Sister Ilia writes beautifully of  the man Thomas Merton and his journey of openness to ever deeper levels of prayer. I discovered him as a fifteen year old the year Vatican II ended, and I came into the church the following year. He was the first of some wonderful mentors on my spiritual journey. It is so sad that there are still people today who want to paint Merton as a heretic or some sort of person at odds with the teachings of the church.  Richard Rohr, OFM, whom I see as a modern day Merton, speaks so clearly about our inability to believe we are loved unconditionally by God, and therefore set up all sorts of limitations to God's grace, believing ourselves to be somehow  unworthy of God's love or thinking we have to earn it.
The last of my cancer patients, to whom I have been ministering, went joyously Home to the Kingdom's Feast, and it was my privilege to be with them as their journeys ended.  God is good, all the time...all the time, God is good.