Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was American Trappist monk who spent his early life in France. This is what he said on April 28, 1957: “If I can unite in myself, in my own spiritual life, the thought of the East and the West, of the Greek and Latin Fathers, I will create in myself a reunion of the divided Church, and from that unity in myself can come the exterior and visible unity of the Church. For, if we want to bring together East and West, we cannot do it by imposing one upon the other. We must contain both in ourselves and transcend them both in Christ.”In this way and through these words, he became one of the original predecessors of the special ecumenical method/attitude called Receptive Ecumenism
To understand even better how Merton attempted to achieve this, and to gain better understanding of Receptive Ecumenism in action – read a book on his engagement with Eastern Orthodox spirituality Merton & Hesychasm: The Prayer of the Heart & the Eastern Church, which includes contributions from great contemporary ecumenical figures like: Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Father Donald Allchin and former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.