Merton’s Turn to Christ and Virtue

In The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton describes his life of sin and his eventual turning to God in his early years. He despised and ridiculed the word virtue, which had come to mean “prudery practiced by hypocrites.” But Merton discovered that virtue, the power that comes from moral excellence, is the only way to the good life.

Without [virtue] there can be no happiness, because virtues are precisely the powers by which we can come to acquire happiness: without them, there can be no joy, because they are the habits which coordinate and [provide an outlet for]…