... there is only one vocation.
Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick,
whether you are in religion or out of it,
married or single, no matter who you are,
you are called to the summit of perfection:
you are called to a deep interior life
perhaps even to mystical prayer,
and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others.
And if you cannot do so by word, then by example.
Yet if this sublime fire of infused love burns in your soul,
it will inevitably send forth throughout the Church and the world
an influence more tremendous than could be estimated by the radius
reached by words or by example.
Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick,
whether you are in religion or out of it,
married or single, no matter who you are,
you are called to the summit of perfection:
you are called to a deep interior life
perhaps even to mystical prayer,
and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others.
And if you cannot do so by word, then by example.
Yet if this sublime fire of infused love burns in your soul,
it will inevitably send forth throughout the Church and the world
an influence more tremendous than could be estimated by the radius
reached by words or by example.
--Thomas Merton, Seven Storey Mountain
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