We looked this morning at the meeting of Benedict and Scholastica as a powerful example of Gregory's sense of transitions in life, of the end of one phase and the beginning of another. And it might be possible to take this too literally and to imagine that one has some sort of cataclysmic encounter that has to take place that enables us to change from being men of doing to becoming men of seeing, which is very much how he will now depict Saint Benedict. I think, at that point, one has to say that, although this is probably true in some sense of the life journey, that certain characteristics or certain aspects do prenominate at different times, the reality is that all of these movements are present, as it were, together.

[01:02]

and it's a question of what is most prominent, what is God most significantly using at any given moment in time. And from that perspective, I think probably Gregory the Great is using this story about St. Benedict's life as a kind of a paradigm of what happens when we're confronted in our spiritual lives with something completely unexpected, something that on some level doesn't seem to make sense, but which is an invitation for us to see ourselves and the world in a new way. And that's effectively what Benedict has done. Scholastica, who was a few minutes ago for him, a kind of a counter symbol, a symbol of what was keeping him from God, suddenly becomes, through the grace of God, someone whom he can see as God's instrument, perceive as God's instrument, and then here in chapter 34, the next section that Benedict progresses into, he literally sees.

[02:04]

Remember, of course, that Gregory the Great, the great doctor of desire, is also the great contemplative theologian of the Latin West. until perhaps St. Bernard or some of the later medieval theoreticians. It's his writings that are read as part of the monastic staple diet for quite a long time, until relatively recent times, along of course with John Cashin and others of the texts that Benedict specifically recommends. In particular, it's Gregory's commentary on the Book of Job, his Moralia on the Book of Job, which I think has probably well been described by one commentator on it as a non-alphabetical dictionary of the spiritual life. The Moralia on Job are not a commentary in the modern sense of the word, and if you look at it as a commentary, it will drive you crazy. What it is, is his response from the standpoint of a theory of contemplation, a way of talking about growth in the spiritual life and the vision of God, using texts from the book of Job as a kind of a springboard, as a kind of a way of bouncing off them.

[03:18]

In many ways, he's doing a similar kind of project in Benedict's life as well. Undoubtedly, he's crafting and shaping events which were passed on to him so that he can make things clear in a way that would be perceptible to ordinary people, so that he can get across things which, in the Moralia, use a technical vocabulary of contemplation. and which are really intended for monks and people who have been exposed to that kind of literature. In these stories, although he's writing about a monk, and although they certainly are read by monks, he's also intending that the deeper meaning, the significance of what it means to be drawn into union with God, and the metaphor of vision, as a way of perceiving God, so that those things can be acceptable to everyone. And the way he does it is by describing events in a very literal kind of way. Benedict has experienced this blocking of his will, what he willed he could not attain.

[04:22]

Now, God, who is love, has enabled his sister to be the more powerful because hers was the greater love. And Father DeVoglia reminds us, this is, as it were, the opening out to the transition between the two icons. the icon of Benedict, the man of doing, and to some extent the man of indignation, into Benedict, the man who has learned the greater love, who has perceived it in his sister, and now having perceived it, having been aware of it, can literally see it in her person, as she is drawn into the embrace of her heavenly bridegroom. So, the text continues, The next day the venerable woman went back to her cell, and the man of God returning to the monastery, and three days later, in a beautiful biblical model of the three days after which the change or the ascension or the resurrection takes place, three days later, standing in his cell, in his place of communion with God, he lifted his eyes to the sky, or to the heavens,

[05:29]

and saw his sister's soul leave her body and, in the form of a dove, penetrate the secret recesses of heaven." He perceives his sister doing what has not yet been possible for him. She is not just died, she is seen by him in the form of a dove, entering into the secret recesses, penetrating into the actual secrets, the hidden-nesses of heaven. She who had learned love, therefore, has access to, has the ability to enter into, the deepest mysteries of the heavenly realm. This, and what follows it, has a very ancient and very traditional monastic heritage. If you'll remember, in the life of St. Antony the Great, Antony has a vision of the death of Amun, the founder of the monastic settlement at Nitria. and in it he sees the soul of Amun being carried up to heaven.

[06:36]

There is already a precedent in the monastic literature for this seeing of the soul of another, for having eyes that are clear enough to perceive this almost connubial bliss, this movement from this life into the deeper relationship, which is the next life that characterizes the Christian contemplative. So, he sees Scholastica, the one who stands for the greater love, enter into these secret recesses of heaven. overjoyed at her great glory, he gives thanks to God in hymns and elegies of praise, he turns it into a liturgy in good Benedictine fashion, doubtless they arrange a procession and announce her death to the brethren. And then, quite literally, he then sent them to bear her body back and place it within the tomb that he had prepared for himself, the basis of the tradition that the bodies of Benedict and Scholastica are buried together. which caused such rejoicing, I gather, after the war and the opening of the ancient tombs by the Americans bombing of Monte Cassino, and the discovery that perhaps the monks of Fleury hadn't quite made off with the relics like they claimed they had in the Middle Ages, and perhaps Benedict and Scholastic are actually still there at Monte Cassino.

[07:50]

But, in any case, that tradition is so that those whose minds were united in God were not separated in body even by the tomb. An external ongoing symbol of their union in God, those who were united by sacra con loquia, this holy conversation, an exchange on earth which prefigures and mirrors the joy of heaven. All of this is a way of preparing for setting up the second half of this diptych, the second half of this literary icon that, based on what Gregory has given us, will now enable us to see Benedict the Contemplative. He's already perceived his sister entering heaven, but now he will perceive something more. And notice how Gregory surrounds what he's going to do with Benedict with the imagery of community and interpersonal relationship.

[08:57]

Benedict is not a solitary anymore. He is not one who has isolated spiritual experiences. Everything that happens to him also benefits those with whom he stands in relationship, as we'll see, his spiritual friends and ultimately his spiritual sons as well. And the context of what we go on to in chapter 35 There's another very ancient tradition in monasticism, and that is the tradition of pilgrimage or visiting your monastic confreres for the purpose of having a holy conversation. This was as old as monasticism itself. Evagrius Ponticus describes the sin of Acadia as consisting in wanting this more than you ought to have it. One of the manifestations of Acadia for the hermit is to be constantly looking out the window of your cell and wondering when the next visitor is going to show up and deciding that you really have to prepare for this instead of praying, of course, instead of of praying the Psalter or spending your time in Lectio Divina constantly being worried about the necessities of hospitality, because even among the Anchorites, visits for the purpose of mutual spiritual edification was traditional.

[10:13]

Well, in Benedict's case, it's clearly also something that Cenobites do. And he makes it very clear, Gregory does, who it was did this and how it happened. On another occasion, the deacon Servandus, abbot of the monastery in Campania, built by the patrician Liberius, paid a visit as was his custom. Again, notice how a parallel is established with the preceding story. A customary visit. There'd been the customary visit with Scholastica. Now there's the customary visit with another consecrated person, this time an abbot who was the who was a deacon, Cervantes. He used to visit to frequent the monastery so that he, a man infused with spiritual wisdom and heavenly grace and Benedict, might mutually imbue one another with the sweet words of life. Here's a kind of a development of the theme that was introduced over the table at which Benedict and Scholastica sat.

[11:17]

There it's just sacra colloquia, holy conversation. Here it's expressed in even sweeter and more heavenly ways, the sweet words of life with which they mutually imbue one another. It's a giving and a receiving. an exchange between people who love God, a building on the story that was before, and a preparation for what is to follow, and a kind of an eschatological context for this. This is not just a kind of a free-floating conversation on the spiritual life, it has consequences that lie even beyond time itself, because Gregory explains, thus the delightful banquet of their heavenly homeland which they were not yet able to enjoy perfectly, but for which they longed, could at least be tasted. In our relationships with one another, if we let the fact of our love of Christ be central, if we allow, without being cloying about it, or without seeking to convert the other to, you know, whatever great insight we've recently come to, if we allow our experience of the other to be

[12:31]

sacra con loquia, a conversation at which the Lord is at the center, it can be an anticipation, a foretaste of what we will enjoy forever. Well, bear in mind that there really are only two things in human experience that endure to eternity. One is our relationship with God, and the other is our relationship with each other. Those two things alone, of all created experiences, endure into eternity and onto the horizon of the eschaton. In effect, that's what Gregory is reminding us, that it is in our holy conversation, in our mutual support of one another, that we begin now to participate in the destiny that lies before us. And having done that, They go to bed. When the hour for rest arrived, the Venerable Benedict retired to the upper part of the tower, and the Deacon Servandus went to the lower, the two places being connected by a stairway. Gregory wants us to be aware of the geography, the very specific architecture of this event, because it's going to be significant as the vision proceeds.

[13:41]

Benedict is close by, he's just upstairs from the cell of the visiting abbot, and in front of the tower stood the large building where their disciples slept, or where both of their disciples slept. As we were reminded, there's a whole kind of little retinue that isn't specifically mentioned, and you just catch glimpses of them on the side. The abbot Cervantes has brought members of his own community to visit with Benedict, so they're all resting together. And so you have this image of the two spiritual fathers, as it were, in the tower. in the vanguard, and even more so in the case of Benedict, praying and standing watch over their disciples, in relationship with them, taking the role in a certain sense of protector and vanguard. Now, what is very important for us to be aware of is that Gregory, who does emphasize the miraculous, also emphasizes how it can occur in the ordinary events of life.

[14:52]

Benedict, who is about to have this great theophany, this great revelation of the Lord, is not doing anything extraordinary. He's not engaging in an experience of fasting that's been going on for weeks. He's not reciting the entire Psalter to himself in the course of a single set of hours. Benedict, the man of God, stood keeping vigil while the brethren slept, anticipating the night office through prayer. This was not unusual. It was an ordinary form of monastic discipline to sometimes arise early or on specific occasions to forego sleep. for the sake of prayer, anticipating the hour of vigils. As he stood before the window, praying to Almighty God in the dead of night, he suddenly beheld an outpouring of light from above, which swept away the darkness of light. And now, Gregory's going to describe several aspects of this light, this light that Benedict now perceives from his tower window.

[15:57]

It's being described as an external, visible phenomenon, not just something happening in Benedict's mind, not just, as it were, a private revelation, which has no connection with the outside world, but it's something that's happening outside of Benedict, which is perceptible to him. A light shining from above, sweeping away the darkness of light. The light shines and the darkness disappears. Echo or resonance, a kind of a cadence from the Gospel of Saint John. The light shining in the darkness, the darkness not overcoming it or mastering it or understanding it. The light shines. It sweeps away darkness. It shines with such splendor that it surpasses the light of day, illuminating darkness as it shines. And then, having seen the light, something else happens. It's a vision within a vision.

[17:00]

It's something that occurs, as it were, inside this light which Benedictus perceived. A great marvel followed this contemplative vision, this speculatio. Namely, as he explained it later, the whole world was gathered beneath a single sunbeam and brought before his eyes. He saw, as it were, the whole of creation gathered beneath or gathered into a single, literally, ray of the sun. Not just a ray of light, but a ray of the sun. This, too, has a very ancient precedent. There is the dream of Scipio, which became a very important theme in the whole of the literature of the Latin West. in which a young man has a kind of a vision of being carried up above the orbs that surround the earth and in which the various planets move to a vantage point from which he is able to look back on the tiny earth

[18:09]

and encounter the spirit of his grandfather. Cicero leaves this kind of image which becomes very important or had already become important in Platonist and will become even more important in Neoplatonist thought. A kind of a sense that it's possible to stand outside the world and perceive the smallness of the world from above. This is what's happening as it were to Benedict. Benedict is standing in a tradition which is revered and reverenced even by the pagans. He is having a perception, an experience that is known and is talked about in the highest philosophical tradition of the non-Christian world. And what is particularly interesting perhaps for us as Benedictines is to be aware of the fact that the powerful effect of Gregory's writings is something that is transmitted not only to the Christian West but also the Christian East. Gregory Palamas, in his great defense of the hesychasts, in his attempting to describe what it is that happens to those who pray the Jesus prayer as their primary form of private devotion, explains or states

[19:25]

I once heard of a man who saw the whole of creation gathered together into a single ray of light. It's an image Gregory Palamas, the great defender of the Jesus prayer tradition, uses in the Eastern Church to talk about hesychasm. Benedict, the father of Western monasticism, is a powerful and important figure in the Christian East. Now, not all Orthodox theologians will admit that it is Benedict or Gregory to whom he is referring, but many, such as Bishop Callistos Ware and others, do have no doubt about that. It is clearly Benedict, and it is clearly Gregory the Great, whom Gregory Palamas is referring to. Gregory was known in the Eastern Church as Gregory Deologus. The dialogues were translated into Greek. They were known and read in the Eastern Church. Benedict is even mentioned as a saint in some monasteries, or was at least at one time, on Mount Athos because of that tradition. This is an image, this is a vision of the contemplative having a vision

[20:29]

which becomes very important both in the Latin West and in the Christian East. And it goes on, as the venerable father intently fixed his eyes on the brilliant flashing or scintillating light, And here Gregory wants to make it absolutely concrete and link it to real world events. He wants to say this is more than an event in Benedict's psyche and so he links it to something else happening in the world and also conjures up again this very ancient tradition of seeing the soul of another moving on towards heaven. If you're looking at God and you're beholding the heavens or the whole earth gathered together in a ray of light and somebody nearby happens to die well of course you probably see their soul moving into that realm and sure enough Benedict beholds the soul of Germanus the Bishop of Capua in a sphere of fire being carried by the angels to heaven this seems like an incidental detail and to some extent it is because Germanus isn't an important figure in the dialogues but what it does is links it to the real world

[21:36]

Gregory wants to give the people of his day hope, not just based on, I know some holy people who had some really great spiritual experiences. He wants to link it to very earthy realities. There's a man who saw the whole world in a ray of light, and it actually happened, and we know it happened, because on that very day, he saw the soul of this person being carried to heaven, and sure enough, that man happened to die. It's a way of validating the vision. It's a way of making it more specifically tied in to the physical world than just talking about contemplation might be. Gregory wants to be concrete for concrete people living in a broken and even disappointing world. And so, because this is a real thing, and not just happening in his own mind, Benedict wants to have someone else witness this. He calls out to Cervantes the deacon, repeats Cervantes' name two or three times in a loud voice, and Cervantes is awakened by this loud clamor, by Benedict shouting.

[22:44]

He ascends and he looks, and he doesn't see it all, but he does behold a trace of the vanishing light. So, this vision of Benedict is shared. He not only goes on, as Gregory has explained, to talk about the vision in some detail to the brethren, but he also actually desires to share it with someone else. A wonderful external kind of, again, almost comic book way of saying, our experience of the Lord touches each other. It's not just for me. It involves me in this world where bishops die on particular days, where people come to visit and we talk about the spiritual life, where they can profit from and even see something of what God has done in my spiritual life. Gregory wants to make it really clear that God touching the hearts of people with this vision

[23:45]

is doing more than just making them into important people. He's actually reaching out, in a sense, to the whole people of God. So, Cervantes sees a trace of it, he's dumbfounded, as Benedict explains it to him, and then immediately, whoever it is, Cervantes or Benedict, orders the devout Theoprobus, someone else, to send a messenger to Capua that very night to find out what happened, and they do it, they request more details, and sure enough, The death took place at exactly the same moment that the man of God came to know of the ascent. So, that's Gregory's way of saying, this is something that really happened. This was a real event in our world. This is the kind of thing God is still doing. Even in our civilization, where it seems like things are falling apart at the seams, Gregory is saying, God is still touching us. He is flooding a world with light such that darkness disappears and the whole of the world can be gathered up into that light.

[24:46]

And that in itself is very beautiful. It's a very nice way of talking about the spiritual life. The imagery of sharing is very helpful. But Gregory is not a one to leave it at that. He doesn't just want to say, so, go meditate on the significance of spiritual light in your own lives. Instead, he wants to talk about it in greater detail, and he uses the mechanism or the medium of his questioner, Peter, to invite more discussion of what the significance of this thing is. What does it mean that Benedict saw everything from above? How could you see the whole world in a single ray of light? It's a difficult image, and now Gregory acknowledges that, and goes on to try to explain it a bit. So, he has Peter say, What an astonishing thing! I am completely amazed! For to say that before his eyes, collected as it were beneath a single sunbeam, lay the whole world gathered together, This is unlike anything I have ever experienced.

[25:50]

I can't even imagine it. In what way is it possible for the whole world to be seen by a human being? The people to whom Gregory is writing know the stories of people who were able to see the whole world, have heard these wonderful tales in one form or another of those who were, as it were, carried up above and behold things from below. What's that mean? What's that all about? And Gregory says, hold fast, Peter, to what I say, to the soul beholding its creator, All created things seem, and I should change that particular term because it's not insignificant, it's narrow, angusta. To the soul that beholds its creator, all created things will seem to be narrow. The image is that of a corner rather than a full room, of a narrow place where edges come together and seem to be confined.

[26:51]

That's how the world seems to us once we have beheld God. In contrast with God, our world will seem a narrow place, a kind of a closing down sort of place. Even if it perceives only a little of the Creator's light, all created things will appear small to it. For by the light of the mind's interior contemplation, The heart is opened wide. And here we have an image, maybe not a direct quotation from the prologue of Benedict's rule. This is a very hot topic in academic circles. Does Gregory ever quote the rule of Saint Benedict? A while back it would have been asked, did Gregory even know the rule of St. Benedict? And for the longest time it was thought that that had been established definitively, and now it's not so definitive. Probably he did know it. Probably he didn't follow it absolutely. In his own monastery on the Celian, if you look at the kinds of things he does with his prior Augustine in setting him off to evangelize the English, there are all sorts of

[28:00]

things that would not be in accordance with the rule that Gregory feels perfectly comfortable doing. But it seems to be a document with which you would have been familiar, and it may be no accident, it may be no coincidence, that the image Gregory uses to describe what has happened to Benedict's heart is the same word Benedict uses in the prologue to describe what happens when we run the way of God's commandments and our hearts dilate, our hearts open wide, our hearts are expanded. He goes on later to use exactly those terms. Here he says that, as it were, the mind opens up, or the inner self opens wide, so much so that it expands in God until it stands above the whole world. There is a widening or an opening within us which happens simply when we perceive the reality of who God is.

[29:04]

To behold God is to be changed. And he goes on to use traditional language of the contemplative experience. We are changed. Suddenly there's a place inside of us that's larger than it was. For truly in contemplation the soul rises above itself. in the light of God transported above itself, the inner self, the interioribus, is amplified, is opened up, is widened. And as it looks down beneath itself, it comprehends in exaltation how small the things were it could not comprehend in its lowly state. And then he goes on to say, the man who perceived the fiery globe and beheld the angels returning to heaven could doubtless never have seen these things except in the light of God. He's using the language of contemplation, the almost fairy tale-like quality of stories of people perceiving miraculous, astonishing things in the sky as a way of teaching a doctrine of grace.

[30:09]

You can't see any of this except in the light of God. None of this will happen except insofar as God gives us his own light, which is himself. Why should we marvel that he saw the whole world gathered before him since he'd been raised up through the mind's light beyond the world? So, when we say that the whole world was gathered up before his eyes, this doesn't mean that heaven and earth shrank. Rather, in contemplation, animus dilatatus, his soul widens. Benedict says the heart dilates. It's much the same metaphor. The inner self is opened wide, and we are more than we once were. Transported in God, he was able to behold without difficulty all that lies beneath God. Corresponding to the exterior light gleaming before his eyes, there was an interior light within his mind, which revealed to his soul in contemplation, transported as it was in God, the insignificance of all that lies below.

[31:20]

For Gregory, the most important thing, and the message he wants to get across, the moral or the kind of punchline to this very powerful and very vivid story is, it's not just about a miraculous light. It's not just about a scintillating vision of creation. It's about the fact that those are the exterior manifestations of something that God is doing in the heart. God is opening us. He is widening us. And the real light is an inner light. The real light is something that happens inside of us. This is a very important image and hopefully we'll have a chance to look at it either tomorrow or the next day. It's particularly important for several of the early monks and certain strands of the Christian mystical tradition. which emphasized the place of God on which the Lord stands, that sapphire stone described in Exodus 24, that that place of God is, in fact, our deepest self.

[32:31]

We're made in the image of God, and when we allow ourselves to be opened wide, like when he found out that he really didn't know what love was, to be actually the opposite of the presence of God, and he was willing or able to step back from that to discover that God was in that place to continue the conversation that seemed to be against his own rule. When he was willing to discover that, when he was willing to find that deeper love, his heart was widened. He was literally opened wide enough that he could see outside himself a manifestation of what God was actually doing within. God was shining a light that made him into more than who he was. And all the external phenomena are simply ways of attesting to something that happens within the self. Well, again, Gregory is trying to use a very vivid and accessible story to communicate images and language and ways of talking about the inner life that are very sophisticated indeed.

[33:47]

The metaphor or the image of light, the widening or the opening of the heart, which is, of course, a very traditional biblical image. running in the way of God's commands, the expanding of the heart is not just from the prologue of the rule, it's of course from Psalm 118, 119. It's a very ancient experience that to behold the truth of God means a kind of a loosening and an opening up of the deepest level of the self, felt in an almost physiological kind of way. And to communicate that in a language that speaks of spiritual vision, and of our hope for heaven, and of our interconnectedness, and of our ability to share those realities with one another in words of consolation and hope, is part of what Gregory's attempting to do. Part of what he sees as being who Benedict was, and what Benedict was about. Because this is really the culmination of Benedict's life.

[34:50]

We won't go on to read the last couple of chapters about Benedict's death specifically, but there isn't much more. Benedict now becomes the man moving toward that light of God himself, who will eventually be seen by his disciples, having passed along the pathway. If not seen passing it, the pathway itself is somehow seen. The way that Benedict leaves behind is something that his disciples can follow, of course, in the form of his rule. Gregory is giving a model of the spiritual life, which is very beautiful, very exalted, very like the one we saw last night in Cyprian, this fantastic sense of the Spirit coming down and giving us what we need, opening us up to the possibility of being changed by the power of God, whom we see, as it were, with the inner eyes of the soul. And yet Gregory is saying that it takes a willingness to be changed in a way that may be painful.

[35:54]

It takes a willingness to come up against what seems to limit, what shows us that we may in fact be pharisaical in our own approach, even when we think we're being most righteous or acting most perfectly. We have to be open to the presence of God, which can surprise us, so that we can be widened and opened, and enabled to perceive something of the light and the love of God. What I'd like to do tomorrow is to take another image from the tradition, another kind of story about vision, a very different kind of vision, which specifically focuses on the experience of beholding God in the ordinary, the surprising and unexpected ordinary, the very attractive but potentially seductive and problematic ordinary. A sense that the monastic tradition has always held dear, that God has given us the whole of our capacity to respond to creation as gifts, which we can use either for good or for ill.

[37:05]

So, tomorrow we'll look at the story of St. Pelagius the harlot as an example of the beholding of the glory of God in creation, and of the possibility of the transformation of a human heart, in virtue of having been seen as a part of that creation, having been seen as one created in the image of God. Thoughts or reflections on Benedict's experience? Well, this is kind of what comparison, contrast, or balance between seeing and hearing. Paul's great vision is heard. Absolutely. Unrepeatable. And here it's almost the Eastern way which you used to see. I mean, it's not absent from our view, but it's an emphasis that maybe again is a rule for beginners.

[38:14]

It comes by here. In a sense, one might try to have a sense that Benedict's seeing is preceded by the verbal conversation, by this exchange that takes place, which is, of course, in words and in the sharing of things, and in Benedict's own keeping vigil, which would have presumably been by the recitation of the Psalter. that the experience of the vision happens in accordance with or as the heart has been prepared by the word and by the sharing of the word and the experiencing of the other. But yes, it's absolutely true, isn't it, that it is a kind of a powerfully Eastern sense of vision. And yet, of course, the wonderful, almost delightful irony is that Gregory the Great's painting this marvelous icon in words. He's communicating it all in verbal story. Is he transferring to Benedict his own experience?

[39:21]

Surely he talks about that himself, doesn't he? Even in the introduction of the dialogues. And he seems to be particularly fond of talking about his heartbreak and his delight in contemplative experience, the introduction to his works, particularly the dialogues and also the Moralia. And, you know, Gregory is in many ways, of course, the patron saint of painful spiritual re-entry. He often talks about what a delight it is to be in the presence of God and how awful it is to be dragged back down to this slimy earth. But, I mean, remember that for the longest time he was responsible for the upkeep of Rome, I mean, where the sewers were constantly backing up and plagues were constantly breaking up and breaking out. this poor, deteriorating, falling-apart city without adequate personnel to maintain it. He had literal responsibility for that place, and one can well imagine that he preferred to spend time quietly reflecting on the presence of God in his monastery, rather than being constantly called out to the latest little civic emergency that was taking place in some corner of the town.

[40:29]

But undoubtedly, he's describing some of his own experience. He describes it so vividly, and of course in the Moralia as well, he gives hints, not just hints, he talks in a rhapsodic kind of way about what it is to be carried beyond the self. The same language is used, and again, the irony about those who try to claim that Gregory maybe didn't write the dialogues, is that they have to admit that he sure darn well wrote this stuff. I mean, this is pure Gregory. I mean, it's precisely the kind of vocabulary that he uses to describe contemplative experience when he talks about it here, and his commentary on Ezekiel as well. I'm sure there's a lot of personal stuff in that as well. And yet, that's perfectly legitimate, because after all, I'm sure he would say it's the same God, so of course experiences must be parallel. Benedict was a monk, Gregory was a monk.

[41:30]

I marvel at people like Gregory. Yeah, I mean, there are so many of them. I mean, very simply, you see, so busy with all the worldly things of the Lady who is Pope and everything. And still, the life of God. It really is quite astonishing. One is tempted to speculate today about the many complaints with which he was afflicted, and wonder to what extent those aren't the standard afflictions of any executive CEO in a pre-Maylocks era. I mean, a lot of what he had to endure is probably partly, at least, the consequence of the responsibilities that he had. His tremendous love of the contemplative life and his deep abiding frustration that he couldn't get very much of it. And maybe that's why he was able to love it so much, because he didn't have to enjoy all the rigors of it all the time.

[42:47]

Living in the monastery you found, and the discipline of which you describe, and in which you're the unofficial superior, in fact, the acting superior, is perhaps a different thing from enjoying the discipline imposed from without. So, Gregory was in a painful, but on some levels maybe slightly privileged position, too. Also the wonder, as you say, point out, he's this very high social, cultural tradition, and yet he reaches these simple folk, like Leo was another one like that. How many of them are so simple? Yeah, an incredible desire. and willingness to be genuinely concerned about ordinary problems in a way that's not contemptuous. If you read his letters, and they're well translated, a good selection of them in the Post-Nicene Christian Fathers series, He's very concerned about ordinary things and perishes, and he's trying to deal with his ordinary problems.

[43:55]

And of course he gets frustrated, and of course he gets perplexed. He wasn't blessed with a very urbane sense of humor. It's been noted by some of his biographies that he's rarely able to rise above irony. But at the same time, he doesn't blister and blast people as his primary motive. He's genuinely concerned to see to it that caring pastors are taking care of the flock, of Christ's flock. And his own regula pastoralis, his own rule for those who have the cure of souls, was of such great benefit that its translation into Old English was was recommended at a very, very early stage, and it became standard reading, required reading, for everyone who consecrated the Episcopate in Britain until relatively recent times. There have been all sorts of people who have delicately tried to point out that, to a great extent, what Gregory does in his pastoral rule is very like what Benedict does in the chapter on Abbots.

[44:58]

To talk in the chapters on the Abbot, the description of how you have to be willing to adapt yourself to the character and the nature of each, and Gregory himself did that in a really quite amazing sort of way. It's a pretty contrasting story of enlargement of heart and narrowness of the things below. You say in the last poem, the insignificance, I see the word angusta. Yeah, it's the same thing, narrowness, it should be... And all I can think of is, you know, here's this poem, who had to be both temporal and at the same time wishing to be contemplative, seeing the narrowness of of all this, and wishing he could be, as he portrays Benedict, in the heights of vision, his heart is enlarged to see the right things, or right things, I should say.

[46:13]

Yeah, and to see them in God, yeah. And what we've just said, I think, makes that image of narrowness all the more all the more poignant. You kind of imagine a passage that's getting narrower and narrower and narrower, and you're forced to move through it. You just kind of wonder if you're ever going to be able to get past it because it's getting so narrow. In a way, that's how he's describing his own experience of the world, and that was the world for him. And that's a very powerful image for anybody who's been given a responsibility, a burden that doesn't seem to be relaxing, that in fact seems to be intensifying or increasing. Undoubtedly, this is part of his own experience as well. and how very modern it is. I mean, how many modern, dark filmmakers and writers use that image of the narrowing place, the crushing place, as a way of describing modern life. But for Gregory, it's counterbalanced by the widening, the interior widening. And, interestingly as we'll see,

[47:16]

But once that happens, then one can see that actually the narrow place is in God's light. Even though it's narrow, even though it may seem to be that small place, it's somehow captured or held together in the light. It's a scintillating, a flashing kind of thing. There again, it means that you have to be able to find something of the glory of God, even in seemingly ordinary things, which is what his book on Job is all about, trying to take the most ordinary statements in this astonishing wisdom literature-type list of animals and astronomical phenomena, which we find in the book of Job, and see their reflections of something of God's glory too. I mean, Gregory's trying to make sense of the world around him, and he's endeavoring to perceive something of the glory in it, but the dynamics are certainly clear in his own life.

[48:17]

He is... What couldn't go so far, I think, is to describe him as a tortured personality, but he is not comfortable in the world. I think that would be safe to say. Well, the others are just saying that you fit. The old expression was between the devil and the deep blue sea. Now it's between a rock and a hard place. Of course there's a loss of the biblical image and a sense of desperation and the anxiousness, but there's a precedent. The other thing I'm just noticing here, the deacon, Absolutely. Make him a priest. Yes, well, not in Benedict's day. It wasn't a problem then. We managed to get by, and in Jordanville, there's a Russian Orthodox monastery, and I remember in their refectory, which is full of iconography, there was some scene of Benedict's life, I forget, which one of the monks pointed out.

[49:29]

Oh, interesting. Very intriguing. Well, and again, the Eastern tradition knows of Benedict because of the dialogues, and Winnie's reverence to Revered, it's because of Gregory's description. That doesn't necessarily vindicate us in their eyes, but it does give them an awareness of Benedict and his significance. I think it's just like that, that he really approached the church. Certainly. That preceded this dialogue by other centuries. Well, Athanasius dies a little after the middle of the 4th century, and so one's talking about 3, 4, 5, 40, 6, a couple of hundred years, a couple of hundred and fifty years. Not even more than that. I mean, I don't want to bring you down any further. Well, again, it depends on whether one's talking about the influence on Benedict himself or on Gregory.

[50:34]

But it's intriguing that the Latin versions of Athanasius' Life of Antony were disseminated really fast. I mean, somehow that book became a bestseller and was being read as far out as Trier. by the beginning of the 5th century, by the end of the 4th century, because Augustine hears about it from soldiers who come back from having been at Trier, who experienced their own conversion as a result of hearing it. He was, so there would have been a special fondness for him in that area. But still, for a book however famous and popular the author to have found its way in translation, as far out as that, it's really quite amazing. Anthony makes permission for his sister, at the time that he has his religious life, or he goes to the desert, but I mean, is there any correlation between that? Monks and their sisters are a pretty common recurrent phenomenon.

[51:38]

Benedictine Scholastica, Anthony's sister, Pecomius' female relation. I think his sister is also mentioned. And, of course, in the much later tradition, Francis and Clare, there's this continually recurring theme of, well, Augustine's own sister, I mean, what has come to be called the rule of Augustine, is You know, one can't really say it to the Augustinians, but it's probably just Augustine's own, yeah, letter of advice to his sister's monastery, which includes, you know, everything from prayer to who should do the washing, his own little homespun descriptions. Of course, we don't have their side of the story much, but at the same time, it is interesting that, as you say, there's always this sense of the need for provision for women, and the blood relation of the founder very often becomes the archetype for the feminine branch of whatever it is that's to happen, even if, actually, historically, that isn't how it gets started.

[52:40]

But that does become a very common theme, you're absolutely right. has bothered, it's not quite the root word, but to some degree, I guess it is, translated the morality into English. There's no good translation. The last one was a Victorian translation, which is very hard to listen to if it's read out publicly. But there is a man who has done a translation, I think of book one and part of book two, a man in classics, and it's available to download from the internet if you want. So, one can get bits of it. We tried reading it in Lent as our second reading a couple of years ago, and it's a very good, readable translation. I think people today need to have it more closely correlated with other texts that you're using at the Vigil Office, but it certainly would be an effort worth doing. an okay translation of the homilies on Ezekiel, which are another important contemplative effort on his part, but they're awfully hard to get a hold of.

[53:46]

The trouble is, some of these have been snatched up by some of these little orthodox presses, and then they disappear out of print, and the people don't answer their phones, so you have no idea what's going on with them. Don't tell anybody I said that. Yeah, Vladimir Semyonovich. Actually, Vladimir Semyonovich is not the problem. There are a couple of other smaller ones that have, um, there was a, there was a, the Gregory of Nyssa's homilies on the Song of Songs, which are fantastic, have been re-translated by Bertrand McCambly, a monk of Spencer. And he gave that to one of the smaller orthodox presses, and it's been out of print now for years. He can't get a hold of it, and he's very frustrated about the whole thing. I mean, nobody knew about it enough to be able to scarf it up for their libraries. So, there are some injustices yet to be righted in our world. But again, on the morality, there's not much done on the latter parts, as far as I know. Thank you all.

[54:48]

On to Pelagia tomorrow.

[54:49]

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