Thomas Merton–Robert Lax friendship

The friendship between Thomas Merton and Robert Lax joined lasting companionship with spiritual influence. Lax, a poet Merton met during his Columbia University years, remained his lifelong friend; their conversations included a direct challenge to how Merton understood the life he wanted to lead.

Friendship at Columbia

Merton’s account places Lax among the important friendships he formed at Columbia University. Lax was not simply a fellow student or a passing acquaintance: the book identifies him as a lifelong friend and an influence on Merton. It gives no detailed account of how their friendship developed day by day, but its later scene shows the intimacy of a relationship in which the two could question each other’s deepest aspirations.

The 1939 Conversation

In the spring of 1939, Merton and Lax were walking together on Sixth Avenue in New York when Lax asked what Merton wanted to be. Merton answered that he wanted to be a good Catholic. Lax pressed him further, saying that he should want to be a saint. Merton initially thought this sounded foolish in light of the life he had been leading. Lax answered that God could make him a saint if Merton would let God do it.

Influence and Significance

The exchange made Lax’s influence concrete: he recast Merton’s stated religious aspiration as a call to greater spiritual seriousness, while locating its fulfillment not in Merton’s unaided effort but in his willingness to let God act. The account does not say that this conversation caused Merton’s later vocation or conversion; it presents it as a significant moment within a longer course of spiritual change. Its force lies in the contrast between Merton’s modest formulation and Lax’s more demanding vision of what that commitment might become.