Survival or Prophecy?

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. First edition, first printing (full number line). Hardcover quarto in gold DJ. xxvi, 196 pages: illustrations; 22 cm Fine in fine DJ. . Hardcover. ISBN: 0374272069

Abstract: "Thomas Merton, the American Trappist monk who wrote The Seven Storey Mountain, spent his literary career in a cloistered monastery in Kentucky. His great counterpart, the French Benedictine monk Jean Leclercq, traveled relentlessly to and from monasteries world-wide, trying to bring about a long-needed reform and renewal of Catholic religious life." "Their correspondence over twenty years is a record of the common yearnings of two holy men. "What is a monk?" is the question at the center of their exchange, and in these letters they answer it with great aplomb, touching on the role of ancient texts and modern conveniences; the advantages of hermit life and community life; the fierce Catholicism of the monastic past and the new openness to the approaches of other traditions; the monastery's impulse toward survival and the monk's calling to prophecy. Full of learning, human insight, and self-deprecating wit, these letters capture the excitement of the Catholic Church in the era of the Second Vatican Council - and the perennial appeal of the life of monastic solitude."--Jacket. Monastic and religious life. Benedictines -- Luxembourg -- Correspondence.