We finished the conference, actually, on spiritual knowledge, but we want to just take a look at the structures, try to see it all together, and then maybe remark on the connections between that conference and a number of the other ones that we've read. Now that was, I think that's an important conference at Keshe, whereas the one that we're starting on today is not so important. It's a good deal briefer, too, the one on divine gifts. It's important because Keshe sees the spiritual life so much in terms of holy scripture. You notice that every conference that he writes, it's really based very much on the scriptures. The first one, you know, he starts out with purity of heart and gets that from the beatitude, blessed are the clean in heart, for they shall see God, and so on, and on and on it goes, continually recurring the scripture. So here he opens that up to us and aligns the spiritual life with holy scripture in

[01:02]

terms of spiritual knowledge. So you can look at progress in the spiritual life in various ways. Growth in charity, those successive renunciations we talked about, you can think of it in terms of moving from fear to love, or from faith and hope to love, or you can look at it in terms of moving from one kind of knowledge to another, from practical knowledge to theoretical knowledge, from active life to contemplative life. And we noticed how strange it seemed that he talks about active life in terms of knowledge, active knowledge. There's a bit of a Greek twist there, and yet there's something to it, too. And when one looks back at his life, from the point of view of the contemplative life, he may indeed see his earlier life in terms of learning, you know, you can look at life as a learning process, among other ways of looking at it. You can lose something that way, if you only look at it that way, you're in danger, because you'll forget certain essential things like love, but that's a good, it's one way of looking

[02:08]

at it. Okay, we wanted to look at the structure of Conference 14, and it seems to me that it breaks down into about four parts. The first part is the general division of spiritual knowledge into praxis and theoriae, practicae and theoreticae, active life and contemplative life, and that's in Chapters 1 and 2. So that's his basic breakdown, and then he breaks it down further after that. Then there's a section on praxis, on the active life, which includes Chapters 3 through 7, and in that section he breaks active life down into various elements, too. Getting rid of the faults, learning the virtues, those are the two big divisions. And then the different professions and occupations that can make up the active life, and then perseverance and so on.

[03:08]

Then the contemplative life, theoriae, he talks about that in Chapter 8, so that would be our third part. And then finally, the way to theoriae, and that goes, takes up all the rest of the conference from Chapter 9 through Chapter 19. So that's the fourth part, and that can in turn be broken down into several other parts, the first of them being the way to theoriae, which is purity of heart, and then a couple of other conditions like meditation and avoiding distraction and so on. That's in Chapter 9 and 10. The manifold meaning of the scriptures. Now he's talked about that before, in Chapter 8, I think, but he talks about it here, and he lines it up with your increasing purity, you see, so that you proceed into the deeper senses of the scripture, the more refined meanings of the scripture, as you grow in purity of heart. One of those various interpretations of the word adultery, that he goes into five of them,

[04:12]

I think, as a person grows. So that's a kind of an interlude there, in talking about purity of heart and the way to contemplation. Then the next little section, subsection, is the purification of the memory, which you do by devoting your attention, your energy, your interest to the scriptures. That's Chapter 12 and 13. And then finally, this thesis that spiritual knowledge cannot be either given or received without purity of heart. That's the last part, and it goes from Chapter 14 to 19. It cannot be either given nor received without purity of heart. Now he states the thesis, and then he makes a kind of exception in the last chapter, where he says, well, sometimes people have the gift of teaching without being pure of heart, for the sake of others. But that leaves a question open to me. Do those people who preach and teach without purity of heart, do they really have spiritual

[05:16]

knowledge in the sense in which he's talking about it, or are they in that category he was talking about before, or that Germanus or Cassian was talking about, remember when they made the objection? Well, look, you have all these people who have such an insight into scripture, and yet they're not saints. And then Abba Nestero said, well, they don't really have insight either, they don't really have spiritual knowledge, it just sounds that way, because they have a good tongue. Well, it's possible that somebody might have a gift of preaching without having that real spiritual knowledge, or he can have a kind of a glimpse of spiritual knowledge, and then a lot of intelligence. In other words, he can get glimpses, but not live up to them. And on the glimpses he gets, he can build a very smooth surface, because of his wit, you see? So there are all kinds of possibilities there. There are a lot of stories, I think, of famous preachers, you know, who had a terrible fall one time or another. But sometimes a fall is after the preaching. Now, this moves us right into the next conference, which is on other spiritual gifts besides

[06:21]

spiritual knowledge. But first, a couple of other observations about this conference. We like to look back and see how it relates to the other conferences. You might have some suggestions there, I don't know. I had a list of all the conferences, and then I lost it. It's useful for remembering, when you look back and seeing how they relate to one another. The relation with the first conference on purity of heart is obvious. The relationship between purity of heart and contemplation, he makes that the condition. And also that division between active life and contemplative life is grounded in the first conference. And somebody says that that's equivalent to the distinction between the scopos and the telos. Remember the immediate end, which is purity of heart, and the ultimate end, which is the kingdom of heaven or eternal life. So, I think we said this before, but they say that purity of heart is the end of the active life, you see? Whereas the end of the contemplative life, or the, call it the object of the contemplative

[07:25]

life, is this eternal life, which is already begun, is already experienced here in the next life, you see? So, the contemplative life, a theory, a contemplation, is a beginning of eternal beatitude, which happens after purity of heart. So, see, you've got the two phases there, implicitly, when Cashin distinguishes the scopos from the telos, the immediate goal from the ultimate goal. That doesn't all come out clearly, though, in the first conference. You can infer it from conference 14. You see how his things are pretty closely linked together, and yet you'll find other things coming in that you won't be able to integrate that well. You'll just have to sort of guess at the connections. Also, a connection with conference 2 on discretion, rather a kind of a reflection than a big connection, but consider that discretion is what rules you on the practical road, on the road of active life. If you don't have discretion, then you go headfirst into the well, like what was his

[08:28]

name, Heron. You go off the road. So, discretion is a kind of spiritual knowledge which relates to the active life. See, it has an interesting relationship both to active life and to contemplation, because it is a form of contemplation in a way that Cashin is talking about. You see, it's an illuminated understanding, which, however, is a practical understanding. It's a judgment. But see how closely it's related to contemplation, and yet it goes back and it casts light on the road of the active life, you see? So, it's a practical kind of contemplation, the way he talks about discretion. And, of course, it also comes from experience. Now, the connections between the one on spiritual knowledge, 14, and the conferences on prayer are multiple and kind of obvious, too. First of all, these are the two places, at least the two places that we've covered where he talks about contemplation the most. And we talked about this before. But he talks about it in two different terms and in two different contexts.

[09:30]

The first term is in the sense of pure prayer, or fiery prayer, or Ratio Anita. The second sense is in the understanding of Scripture. So, those are two sides of contemplation which sort of meet at the top in this kind of wordless ineffable, fiery prayer. Now, one of them is distinctly intellectual, and the other sometimes comes as having an intellectual side to it, and sometimes simply as an uprush of spirit, as it were, as fire. There's one example. Let's see if I can find it. Page 226. He's talking about the prayer which comes after the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer carries those who use it to the higher state of prayer, which I mentioned before. That spark-like... Spark-like is a weak translation of the prayer of fire. There's only a spark for Chadwick, there's a fire for Cash.

[10:33]

That spark-like and ineffable prayer, which very few men know how to experience, it transcends the senses, is marked by no vocal expression, whether silent or loud. No words, you see. Beyond the word, beyond the letter. But the mind, illuminated by an outflowing of light from heaven, does not define it in the narrow limit of human language. With the senses unified, it pours forth prayers almost with violence as a spring pours forth fresh water. And in a second's time darts up a prayer of such richness that afterwards the mind returns to normality, cannot easily describe it. See all the things there are in that prayer. And part of it is understanding. Part of it is intellectual, you see. The mind is flooded with light, and then the up-rushing of prayer is like a response to that light, the way he has it here. It's a little bit different in the other places where he talks about it, and I didn't find them this time. But see how closely related it is to that understanding of the Scripture. Also the fact that you go beyond words. You see, you go beyond words here, and you go beyond words also in the spiritual sense of the Scripture. Beyond the word, beyond the letter, to the interior core, the heart, the meat, the marrow.

[11:39]

So, Father, the experience of prayer then, or what he's saying, is something that you really can't describe. Of the highest prayer, right. It's indescribable because it goes beyond words. It's simply another range of experience, or another state of consciousness, you could say, which cannot really be put into words. That's what the mystics keep saying too. They keep trying to use words to describe it, but they can't. They feel the need to use them because they feel the need to communicate in it. I mean, but is that, is communicating that sort of, you can't say weakening, but sort of diffusing the impact of that experience? If the person feels that the experience is really being communicated in the words, or that he's trying to communicate the experience in the words, yes, then it's weakening it, because that's a mistake, you see. So usually they take pains to point out that, I've tried in some way to indicate, to point

[12:45]

by means of words to that reality, but it's by no means enclosed within the words. You know, like the finger pointing at the moon that the Zen people like to talk about. That's the situation. The words just don't get there. And it's funny how often our whole consciousness, and our thinking, and our experience is determined by words, because we identify things with words, and then we think about the word, and we think we're contemplating the thing, but we're only contemplating the word. It happens so often, we're doing it all the time. Especially nowadays, because we're into such a verbal culture, I think. There are so many words that are with us all the time, and our experience is not that deep and that rich, and there are too many words, so we tend to be too much on the surface, and really to live in words rather than in the deep experience, which another kind of man had. For instance, very primitive peoples, I think, are different, because they even have many ways of communicating, but they're not verbal. Most of our communication is verbal, and we tend to think, because we're over-civilized in a way, we tend to think that anything that can't be put into words just doesn't exist.

[13:48]

I was reading this fellow Ornstein about this, quite convincing. One of those students, psychologist, he's a student of consciousness. So, a lot of our consciousness is a kind of a verbal construction, or it's a construction of ideas, which is shored up and fortified by words, and we think that nothing exists outside that. But that's only one of many, many possibilities, and maybe a very limited possibility. So we build ourselves a little house with words and with concepts, and we live inside of it and think there's nothing else. Okay, that's one connection between the prayer conferences and the spiritual knowledge conference. Another is the Our Father, which is a scriptural prayer, and which forms the backbone of Conference 9, or a lot of it, anyway. And then you find that most of the prayer that he's talking about there, until it gets to that fiery prayer, is grounded in Holy Scripture in some way. Either the Our Father – remember, he goes through and he makes a commentary on the Our

[14:51]

Father – or the Deus in Agitorium, which, remember, that thing which is absolute panacea for prayer and for all ills, that thing comes from the Scripture. That's the first verse of a psalm. What is it? 72, 71, something like that. And similarly, his treatment of prayer, of course, when he talks about those four kinds of prayer, and gets the words from St. Paul. And then also, when he talks about the highest kind of prayer, he says, well, that's the kind of prayer that Jesus was praying at the Transfiguration, or when he went out to be by himself, or in Gethsemane, you see. In the Our Father, what was the original language that Jesus was speaking? Probably Aramaic, because we have this word Abba, Abba Father, which is Aramaic, you see. So Abba is the translation, so he would be saying Abba? Very probably, yeah. Whatever hour is in Aramaic. I don't know what it… because Aramaic is kind of a side language today. What I mean is, Scripture students study Aramaic.

[15:54]

But I think it's thoroughly a dead language now. I think that the Eastern languages have evolved further. Hebrew is not a dead language, but it's different now from what it was in Biblical times. In Sanskrit, it's pronounced Apa. Apa. Yeah, it's kind of a universal thing. I don't know what the derivation is there, the Semitic languages from the Aryan or whatever. So, very probably Aramaic. That's what they theorized. And then it was translated by the evangelists into Greek. Or they say that Matthew wrote his Gospel first in Aramaic, or in Hebrew, and then translated it into Greek, or it was translated by somebody else into Greek. I don't know if that's true or not. They think they find signs of the Semitic language. Semitic construction, whereas Luke wrote his in Greek.

[16:57]

I mean, right off. Okay. The especially striking intersection between the Scriptures and prayer is where he talks about the understanding of the Psalms, when you're praying the Psalms. Remember that? That's in Conference 10, Chapter 11. There, with deep compunction, he will make the thoughts of the Psalms his own. He will sing them no longer as verses composed by a prophet, but as born of his own prayers. There are times when a man understands God's Scriptures with a clarity with which a surgeon understands the body, when he opens up the marrow and the veins. These are the times when our experience seems to show us the meaning by practical proof before we understand it intellectually. Okay, now remember that the Psalms are the Scripture which we pray with. So there's a natural intersection here between the two. And see how what he's talking about here is precisely that spiritual understanding which he's talking about in Conference 14. But here it's in the context of prayer, because the person is praying with these Psalms.

[18:00]

And meanwhile, the Scripture is opening up to him as he speaks it. And it's opening up inside of him, as if it were coming out of him, you see, as if he were creating it. Now, when we talk about those various senses of the Scripture, it's interesting here to see how a person is moving from one sense, as it were, and from one time into another time. He's, as it were, realizing his unity with the Old Testament psalmist, right? Across time. Just like in the sacraments, you realize your unity with what? You realize your unity with the Passover, in a sense, because we're still celebrating the Jewish Passover, in a way, when we celebrate the Eucharist. But where is that unity founded? It's founded in Christ. It's founded in Jesus, right? In other words, he is the substance in all of this. And so you've got Old Testament coming off in this direction, and you've got our experience coming off in this direction, maybe. But they just radiate from the heart of the thing, which is Christ himself. We're all one in Christ. Not only across space, but across time as well, you see.

[19:01]

He's the link which unites it all. Because he's the eternal, as it were, substance behind it all. Remember, he's the Word, too. So he's both the meaning and he's the existential union there that makes that true. It's very much related to the doctrine of the sacraments. Remember I read a little from Bagheggini before, about his theory of the different levels of the meaning of the sacraments. They've got those four levels of meaning. One goes back, one goes forward, just like the historical and the anagogical, when we're talking about the scripture. One is the doctrinal, the dogmatic, which roots itself right in Christ. And then the other one is our experience. So you can take either road. You can start anywhere and go up the other side roads, you see. But in any case, you go back to that central one, which is founded in Christ. The allegorical or dogmatic or whatever you want to call it. The doctrinal one. It's not just doctrine, it's not just truth. It's the living reality of Christ that's in the centre there, which is also the substance of the sacraments.

[20:04]

We never talk much about the sacraments. It's not appropriate in studying Cassian, but they're very significant theologically. Something we don't understand right away. The sacraments are very difficult to get into from a modern man's point of view, because they really confront us with, I don't know, just another way of understanding, another anthropology, which goes way, way back into primitive man. It goes right down into the ground, as it were. I can't remember his name, the Jesuit that is teaching in Europe, he was mentioning, I think it was him, I don't know if it was him or Fr. Boniface, about the awareness of the Eastern Church and the concept of sacraments, that they feel that praying in front of the crucifix is a sacrament. That was Fr. Muniz's. I had a little problem with him there, theologically, in a sense. But he was pointing out that we've got seven sacraments,

[21:09]

that's the way it's... But that comes from the Middle Ages, the late Middle Ages, when they decided, well, there are these seven sacraments in the institution of the Church. But in the Eastern Church, they say, well, either there's only one or two sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist, or there's an innumerable multitude of sacraments, all rooted in the mystery of Christ, which we would call sacramentals. We would call the cross a sacramental, holy water a sacramental, the Bible itself, the physical Bible, a sacramental, whereas we say the sacraments are baptism and confirmation and the Eucharist and holy orders and matrimony and anointing. So we've got them sort of rigidly defined, and we've lost the unity of the whole thing, which has been recovered with Vatican II, however, especially in the sacraments of initiation, and seeing everything rooted in the paschal mystery of Christ. So the understanding has really been revived. But our theology has tended too much to analysis, you see, and too much to systematizing, so it loses the unity of the thing, and sometimes also loses the wholeness of it. If we make too much of a distinction between sacramentals and sacraments,

[22:11]

we rob the sacramentals of something of their power, because they're a means of contact with God. If we call Scripture a sacramental and put it on an inferior position from the sacraments, well, that's a big mistake. That's a big mistake. I don't know if people do that ordinarily, but it's potentially there in that kind of system, where Scripture has to be definitely alongside the sacraments, and the two married almost. They are really, in Vatican II they are very much. You've got the two tables, the table of the Word and the table of the sacrament. You're fed with the bread of the Word, and then you're fed with the bread of the Body of Christ, and the sacrament itself. And the sacrament itself has a Word which is part of it. Part of it's a physical thing, and part of it's a Word, like the words of consecration, and then the bread which is changed into the Body. So the Word and the sacrament are really inextricable. They're on the same level. I don't want to get too far aside. But we've got to be careful when we say that venerating the cross is just as much a sacrament

[23:15]

as the Eucharist, okay? It's okay to say that in a way, because the hermit in his cave like St. Benedict who didn't have the Eucharist for a whole year, or a couple of years there, you know, in Syriac on his cave, no doubt he was closer to Christ than millions of people who had the Eucharist frequently, you know, every week. However, they've just got a different, it's just a different value there, because one of them is the Body of Christ, my goodness. One of them is the physical presence of Jesus Christ, which we eat, and which is the thing that really unites us to Christ, body and spirit, you know? Whereas the other one is a representation, it's an image. But we're getting close to the icon thing there. Icon and sacrament. Icon and sacrament in the East. Because the crucifix is an icon, in a sense, and for the Easterners, it's probably an icon. So you've got a denser theological truth there than we usually see, too, if we see the crucifix just as a picture of Jesus. Another time. So the thing about the psalms is very important here.

[24:20]

If we have the same attitudes of heart, we're in the psalmist, David, or whoever, wrote or sang his psalms, we shall become like the authors and be aware of the meaning before we've thought it out instead of after. See, that's that infused knowledge from the Holy Spirit that comes into the purified heart that he's talking about, which is there before you think about it. There's a difference between intuition and reason. Intuition is just there, boom, zip. Whereas reason, you go from this to that to that. Ah, maybe it's so, you know, sure enough. Wrong again. Wrong again. Then you look in the back of the book. Yes. The force of the words strikes us before we have rationally examined them. And when we use the words, we remember by a kind of meditative association our own circumstances and struggles, the results of our negligence, and so on. So you feel the spiritual warfare in yourself, and then you see it reflected in the psalms. And then the meaning of the words of the psalms jumps into your mind before you've thought about it. That's what the Holy Spirit does when the heart becomes transparent. And the centre of it is in Christ,

[25:24]

not in David, but in Christ. But all of these ages are somehow united together in Christ, especially in his death and resurrection. Thank you. Also, you get a kind of a parallel on the... or a conflict, in a sense, between concentrating on one phrase, the deus in agitatorium, God, come to my assistance, Lord, make haste to help me. If you take one phrase from the scripture and concentrate on that, instead of allowing your mind to rove and wander among the scriptures... That was Cassian's problem, or Germanus' problem, at the end of Conference 10. And then they found it was harder to do that. So, there you've got Lectio on one side, and you've got a kind of a mantra meditation on the other side, or a repetitive prayer, something like the prayer of Jesus on the other side. And they're not the same, they're two different ways. But both of them start from scripture, but it's a sharply different use of scripture, you see. One trying towards the maximum of concentration,

[26:27]

and the other allowing itself to be drawn wherever the spirit seems to lead it, in the scriptures. And then there's another thing, which is a methodical reading, which is different from both of those. A couple of other parallels before we quit this. In Conference 11 on perfection, remember the scale, the axis of the spiritual life there was from fear to love, or from faith and hope to love, okay? So, it's as if you had two levels, not three levels so much, it's two levels. On the lower level is fear, faith and hope. On the higher level is love. Now, if we line this up with Conference 14 on spiritual knowledge, we find that the lower level corresponds pretty well with the active life, and the higher level corresponds pretty well with the contemplative life. The end of, the goal of the lower level there, of active life, as a matter of fact, is purity of heart, which is the same as love for Keshen.

[27:28]

We're going to see that again when we start Conference 15. And then from there, love just... There's nothing beyond love, you see, so that's the door, as it were. But it's also the whole upper chamber of the contemplative life. Love and contemplation are on the same level. You work for love so that you may enjoy contemplation. That's sort of the theory of Agrius and Keshen. But love is already in the upper store. And then Conference 12 on chastity, which we didn't cover, that's a precondition to the spiritual knowledge that he's talking about, you see. He's talking about purity of heart mostly, but he also says physical chastity is a kind of a condition. He says that in Chapter 16 of Conference 14. I don't know if any other correspondences between the conferences come to mind, or contradictions, maybe. A few references on this,

[28:32]

because this is something that you can follow up other times when you have more time. You'll find it fascinating sooner or later. Because this broadens out into the whole area of spiritual reading, you see. But spiritual reading, which always finds the scripture as its most precious part, as its core, as really the central road. And that's something we have to deal with ourselves, we have to fight with ourselves with sometimes, because other things will be much more interesting than the scriptures. And at times the scriptures will seem very dry and empty and poor to us, you know, and other things will be so much more exciting. And yet we always have to keep that thing in our mind that sooner or later that scripture is going to open up and we're going to find out that that contains more than all the rest. Sooner or later it's going to open up and we're going to find that that opens us to a depth which simply isn't in the other things. And the other things are all a commentary on the scripture. That's the way the Fathers thought about it. Everything that they wrote

[29:34]

they considered to be simply an aid to understanding what was already in the scriptures. That may sound terribly backward. Ah, he's going to try the big... Do you have a time timer? He has to try the air receiver or the generator up there. They considered everything else that they wrote and that they read to be an aid simply in understanding the scriptures. You know, that sounds... Well, gee, that's going backwards, you know. Don't we ever learn anything? Doesn't theology ever get anywhere? Isn't anything exciting happening in Berkeley? Well, whatever exciting happens in Berkeley has to be found in the scriptures because it's all there, you know. It's the Word with a capital W which means it's Christ and the Word has been spoken and so it's all there. So that can sound terrible or it can sound exciting depending on where you are. But keep it in mind because sooner or later you have to come back to it because it's true. Well, it definitely keeps us down on our own private library, you know, as far as the books that we need.

[30:36]

Right, right. Sort of, I was really impressed with the Pilgrim, you know, the books. Yeah, he had his Philokalia which itself is a library, by the way. Yes. That's a big affair. And the scriptures, you know. Other people would just have the scriptures. Some of these young pilgrims on the road, all they have got are the scriptures. And maybe the Russian pilgrim, too. Then they come knocking on the door and they say, where's the Philokalia? I read about it and I want it. There was one like that here a few weeks ago. A couple of references. One is Saint Bonaventure, the Breviloquium. If you read the first part of that, it may make you sick because it's so musical and he's playing games a bit, you know, because he likes numbers and he likes to make things symmetrical. He's got a whole lot of wisdom in that. What was that one again? Breviloquium. B-R-E-V-I-L-O-Q-U-I-U-M. It's a little green book there. Is it in English?

[31:36]

Oh, yeah, it's in English. That's a Latin title but it's translated into English. Most all of his stuff is translated into English. He's a good, he's a scholastic, you see, but he's more of a rolling scholastic somewhat than Saint Thomas. He stresses the love and the delight angle more than Saint Thomas does. He's more of an intellectual. A more intellectual intellectual. Breviloquium. The first part where he talks about Scripture. He talks about the height and the depth and the length and the breadth. Leclerc. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. I think I referred to that before. Sometimes it's good to read that at the end of the time. It's about monastic theology. And monastic theology is 99% a commentary on the Scriptures. And in certain places he talks about the way they comment the Scriptures in various ways. Then De Lubac. Now, De Lubac is the grandmaster of our time in this material. And he's got this book in English called Sources of Revelation

[32:37]

which is really not about the Sources of Revelation but it's about the exegesis of the Fathers, you know. Especially the relation between the Old Testament and the New Testament. I told you about that book before. It'll bore you to death the first time you read it. But then if you read it again later on it may make more sense. And he's got a big four-volume work in French called Exegesie Medieval. This is sort of by the General of the Bible. He loves that book. He loves De Lubac. Got a lot of his inspiration from him. Which is the same thing. And some of it is boiled down into this English translation. Is he still alive? Just about. I don't know. I don't know whether he's... Well, I mean, he's old, you know. I think he's still alive, yeah. He was here one time. Really? He gave us a book, signed it, left it in the library and boom, he was off. He came with another gig or two down from him. But he's responsible for much of the patristic work

[33:37]

that has been done in France in the past 30 years. This Source Chrétien series, you know, which runs to about 250 volumes. Wow. And he's at the back of the marvelous map. He's got these insights, you know, about where the real meat, the real values are in the patristic tradition. You've got some people who've got an instinct, a kind of discernment like that and they can zero in on the truth and unearth the whole treasure of this stuff, you know. And then there's a book by Smalley, a woman, I guess, Beryl Smalley, called The Bible in the Middle Ages, which is helpful also. The reading of the Bible in the Middle Ages. And then finally, The Fathers Themselves. Smalley is S-M-A-L-L-E-Y. The Fathers Themselves. And here there's no end to the number of names that could be quoted. You can start with, say, start with Origen, something like that.

[34:38]

James, you have the commentary on the Canicle. That's a good example. That's a rich work of Origen on the spiritual life. According to Daniel Luther, that's the best one to read on the spiritual life. And Origen, remember, is the one who laid the groundwork for our spiritual theology. It's amazing what he did, how much he did. Then St. Gregory. In St. Gregory, in the library, you've got his Moralia in English in four volumes, and then also his homilies on the Gospels, just selected ones. He's a good example because he spends all his time doing this kind of exegesis we've been talking about, and he really revels in the spiritual meaning. St. Augustine, of course. A lot of the stuff that St. Augustine wrote is of that kind. His commentary on the Psalms is an excellent way to get closer to the Psalms. I don't think we have it all in English because ancient Christian writers, I think they only did two volumes out of three or something like that. Maybe they got as far as Psalm 100 or something like that,

[35:40]

but I don't think it's finished yet in English. Unless it's in that Post-Nicene Fathers, it could be. And then his commentary on St. John and so on. Commentary on St. John you've probably read too. Richard of St. Victor's has got a thing called The Benjamin Minor, which is very interesting. A very intricate, psychological reading of Scripture. The spiritual, what we call the mystical or topological sense. Benjamin Minor. We have that in English. What is it called? Benjamin Minor. It's not clear until you realize he wrote a Benjamin Major too. A big Benjamin and a little Benjamin. He wrote two books about Benjamin. Benjamin, it's the son of Jacob. For him, Benjamin was... The least of the tribes. Well, the least of the tribes. In a way, he's the greatest. I think Benjamin is contemplation

[36:41]

or Benjamin is love. Joseph is discretion and so on. In other words, he allegorizes all the sons of Jacob. So it's a very meticulous exegesis, but he gets some fascinating things out of it. With a lot of game playing, sort of, he gets a good deal of meaning out of it too. Saint Peter Damian got a lot of exegesis of this kind in that little book by Patricia McNulty of his writings in English, you'll find. Any of those sermons in there, you'll find a lot of that kind of reading of scripture, spiritual sense. Saint Bernard is a goldmine, especially his sermons on the Song of Songs. Marvelous. It's just a tissue of scripture from one end to the other. Sometimes very deep and sometimes just playing with it, you know. And finally, Saint John of the Cross, the marvelous exegete. He goes right

[37:42]

to the spiritual meaning, right to the mystical meaning very often. In fact, he's almost always working on that meaning. If you read part of the Ascent of Mount Carmel, I think I read a little bit of it to you a couple of weeks ago. Pages 29 through 32 in the first volume of Peter's there on the Ascent of Mount Carmel. There's a lot of spiritual meanings that he's getting out of Exodus, the book of Exodus and the event of Exodus. That's a good example of what he does with it. But he's always using scripture all the time. And that makes you think twice when you realize his experience, the depth of his experience and the fact that he never gets beyond scripture. But he uses that as his language, as his teaching, teaching meaning, not just abstract theological terms. Okay, that's enough for that. Conference 15 is on spiritual

[38:43]

miraculous gifts, actually. The connection of this one with 14 is obvious because this spiritual knowledge is a spiritual gift as well. But when he says miracle, he means especially healing. And so the whole conference is about healing practically, including resurrection. That's about as far as you can go in healing. And again, it's Abba Nesteros. In the first chapter, he talks about the three reasons for these gifts. Which you have to read a little bit attentively because it may seem a little confused. And the first reason is for healing. Simply, God wants to heal somebody, so he heals them through a holy man. The second reason is building faith. And sometimes, in other words, miracles excite the faith of people. For instance, think of all the people that are devoted to Padre Pio, and that therefore pray more because of Padre Pio's marvels, one sort or another,

[39:44]

you know. Or St. Anthony of Padua and so on. Some people, their faith is much strengthened by seeing or hearing about that sort of thing. Whereas other people are turned off by its strength. Some people don't want to hear about miracles. And thirdly, the third reason is not building faith, but it's deception. In other words, it's building false faith. And those are the miracles that are caused by the devil. It may surprise us to hear that there are miracles that are not from God. Because we take miracles usually to be proofs of God's work. But no, even Jesus says they'll do signs and wonders. Cast out devil and so on. So, in the first case, it's the saints that are doing it. In the second case, it happens also through sinners. I don't understand quite the connection there. Why the purpose of healing should be accomplished only through the saints and the purpose

[40:45]

of building faith should be accomplished also through sinners. Because it seems to me that faith is built in both ways. So I don't see quite that connection, but maybe it doesn't matter too much. And in the second case, it's dependent also on the faith of the patient, the person who is to be healed or his friends. And the third is healing work by the deceitful power of demons. It happens that when a man who is obviously a sinner is regarded as a saint and a friend of God because he works miracles, others are led to copy his sins. Scandal arises and religion is defamed. So I suppose that there have been heretics and leaders of schism in the church and so on who have done signs and wonders. Also the magicians of the pharaoh, remember? When Moses went with his rod and with his miracles, the magicians imitated his marvels. They finally did one they couldn't imitate. Forget what it was.

[41:47]

And sometimes the demons do it not to deceive others but to lift into pride the man who believes himself to possess the miraculous gift. In other words, he thinks he's holy and therefore he thinks he's invulnerable because he can do marvels. And then he gets inflated and careless and bang, they get him. And so, they pretend that they are being burned up and driven out from the bodies where they were dwelling through the holiness of people whom truly they know to be unholy. So they pretend, in order to give somebody a false sanctity, they pretend to be driven out. I've always had a problem with the words of Jesus where he says, if Satan, if I cast out devils by the finger, what was it, by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? If Satan, if a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand. I've never really been satisfied with my understanding of that. And here, Cassian is saying, well, the demons can cast out the demons, you know. They can pretend that the house is divided against itself. So...

[42:52]

It's tricky, yeah? It's tricky, yeah. Well, demons' organizational setup is bound to be tricky. So we shouldn't admire people. Chapter 2, we shouldn't admire people who possess these powers on account of their powers but only on account of their sanctity. We should see whether they are morally reformed, whether they're converted. God's grace gives this to a man not for miscellaneous reasons like the faith of someone else but in proportion to his own earnestness. Gives this. Now, what does he mean? He means gives this conversion, gives this moral perfection, this sanctity to a man not to build somebody else's faith but in proportion to his own earnestness. earnestness is... What is it? Studio. Studio. Studio means effort, earnestness. In Latin. This is the knowledge

[43:53]

of true goodness. Now, it's important to see what the original is there. This is actualis scientia, he says. Actualis scientia. Well, what is that? That's that practical knowledge we were talking about before. It's the same word. It's the same term. So, this is practical knowledge which he says, which St. Paul calls charity. So, you see, when you get to the end of that active life, the goal is this charity. The knowledge is charity at this point. You see where it fuses with the earlier conference, that theory of active life and contemplative life. And also, back at the beginning with our purity of heart, charity thing for the immediate goal, you see. And then the contemplative life goes on from that. He's not talking about the contemplative life here. And it's more excellent than all the tongues of men and angels. There he's alluding to 1 Corinthians 13, of course. And the faith which moves

[44:54]

mountains and so on. Because that's a miracle too. The faith which moves mountains. That's a miracle working faith. That can be had without charity, strangely. That's a perplexing thing too. And even modern. And then he continues to quote 1 Corinthians 13. Here we get to a thing... They make a distinction in theology between two kinds of grace. Grace is distinguished in many ways, but one way is between sanctifying grace and what they call gratia gratis date, which means that graces which are given for nothing. It's not a good phrase, because grace by definition is gratuitous, which means that it's free. It's just given. By God, it's a gift. You don't earn it. But between the grace that is given for somebody else's benefit and the grace which is substantially perfection or virtue, which equals charity. So you've got these two kinds of graces. One kind of grace you can call sanctifying grace.

[45:54]

Sanctifying grace is charity. It's the substantial grace of the spiritual life. And that's the essential thing to aim for. That's what's important. The other grace is the grace that's given for somebody else's benefit, like the grace of miracles or the grace of teaching, the grace of healing, all those things, you see. That's a distinction which you find very often and also in the books on spiritual theology the past 60 years or so. It comes from the scholastics, I guess. There's something else in between there, of course, which is not quite sanctifying grace, and also it's not given just for the benefit of others, but it's a grace for yourself, which might be the grace of understanding, like you were talking about before, you know, and then actual graces to be able to do things. So that distinction doesn't completely exhaust the possibilities. Nevertheless, it's a useful one. What we're talking about here is the difference between gifts and graces which are given for some exterior purpose,

[46:57]

and gifts and graces which are really one gift and grace which is given for your own spiritual good progress, which is charity, which is, at a certain point, uncreated grace. It's the presence of the Holy Spirit. And that's where it really gets to be an important thing. When you're talking about actually the presence of God in you, and the presence of God's kingdom in you, in a way, his rule in you, versus graces which merely have some function. You're talking about the difference between the substance of the spiritual life, which is the Holy Spirit, and the sort of accidents you can say, the surface things, which may appear big, which may, you know, be very spectacular, like healings and things, but really are only accidental to that other thing. And if you look at somebody like Saint Therese of the Infant Jesus, you see sharply the distinction there. No marvels, no marvels at all, but an enormous amount of charity, an enormous degree

[47:57]

of sanctity, but completely hidden because it's not accompanied by these other graces. And they even make a distinction. There's this writer who wrote, what is it, Ruth Burroughs, she wrote a book recently, I forget, Guidelines for the Spiritual Life or something, and she talks about two kinds of contemplatives, as it were, two kinds of saints, the lights-on kind and the lights-off kind. The lights-on kind has a lot of graces, intellectual graces, which make her understand where she is. She has a lot of insight and so on. The lights-off kind is like Saint Therese in that she has very infrequent insights and sort of moves in a fog, moves in the darkness all the time, and yet can reach the same level or a much higher level than the first. Lights-off and lights-on. With or without the intellectual gifts, you see, supernatural intellectual gifts, because they can both be of the same natural intelligence, I suppose, if God leads them in different directions, in the light or in the darkness. And then you've got,

[49:00]

aside from that, the grace given for the benefit of others, like these healing things. So everything that he's saying here can really be put into a couple of words, can't it? He's saying, just as he did in the first conference, strive for charity and not for any of these other things, which are only accidentals, which are not really important and which are also treacherous and dangerous. So this is one of the crucial questions of the charismatic movement today, of course. The relationship between the gifts and charity, sanctity itself, Christianity itself. The revival of a recognition of the gifts of the Spirit, of the Holy Spirit, whether they be healing, whether they be understanding, wisdom, knowledge, all of those things that they talk about. Also tongues. The difference between the gifts and the appreciation of those gifts without, at the same time, making them superior

[50:01]

to the central gift, which is the love of God, or which is sanctity. There's a very delicate equilibrium there. And, of course, you can go off either end. For a long time we were too ignorant, I think, of the actuality of those gifts, as if they had all vanished in the second century or something like that. Things like tongues and healing. And it's marvelous that they should be brought back to life today, rediscovered today. But at the same time, with that kind of explosion of charismatic gifts and phenomena, there's a risk of forgetting that the essence is charity. And as Cassian says, humility, which is sort of the vessel, the container of charity. It's all obvious, but in life it's hard to keep that equilibrium. Because we tend to go after that which we can see. Especially that which seems like success, which seems like a reward, which seems to crown our efforts and our prayer. Always that temptation to say, now we've got it, now we're here, now I can do it. That is why

[51:07]

I never saw my teachers set any store by miracles. Even when they possessed this particular grace of the Holy Spirit, they would never use it except in some extreme and compelling necessity. Now, there are probably a lot of stories in that saying to the Fathers to that effect. I didn't have time to track them down. There's a section in the Systematic Collection on visions, supernatural visions. But I looked them up, some of them in here, and they're all visions. They're not miracles of healing and so on. It's not other marvels. So it's not of so much interest in this connection. And then he gives some examples, some examples of the saints and why they did miracles. The first is Abba Macarius. And he raised a dead man, and he did it to prove a point. Because a heretic, a disciple of Eunomius, I think that was an Arian, I think Eunomius was one of the Arian teachers. Macarius

[52:11]

was challenged by this heretic, who used subtle syllogisms to attack him and tried to drag him into the prickly jungle of Aristotle. About home, Macarius knew nothing. Better off. But Macarius replied to his lengthy arguments by a short text of St. Paul. The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. So he says, well, let's see. So he could challenge him to walk through fire. Sometimes they do that, you know. Or say, well, let's see who can raise a dead man. Let us go to the cemetery and invoke the name of the Lord upon the first corpse we find. This is very reminiscent of Elijah. Remember Elijah back in the book of Kings? And the 70, it was the 300 prophets of Baal. He says, well, let's see now. You build your altar and you put your, you sing your songs all day and you cut yourselves and so on and dance and then I'll do my thing over here and then we'll see what altar fire comes down on. So Elijah makes his altar and he slays his beasts and he puts his wood out and he digs a trench

[53:12]

around and he pours water over everything and then he prays and the fire comes down and it consumes everything and it consumes even the dirt and it licks up the water and the dish. He says, now who's the Lord? And so it's not Baal. So it's a similar situation here. That's a classic episode in the scripture. A real show. And then five minutes later he's running away. Elijah. So the heresy The heretic agreed to come the next day but he didn't show up. And so Macarius he did it anyway. He went and he found a real old moldy corpse. Not a fresh one. Like Elijah pouring water on the wood. Stood by a very old corpse and said, man tell me this. If that heretic had come here with me and I had invoked

[54:12]

in his presence the name of Christ my God would you have risen from the dead in front of these people who were almost led away by his false teaching? The man rose and said that he would. And then he died again. No, he asked him a few questions before he let him go again. He said what was he during his life and whether he had known Christ's name. He said that he had lived under the ancient kings of Egypt and had not in those days heard of Christ's name. This was probably a mummified corpse. So Abba Macarius replied sleep in peace with the rest of your fellows waiting for Christ to raise you up to last. So he did it you see, to prove an argument and then to glorify God really and to save people from falling into heresy from falling away from the faith. And then he does refer to Elijah there. Secondly, the miracle of Abraham. Abraham the simple. Once again, not a learned man. He emphasizes that. There was a woman who came to him whose baby was starving and so he restored fertility to her

[55:13]

her breasts by giving her a glass of water and making the sign of the cross over her. And a second miracle of Abraham when he was challenged rather Christ was challenged to heal a cripple. So he did it. The second time it was simply a matter of mercy it seems it's simply a question of human compassion where the other two are proving something for the sake of the faith for the defense of Christ. Chapter six more really more of the same. So they didn't accept any glory for themselves for all of these things. And the fact that there can be evil men who work miracles the words of Jesus rejoice not because the devil is a subject to you but rejoice rather because your names are written in heaven.

[56:14]

And then he says what did Christ really teach? Did he teach people to perform miracles? No, he said. He taught them two things. The first is learn come and learn of me because I am meek and humble of heart. And the second is love one another. So he says that the teaching of Christ is not miracles not to imitate the Lord in that way but to imitate him in meekness humility of heart and patience and in charity. Those are the two essentials. And he's telling you once again what the substance of the spiritual life is. He makes a little eulogy here of humility. Humility then is the queen of all the virtues. She is the stable foundation of the house of heaven. She is the peculiar and marvelous gift of the Savior. And the only person who can work miracles safely is the one who is humble. When the Lord was returning to his father he wrote so as to say his will and left it his final word and left it to his disciples thus A new commandment

[57:17]

give I unto you that you love one another as I have loved you. So do you also love one another. And so on. And so he simply teaches the same lesson again. Chuck. Go ahead. There seems to be a connection coming to me for humility and detachment. Sort of like I'm with the same breath. Yeah. Humility seems to be a kind of more global form of detachment. Because what is humility, detachment from? It's detachment from yourself, right? So you get detached from this, you get detached from that, you get detached from each little desire, you get detached from your will and you can't get detached from your will without humility. You can get detached from other things without humility but not from your will. Because at that point you're really touching the core of the self, you see. So humility is detachment from yourself. Well how can you

[58:18]

be detached from yourself and exist? Only if you exist somewhere else which is deeper than the self, right? So there we're talking about that that small self, the self with a small S, the ego. And a person who is detached from himself really is detached from all other things too, except the love of God, except love. Because he can only be detached from himself in virtue of love because he's standing in love. But he'll be detached from everything else because he can't be captivated by anything if he is free of himself. That seems to be the law. Could you say that again? If you're free of yourself not captivated by yourself, you can't be captivated by anything. If you get beyond your own ego nothing can dominate you, it seems. Because the only place you can go is towards God if you really do that. So that means humility is detachment. You can compare those ladders of the virtues

[59:18]

that you find sometimes in Cashman and Maximus the Confessor and so on. See how they relate detachment and humility. It's hard to put one after the other. But the virtues are all united and these two are united in an obvious way. Now, also, detachment is the contrary of attachment. What is attachment? Attachment is love, right? Some kind of love. Now, charity is that which fills the space that humility makes in a sense. So you can also say that detachment the culmination the crown, the fruit, the fullness of detachment is love, is charity. Because there all of a person's power of love is sort of gathered into one. Gathered into one. So it can no longer be pulled at and dispersed and drawn off in every little direction by the things that stick us to themselves and attach us to themselves.

[60:18]

Okay? Now that's just the other side of humility. Love is just the other side of humility. Humility is detachment from oneself because it's detachment from the will to be number one. From the will to be God, really, which is our perverse self-love. Anyway. It's easy to throw those words around, but it's another thing to get there. Then he goes on a little more in the next chapters. Chapter 8. It's a bigger miracle to eject passion from your own body than it is to eject an evil spirit from another's body. It's a bigger miracle to be patient and refrain from anger than it is to control the demons which fly through the air. And so on. So, the monk's battle is the conquest of the passions. And if he gets the purity of heart, then

[61:18]

maybe he'll work miracles, maybe he won't. But it doesn't matter so much. The important thing is the purity of heart. Which, remember, is detachment and is the other side of charity. It's better to rid your own heart of melancholy than it is to rid someone else of bodily disease. Now, melancholy is a passion of the heart. The power which heals your own soul is finer and loftier than the power which heals another's body. Well, that's an interesting statement, because talking about two levels of power almost in a physical way there, and we can't go much further than that. We can't ask him exactly what he meant by that. As if there were a physical, a quasi-physical power of healing, which gets us into that sort of thing that they talk about today, that kind of influence that flows from one person into another in prayer for healing and so on. The kind of energy that flows out of the body. Whereas what heals the passions of your heart is what? It's the Holy Spirit directly,

[62:20]

it seems. Pretty directly. And then, in Chapter 9, more about not claiming glory or being joyful about these powers, but only about inner purity of life and heart. So, once again, purity of heart across the whole thing. You can see there's just one message in all of this, really. And then he has a further story, which is the story of Paphnutius, which may seem to you a little bit mysterious. Paphnutius thought that material fire shouldn't burn him if he was pure of heart, because he'd overcome the fire of lust, he thought. But then he put his hand out and he got burned in the fire. And that set him to thinking. And so, then he had this vision, which seemed to come from God, which suggested, if your heart remains tranquil, let's see,

[63:22]

to prove that all lust is extinct, go and lay hold upon a fair maiden. And if your heart remains tranquil and your bodily sense is serene, this fire in the oven will be as harmless and gentle to you as it was to the three children in the burning, fiery furnace. So the Lord agrees with his principle there and says, well, go and try it. Try yourself in the furnace of lust. It doesn't sound like it comes from the Lord, as a matter of fact. Capnusius didn't do it. He figured, well, no, my chastity wouldn't stand up to that. And then he makes his statement, which is what Cassian is driving at. It's a greater gift to kill lust within than to drive the devils outside by the Lord's power. Okay, that's the end of the conference. The structure of this one we can talk. Well, we can pretty well finish. It works out this way.

[64:24]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ