Master will go. I usually speak about 25 to 30 minutes, so that keeps it within a range, I think, that's reasonable for all of us. What I've done also is to prepare an outline of the retreat, which I put over there near the candy. I thought right there it might be a further incentive to take a look at it. And what I do is I give you the readings from Scripture and the rule that I comment on, so if that's of some help to you. Also, Father Martin asked that I would be available for anyone who would wish to speak to me during the time that I'm here. And he suggested that we use the conference room there just off of the book, card, and gift shop. So, don't hesitate. I'm here at your service. I'm here for you these days. And I think that's about it.

[01:02]

One of the projects that I have enjoyed doing over the years is keeping track of the questions that are posed by God to us in the scriptures, and posed to us also by Jesus. And we might be surprised to know that there are over 350 questions found in the scriptures that come to us from the God of Israel and from Jesus Christ. So our ancestors in the faith encountered a God who posed questions to them because he was known to be a living God. And so, that is also true for us today. God continues to pose questions to us through his scriptures and through many other ways.

[02:10]

But it's also true that when we read selections from the books of Job and Jeremiah and the Psalms, We also hear questions that come before God out of the human heart, a human heart that is often searching for answers to some of the most ultimate of questions. And in those questions in the scriptures, we can sometimes hear ourselves and similar questions that we come posing before our God. So it reminds us that from the very beginning of time, there was a true and authentic dialogue between God and people of faith. And yet, some of those same questions remain for us today. Why is it that innocent people in our world today, people of faith, continue to suffer?

[03:14]

Can a God who created this whole vast and wonderful world that we live in, be concerned about little me, this one creature. At the same time, some of the questions of the men and women of the Bible remind us of how, sometimes, how myopic our vision can be when it comes before God. Who is the greatest in the kingdom? Can these sons of mine sit one at your right and one at your left? How many times do I have to forgive? What will my reward be? What sign will you give us, Lord? And it is a good comparison to see how different God's questions are in light of some of the human questions that we hear coming out of the Scriptures.

[04:22]

I think we can all remember that scene in the book of Job, when seemingly God has had enough of Job, and he says, Gird up your loins like a man, and I will question you, and now you tell me the answers. And the result of God's incessant questions being fired out at Job are that, as a human being, in truth, he was someone who was immersed in mystery, submerged in mystery, and that so often what we see as problems in our life are really not so much problems but mystery, a mystery that we are called to live with as men of faith. And true mystery is often something that is too deep for any one of us to master. And that is an important insight for us to have.

[05:26]

And such mystery, taught by God to Job, is something that is to be embraced and something ever sought after without ever coming to a full comprehension. But when Job came to that understanding of what that all meant, He came face-to-face with something, and without ever knowing it, he came face-to-face with one of the most precious gifts that we can encounter in our human lives as men of faith, and that is wisdom. As we see in the questions of God to Job, Divine inquiries are often quite different from our own. And rather, so often, God's questions to us are an invitation. They are an invitation to open the heart and the mind

[06:28]

to a manner of divine communication which touches us ever deeply, ever so deeply, and ever so profoundly. And in the end, if we are faithful in trying to answer the questions of God, these questions then begin to form within us a divine human communication. a relationship between God and each of us, a relationship that we can call a divine human friendship, something which each of us deep inside earnestly yearns for because, in effect, it really is the very reason for what we were made for, friendship with God. and why we come to a monastery, to be able to live in the heart of that relationship, that oneness with God.

[07:31]

Divine questioning, God's questions to us, respect human dignity and human freedom. And God's questions to us are always caring, even when they can seem to be either a reprimand or a challenge, because what they are trying to do is to draw us ever closer to God. And God's questions are not merely rhetorical to us, but rather they are like the good teacher. They intend to open up new dimensions of understanding, to elicit new insights into the simple things of the spiritual life that really matter most, to correct our faulty human understanding, or to establish new links between things that are already known to us. The questions that God poses to us in the scriptures are, in effect, very personal.

[08:42]

They are directed to an individual or to a group for whom God is manifesting care. And for me, where this truly awesome mystery lies is that when we see these questions of God posed in the scriptures, they are in effect God seeking us out. What an unfathomable mystery to think that God is in search of frail and broken human persons like you and me. God is always inviting us. Or maybe better expressed, God is always trying to attract, to allure, to entice us by the power and the truth of his message. And even in its harshest form, God's word is always a message of justice and love.

[09:46]

By the questions that we hear in the scriptures, God speaks to us in a very personal way in this our own day and age, drawing us into the rhythm of that divine human dialogue which God inaugurates with us. The question remains then, can I hear the voice of God speaking to me? Can I hear the promptings of the Spirit, who dwells within me already, addressed to me in whatever situation in life I find myself? Can the scriptures be a personal address of God to me, to us? These questions will console us, they will challenge us, and they will often unsettle us if we hear them in their most personal dimension. And we know that these questions can lead us, by God's grace, to greater freedom, to more abundant life, and to deeper love.

[10:57]

For me, especially in my ministry as Abbot to my community, those words of the third song of the Servant of Yahweh in the book of Isaiah, have touched my own understanding and belief of how God's presence to me is so real. In the words and the questions of scripture, that passage from Isaiah chapter 50, morning after morning, God opens my ear that I may hear. I have not rebelled. I have not turned back. It is in Genesis 3 that God poses the first divine question that we hear in the scriptures. And the question was posed to Adam after he and Eve had eaten the fruit that was forbidden and enticing.

[12:00]

It was beautiful to see, good to look at, good to eat, and the tempter promised it would make them more like God. And this is the prototype of all temptation, which most of us know experientially. After they had eaten the fruit, God asks Adam, and now in the context of this retreat, asks each of us, where are you? Where are you? Genesis 3 briefly but poignantly tells the story here. The eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked. So they sewed leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. They heard the sound of the voice of the sound of the Lord moving about in the garden at the breezy time of the day.

[13:07]

The man and the woman hid themselves from the Lord God. among the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called out to the man and asked him, Where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden, but I was afraid because I was naked, and so I hid myself. Then God asked, Who told you you were naked? You have eaten then from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat. The man replied, The woman who you put here with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it. Then the Lord God asked the woman, Why did you do such a thing? And the woman answered, The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it. There are some details about this passage which I think give a depth and a force to the story and, also importantly, to our own story.

[14:20]

First, God was so very present to them. So much at home were they that they immediately knew his moving about in the garden during the breezy time of the day. So present was God to them that he stands there with them even in the moment of their sin and its revelation. This is especially true because Adam and Eve were made in the divine image and so God acts toward them in the way that he does with both care and candor. Further, we see that the dialogue between Adam and God is relational. Notice how familiar that dialogue is between the two. And God's further statements and questions are severe, but lovingly expressing a concern for the very summit of his creation, man and woman.

[15:30]

God was with them. but in a phrase familiar from the confessions of Saint Augustine, they were not with God. This kind of situation will repeat itself time and time again throughout the scriptures. Being made in God's image is truly the vocation, the calling of every man and woman. We are ever called to become more like the one in whose divine image we were first fashioned. And this is also the ground, the very ground for our divine human communication and for divine human communion, which is the very basic notion of our covenant with God. In chapter 17 of the book of Sirach, it reads, with wisdom and knowledge, God fills Adam and Eve.

[16:38]

Good and evil, he shows them. He looks with favor into their hearts and shows them his glorious works. That emphasis here in that passage from Sirach upon the heart as the way to come to wisdom and to knowledge is very interesting. We all know that in the biblical mind, the heart was something far more than just the seat of the emotions. It was also the very center of a person, kind of bringing together both mind and heart. And we might even well translate that sentence, God gave them a heart to think with. For the ancient Hebrews, the heart was the center of both the will and the intellect. What a world ours would be if more leaders thought with their heart.

[17:42]

Adam and Eve knew the Lord's presence, but they avoided him. In fact, they hid from God. Is that something that happens in our lives? God speaking is the revelation of his divine message, yet Adam and Eve hid from that voice. Are there times when God wishes to reveal something to me? either in word, in sacrament, through an event, through someone, wishing to reveal a deeper understanding and insight into the call of God and the desire for a response, and I have avoided it. Have I slipped into hiding to avoid the consequences of that so very important encounter? How long does it take us to learn that we really can't hide from God? God asks us this question through the prophet Jeremiah.

[18:51]

Who can hide so that I don't see them? Do I not feel heaven and earth? Jeremiah 23, 24. Adam and Eve hid from God, but notice God comes to them. And it is God who opens the dialogue. He inaugurates the conversation with this very simple question, where are you? This is a question meant to elicit from Abraham an honest response. leading to greater self-awareness and eventually, hopefully, to repentance. But Adam avoids the direct question altogether. In fact, Adam really doesn't answer the question that God asks him, where are you? Rather, he circumvents it by all sorts of other responses.

[19:54]

Notice in that one simple sentence, that one verse of scripture, Adam says, I or myself, five different times, expressing that isolation of Adam from the one who so desires to give him life. And so begins the movement of human history. In contrast to Adam, think of all those individuals whom God calls and who respond directly and immediately. When God called Abraham, the text reads so simply in Genesis 12, 4, 1. Abram went as the Lord directed him, and Lot went with him. And then when God would call Abraham to that unbelievable question, to sacrifice his own beloved son, God calls and the text reads, God put Abraham to the test.

[21:04]

He called to him, Abraham, and he answered, ready. Moses also responded with immediate acceptance, and later tries to worm his way out of it. Young Samuel is initially uncertain of who is speaking, but when he understands that it is God, his immediate response is, Speak Lord, your servant is listening. In the New Testament, there is also the young and uncertain Virgin Mary, who is first startled and unknowing. But as she comes to understand what is happening in her presence, she says, let it be done to me according to your word. Finally, when we get close to the end of the New Testament, the epistle to the Hebrew speaks of Christ in this way. When he came into the world to fulfill the new covenant, he said, Here I am, Lord.

[22:11]

I have come to do your will. But Adam avoids the questions, not telling where he was, but that he hid in fear because he was naked. There is a failure to openly admit that he was disobedient, and in consequence of that, he was naked. In the deepest sense of its meaning, Adam refused to be naked before God. He turned from God and hid because of sin. At the end of Genesis 2, before we move into the story of the first sin, we hear in that text, the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame. Adam and Eve came naked from the holy hand of God. And I believe it was Saint Jerome who had as his motto, naked I came to follow the naked Christ.

[23:17]

Is there not an important spiritual connection with the new Adam who came to reverse the avalanche of sin caused by the first Adam, who in his saving death was naked on the cross? The loving response of the Son of God becomes the model then for us to imitate. And so we ask ourselves, Do I hide from the truth about myself like Adam and Eve? Do I hide from the full truth of my thoughts, my actions, my stances, by evasion, by self-justification, by defensiveness? Do I hide from God and myself by putting myself into a mode of unstopping activity, from frenetic activity, and things to occupy my thoughts and my prayer?

[24:22]

Do I put diversions in my life so that I can avoid facing myself and coming before God in truth and honesty? Or do I hide and try to escape by centering so much on myself that self-absorption becomes my hiding place? When God confronts Adam, he blames Eve, and she blames the serpent. And doesn't that all sound so familiar? Is this my way of hiding from the responsibility that comes from my own sinfulness with what I have done? But in the end of this story, There is a concluding verse that is filled with a Hebraic tenderness and hope, with consolation and concern.

[25:24]

It reads, for the man and his wife, the Lord God made leather garments with which he clothed them. Even in their rebellion against them, God cares for them, provides for them, and bestows upon them a token of his gracious concern. What kind of God is this who acts in such a manner? How much had God wanted to bestow upon Adam and Eve the greatest of his created gifts. But they wanted power and mastery. And because of this, they violated their deepest selves, as well as their relationship with God, in order to get what they wanted. And isn't there something painfully familiar about that? Despite the fact that they had hidden from God, their divine creator sought them out in mercy and promised them redemption.

[26:39]

That's the ultimate story of love. The love of God for those he has endowed with his own life breath. And we are those same people. In the next chapter of Genesis, the question that comes forth from, we find, is, where are you, takes a turn, and still familiar, God asks Cain, now where is your brother? This reminds us that we are responsible for more than ourselves. Some chapters later, God asks Hagar, as she is running from the home of Abraham, Where are you coming from and where are you going? And later in First Kings, God asks Elijah, what are you doing here? These are good questions for us to ponder in these days of retreat in a very personal way.

[27:46]

Who and where are my brothers, my sisters? How are they doing because of me? Where are you going from here at the end of this retreat? What are you doing now, these days? I'm reminded of that question which St. Bernard continually asked his monks in his conferences, saying, Why have you come here? Retreat is so perfect a time to reflect on that question posed to Adam and today posed to us at this moment. Where are you? Where are you in your life's journey, in your Christian identity, in your monastic witness? These are days for us to stand before God, naked and vulnerable,

[28:49]

and to respond to the divine questions posed to us honestly, directly, trustingly. If then today you hear the voice of God, harden not your hearts. That's the thing about being naked is always on what was a problem, but I never thought of that. We came naked from this, and then us being naked doesn't honor him a bit. Actually they were clothes in some sense, which is glory.

[29:52]

They lost it, and that's what you realize. that they were naked, but that they came naked from the hand of God and there's no need to be embarrassed at all. Yes. Just as they were. They were not. Yes. This is obvious to me, everybody knows this, but he clothed them with the skin of dead animals to remind them of their mortality. Yes. That's why we were overgrown. Yes. At least that's what art would detect it, huh? The big leaves. They're big now. They are big. Cover your mouth. I mean the way they would ask questions.

[31:21]

They wanted to be like God. First time I ever heard it. They wanted to be like God. Trying to get questions on me. Trying to get permission. It really is, it's all how you want to be like God. Because we should want to be like God. Good, gracious, compassionate, understanding, forgiving, merciful. But we want the wrong things of God. We want power and mastery over this and over that. It's kind of a controlling sort of thing instead of a hands-out sort of thing. But I think, you know, one of the things that I just remember being very impressed with a number of years ago, maybe some of you have read the writings of the Jewish philosopher and theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel.

[32:44]

And one of the first books he wrote was Man in Search of God. And in the midst of that, he realized he had to write volume two, God in Search of Man. That was really the deeper mystery, but it wasn't until he had first looked more self-consciously at himself in search of God that he realized what the scriptures had to say about just the opposite. God in search of us, that tremendous mystery. When did you write the second book?

[33:50]

I think it was written sometime in the 1960s or 70s. So we would always hang them on our trees for years? Yes. They were the real crystals? Yes. I don't know if you'd ever heard that story that's told, a true story about when he had suffered his first stroke, that a dear friend of his went to God and was trying to cheer him up. And his response was, you don't have to cheer me up. I asked God for only one thing. And he gave it to me. I asked him for wonder, and he showed it to me. Samuel, you said, once he realized it was God, and he said, yeah, I know.

[35:25]

What did you say about Mary? I had said that, at first, what you see in the text of Luke is that she's uncertain of what is happening here. She's perplexed. Then when she comes to realize the angel's word as being God's word to her, she says, let it be done to me. And you know, that's almost a kind of literary form that you see in all of those call narratives throughout the scriptures. Moses says, I can't go before Pharaoh. I'm not someone who can speak. Isaiah says, woe is me. man of unclean lips living among people of unclean lips. Jeremiah says, I am too young, I cannot do this.

[36:26]

Amos says, I'm no prophet. I'm a dresser of sycamore trees, a cattle herder. So you see that consistent demurring from the call of God when it comes. when the question of God comes. Will you do this? Will you follow? Let us pray. Lord Jesus, how attentively you waited upon the word of your Father and you followed it in faith. Open our ears to hear your voice and spread wide the doors of our hearts to receive your word in trust and hope. To you be all praise and glory forever and ever. Amen.

[37:27]

After 36 plus years in the monastic life, I can say with honesty that the most formative ongoing experience of my monastic life has been the practice of Lectio Divina. And it's not so much what I've learned in doing Lectio Divina, it's not what has been accomplished in practicing it, but rather it is an attitude that it has instilled within me Lectio Divina, I think, has taught me what I believe to be the heart of the monastic vocation, listening to the voice of God. To listen, and to listen, and to never stop listening, is for me the heart of the Benedictine vocation.

[38:29]

And it's not insignificant that the very first word of the Holy Rule gives us that command to listen. In the translation of The Rule by Abbott Patrick Berry of Ampleforth, the text continues, I think, in a most inviting manner. He translates, attend to the message you hear and make sure that it pierces to your heart so that you may accept with willing freedom and fulfilled by the way you live, the directions that come to you from your loving Father. There's three expressions in that translation that I think touch on both the mystery and the blessing of the voice of God in our lives. First of all, a message piercing the heart. Secondly, accepting that message with willing freedom

[39:33]

And thirdly, a word coming to us from a loving father. Let's look at each of those three ideas briefly. First, it must be a message that pierces the heart. In our technological age, there are so many words waving their way in and out of our daily lives that we almost become numb to the power of words. They roll over us like water rushing over smooth rocks in a brook, and there's no stopping them. But what Saint Benedict is talking about here, I think, is just the opposite. We are to listen in such a manner as to allow that Word not only to touch our hearts, but to pierce our heart, to wound us in such a way as to force us to stop and to attend to what has penetrated our innermost being.

[40:39]

But first, we have to listen in such a way that allows the Word to stop us and to force us to attend to it. Second, we move from listening to the Word to accepting it with willing freedom. How often in our life do we come to a point of accepting a situation and learning to live with it, often with a kind of unpleasant resignation and an admitted unhappiness? But Saint Benedict commands just the opposite. And here this translation suggests the nuance of acceptance with willing freedom. RB1980 suggests a translation, to welcome it. There's something powerful, I think, implied in this, and it's an inner freedom.

[41:42]

Inner freedom gives us the strength to hear whatever is true, regardless of how it impacts on us, and to follow its lead. It's my own personal belief that monks should be among the freest people in our world, with that sense of inner freedom. But how many of us really possess that inner freedom, which is so characteristic of the monastic tradition? While most of us experience it occasionally, true inner freedom is an ideal to be sought at all times. then we will be able to listen, to truly listen to God's voice and to put it into practice. And third, to realize that this word comes to us from a loving father.

[42:44]

To understand this, all we need do is to turn to chapter 15 of the gospel according to Luke, the parable of the gracious father and his two sons. And there we find the image of a father which puts in limited language all that God is and more. While it speaks so powerfully about God in terms of divine freedom, full and ready approval, a readiness to welcome us back, and kind of lavish acceptance, it still falls short of the reality of God in our lives. And that remains for each and every one of us, that ongoing and that unfolding experience of the mystery of God's love for us, for each of us. A God who wishes to speak to us so as to teach us, to guide us, to strengthen us, to comfort us, to console us,

[43:52]

in effect, to share divine life with us. When we think about biblical images that instruct us in the way of listening, one of the most expected would be to come from that passage in the third chapter of the first book of Samuel, where young Samuel is ministering at the temple at Shiloh and a voice comes calling his name, and finally, on the third time, he responds, Speak Lord, your servant is listening. And while there is much to consider and analyze in that text, there is something that is quite fundamental and foundational that is often overlooked in that passage. It is this. Biblically speaking, The one who listens takes on the posture of a servant, a disciple.

[44:56]

To listen is to become a servant. To listen is to accept discipleship. Listening presumes a readiness to take the word in, to allow it to bounce off the walls of our hearts, echoing within us, hearing it again and again and again, and giving it an abiding place in our inmost being. Think of those passages that you hear in the scriptures. The servant is the one who waits upon the word of the master. He then takes the word in and he does it. One of the most beautiful passages in scripture that I think brings out this motif of listening and discipleship together is the passage I mentioned last night from the third servant song in the book of Isaiah in chapter 50.

[46:00]

Recall that text with me. Morning after morning, God opens my ear. He opens my ear that I may hear and I have not rebelled, I have not turned back." In this passage, the speaker tells of his experience as servant and disciple. Each day he awakens and God himself opens the ear of the servant to hear what the divine voice speaks. The challenge of that word is obviously there. For the servant says that he has not defied or resisted that word. What a process of conversion that would mean for any of us. The demands of God's word rarely find a ready acceptance in the human heart, because what it calls us to is the way of sacrifice and abnegation, self-abnegation.

[47:08]

It oftentimes seems that when I want to go down this path, God directs me down this path. And when I want to go in one direction, God seems to point me in almost the opposite direction. There's something comic about it because it seems that it's never my way as being God's way. But our experience in faith tells us time and time again that God's way is always the path of blessing because it is the path of obedience. Obedience with a capital O because summons there comes from God. Somewhere I read that authentic listening is the moment of stepping out of my own self-concern and dwelling silently in the truth of what one speaks to me. And how true this is when we believe that the person who speaks is none other than God.

[48:17]

The divine voice will always speak the truth, but the difficult thing is discerning, understanding, interpreting the divine voice. The servant confesses that each morning he awakens to the summons of God, but certainly that came from a heart that for many years had been readied to hear without fear, to hear with hope, and to hear with trust. But we can well ask ourselves, how do I listen well? How do I know that I am not merely listening to my own voice or some other voice competing for my attention within me? It's not an easy thing. And the pace of our lives and the movement of society war against listening in the spirit of the scriptures and the monastic tradition.

[49:21]

While the scriptures call us to silence and to the emptying of oneself society calls us to a fast pace, to plenty of noise, and to personal fulfillment. Now in themselves, none of those things are bad, but the point is they don't create that sacred environment where listening to God's voice can easily take place. It is in an atmosphere where silence is treasured, that authentic listening takes place. And so to be sure, silence is not the place of peace that we might immediately think it is. Silence is the desert. And more treacherous, silence is the interior desert. There's a saying of one of the Desert Fathers which I think capsulizes this well.

[50:23]

The most dangerous journey is not from the city out to the desert. It is the journey through the desert within, the crooked pathways of the human heart. How often do you hear a story of someone who has gone around the world looking for an answer to a problem, for the perfect place to be able to accomplish a task, or for the opportunity to meet some guru who is going to answer this important question? And the person only returns disappointed. In effect, instead of running toward something, the person is running away from himself. The person had to go no further than within. But that can be a very perilous journey because it involves meeting oneself there and simultaneously being face-to-face with God.

[51:31]

The story of Jacob's nocturnal wrestling match is the story of every human person who listens to the voice of God. One of the ways in which we know that we are hearing the voice of God is that it forces us to struggle, to wrestle with foundational issues, and to see ourselves in relation to the one whom we encounter who is no less than God. In 1997, I spent two weeks in England. The first eight days, it rained every day and almost all day. And it was something of a historic rain, because that year, Wimbledon went on record for having to cancel more days of tennis than ever in its history, and even had to extend the days of the tournament.

[52:33]

Those were my first days in England. But everyone kept saying to me, with a kind of warm and bemusing smile, just wait till the rain stops. Just wait and see. And finally, when it did stop, I couldn't believe my eyes. I was driving on the motorway north to York, and everything there that caught my eye was a genuine distraction. The moors and the glens, the valleys and the hillside just seemed to be studded with emeralds of varying shades of green in every size and shape. The land was a lush green and spring and signs of spring, signs of life were springing up everywhere. It was so stunning that you really had forgotten about the rain that had been there. It was because you saw something that had always been there, but now you saw it with a new perspective, a new vision.

[53:45]

It was beautiful And I saw something more than the beauty of nature. It was a sacrament of divine listening. So often we listen and we wait, hearing little or nothing. And it's like the rain which just keeps falling and keeping us from seeing all that is around us in a perfect light. But when the rain stops and the sun comes out, when the Word breaks through the walls that we didn't even know we had constructed, something happens. And by the power of that Word to which we have listened, we are changed. We experience transformation, and we know that the voice that we have been listening to is divine. and it is speaking to us, to me, and it brings peace.

[54:49]

Another wonderful icon from the scriptures which tells of the mystery of waiting upon that divine voice is the scene of the prophet Elijah at Mount Horeb. The prophet had gone to the south, barely escaping with his life after Jezebel had seen what he had done to her priests on Mount Carmel. But recall that scene with me where the prophet has arrived at the mountain of God, at Horeb. And the divine voice comes to him with the question, Elijah, why are you here? Elijah tells of his zeal for the Lord and his own dread situation in which his life now is even being sought and threatened. He's told then to go and to stand on the top of God's mountain, and the Lord would be passing by. A mighty wind, a strong earthquake, and a blazing fire come, but in none of those expected theophanies,

[56:01]

is God found. And here, the Hebrew text becomes difficult. We have a term that is only used once in all of the scriptures, and some translate it as a tiny whispering sound, or a small still voice, or a faint murmuring sound, or a light murmuring sound. My sense of how to translate that would be along the lines of the sound of utmost silence. It forms a perfect and climactic antithesis of what had preceded, from a dramatic cosmic upheaval to utter stillness. As we say in English, the silence you can cut with a knife. It is not where sound and light bring dramatic effect, but rather where the human person comes into contact with the Divine Presence.

[57:08]

It is an overwhelming sense of presence that comes out of the silence. Then, here is the staggering experience that the prophet has been readied for, to hear God's voice. A voice that will lead him down a path he did not intend to go. He would be told, return now to the scene of your fear. And there, deliver God's message and anoint an unexpected person as king. So the listening to the voice of God led to a life-altering experience for Elijah. On a very practical level, the task of interpreting the voice of God is often best done with a competent guide whom you consider to be wise in the realm of the spiritual life.

[58:12]

Far back into the monastic tradition, the fathers of the desert knew well how easy it was to fall into self-delusion, which led to the more serious sin of pride. We live too closely with ourselves, and we become all too accustomed to that voice within us that tells us what we want to do, and as soon as it seems to click with us, we do it. If we believe that the voice of God is going to call us to continual conversion, then we are naturally going to shrink from the challenge of singing the radically new song that God is going to invite us to sing. Someone to wait with us during the rain or to walk with us through the desert is essential in peeling back the layers of silence in order to lay bare the voices of the living God that come to us.

[59:21]

One of the biggest dangers along these lines is feeling better about our situation in the midst of struggle. When we feel better, we sometimes have simply turned sacred listening into problem solving. instead of that contemplative undertaking of truly listening to God's voice. An experienced spiritual guide will be an objective outsider, genuinely concerned for our personal growth and refusing to allow us to sweet-talk our way through God's invitation to conversion. Go back and look at those passages in the scriptures where God calls a person to a new experience, to a new turn in their life. There's struggle. There's rejection of the call. There's a demurring from the human capacity to be able to accomplish it.

[60:27]

And there was fear in the face of a life-altering change that was about to take place. A good spiritual guide will help us to face those challenges with humility, inner poverty, trust, and hope. I began by expressing my personal conviction that the art of listening lays at the heart of the monastic vocation. After giving some explanation of this, let us conclude with a few final observations of its importance, especially in our lives as Benedictine monks. Saint Benedict reminds us in the prologue that our entry into the monastery is an admission to the school of the Lord's service. It is true that the manner in which Saint Benedict describes the responsibilities of the abbot

[61:30]

or the prior as being primarily a spiritual father who teaches. But as an abbot now for more than 10 years, I can tell you that I believe with all my heart that it is Christ who is the first teacher of the month. And so perfectly has he taught us by his example that we need only to open the pages of the Gospel to see where that Word comes to life for us. When we listen, really listen to those divine promptings within us, we are then schooled in the ways of God, and we are shown the path which then will lead us to that true inner happiness. In the simple analogy where a student who listens well learns the lesson, so also the monk who listens attentively comes to understand the mysterious and circuitous plan of God in the labyrinth of the human heart.

[62:38]

If we are willing to be schooled by the divine voice, then we are led in the way of perfect freedom and peace. that for which we came to the monastery seeking. And I'm reminded of that verse from Psalm 119, I shall walk in the path of freedom because I seek your precepts. As Benedictines, we should be the freest of people since our lives are filled and imbued with that Word of God that leads us to an abiding peace of heart. The Gospels, and especially I think the Passion narratives, portray Jesus as a man of tremendous spiritual freedom. Daily schooled by the word of his father, he knew the experience of struggle and fear, and he prayed, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not as I will, but as you will.

[63:46]

That is the freedom. that authentic listening gives to us. And such spiritual listening enables us to embrace the whole of human life with its ambiguities, its experiences of failure, its endless paradoxes, and our own sinfulness. The interior freedom of which I speak strengthens us to push beyond the human powers of analysis to that gift of divine life itself. When we move into sacred silence and the freedom that it offers, we move then into the creative work of God within us. To listen to its depths is to find oneself in treasured communion with God. that for which we came to the monastery, seeking God.

[64:49]

To listen, and to listen, and to never stop listening, is for me the heart of our Benedictine vocation. Freedom? Oh, Psalm 119, it's verse 45. I shall walk in the path of freedom, for I seek your precepts. We had a couple years ago a workshop on helping us with the community and the populations that we got.

[66:06]

Anyway, and I asked him if he could talk to us on community I think that he couldn't do that because, really, you had to first learn to listen. And then you had to learn to be assertive without being aggressive. And then you had to learn... But... But the whole, you had to learn the whole bit in order to be able to listen. And then listening and reading, when we're listening, we're listening to something, whether it's computers, or going out by the hamster, or going to the hotline, or going to the telephone. But the reading is totally, totally attentive to the person. Not thinking of ourselves at all, but who are we thinking of?

[67:07]

You know, one of the experiences in my own community that I think was one of the most powerful, and it was almost like a threshold that we had passed then beyond, which has enabled us to listen in new ways. was, some of you may be aware, that back in June of 2002, a gunman entered our monastery, killed two of our monks, and seriously wounded another two. And after that experience, I just sensed so strongly in the community that there were such a variety of feelings, reactions, and emotions that I asked a Capuchin friar who works in our seminary, he's the director of our psychological services in the seminary, if he would come and animate a session for us and just help us to talk about that.

[68:14]

And it was very powerful from this perspective And I said to the monks, you know, Father Duane is going to direct this, and I want anyone who feels that he wants to speak, that's fine. And if you don't, that's fine, too. I just ask you to be here and to listen. And probably about two-thirds of the community said something. No two people said the same thing. But there was this genuine sense that everyone in the community was trying to move forward through this experience of the paschal mystery that we were in the midst of at that moment, to move beyond. And we listened to one another as we had never listened to one another before. And it really was a turning point for us in our ability to be able to listen

[69:18]

And as you say, not be thinking about what I have to say next or what I have to respond to, because we were only there to listen. And I think it became a real threshold for us in being able to listen to one another in a new and a very positive way. I don't recommend. Four people shot, two dead. But it was real paschal mystery for us. I mean, it was new life out of death in many ways. You're right. From the beginning? In the beginning? From the rule that I gave three at the beginning.

[70:25]

Accepting the message. in freedom, or letting the message pierce the heart, accepting it with willing freedom, and thirdly, knowing that the word comes from a loving Father. Isn't it interesting that the future of America sees that older men in that form, in that more extreme form, that they are more reluctant to be defective, while

[71:28]

Younger person, newcomers, they are eager. They have all the answers. Yes. You know, for spiritual direction. Are we in the modern kind of phenomenon? Well, I'm not sure, because I would say that we have a number of Senpehkde, you know, who I would look on as being a wise elders. And in every case, I think they're good listeners. But it is true, sometimes younger people think they have all the answers. But this fellow who you may know, a Jesuit here from the East Coast who writes for a fair bit on spiritual direction, Father William Berry. He says, no one should be involved in spiritual direction as a director unless he's at least 45 years old. Interesting, huh?

[72:35]

Now, we know of exceptions to that, you know, but it's an interesting comment, which I think associates with your question. Yes, and not being afraid of that and being comfortable. I didn't realize that God told my dad to go back to the scene of the fear. I didn't want to think about it. He couldn't have done that unless he knew in the voice of... I think it would be my life if I didn't want to put my own life at stake.

[73:45]

I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to listen. And if you believe, it's God telling you to go there. The thing is, should you be willing to listen to the people? You wouldn't make, like, some half-hour... Yes, actually, I did mention that last night. I think you had been detained. And yeah, somebody has already asked. I'm here to... Okay.

[74:36]

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