Daily Reading, May 1

The Cross is completely baffling both to the Greeks with their philosophy and to the Jews with their well-interpreted Law. But when one has been freed from dependence on verbal formulas and conceptual structures, the Cross becomes a source of “power.” This power emanates from the “foolishness of God” and it also makes of us “foolish instruments.” On the other hand, he who can accept this paradoxical “foolishness” experiences in himself a secret and mysterious power, the power of Christ living in him as the ground of a totally new life.

From Zen and the Birds of Appetite by Thomas Merton, quoted in Wisdom of the Cloister, edited by John Skinner (Image Books, 1999).