and of the sun and the Holy Spirit. Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open and all desires are known and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name. And we ask you this in the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus. Amen. Well, this morning I was saying something about Alice's experience. of painful experience, of having a kind of intellectual knowledge that just hadn't passed in the totality of her being. And this is a really typical monastic experience. And so I just want to polish that off by giving you a horrible example.

[01:03]

My own experience about that was during my second year as a student in Rome, and we had about four students from Gethsemane in Rome at that time, and two of the cooks were also brothers of Gethsemane. And it was the end of the school year, and I was going up into France by train. And so our brother Thomas, who was one of their cooks, got together this magnificent picnic lunch for me. It was just absolutely splendid. And so I get on the train, and it's a very, very hot day, but there weren't very many passengers. And so I had a compartment completely to myself. And so the train starts as usual, and we got as far as Pisa, which is about 11.30 maybe in the morning. I was beginning to get a little bit hungry, and I remember I looked out of the window in the compartment when we got to the station at Pisa,

[02:09]

I saw this old derelict of a fellow. He just looked absolutely squalid and you could almost feel the life all over his body. And he's wearing a rather heavy ramshackle old coat that reached down below his knees. Anyway, this is very hot weather. And I just remember thinking, you know, thank God he's there and I'm here. And I was a little embarrassed because I thought I had this mystique of poverty. Don James had given us students, you know, permission to help out some poor people. So, we got so many students, had adopted a couple of really poor families that were squatters and lived in caves in the northern part of Rome, you know, people who had TB and just horrible situations. But I always felt a little bit like St. Francis, being identified with the poor, being so charitable and everything. Well, at any rate, the next thing I knew, there was a rap on the door of the compartment.

[03:12]

And who was there? This old abandoned derelict that I'd seen on the platform a minute ago. And you know, my instinctive reaction was to say, Ave Christe. Hail Christ. I mean, I knew intellectually that this was Jesus and a very poor, abandoned person. I knew it. You know, I would have put my head on the block for it, except I was totally revulsed by this. And he asked if there was an empty place, and obviously there was. And I couldn't exactly tell him to find another apartment. So he comes in. And he sits down close to the corridor, and I was slinking as close to the window as I could possibly get. And he started speaking in Italian, and then I just told an outright lie. I said I didn't understand Italian enough to carry on the conversation. And so there was a feeble attempt to have an exchange.

[04:17]

And I wondered, how long is he going to be on the train? And all the time I was saying, Hail Jesus! I got out my New Testament, and you know, the text in St. Matthew about the Last Judgment and the sheep and the goats and those who received Jesus and the poor and visited Him. And I was reading all of that, and I believed it, and I was telling myself all that. And so I asked him in my bad Italian how far he was going, hoping he was going to get off at the next stop. And then he said he was going to Rapallo, which was about three hours away. And he was just absolutely filthy, and he was wheezing, he obviously had TB, and he had no luggage with him, but he had an old newspaper that was folded that I found out he used as a wallet. And later on, I did speak some with him, and he'd been a soldier in France, and he had some kind of a disability ticket for the railroad because he'd been in the service.

[05:23]

And so, at any rate, it was time to eat. And I knew, I just absolutely knew that I should invite him to share this wonderful meal. that I had on me. And I couldn't bring myself to do it until he fell asleep. And then that gave me an out. And for about two and a half hours, you know, I just sat there, trembling, recognizing that this is Jesus. But just unable, you know, to let this pass into a simple act of Christian courtesy and love. And so at the end of this time he was wheezing and it was obvious that he had to wear this long coat because his pants were in such shambles, you know, he needed something to cover him for the purposes of modesty. And so then he woke up and then we did start talking and he told about how we talked in French and his French was so much better than mine was. And he told about having been a soldier in France and how beautiful it was.

[06:29]

And then he started talking about Apollo and how wonderful the sea was. He probably lived in a dumpster or someplace, but he had such a feel. It was really just poetry, just music listening to him. It was just absolutely beautiful. And then finally I got my courage out, just as he was about to leave. And I asked him, you know, if he would kindly take the Italian currency that I had because it wasn't worth trying to get it exchanged at the French border, and I had a couple of, you know, sandwiches left and so forth. And he thought that I was all upset. And he was just so absolutely so beautiful. And he took, you know, what I offered him with the most enormous dignity and courtesy. And I was literally weeping. But I knew then what it is to have an intellectual knowledge that hasn't passed into the heart. And every time I think I'm pretty good at being identified with the poor or anything else, I have a big question mark there.

[07:37]

So it's only when we really, really put to the test, I think that was a great grace for me, completely humiliating it, most, most illuminating. So I hope you people would be able to respond better than I was able to at that time. But just as terror at being able to see intellectually things so clearly and being able to make this act of a certain kind of faith. and not being able to follow through with that. Okay, so, now I want to tell you about another similar experience of Alice's. Let's see, I'm skipping a few paragraphs. I can't find the text in the English text, so here's the Latin text. Her intellect now is filled with this light, and she's trying to bear forth in her whole being what she understands conceptually.

[08:47]

And then she has this experience of having foot of a waft of the fragrance of the promised land that comes to her from time to time in prayer. And she has this experience of this great longing because if just this initial and co-ative experience of what she catches, just a little of the fragrance, is so deep and so wonderful for her, what must it be actually to taste the fruits of the promised land? Now this is another aspect of compunction. Maybe we'll hear something about it in the book. at noontime in the refectory. I don't know. But this is an important type of monastic experience. I don't have the text of the preface for virgins and religious here, the wonderful, wonderful liturgical text. And the main section of it, remember, begins something like, Oh, we praise God for these religious who have left all to follow Christ.

[09:50]

And then it goes on to talk about how they have returned to the innocence of our first parents in paradise. Now that's a big thing. You come to the monastery and with the grace of God's help and our ascetic practices, our prayer, we're able to return to some type of experience of God as our first parents had before the fall. But then it goes on to say that these saints whom we're praising, who have left all to follow Christ and have returned to the first innocence of paradise, also have a foretaste of the good things of the world to come. And this is very important in our monastic life too. There are so many people who just in their own experience have never known what it is to taste something of the fruits of the kingdom here and now. And when you find a monastic community or any Christian community who has actually had this type of experience, people begin to realize that it's for real.

[10:58]

And I know this is one of the things that overwhelmed a lot of people about our Father Lewis in his early writings. We said, did he really experience all of this? And just the fact that God can put his finger on this person and that person and gives them a taste of what the realities of heaven really are is just so meaningful for so many people. And so, in our communities, you know, we're striving, but we're also attaining, with the grace of God, a certain experience of the things of God. And I think this is one of the things that people find so attractive, say, about your community, or about any religious community, that this is the place where Those realities are absolutely real and the subject of some kind of experience, at least an incoherent experience. There's a beautiful expression of this in one of the Narnia Chronicles of C.S.

[12:07]

Lewis. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Narnia Chronicles. little English kids that find their way into this mythical kingdom called Narnia, where there's this great Christ figure who's a lion. His name is Aslan. And so these little English kids are outside the normal space and time. And there's profound theology inherited in all of these children's stories, which I think adults appreciate more than kids. And so, there's one of the chronicles, which is called The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Oh, and I should say that some of the animals are, like in Father Lewis's poem, not only intelligent, but they speak. They're just like human beings. And so, all nature is alive and resonant, and there's this harmony between the humans and nature. And so, at any rate, This is called The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and the plot has something to do with the fact that an enchantment has fallen on the whole of Narnia.

[13:13]

And to break the enchantment, it has something to do to wake up these seven lords of Narnia who have fallen asleep. Now, these are kind of like contemplatives who lose the taste for contemplation. and are sunk into a kind of a torpor, a lack of sensitivity. And now, how are these children going to break this enchantment that is falling on Nernia? So, they're on this voyage, this expedition, and they come across this old man who's a little bit something like an archangel. And this Prince Caspian asks, he says, Sir, said Caspian, will you tell us how to undo the enchantment which holds these three Narnian lords asleep? They've just found on this island these three sleeping lords of Narnia. So, will you tell us how to undo the enchantment which holds these three Narnian lords asleep?

[14:15]

I will gladly tell you that, my son, said the old man. To break this enchantment, you must sail to the world's end. Okay, just the whole limit of human possibility. Or, as near as you can come to it, and you must come back having left at least one of your company behind. Okay, so in this community, there has to be someone who is able and willing to go beyond the world's end. and to break the enchantment of Narnia, to be willing to stay there. And what is to happen to that one, asked Ulipitchi. And Ulipitchi is one of the wonderful characters in this chronicle. It's a talking mouth, about so big, filled with enormous braggadocio. I mean, it's just like us. And so he represents kind of the aggressive little twerp who has to refer to himself, you know, the last and the least, but who makes his point by an enormous amount of show and braggadocio and all of that sort of thing, and tries to invest himself, you know, with the false nobility and courage that he really doesn't have.

[15:37]

He must go to the utter east and never return to the world," says this old man. That is my heart's desire," said Reepacheep. "'And are we near the world's end now, sir?' asked Caspian. "'Have you any knowledge of the thieves and lands farther east than this?' I saw them a long time ago," said the old man, and then there's a conversation. To get to the east, the waters are uncharted. When we're that far along, we're really on our own with the grace of God. And then there's some more conversation, and he says, for this old man, he says, But come we waste time in such talk, are you yet revolved to go beyond to the uttermost east? Will you fail farther east, and come again, leaving one to return no more, and foe break the enchantment? Or will you fail westward in the opposite direction?"

[16:41]

"'Surely far,' said Reepacheep. "'There is no question about that. It is very plainly part of our quest to rescue these three lords from enchantment.'" "'I think the same,' Reepacheep replied Caspian. And even if it were not so, it would break my heart not to go as near the world's end as the Dawn Treader will take us." Parker said, they're the contemplative, we're the contemplative, who want to go as far towards the world's end, towards the mystic east, as is possible to go. He says, but I am thinking of the crew. They signed on to seek the seven lords. not to reach the rim of the earth. If we sail east from here, we fail to find the edge, the utter east, and no one knows how far it is. They're brave fellows, the crew, but I see signs that some of them are weary of the voyage and long to have our prow pointed to Narnia again.

[17:42]

I don't think I should take them farther without their knowledge and consent. My Lord, said the old man, there would be no use, even though you wished it, to sail to the world's end with men unwilling or men deceived. That is not how great unenchantments are achieved. This is important for community life. So we're all, you might say, towards the edge of the world, the uttermost limits of human possibilities. But if in a community you have people who don't have the knowledge, and don't have the will, and don't have this commitment, you're not going to get there. And so this is so important for us. Well, you might have only one person, say, in a community who actually gets there and stays there for the sake of the whole world.

[18:43]

You have to break this enchantment that's fallen on the world and that's the force of drowsiness, sleep, and torpor from which all of these horrible things come. So we might not all be able to get there and stay, but we do have to have this collective will and this quiet enthusiasm now. You can't fail for the world's end with men unwilling or men deceived. And so, I'm thinking of Don Damas's remarks he made in our community about the holy community. I was speaking with Reverend Father about it earlier this afternoon. He told us the story of a retreat master who went to a monastic community for the retreat, and he was deeply impressed with the monks he found there. And he told the abbot at the end of the retreat, Reverend Father, he says, I really am impressed.

[19:46]

You have some really holy monks here. And the abbot said, well, you know, I'm a bit disappointed. I was hoping you were going to say, not that you have some holy monks here, but that you have a holy community. And there's a difference. And Father Martin, in one of his articles about the relationship between Mount Saviour and Maria Laak, quoted practically the same thing from Dom Idelfon's Hervé again. He said, you want a holy community and not simply a community in which you have a lot of individuals starve. And there's a difference. You can have a community in which there's no one, you might say, who's a canonizable saint, but there's a kind of a collective holiness and a collective sharing of ideals and a collective vision that affects everyone. And that's so terribly important. You know, that here at Mount Savior or at Gethsemane, it does not be a question of a few

[20:49]

excellent, outstanding individuals who have really made the grade. But there's got to be this collective community experience in which we all share in the same kind of vision. And it's so beautiful at the end of this. They've sailed in the Dawn Treader as far as they possibly can. And then comes the moment when you have to leave the security of the boat, the collective security, and a small group of children from England get into a coracle, a little skin round boat, like in Robinson Crusoe, and to paddle, okay, towards what seems to be the shore. What they saw eastward, always towards the east, beyond the sun, was a range of mountains. It was so high that either they never saw the top of it or they forgot it. None of them remember seeing any sky in that direction.

[21:52]

And the mountains must really have been outside the world. For any mountain even a quarter of a twentieth of that height ought to have had ice and snow on them. But these were warm and green and full of forests and waterfalls of however high you looked. And suddenly there came a breeze from the east, the Holy Spirit, like the breeze over the chaos on the first day of creation, tossing the top of the wave into foamy shapes and ruffling the smooth water all around them. It lasted only a second or so, but what it brought them in that second, none of those three children will ever forget. It brought both a smell and a sound, a musical sound. And this is sort of like the eschatological reality, the little taste of the things of the kingdom that we have in prayer in our monastic life and love together.

[22:54]

It lasted only a second or so, but what it brought them in that second, none of those three children will ever forget. It brought both a smell and a sound, a musical sound. Edmund and Eustace would never talk about it afterwards. It was beyond conceptual clarity, beyond clear thinking words. Lucy could only say, it would break your heart. Why, said I, was it so sad? Sad? No solution. Well, I mean, this is the effect. When you've really tasted something, the tears come. And as I said before, your experience may be sometimes the gap between the fulfillment and where you are now, but you have this full assurance, you know, that the full reality is waiting for you. Was it sad? No, said Lucy. For no one in that boat doubted that they were seeing beyond the end of the world into Aslan's country, Christ's country.

[23:59]

At that moment, with a crunch, the boat ran aground. The water was too shallow now even for it. And this, Sadhvi Pacheka, is where I go alone. Okay, so there are individuals whose fingers of God have been put on them, who are designated to go beyond, like little flowering, and the saints, and some of the mystics, and people in our own communities too. Don't forget that. They did not even try to stop him, for everything now felt as if it had been fated or had happened before. And it had happened before, because the one who had gone before was Jesus, of course, in his paschal journey and the thought going beyond the limits of human possibility. So they helped him to lower his little coracle. Then he took off his ford, you know, he always cares for the ford, his kind of security properties, always brandishing and winning arguments that way.

[25:01]

So he took off his ford. I shall need it no more, he said. And what a joy it will be, you know, when we can take off our swords and all this kind of artificial props that we have and toss them away." And he flung it far away across the lizard sea, where it fell. It stood upright, but it held above the surface. Then he bade them goodbye, trying to be sad for their sakes. That's beautiful. But he was quivering with happiness. And then it gets mushy. Lucy, for the first and last time, you know, a typical girl, did what she had always wanted to do, taking him in her arms and caressing him. Then hastily he got into his coracle and took his paddle, and the current caught it, and away he went, very black against the lilies. But no lilies grew on the wave, it was a smooth green slope. The coracle went more and more quickly, and beautifully, and rushed up the wave's side.

[26:02]

For one split second they saw its shape and reaped its heaps on the very top. Then it vanished. And since that moment, no one can truly claim to have seen it reap its heaps of mouths. But my belief is that he came safe to Aslan's country and is alive there to this day. So the people in our communities elsewhere too are called to go beyond the utmost limits, and whose fidelity to that vocation has something to do with breaking the torpor and the enchantment into which the world has really, really fallen. And there can be people like that in our own community, and Alice is definitely going to be one of those persons. So, I want to say a few words now about the next section, which concerns Alice's relationships with her sisters. Because none of Alice's experience is going to take place apart from her life with and together with her sisters.

[27:14]

It's always a question of community. And when God raises up within the community a person who's remarkable for this or that talent, it's usually for the sake of the other people in the community. And so there's a list of Alice's virtues at this point, and the author calls her by a very special adjective. He says she's socialis. She's social. She's a woman who loves to be with other people. She gets along with other people. And here are some of the things he says. She's the consoler of all. Singulorum recreatrix, each individual she helped to pick up the pieces again. Recreatrix means someone who recreates, who brings things together again. So you're torn apart, but living with Alice and being with her kind of helps integrate things again.

[28:19]

I guess the N-word nowadays is brokenness. So Alice helps to bring the pieces together again. And she's compassionate, intimacy shared within her deepest being, okay? She compassionates those who are wretched. She patiently bears with infirmities of others and so forth. And so a beautiful, beautiful description of her. And I must say, where you don't have a real community, I don't think you have very much possibility of having real contemplatives, really monks. And I don't see how you can be a monk without being a contemplative, without being drawn deep into the mystery of Christ and having this as the object of a contemplation. It's not a Zen type of experience. I mean, what are we contemplating? It's not our navel or anything. You've got to be contemplating God as he's revealed himself in Christ. So here are a few texts that I love very much from the Hasidic tradition.

[29:22]

These holy Jews, who are very much like the Desert Fathers, and this text goes like this. When there is hatred and fear, and men hide their faces from one another, then heaven hides its face. But when men love each other and show their faces, then heaven shows its face. And the glory of God rests upon us. I think it's a terrific text. You'll find some people, you know, who go around making a show of hiding their faces, you know, no contact with their fellows. And these kind of people who are not only solitary in a bad sense in the community, but really isolated. Now, we don't go around burying our intimate hearts. You know, this is a terrible thing. We have to have a spiritual modesty. And we also have to have an enormous amount of elbow room in our communities.

[30:23]

And I think the lifestyle of our monastic communities gives us this. But you have to be open to the brethren, too, and not hide your faith. And when we can look at each other, in Zulu, I don't know any words of Zulu, but I saw a translation of something recently, and when they begin a conversation with each other, they'll begin by saying, I see you, and then you reply, and I see you. You recognize your presence to each other, and you see their face, their mode of expression. And so we, in our communities, have to be people who can see each other, and people whose faces are revealed to each other, who are open to each other. And then, if this is verified, then the glory of God can rest on the whole community. But if we hide our faces, then the glory of God cannot rest on that community.

[31:27]

And there's another thing about letters. If any of you know Hebrew, you know they depend mostly on the consonants for their text. And then around the consonants are all these little dots and squiggles that are the vowel sounds. And so the thing is that, why is it that in the Hebrew writing, One letter cannot touch another letter, because that's true in Hebrew. You don't have the letters connected with each other. Each one stands individually. And the answer is, because the letters stand for the union, communion we'd say, of Israel, And each letter has to stand not only together with the others, but as an individual. So you have to be uniquely yourself, as we are uniquely ourselves in Christ.

[32:30]

But then the question is, why is it, if you have a text, and one letter is missing? You can't use the text. And this refers to the Jewish custom. When they're writing, say, the Torah, a sacred text, and the scribe makes a mistake, you just can't erase it. The whole page is ruined. And you can't burn it, you can't throw it away. They have a special cabinet in the, or room in the synagogue, called the Genitza. And that's where they put these defective pages. So they have a certain holiness. But why, if one letter is missing, does it become useless? It's because the letters stand for the individuals in the union of Israel. And if there's one individual who's missing to the union of Israel, then the glory of God cannot rest upon the whole group, the whole of Israel. And I think that's just great for our communities. We have this wonderful setup where we can be uniquely ourselves and individual.

[33:37]

And at the same time, not one individual can be missing. Everyone has to be taken into account. And if any one of us is missing, then the glory of God cannot rest on this community. And I'm thinking of the account in St. Luke's Acts. of Pentecost. Remember the Pentecost outpouring of the Holy Spirit is preceded by the prayer of the holy women and the apostles and the disciples gathered in the upper room, some 120 of them. And St. Luke says they have but one heart and one mind. Now the Scripture scholars point out now that St. Luke is taking a lot of material from the Old Testament, And he's showing how the Old Testament, with these texts and these particular terms, how all that material is being fulfilled in the New Testament.

[34:38]

And there's a correspondence between Pentecost and the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. They're just a parallel text, which is very, very striking. But then they also point out that Saint Luke is apparently not using, strictly speaking, the biblical Old Testament text as the basis for his talking about Pentecost. What he's using is what they call the Targums on the Old Testament. So the Targum was the sacred text in Aramaic, but with additional words and explanatory terms worked into it. And so what St. Luke has done is taken a Targum, all about the giving of the law on Pentecost, with these interpolated words, and he's used some of these interpolated words in his Pentecost account. And where do you find in the Pentateuch they had one heart and one mind at Sinai, the Chosen People?

[35:42]

You don't, but you find it in the Targums. And the idea is, according to the rabbis, why is it that the Chosen People camped at the foot of Mount Sinai have to have one mind and one heart? Well, the answer is, because Moses cannot receive the law until the people are of one mind and one heart. God can't send the Holy Spirit until the disciples of Jesus are of one mind and one heart. Now, of course, you can't be of one mind and one heart unless the Holy Spirit has already caused. But they're praying, so obviously the Holy Spirit has been working and acting and bringing them together. But you can't have this plenary outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost until the praying community has this one mind and one heart. And this is enormously important, I think, for our communities. You don't find this great outpouring of the Holy Spirit, when you don't find the community that has one mind and one heart.

[36:45]

And where you find a community really united, you find any number of absolutely unique individuals, and the two seem to go together. And so a really common vision in common orientation and common experience are really going to be important if God is going to put a finger on individuals, raise them up within the community, and give them these deep graces of prayer. And this isn't, I don't mean extraordinary, Great, those are spectacular things. It's much better for community life if you don't have too many charismatic figures in the community. But nevertheless, this unique occasion of each individual and this collective experience of sharing in a common vision, having one mind and one heart, those two things just simply go together. And I remember when Father Timothy first became Mammoth.

[37:48]

He spoke about an article written by the sociologist, novelist, Andrew Greeley, and he had made some kind of a survey of religious life in the United States. Now, this was 20 years ago, and I never read the article myself, but according to Father Timothy, his conclusion was the major problem in religious communities was envy. Now, can you imagine? But the way Father Timothy explained it, in our democratic society, when someone becomes exceptional because of some particular excellence in his or her character or abilities, others who are less gifted tend to try to swat them down and bring them down to their own levels. And Andrew Greeley found this in religious communities, just the hordes of talented people who would leave religious life, finding it absolutely intolerable.

[38:52]

And so this is a terrible thing, and you find it sometimes in even monastic communities. I was just so horrified. I didn't find him much against femininity, but seeing a lot of professional religious who handed in for people like Fr. Lewis, he was the object of all kinds of really unjustified criticism. Well, there are a lot of justified criticism too, but you could just see people just handed in for him, and just wanted to bring him down, sort of to their own level. So all we have to do is love and respect the excellence that are in each other, and there's plenty of excellence in each of us. And that brings us more together as a community and makes it possible for us really to live collectively and individually the mystery of Christ at real depth. And you don't have to be a spectacular community for this. I remember reading, I remember that 70 years ago, Father John LaCrosse was the retreat master, and there was a family living on, you know, a half mile down the road.

[40:07]

Very poor families with a large number of kids, you know, seven or eight kids, and no bathing facilities, maybe not electricity. We helped them out as much as we could, but a very, very poor family. And a couple of the kids, the little boys, started coming to Gethsemane, and they struck up a lively friendship with Father John on the cross. Father James wasn't too happy because he'd find the kids wandering around the cloister after Compline and so forth, but at any rate, these kids really loved Father John on the cross. And so one day they asked Father John the Cross, please, to go and visit their family. They were so proud of their brothers and sisters, you know, all eight of them. And Father John the Cross said, you know I can't go outside the cloister. And they said, oh Father, come on, you can get in their car and you can drive. You can drive to our house, and you can park the car, and you don't have to come into the house, Father. We'll bring our brothers and sisters out to the car, dirt and all."

[41:11]

I mean, this is one of the most beautiful things, the pride and security that these little unwashed kids have. But they love each other, they're proud of each other, and they feel this real security, even though they know very well, you know, on a certain level, they're not all that spectacularly clean or anything. And I mean, this is like us too, you know. We're together, dirt and all, and we have to have this kind of pride. in a very, very good sense, not an intellectual pride, or dumb Father Demetrius. I remember on one occasion, I was speaking about Maria Lachen, and he used the expression, Superbia Lachensis, this wonderful, great tradition which could become an object of a certain amount of pride in the wrong sense.

[42:12]

So that's out. But I remember years ago reading an editorial, and I heard a correspondent, a defunct magazine, that was talking about celebration and it was in the context of the 4th of July. And this is the time of the horrible things happening in Vietnam and the country is so divided and you just couldn't celebrate the 4th of July in the way that we had done 60, 70, 80 years ago, in a very naive way perhaps. But at any rate, the editor was saying, you know, we cannot celebrate these days because in order to celebrate, You have to feel a certain security and pride in belonging to the group that's celebrating. And then he goes on to show how the country is so divided. And it's only where you find people who love to be together and are proud to be together and have a security for being together that you can really celebrate.

[43:12]

And I think this is true in our monastic communities too. We could really be able to celebrate the mystery of Christ unless we have this pride and this joy of being together in spite of all the obvious difficulties that there are. So I think when you have a group of men who live together, who've been called together by the love of Christ and really believe in their life together and accept this, in spite of the dirt and everything, you have a place where contemplation, where prayer becomes palpable, almost visible. And you have these individuals who are graced with great gifts of quiet, humble service and prayer. I guess I have two more minutes, but I have here the jacket of a record I love very much. I left the record in my hermitage.

[44:14]

If you can't see it, I'll pass it around. I'm ashamed to say I do love Picasso, and I like play, and I like a lot of contemporary art, and I really do, but I also like pictures that tell a story. Now this is a picture that tells a story, and it's painted back in 1895. It's called the Bays Water Omnibus. It's just like an early trolley. with a horse instead of an engine. And so you see two families in it. And one family you can hardly see, it's over here hidden in the corner. But here you see three people who are obviously society people, very well-dressed, going to some social event. And the mother is a fairly young woman still, but elegantly dressed and carrying flowers and so forth. Lovely face, but with a kind of insipid little smile on her face, you know, the sort of thing that you see in society, ladies or hostesses on airplane flights, a little bit artificial.

[45:27]

And then the husband, who's much older, is reading his newspaper. So he has his nose, he's completely oblivious of everyone else, and he's looking in an entirely different direction, and she's looking out this way. And the girl, the daughter of the family, who's, you know, doesn't know what to do, and she's obviously bored, and she's looking at a young woman who's coming into the omnibus, looking in an entirely different direction. So three members of this very well-screened society family, who are just not in connection with each other or with anything else, and then over here in the corner, You have this poor woman holding her baby, she's obviously a widow, she's dressed in black, and this little girl with a kind of a mucky dress, and her hair needs combing, and it's obvious that they're very poor, but you just have this circle of love The mother is holding the little baby in one hand and holding her hand around the little girl with the other.

[46:32]

And it's just like in the Guru-blessed trinity, the icon, where you see these three persons inclined towards each other in the circle of love and life and knowledge that's moving. between them. So a grubby little family, and I'm sure at that historical period that's an Irish family, and the woman is wearing black because she's lost her husband, you know, he's dead, she's a widow. So it's just very moving. So we have to be like that circle of love. Okay, that's enough until tomorrow. She's looking, but she's not seeing. No, no, no. There's a vacuum. Smiling. Smiling a little bit. Oh, I help him in the day. Lord, if you want to stand, look at this. There is a beautiful thing about Jehovah's Witnesses, that it starts in a certain sense not with the left hand facing, but it starts with the back.

[47:46]

And the right, and the heart, the Eucharistic table, and the art of prayer. Well, you think my smile is as simple as that? You think my smile is as simple as that? I have to be with dirty Irish in the corner, brother. Yeah, but unfortunately... I mostly wore them out. And they got worn out before the time of cassette recording, so they weren't transferred. Don't you have a collection of some of your family members? My family, I would tell you. Oh, thank you. From Basso to some prominent people. When he gave our retreat, I think it was an eight-day retreat, and three conferences there, and so that was 24 conferences.

[48:59]

And when I was father-master of the juniors, and I had to go someplace, and would be missing for one of their conferences, I always had to slap on the damnation. They got pure damnation. We had a primitive walk-through wall, in fact, I think it was called, but most of Father Lewis's conferences, after first day, got recorded on those, and the quality was good enough to be re-duplicated for sales with the cassettes. It says the light is down, so we'll get the lights off first. He gave some examples of that. Yeah, the only one we have, I wanted to ask if it would be possible to get a copy from there.

[50:01]

We have his compliment psalms, and that is just incomparably beautiful. And I think that's the only one on the psalms that we have, of course we have past breaks through scripture, and that he published I think before he came to Gethsemane. Then we have his wonderful book on sacred signs, which is just absolutely super. Oh, what a man. Thank you, Dr. Lister. You have a song? Oh, that would mean so much, because I was asked by one of the brethren to see if, well, now he wanted a personal copy of the Confirmed Psalms. That's under the knee of Ryan. He's just one of the holiest persons, just a magical, and you still have that in stock? Oh, that's great. You do? Oh, golly, golly, golly. Well, now, this was the little booklet that we have in the library. Oh, okay, that's what we've done with Fathador. Oh, no, we don't have anything like that.

[51:02]

So now, I don't think we have any tapes of them. And you know our Navas are just looking, looking for things like that. They respond so wonderfully well to things like the life of Anthony and every time I tell them something from Dhamma Gyan, it just drags home and comes alive for them. And then she caught on. We have a couple of things. Downstairs, we'll look in the storeroom. Oh, that would be wonderful.

[52:03]

Because our tapes of Dom Damascus, for his retreat, they're just worn out, mostly by myself, and they wore out before we even knew there were going to be cassette recordings that could be transferred to Dom. Well, I think we have to get a computer over here. There's a wonderful recording, too, by the way. No, no, he's English. Very, very, very good, but Catholic. And I convinced Catholic. Are you still watching the music and listening to her?

[53:08]

I'm afraid so. I'm afraid so. Even in your hermitage? Especially in my hermitage. All kinds of weird sounds come floating out from my hermitage. I have a record player. But also, Father, I got a cassette player with Father Timothy's permission. And I had a radio attachment on it. And so I asked Brother Christoph to take off the radio attachment, like a real hand radio, to prevent discriminants. And he said, well, you have to use the machine for a week or two, just to be sure it rotates. If I take out the radio and it has to be returned, well, we can't return it. And then I found out that the four radio stations that play nothing but great music 24 hours a day, and then I see it there. Father Timothy told me I could listen for radio stations.

[54:13]

Yeah, okay, perfect. And it's just, just dramatic music. And so, I'm afraid I hear the metrophone's off again. Not country music. I went from Memphis to Sodiaco. I had a rental car and I was trying to do something. Oh yes, they have a lot. I'm stationed at the library with one of the jazz musicians, and then one of the, one of the guitarists. But awesome. You're definitely right.

[54:45]

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