Half-a-century ago while he was standing at the corner of what was then Fourth and Walnut streets, Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton had what has become one of the most publicized — and revered — personal epiphanies in history.

Away from the isolation that was his constant companion at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Nelson County, Merton said he was simply looking at the citizens of Louisville as they made their way along a busy thoroughfare in the heart of the city’s shopping district.

“I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people,” he later wrote, “that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race. ... There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

Merton’s epiphany happened 50 years ago on March 18. In the years since, his revelation has affected countless others — his epiphany has led them to experience epiphanies of their own. And this March 18 starting at the Muhammad Ali Center nearly two dozen local religious and civic organizations will hold three events to commemorate the “Shining Like the Sun” moment.

The first will begin at 4:30 p.m. at the Muhammad Ali Center where an exhibit of Merton’s photography — called “A Hidden Wholeness: The Zen Photography of Thomas Merton,” will be available for viewing. An hour later in the Ali center auditorium the Thomas Merton Center, Louisville Bar Association, Muhammad Ali Center and Interfaith Paths to Peace will hold a program of discussion — and the relating of personal epiphanies — by a half-dozen panel members. (All seats for that event have all reserved.)

Those speaking include attorney Donald Vish, chairman of the board of directors for Interfaith Paths to Peace; Joe Reagan, president and chief executive officer of Greater Louisville, Inc.; Christopher 2X, founder of the Ceremonial Healing Group; journalist Pam Platt; attorney Greg King; and arts activist and “Merton-inspired community builder” Ellyn Crutcher.

The program will be narrated by Dr. Paul Pearson, director and archivist of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University, and it will be moderated by the person who had the idea for the program, former Louisville Bar Association President Thomas Williams.

Following the Ali Center event, there will be a procession to the site of Merton’s special vision — now Fourth and Muhammad Ali streets. There, a ceremony will be held to recognize the naming of that intersection by local government as “Thomas Merton Square,” and declaring March 18, 2008 to March 18, 2009 as the “Year of the Epiphany.”

The idea for all of this, Williams said, grew out of a similar program held at the Ali Center on St. Nicholas Day a year or so ago. Williams said he listened then to the experience of fellow lawyer Don Vish as he related his personal epiphany.

“He was getting his car fixed in the West End and needed to take a bus back to his office downtown,” Williams explained. “But when he went to pay his fare, he didn’t have any change,” just several $20 bills.

“The bus driver was about to make him get off when a little lady sitting in the back walked forward and dropped the quarter in the box for him,” Williams said. “During their conversation, Don learned that she was a seamstress, and he said he was going to give her $100 to put in her collection plate at her church.”

But the lady would have none of it, Vish had explained. “She looked at him and said. ‘That’s not how charity works,’ ” Williams recalled. “She said, ‘Now you go and do unto others as I have done unto you.’ ”

“Well, that knocked my socks off when I heard it,” Williams said. “And as I listened to others share their personal epiphanies, it was in the back of my mind that we should do something similar and that the 50th anniversary of Merton’s epiphany would be the right time to do it.”

Merton’s experience has affected so many people, Williams said, and now the program “is coming together really nicely.”

“My theory is that he didn’t see just anybody; he saw the folks of Louisville, Ky.,” said Williams. “He was courageous enough to share that experience back in the 1950s. A monk having an epiphany in the center of a shopping district is astonishing in its own right, and the fact that he had the courage to share it is astonishing, too.”

Merton, Williams said, “saw the hidden beauty of our hearts,” and he believes that the space at Fourth and Muhammad Ali has “picked up his mysticism” too. “I recently learned that at the corner, there on the Starks Building, the words ‘Fourth and Walnut’ can still be seen carved into the granite.”

Terry Taylor, executive director of Interfaith Paths to Peace, shares Williams’ anticipation for the upcoming March 18 events.

“This is one of those unique times when a physical landmark will be put in place that will mark what was a spiritual landmark in time,” Taylor noted. “And it may be that the event in 1958, especially for Roman Catholics, might be the most significant spiritual event of the 20th Century. Speaking for myself, the significance of what Merton said on that day figuratively brought the walls of the monastery crumbling down and invited everyone into contemplative spirituality.

“He took a step outside the walls and put his name on the line to speak out against racism, war and injustice,” Taylor said. “And he called on the rest of us to do the same thing.”

Among the religious organizations taking part in the March 18 program, procession and “Thomas Merton Square” ceremonies are the Kentucky Council of Churches, the Archdiocese of Louisville, the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky, the Mid-Kentucky Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church USA, the Islamic Cultural Center of Louisville, the Community Relations Council of the Jewish Community Federation of Louisville, the Hindu Temple of Kentucky, the Drepung Gomang Institute and others.