In a recent review of Thomas Merton's The Waters of Silence the reviewer concludes with this stirring challenge: ‘Thomas Merton writes for the world, and he writes, as he must, of a special glory of Catholic life that, despite its wonderful growth, inevitably remains the privilege of a small minority. A harder and more insistent task must be to reveal the depth and delight of the common life of the members of Christ whose lot is to live in the world, so that they, in union with the hidden ones, may sanctify it. Would that there were another Merton who might show, with something of his skill and grace and popular appeal, how the “Waters of Silence” may flow into a world that dies for lack of them.’