“The mere ability to choose between good and evil is the lowest limit of freedom, and the only thing that is free about it is the fact that we can still choose good.To the extent that you are free to choose evil, you are not free. An evil choice destroys freedom.We can never choose evil as evil: only as an apparent good. But when we decide to do something that seems to us to be good when it is not really so, we are doing something that we do not really want to do, and therefore we are not really free.Perfect spiritual freedom is a total inability to make any evil choice. When everything you desire is truly good and every choice not only aspires to that good but attains it, then you are free because you do everything that you want, every act of your will ends in perfect fulfillment.Freedom therefore does not consist in an equal balance between good and evil choices but in the perfect love and acceptance of what is really good and the perfect hatred and rejection of what is evil, so that everything you do is good and makes you happy, and you refuse and deny and ignore every possibility that might lead to unhappiness and self-deception and grief. Only the man who has rejected all evil so completely that he is unable to desire it at all, is truly free.God, in Whom there is absolutely no shadow or possibility of evil or of sin, is infinitely free. In fact, he is Freedom.” — Thomas Merton, “What Is Liberty?”, New Seeds of Contemplation [Ad Parnassum - Paul Klee]
• Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, has sold over one million copies and has been translated into over fifteen languages. More: http://merton.org/chrono.aspx
• Ad Parnassum (1932) is considered to be the best example of Paul Klee’s pointillist style; it is also one of his most finely worked paintings. Ad Parnassum was created in the Dusseldorfer period. More: https://www.paulklee.net/ad-parnassum.jsp
