Father Thomas Merton born in France. His parents, he notes, did not like the Protestant cenacles in France. Hid dad died a good Anglican, Merton notes.
Tom Merton protested the liberal teaching he received at Oakham School in an Anglican school in England. It had no substance, and "I proudly assumed that this was the case with all religions, and obstinately set my face against all churches."
Until 1938 Merton "gradually passed from being anti-clerical and became a complete unbeliever," by his own admission in his, "A Life in Letters."
Merton confesses that his path was disastrous: "My only concern was with earthly thing: thinking myself passionately devoted to justice and liberty I began to take an interest in atheistic communism, and, for a while, I held the doctrines of radicalism, concerning religious institutions: namely that they were purely the result of social and historical forces and, however well-meaning their adherents, they were nothing more than social groups, which the rich made us of to oppress the poor!"
Amid his confusion, he studied Jacques Maritain, and, began to go to Mass at Corpus Christi Church in New York and was baptized Nov. 16, 1938.
Eventually, Merton chose a life of quiet solitude as a Trappist monk in Gethsemane, Kentucky, a favorite place of mine for retreat and reflection.
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