The Gospel I Missed: What Merton Taught Me About Catholic Christianity
"Occupy my whole life with the one thought and the one desire of love, that I may love not for the sake of merit, not for the sake of perfection, not for the sake of virtue, not for the sake of sanctity, but for you alone." - Thomas Merton
I said it too. Maybe not out loud every time, but I thought it: Catholics don't know the gospel.
It's one of those criticisms that gets passed around Protestant circles like a well-worn coin, handled so often it loses its edges, becomes smooth and unremarkable. Someone you respect says it, you nod, and the caricature in your mind solidifies a little more. Catholics pray to Mary. They think they earn salvation through works. They've wandered from the simplicity of the gospel into ritual and tradition.
I had no idea what Catholics actually believed. But I was certain I knew what they didn't believe.
Then I read Merton.
The Gospel I Thought I Knew
As a Protestant, I could tell you the gospel in thirty seconds. God is holy. We are sinners. Jesus died for our sins. We are saved by grace through faith, not by works. Done. Packaged. Portable. Ready to share.
And it's true, every word of it. But somewhere in the efficient packaging, something got lost. Or maybe I just stopped listening for it.
The gospel became a ticket punched, a transaction completed, a doctrine defended. It was the foundation, yes, but once laid, we built our Christian lives on top of it with programs and principles and practical steps for growth. We talked about the gospel as the entry point, but the Christian life after that? That was about discipline, obedience, small groups, and accountability.
Nothing wrong with any of those things. But something was missing.
The Tension I Didn't Understand
Here's what confused me about Catholic theology when I finally started paying attention: it seemed to hold two things together that I'd been taught were opposites.
On one hand, Catholicism calls believers to radical holiness. The lives of the saints aren't held up as exceptional outliers but as what we're all called to: complete surrender, heroic virtue, transformation into the image of Christ. The moral teaching is uncompromising. The call to sanctity is universal.
On the other hand, it all depends entirely on grace. Not just initial saving grace, but sustaining grace, transforming grace, grace upon grace upon grace. The sacraments exist because we need ongoing, tangible encounters with God's mercy. Confession exists because we keep falling. The Eucharist exists because we're desperate and weak and need to be fed.
I'd been taught these were contradictory. Either you believe in works righteousness (high moral demands) or you believe in grace (unmerited favor). Pick one.
But Catholicism refuses to pick. It lives in the tension.
And Merton's prayer expresses that tension perfectly.
Love for Love's Sake Alone
"That I may love not for the sake of merit, not for the sake of perfection, not for the sake of virtue, not for the sake of sanctity, but for you alone."
This is the gospel I missed.
Merton isn't dismissing merit or perfection or virtue or sanctity. The Catholic tradition talks about all of those things constantly. But he's saying none of them are the point. They're not the motive. They're not even really the goal.
The goal is God himself. Not what God can give us. Not even what God can make us. Just God.
And the only way to get there, the only way to love like that, is to ask God to do it in us. We don't manufacture that kind of love. We don't achieve it through effort. We can't even properly want it without grace.
So we pray: Occupy my whole life. Take over. Displace everything else. Give me one thought, one desire. Let it be love. Let it be for you alone.
That's not works righteousness. That's the cry of someone who knows they can't save themselves from themselves.
The God Who Wants Your Heart
The God of Catholic Christianity doesn't just want correct theology or moral behavior or Sunday attendance. He wants your heart. Your motives. Your secret thoughts. Your hidden desires.
And that's terrifying, because our hearts are a mess.
Which is exactly why the Church gives us confession. And spiritual direction. And the litany of saints who struggled just like we do. And prayers like Merton's that we can borrow when our own words fail.
The pilgrimage isn't once for all. It's daily. Sanctification isn't a program you complete. It's a lifelong conversion: the same conversion, over and over, going deeper each time.
"Lord, have mercy" isn't something you say because you haven't figured it out yet. It's something you say because you have.
What I Wish I'd Known
I wish I'd known this when I was criticizing Catholic theology from a safe distance. I wish someone had shown me Merton, or St. Thérèse of Lisieux, or St. Augustine, or any of the voices that have echoed this same gospel for two thousand years.
I wish I'd understood that "faith and works" isn't a debate to be won but a mystery to be lived. That grace doesn't compete with holiness but produces it. That mercy and justice, love and law, gift and task aren't opposites but partners in the dance of conversion.
I wish I'd known that the Catholic Church has been teaching the gospel all along. Not a different gospel. The same one. Just refusing to reduce it to something smaller than it actually is.
The gospel is that God became man to make us like God. Not through our effort, but through his mercy. Not despite our weakness, but through it. Not around our humanity, but by fully entering into it and transforming it from the inside out.
And the only response to that gospel, whether you're Protestant or Catholic or anything else, is what Merton prayed:
Let me love you for you alone.
The challenge for all of us isn't whether we know the right words about the gospel. It's whether we're letting it occupy our whole lives. Whether we're asking God to change not just our behavior but our hearts. Whether we're loving for merit or virtue or respectability, or whether we're learning, slowly and painfully and by grace, to love for love's sake alone.
