Okay, that's the way it took place. And I think it reminds me how influenced we are by the place and the times. And I think there was something that happened in the course of his life and in the life of the community at Weston, which really changed the whole energy and identity of that community. It was different here. And again, that's something that's important for you to see. There was Leo and John Hammond, there was Damasus and Martin Buller, and there was different trajectories both ways. And I think both were trying to provide a suitable monastic witness. And with different places, different things happen. And we do try and understand that. But again, we have to understand it with respect to how are we living out the spirit and the structures of the rule.

[01:07]

I'll go back to the original question of Justin there. Yeah, it's different when you don't have a congregation and a history that you're in this tradition. And for whatever else, you know, it had Had Maria Locke made a foundation, let's say, back in 1932 here, and then sent a bunch of mucks over, it would have been very, very different. That wasn't the case. And I think what we have is something very different, and it's good. It has a stamp that's very distinctive. It's very unique. Oh yeah, well, in chapter 17, 18, Well, of course, at the end of the, you know, our fathers did all these Psalms in one day, and here we are just fumbling to get them done in a week.

[02:40]

Well, Benedict, you know, was aware of the fact, and this is, again, this is the historian speaking, every generation looks back on the previous generations and says, boy, they really lived a life. It isn't so. Yeah, there were some people who were living very credibly and authentically, other people were not, or were always in need of reform. I mean, there have been decadent monks in every generation. There have been monasteries that have lived a more primitive type of monasticism with great zeal, others less so. But I think what Benedict wanted and what has taken place, is enough flexibility and pliancy to meet the needs of this particular place. One size doesn't fit all, and you just have to have a genuine appreciation for what we are receiving, that's the whole idea of the tradition, fathering, from the people before us, and

[03:55]

how it best fits the needs of the church. You know, again, we're back to the signs of the times. We have to discern what do we need right now. You know, if someone says, well, we don't need the office. Well, obviously you should go somewhere else because that's a given and it's what we have. How we say the office, how we make it an effective instrument of our witness is the key. And that's liable to some change, adaptation, fine-tuning, and it's not for the purpose of, okay, I'm going to impose my agenda, or we're just going to, you know, take away some of these things that are just ridiculous. Hymns, we don't need hymns. Hymns have been there from the start. We're going to have hymns, brother. The hymns you take me, but we're going to have them. I think you get the sense, you know, and Benedict wants us to be able to talk about, wants the abbot to be able to say, okay, this fits us, this doesn't.

[05:04]

And we have to respect the fact, okay, that congregation doesn't do it, but that's congregation, we're different. We're coming up to about an hour, so maybe we can continue this evening, certainly. Same way? Okay. Thank you for your attention and contribution. Tools for Good Living. This is his latest, and as usual, it's very meaty. But I think this could be somewhat relevant for us. It becomes increasingly obvious as the years pass that one of our prime responsibilities to the other members of our community is the giving of good example. It is a case not of flashing our virtues around but simply of maintaining our steady fidelity to conscience and to the ordinary exercises by which the common life is sustained.

[06:07]

liturgy, prayer, common work, sociability, and the other staples of cenobitic existence. This is really the last shot you all have, so take advantage of it. Again, I thought we might review a little bit what we did. We went through prayer, and then obedience, silence and humility. We went through the virtues and then vows going into consecrated celibacy, poverty and stability. We talked about both work and hospitality and tomorrow I intend to talk about conversatio in the context of community. So, your turn. Oh, yeah, I mean, if you want to be careful what you pray for.

[07:20]

But I want to give you a chance to also just commentary or clarification. I mean, it's not just questions. If there are things that still seem ambiguous or It wasn't quite clear. I'd be happy to try and clarify things. I can give you, I actually, for some of these, I actually include a few questions on them, so I might do that. Let's see. How am I nurtured in my spiritual life through the public prayer of my community?

[08:32]

What happens to us in the office? One, two. You know, of course, it's the thing I hear all the time. What do I get out of mass? Famous adolescent wine. And you can't expect them to really absorb the retort. Give yourself over to the mass and you'll be surprised.

[09:36]

You know, you have to give it little dollops that are different. But that's the give yourself over to the office. give yourself over to the fact that there is something about this particular form of prayer and generations of people who have done it which has allowed the Lord to enter the deepest part of our heart and work on it. And part of it is the Psalms, part of it is just our being present with the right attitude to receive the word as it comes to us. And I do think a good part of the paschal mystery becomes more obvious just going through the office day after day, year after year. Now again, I look at my own life and I can just see how Jejuna notion I had coming in with respect to the office.

[10:41]

I mean, I had some zeal, I suppose, and some fervor, I had the good sense to ask people why they kept on going to this office and they answered quite honestly that they derived a great deal of benefit from it, but it takes a while. It takes time. And like so much else in monastic life, It's the proverbial, you know, water working on the stone. It does work. But I do think, you know, there's an aspect there of wanting to do it right. We talked about perfectionist, and there's an aesthetic aspect. I don't want to knock musicians either, but you know, you have some people, it's all about getting it right, exactly, you know, the way we do it, as provided in the customary.

[11:43]

And that becomes the be-all and the end-all, and that's not it. I mean, it's important that we do it with a seriousness of reverence, a gravitas, it's important that we have good readers, we have good cantors, it's important that the translations are done well, the psalms are marked out well, but That's just setting the groundwork for it. I don't know.

[13:17]

I don't know. As proverbial as it is, it's so true. It's in the office where we experience the truth about life and community.

[14:18]

If there are tensions in the community, boy, they will come up in the office. Whether it's the pace, recitation, frustrations, we have, they're there. and uh... how we deal with them in the vital again we're all in this together we we we try and respect one another and we we develop this capacity i've done it over the years you know the the irritants and there we all have our irritants poor musicians you know they they hear people off key uh... for me it's it's actually the readers you know i i just can't stomach people who come up cold and expect they're going to do the reading, and it's going to be nice. And you have to prepare, you have to take time, you have to have an appreciation for the Word of God. But that's my expectation, and I can't impose that on everyone. I just, I have to put up with the weaknesses of body and behavior of my brothers, and I do that, and when I really do it, it's amazing how fertile the Word can be.

[15:23]

and really get hung up on how we didn't get that pronunciation right. You know, we didn't have any comments on celibacy, all types of things there. You know, we could just go on and on in terms of... What is a celibate witness today?

[16:26]

How do I see myself as celibate? And when did I see myself as celibate? those of you who've experienced the people who left places like Elmira, and there were a lot of them, and other, you know, some weeks it was just, oh, there goes all this, they're all going, they're gonna get married, hmm, they've been here 5, 10, 15 years, you know, that was, it was something we never really processed as we should have, but it was a very sad commentary on how well we had internalized celibate chastity as a gift. Which brings my point, I think you have to have people who certainly live celibacy but also can talk about it in a comfortable way from the point of view, I gave you that quote from David Moreland, that

[17:38]

convinces people, you know, we're not some type of people who just cannot in any way be able to engage individuals as a single person, as someone who's a wannabe failure for marriage. We are celibates. We're called to celibacy. How do we see ourselves advancing in that state? How do we see ourselves giving an effective expression of that? I suppose regular, but I use a lot of those. I don't really know the path. I mean, I don't... You know, I think the thing that I remember a lot about was... I think that's what it's all about.

[18:46]

Well, like you say, you are not seen as a part of the body of the MCM, but the bits and pieces of the body of the MCM. You [...] are not seen as a part of the body of the MCM, but the bits and pieces of the Last year, when I was born, we had to go up to the floor, and we had to keep on going for a week, so much of the time. I'm a big boy. I certainly can't imagine living in a lot of pain, but I look forward twice a week to these things. I don't even have the sense about pain. See, I would hope that that person who was here would have heard that from him.

[20:05]

Because it would have been, I think, a very valid and authentic response to what he was asking. And that's what we have to give. Life brings love to my heart. The language of the Auld and Early Scottish is the English language of contact, contact, contact, and I believe that Auld and Early Scottish will make that when we evolve further.

[21:09]

There are numerous backdrops and analogues and formations. One, I don't know if you remember, but it's a place where you can feel a lot of what is real life and where you can feel a lot of energy, a lot of reality, a lot of facts. I don't know. I don't know. I found it very helpful, because she talks a lot about what it's like to be a woman, and I never knew much about it until I read it in her own head. And so, I knew all the women on it now, and I was thrilled to be a part of it, and hearing that story,

[22:19]

Well, first a clarification, when I said processing things, I was referring to celibacy. In other words, we needed to process how these people leaving and getting married perhaps are connected with our understanding of celibacy and how we are forming people in that. It's not that every time someone leaves, you have to sit down and have a big session and let's really examine why this took place. You can't do that. The notion that psychology is certainly a helper in this is something almost every formator, any superior, would say, yes. But we have to avoid the, I think, the trap of, okay, we can frame it all. with respect to psychology, and we understand now what intimacy is, and we know boundaries, we've got all the lexicon of the words, and we've got the basic idea of what we do, what we don't do.

[23:29]

Those are tools we take to then look at the call and the charism of celibacy, and see how it is connected with our intimacy with Jesus, and how it is a response, an ongoing response to this call. This lived in faith, and it has both the element of sacrifice and the element of love. I mean, it's so much broader than what we discovered was our terrible inadequacies with respect to formation. those things needed to be remedied but you know we we didn't have I think the problem was not so much an inadequate psychology of celibacy as it was a theology of celibacy Even though that's true, but how do I live that?

[24:38]

How do I live that? There's a concept of where you live on nature. How do you come from that? And what my vision was, if I can be impressed with who I am as a person, that's what I believe. And I stand by that. One can never be part of a group, even when they think they're living in a rush. I have. I have done a lot of reading on the front of the river, and the middle of the river, I find that river, that deeper and deeper and deeper.

[26:04]

The setting up of the building, that's what we've got on it. Those are coming over. I mean, what is wrong with you? You don't stop, you don't stop being a structure. You're a structure. It's a problem. And we don't think that we're here to allow beings to repeat. So all you have to do is stop being a structure. It's not meaning everyone has to repeat. Well, it's living honestly. It's living with humility, but it's also, you know, back to, you've got to have a person in your life who you are completely open and honest with, because all the

[27:17]

the different hurdles that will be there for a person. Young, old, heterosexual, homosexual, with respect to living a celibacy, they will come. And if you say they haven't come yet, or you don't experience them, then you're living in a different universe. But you have to be able to share those, and share your failures, too, and learn from them. And not in a way that, you know, I can go back to, I mean, talk about craziness, you know, some of the things that took place in the 60s and 70s, the Third Way and all that, it was just, you know, you looked around, where are these people going? Fortunately, there were enough sane people who kept in place the fact that, yes, this is a vow that we should take seriously, and it is a vow that can only be understood as part of a charism that's given to us, not some rule that is foisted upon us, you know, to try to keep us in place.

[28:22]

But the freedom that is part of being a celibate is something we don't talk about enough. the freedom to love so many people and love them in a particular way that communicates Christ to them. I would, you know, I've tried to cast silence in a positive way.

[29:27]

I'd say secrecy and shame, those are the things you should avoid. And God knows we've had enough of that. And, you know, we talk about Catholic guilt. Well, I mean, at a certain point, we have to own up responsibility for being a celibate, being a sexual being. I think you really have seen a completely different change in the atmosphere. If you go back to the Catholicism, especially in this country, I can imagine most of the people who came in here in the 1950s and 60s were coming out of that Irish Catholic, half Jansenist world where it was just so absolutely out of the question. talk about, raise the issue of sexuality, speak of it, you know, and you were supposed to appeal guilty.

[30:29]

I mean, if you would, the only time you ever used the word masturbation was in the confessional. I think that there had to be something that people sensed was not quite right about that, and we just kept on going. And we didn't deal with it adequately, as I hope I pointed out in my conference, in formation. And now, at least, we can do that. And sad to say, now we have to do it because we're held accountable by all these organizations that have been watching the church after the sexual abuse crisis. But there are two. I think the sexual abuse crisis was the Holy Spirit speaking in high volume about what needed to be done. Many, many years ago we had a workshop here with Reena, a sister of mine, who was involved in the formation, and a friend of mine, Matthews, a friend of mine, and another friend of mine, Matthew, from Germany, and they were all in the workshop.

[31:40]

And one single day on Christmas, how important it was for the novices to have a meaningful relationship with seminarians. And it looks to Mary Magdalene. And he says, you are asking something that I cannot afford as a merry man. I think one must be very careful that this meaningful relationship will end up with intercourse, and they cannot tell who's the lover.

[32:44]

But what happened is that for so long, the Salafist era meant that I always found it sad, you know, that people think that because you are celibate, that you are not using all of your faculties. I said, I find that sex is a real, it's an option. You know, you want to go in for a nude, and it didn't really, I found that, you know, you're saying no to one thing because you want to have one thing.

[33:45]

And there's a skill involved in relating to others as a celibate. And we pick that up, and we have to have models. I mean, I don't know where I would have been without having some models of celibate witness. And, you know, it's not, again, something that you're reading off a script, but you have a sense of what to do. And, of course, I go back again You know, prayer is essential. If you're not going to be a person of prayer, and you expect to be a celibate, just let it go. Because you have to have it. But yeah, that memory, believe me, there was a lot of that going on at a certain time. And it was pretty foolish. And it was amazing how really, I mean, it's one thing to be underdeveloped, but how we simply were bankrupt with respect to our understanding.

[34:55]

And, you know, go back to the Fathers in the Desert again, the Apotegmena, go back to Avigris, they had it, they knew what was happening, and they talked about it. We all need one of those. We all need one of those. We all need one of those. He was so suppressed in damage that he wasn't there to help him or anything. I've faced it in a number of all of that, even if our basic sense of God is gone, but it's as deep or as palpable as corruption.

[36:15]

Despite the times I tried, despite it, you know, I don't think that, still, it could never satisfy. Yeah, what an advance that was to have the head of our church give us this incredibly rich and deep foundation for what we needed. kind of a roadmap for that this is incorporating all the modern psychology and understanding of anthropology, what we do.

[37:19]

But he takes some plights when he starts. Thank you very much. It might be around 5 to 5, you know, when you're sitting in the house.

[38:57]

I might be in a better room now. He made me run a lot of feet. [...] He made me run a lot of feet And this is what I'll do. He told me that it took a great deal of planning for him to figure out how he wanted to do it.

[40:26]

Very nice. He talked about it a long time. [...] He talked about it a long You know, I think what you just described from Dr. Knocker's whole presentation is very similar to what was your gift from the Damascus.

[41:40]

You know, I think any time people came across Willa Damasis, there was this sense they had of there was something beyond he was taking us to. You know, he didn't even have to be talking about the transfiguration of the Basel mystery, but you sense that, yeah, you're going to look to this other horizon. And, you know, we can use, as I did, you know, there's an eschatological motive for celibacy, there's an eschatological motive for poverty, but there's an eschatological motive just for, you know, looking at this place and seeing the people. The people should point you beyond. And that's not a pie-in-the-sky thing, it's this beyond that comes from this deep interior pondering of how God is working within us and in this world. And, you know, it was striking, you know, I was thinking of all the people who were attracted here, and there were so many. And, you know, what's happening now to a lot of our communities, lay people coming, lots of outlays, you know, you were doing that before most other people were doing it.

[42:45]

And I think a good part of how that got started was precisely, you know, the personal magnetism of Adamus. But he had to have a place where people would come. I mean, you didn't go to the Biltmore in New York City, because you liked the Biltmore, and Floyd Ammons was there that Saturday night. But when he was here at a place, there was a whole different character to that. And again, the whole notion of what monasticism does, if you would ask what monasticism does in this country, let's say, a hundred years ago, Everyone was going out. People were going out to the schools. People were going out into the parishes. People were going out doing mission work, making foundations. Okay, and that was in response to a need, but now they'll come to us. And they want to discover something that's very dear to them, you know, this mystery of God at work.

[43:52]

Other points to go over or bring up? And, you know, I know in my own practice, I'm older than that. You know, I mean, I'm very well... I know the theological things. and I can, you know, I can say, well, it's a strategy or a book, or I can, you know, pull out the attention, or I'll listen to a play, or I'll listen to a song, [...] or I'll listen to a song

[45:20]

Well, I think it has to be personal, because all prayer is very personal. And I get the same thing in spiritual direction. When I was a young monk in San Anselmo, I came across a couple of English monks who I really enjoyed very much. One was very much into the Jesus Prayer. I mean, it's hard for me to think, I was what, 23 years old? I'd never heard of the Jesus Prayer. and he was very good and he said use it and I did and not that you know I expected some magic to take place but I just somehow I had a sense that this was important and I I've continued to use that as my means whenever there's distraction that brings me back to the senator brings me back home and I Saying it is just the restart button, and it puts me in the right place, it puts me in the presence of Jesus. It makes me mindful of my sinfulness, which I think we have to do.

[46:28]

If you're going to be praying, that has to be before you always. I often think, you know, compunction is such an important dimension for Benedict in our personal prayer, and that helps me be mindful of my prayer of compunction, praying for my own sinfulness. And, you know, kind of translate what I said about Abbot Chapman, you know, pray as we can. If occasionally I'm just, I am beat and I'm tired, I just, you know, even with drowsiness, give it over, and stay, if you have to start nodding, and then let the Lord receive that. But I think it's the faithfulness, the underlying temptation for the distraction, which is something we need to recognize, is give it up. And if we go that route, everything just erodes very quickly.

[47:29]

Oh, there you are, Luxio again, huh? No more successful this morning than it was yesterday morning. How long are you going to do this? You just have to believe. Okay, I'll stay with it. And again, I know now the fruits. But when I was first really struggling with that, I remember keeping in mind these people who did Luxio and it made a difference. It made a difference. We need examples. But at least for me, in the distraction business, the pieces probably didn't get done in time. But any other comments, questions? I knew some of you guys three years ago from the bottom of my heart that the person that you're talking about is one of the first ones to know, and I'm really more than happy to allow you to know that.

[49:01]

But, um, you're a lot of people, and I appreciate you talking to me about this. And, you know, I don't necessarily mean to talk about having any potential, but I've experienced it all the time, and sometimes, You and I are friends, and we have been through a lot. That's what I was saying. I remember we had a few times where I'd go to college, and then I'd go back, and after a while, I'd fall in love with her, and I'd stay with her, and I'd fall in love with her, and I'd start thinking about how I would talk to her. It was lovely. I was thinking about it, but it was holding me back. I wasn't really aware of it at the time. I was thinking about it before I finally figured it out, but I didn't really know what to do with it.

[50:03]

I didn't know what I was saying. So I guess I had to distract myself from it. I had to get rid of the stigma. And we know what works at a certain stage in our life and what doesn't work. And we also have to be able to handle, you know, the memory starts doing funny things at certain ages and you have to be able to work with that too. And energy levels and all these things. Again, we have to measure what we can do best. And, you know, if we've been

[51:05]

I know one Trappist who, when he got to the infirmary, he just realized, you know, trying to do 45 minutes of lecture was stupid because he was nodding off at the 15, 20 minutes. Okay, just do 15 minutes in four different breaks during the day and that worked out well for him. So you adjust. Okay, I think we're, yeah, so. Thank you. We'll gather in the morning. And again, if any other questions or comments, I'm still around. So we'll pray the Holy Spirit will see us through. Thank you. And this then is the good zeal which monks must foster with fervent love. They should try each to be the first to show respect to the other. Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may he bring us all together to everlasting life.

[52:14]

As he comes to the end of his rule, Benedict exhorts the monks to realize that with all of their individual quirks and differences of body and behavior, they will be saved, not singly or separately, but all together. There's no question that at the culmination of his rule, Benedict wants to make a case for the absolute centrality of community life. And for the increasing individualism of recent generations, the communal character of celibatic monasticism, of which we are part, may not speak with any particular relevance. But certainly, we have to recognize the need for community today. It's an entryway symbol for understanding how we can be transformed through the structures of our common life and through the pastoral mystery. So we might just examine how this notion of community has been at work in our church, and certainly we have to acknowledge that the

[53:24]

origin of the whole monastic ideal is there in Acts chapter 2 and chapter 4, that first community of Christ's followers sharing their goods in common, gathering each day to worship and having their meals together. That model certainly was operative for especially Saint Basil and Saint Augustine insisting, as they did too, on the primacy of charity when living together. In fact, there's one constant coordinate of the first century's monastic literature on how community functions. It is fraternal law, caritas. That's especially the case in the last nine chapters of the Rule, Well, we have this distillation by Benedict of the fragile relationship between individual and the community and how it needs to be kept in balance by the equilibrium of love. Much like the demands of Caritas, the capacity to fully appreciate the fruits of community life is only going to be accomplished over time and with difficulty.

[54:36]

I know in my own monastic life the idea of community It seems to be the driving attraction of new members seeking to enter, and that's understandable, but also the source of the greatest disillusionment for those who come to realize, as we all inevitably do, that every Christian community and monastic community is marked by sinfulness as well as saintliness. In studying monastic history, I've been struck by how much of the energy of people in community is taken up with that struggle. You know, you look at a place like Mount Savior, for the years especially, struggling to cope with the real threat of economic failure, dealing with overwork in ways too many to count, and yet the community was the life raft for the people, and the overriding force that conveyed the true identity and mission of the place. I question how effective that is today in any of our communities.

[55:44]

If we look around, you know, we have our black humor, but a very honest assessment we can all make, we would not choose the people to spend the rest of our life with if we had a free choice in our community, but God has placed us with them, and we have to have the surety to know that there's a reason for that. They're the agents he wants to work for our salvation. So there's a special quality to this and I think the quality that we see in the monastic tradition is very similar to one that is spelled out by Jean Vanier. I'm sure some of you are familiar with the L'Arche communities which he is the founder. The communities for the physically and emotionally disabled. And this is how Vanier describes this type of community. Community is a terrible place in the sense that it is a place where our limitations and egotism are most clearly manifested.

[56:50]

While we are alone, we believe we can love everyone. When we begin to live full-time with others, we discover our poverty and weaknesses, our inability to get on with people, our affective or sexual disturbances, our frustrations and jealousies. However, if community is the place that brings a painful revelation of our limitations, weaknesses and darkness, it's also a place where we are accepted, accepted with our frailty as well as our ability. In this sense, community can gradually become the place of our liberation. the place where we discover our deepest wound and accept it, the place where we can be ourselves without fear or constraint. I think that has an uncanny resonance with monastic community life, because we know that the mutual trust so essential for living out community life is born of each day's forgiveness and re-acceptance of our frailty and our patchy lives.

[57:59]

Again, Saint Benedict tells us community life is supposed to lead us to everlasting life. But that path can only lead through relationships. It's the fundamental relationship between ourselves and God and then the whole chain of human relationships that flow from this primary one. We also know that a relationship can only be truly authentic and stable when it's founded on an acceptance of our limitedness, even our darker side. It's a given that every human interaction, perhaps especially those that are shaped in the hothouse human environment of religious community, is going to be marked by some friction. That's usually where God's grace is at work, where there is some rubbing together. I think one of the biggest temptations for the well-meaning aspirants to our communities is to pretend that friction, that tensions and differences do not exist, or we mask the truth of that with polite facades.

[59:07]

At worst, that's a type of collective arrogance that places us above the level of everyday grace. At best, it's an unconscious refusal or denial to admit the truth of original sin and how it emerges from the fabric of our daily existence. Real truth-telling requires one to admit that the truth of community life can be a very messy business. As one of my conferences went to remark when praying Psalm 133, when Oral runs down upon the collar of your robes, that's pretty messy. One other element that I want to mention in passing, and I made reference to it, is how fraternal correction, especially when it's connected with seeking the common good, is vital in this process. You know, in his disciplinary code, Benedict lays out a formula for disciplining wayward monks, very similar to what one encounters in Scripture in Matthew 18, 15-16.

[60:11]

the monk should first be corrected privately by senior monks. If he fails to bring about an amendment, then there's a public rebuke, and failing that, Benedict has this process of involving the whole community. The abbot, the senior monks, the sempecte, the predicate soul, went over the soul of the monk, and then the entire community is aware of what these sanctions are in terms of exclusion, but then are praying most earnestly for the reform of the recalcitrant monk. I mean, it's just, one of the books I'm reading in the library is Enlightened Monks. It's about monks at the time of the Enlightenment, and there's a whole section there on monastic prisons. they were real, but I didn't realize at the time, you know, this is the 18th century, how Jean Mabillon was especially, people were left in prison cells with no reading, no contact with anyone, it was a perfect, you know, as what we see happens in solitary in prisons today, it's a surefire way to have them

[61:26]

you know, lose all hope. So, Benedict doesn't want that. He wants this person to be able to have a change of heart. He wants the person to experience the support of the community. And that's why he gives us these rituals. But we have to be open to the fact that the community is going to help us. The Ortegas of Gaza has a wonderful line, let the one who is admonished be convinced of the charity and the experience of the one who censures. If one is disturbed at being blamed for the passion, this is a sign that he obeyed it willingly. To accept the correction without anger proves that one served the passion unknowingly. I mean, the psychology of the ancient monastic elders is incredible. Benedict also, in the arranging the rule certainly had an understanding of human nature.

[62:27]

And he knew, for example, that the greatest threat to the harmony of the community was murmuring. That's very apparent in Chapter 4, when he lists this long roster of instruments and good works that include not grumbling or speaking ill of others, not nursing a grudge. He was on to passive-aggressive behavior. And he could distinguish between the viewpoint or criticism that was pressed with humility, that's the justifiable grumbling of chapter 41, and the chronic complaint. Again, you know, you read, it is good to read the Latin, you know, that word murmuratio, you know exactly what it's connoting. You know, it's this heavy and dispirited heart. And he uses it, I think it's 12 times in the rule, and in every case it's admonitory. You think of, you know, the people in the exodus going through the desert, it's the constant whine.

[63:38]

The Pharisees and scribes in the gospel are constantly murmuring against Jesus. What the murmur does is upset the rhythm of fraternal correction by removing rituals of acknowledgement of sin and heath. You know, it's the perfect example of how we're examining the gospel splinter in the other's eye without engaging the more demanding challenge of examining the being on which we sit. And it really plays into splintering the common good, and I'd just like to quote, you know, again, Michael Casey has this keen sense of what happens, and this is how he describes the murmurers. They are locked into their present discomfort and short-sightedly seek to find culprits for their existential misery." That's a great line. Culprits for our existential misery. To live like this is to live a falsehood. Its only effect will be to generate more pain, not only for ourselves, as the murmur is feeling the pain, but also for those around us who are foolish enough to take our complaints seriously.

[64:49]

and I mean, mea culpa, where we, you know, seriously take the murmurer's complaints, this is not just a viable criticism, we're contributing to the erosion of the common good. The opposite of that is the peace of the community. And, you know, this is, again, it's a hallmark of the rule. Benedict is noting the priority of peace when he speaks, for example, on the distribution of goods, says that Everyone should respect and accept the differences of need within the community so that all the members will live in peace. And I think that's closely aligned with the respect for persons and their individual differences. Certainly, that's a special responsibility of the superior. And it needs to be communicated to the guest in a very clear fashion. I think it's clearly conveyed again in chapter 4, where monks are warned not to give a hollow greeting of peace, and to make peace with a fellow community member before the sun goes down.

[65:56]

You know, we can't just impose this, or, you know, we do it every day in the liturgy, so that's fine. I think, again, the divine office is to surefire test. We're praying the Psalms each day. These Psalms articulate pain and conflict. But they also conclude by acknowledging our need for healing and harmony. And I think Benedict clearly wants us again to go back to the person of Christ. Again, we call, as we did before again, defer nothing whatsoever to Christ. And then defer nothing whatsoever to the work of God. The wisdom of centuries of lived communal life is that the daily structure of community life is an inherent safeguard to keep our gaze fixed on Christ. Again, the purpose of community life is not conformity or uniformity, but it's harmony, which is what we find in Pax.

[67:00]

There's also a special vowel that I think is intimately tied to this bond of community, and in Latin is called conversatio morum sumorum. A lot of ink has been spilled by scholars on the best way to unpack the meaning of this term. But I think the translators of RB 1980 captured its essence when they rendered it as fidelity to the monastic way of life. Somehow, it's the promise to accept the way of life, the monasticity of the community of people we're entering. Again, Cayce has a great definition, too. He says, Conversatio is the integrity of monastic life, the sum of its observances, everything that gives expression to the specificity of the monk's vocation. It is the all-purpose vow. But I think, too, Benedict would attach this vow to that famous line in chapter 72,

[68:02]

accepting the weaknesses of body and behavior of one's fellow community members. I don't know if people are familiar with Bernard Lonergan. He was a Jesuit theologian who spoke on a lot of things. He was an expert on Thomas, but he has a great penchant for this notion of conversion, and he puts it in these words. He says, conversion is existential, intensely personal, utterly intimate. But it is not so private as to be solitary. It can and should happen to many, and they can form a community to sustain one another in their self-transformation and to help one another in fulfilling the promise of their new life. Finally, what can become communal can become historical. It can pass from one generation to another. It can adapt to changing circumstances, confront new situations, survive into a different age, flourish in another period or epoch.

[69:06]

And I would hold that Lonergan has given us a wonderful summary of monastic conversatio. We think, too, a biblical image, Paul, the Galatians, bearing one of those burdens. I think that's done especially in conversatio through the virtue of patience, which is also a key to understanding Benedictine spirituality. Remember in the rule, at the end of the prologue, we're going to deserve to share in Christ's kingdom only if per pacientissime, through patience, the greatest patience, we share in the sufferings of Christ. Now something of a coda for this, at the end of the rule in chapter 72, community members are to support pacientissime, one another's weaknesses of body or behavior. Then goes Gregory the Great called patience the root and guardian of all the virtues and

[70:13]

the one striving to be perfect, can't be impatient with the imperfection of his neighbor. You know, this patience, it doesn't pass on the evil to others, it absorbs the evil. You know, and we were familiar, of course, with the Gandhian and Martin Luther King notion of nonviolent civil resistance. That's at the heart of the rule, this willingness to sustain even injustice for the sake of what we know is greater good and to do it in solidarity with the Christ who did the same in his passion. An area of community life where that patience is most tested is encountered in the sick and the elderly. Recall how for Benedict the care of the sick like the care of the guest is given a privileged place where both the stranger and the sick are to be seen and to be served as Christ.

[71:14]

But that care is not exclusively one way. The sick are exhorted to not be excessive in their demands. And I think the same sensitivity we see towards the elderly and the very young in chapter 37. Those who are most vulnerable in the community are given the most protection by the rule, and given the ministry of presence by other community members. Certainly, I mean, this is eminently practical. Today, we know the crisis of health care in our country, we know the reality of increasingly aging populations, and I think, you know, we can see how a monastery can be a very effective witness here. For one, you know, our care is personalized, and you certainly do that here at Mount Sapien. Other community members are the ones who are giving their time and effort. In larger monastic communities, where you have extensive infirmaries, there's still not, for the most part, the impersonal, sanitized care that's so prevalent in other institutions.

[72:25]

We want to make every effort to avoid separating the sick and elderly from the rest of the community. We do that well, and I think it's important that they are a part of the community. There's the great Psalm 71, cast me not off my old age, as my strength fails, forsake me not. And that reminds us of the precariousness of our own life. Years ago, there was a remark made by elderly monk to a guest. The guest says, what motivates you to get up and do all this each day? And he says, I get up each day learning better how to die. Boy, that guest was flummoxed. But it captures the essence of what makes monastic life different from others. It also speaks a language that we were hinting about last night, looking beyond. We will see the life beyond this line.

[73:30]

And, you know, the monastery is both the place where we spend our earthly life and the place where we enter eternal life. And the whole of our monastic probation should be lived in accordance with this understanding of the Paschal Mystery. I think much of the real spiritual pedagogy of our life needs to incorporate that. And that leads me to a brief mention of all the A-words. Asceticism. I think traditional ascetical practices of monastic life have always been present here. That's good. Fasting, keeping vigils, practicing some mortification. We know what happened, a lot of monasteries just did away wholesale with a lot of these practices and it didn't have the best consequences I think. Which is not to say that asceticism should be the be all and end all.

[74:36]

It's all about the motivation. We can become addicted to asceticism as well and it can lead us nowhere. Charles Leclerc has a great line, he writes to practice a certain type of asceticism or not is important only in function of the inner freedom that results from it. I think the best norm to assess that is its fruit. Does it free ourselves from the hold of evil? Does it bring us closer to Christ? I think early monasticism showed us the futility of competition and practices of personal renunciation. You know, Brother X is having only two loaves, I'm going to have only one, or one half. That's just not part of what we do. But there's, I think, an asceticism we fail to notice. And, you know, it is community life. community becomes the spiritual reality check for our personal agendas and projects.

[75:42]

You know, we're so preoccupied with those things we need to come up against the very chastening climate of community life. You know, the recurring teaching of the monastic elders has been to keep us from wandering outside the corral. And that's just not physically, it's in our mind we wander. And, you know, we have to depend upon people in the community to just be daily reminders of giving up something of origin. Great line, Kathleen Norris says, living in community is all the asceticism you need. And really, there's a lot of truth to that. Part of that experience, though, is disappointment in the expectations we have of the monastery. And we all do. We enter with our expectations. I think it's analogous to the experience we see with spouses, with friends.

[76:49]

We have an overly idealized model of community, and it falls short of the hopes we have for it. some of the paragons of virtue we came in looking at, admiring, have clay feet. It's precisely at this time, I think, that we have to look to the underlying grace of community. And it's a grace that flows directly from the communitarian contact with human frail. We see it, you know, there was just a few weeks ago one of the priests My senior, who was vocation director at Diocese, had an accusation approved to be apparently true, sexual abuse. And again, it was, we've all gone through this. But there, but for the grace of God, go I. And you recognize people, people are struggling.

[77:51]

And we're all struggling. We need one another. I think this is where I found for myself looking to the older members of the community is helpful. It seems to me that our foibles and failings get accentuated as we age. And we know how that works. Grandparents do it all the time. The grandparents indulge and mentor the grandchildren with a wisdom that they didn't have when they were parents. And the same works in monastic life. It seems to me that that's capsulized very well in that last instrument of good work to never lose hope in God's mercy. Members of the community have to be convinced, if we are led all together to everlasting life, that this is the hope. It's the hope we share.

[78:54]

We don't live next to people in community, we live with people in community. And we do that until death. You know, once I had a wedding about a year ago and we were going through the rehearsal and I always go through the vows the night before and of course the reaction of the group until death was part you could just see kind of blanched, never really get home. And afterwards, I commented, and he said, yeah, would you say that? And I said, I did! And I meant it, I'm coming to mean it, and it takes a whole lifetime to come to mean it, but you have to take it at face value, it means just that, till death. And on that point, I think, you know, there's something in the ritual of solemn confession, really is very heartening for this, you know, we were there, sustain me, oh Lord, as you have promised, that I may live and don't disappoint me in my hope.

[79:59]

And there's added emotion, you know, we make the profession, we repeat it three times, and we see all the other professor members do it. My particular community has a ritual where at the funeral of a confrere, at the end of the mass, we all gather around the coffin and we sing the Sushite. It's just very moving. And you know, it always strikes me, this perseverance in the monastery, that's when I registered. Just, yeah, this is what it's all about. And when Benedict says we are to yearn for everlasting life with holy desire, yes, this becomes tangible when we realize it's not just me the Lone Ranger doing this, it's a shared holy desire for everlasting life. And I think, as I mentioned in the homily today, it's the totality of this which makes it special.

[81:04]

You know, people have always entered and left monastic communities freely. And that's the way in which things work. But, you know, we are the classic intentional community. And it is meant to bind us for life. And the weight of centuries of monastic wisdom tells us that any serious effort at formation in Christian living takes an entire life. It's such a valuable counterweight to the culture that wants to have short-term remedies. Therapeutic communities, and there's a place for therapeutic communities, but not here. I think one of the signs that becomes evident if we live, give ourselves over to community life, is this increased capacity to love, and this of course is captured at the end of the prologue, when Benedict speaks of that dilation of heart is we make progress in this way of life and faith, our heart enlarges. And you know there are, it's a little bit like if you know the Buddhist tradition, the bodhisattva figure as he approaches death wants to stay in order to sustain and inspire the other people who are on this side.

[82:24]

And I think the elders in our community do that. We had our founding abbot, Abituro, he died at 102, he died in full possession of his faculties, but you know, the last 15-20 years of his life, he knew it was in a certain sense part of the time, but he was just a wonderful figure for reminding us of Yahweh's enlarged heart, because it was just evident, he was this radiant person, and we need people like that, and you've had them at Mount Sinai. In a certain, I mean, I don't know how many of you know Brother David, but, you know, David Steiner Rast has a bit of that in him. I haven't talked to him in ages, but his greatness came through. This inner joy, and, you know, we can call it holy desire, we can call it the joy of the Holy Spirit, about which Benedict speaks in a rule, but there's an incredible tranquility. The battles have been fought,

[83:25]

demons of an earlier time are displaced, people are living in God's presence. And this is not the first river of the novice, this is the transparency that the light and virtue that we know comes. And it comes to those who have this mindfulness of God's presence in their life and who have been willing to undergo the transformation. And that is so heartening. one of the things I've appreciated, I've done visitations of other communities, and if you go to a visitation, you listen to all the members, you get that sometimes. You get the love they have for the community, and for all the negativity that comes in. You, especially for the older people, you really see that this is something that has been worthwhile. And, you know, they are an effective witness. So we know God has searched us out, and in case we have any doubts, we know that our fellow community members have also searched us out.

[84:34]

And they embrace us. They embrace us with our good qualities, with our spiritual warts, as a sign of God's mercy. And I think it's the embrace of community that will impart its special mark on our formation. Remind us this is not a solitary trek undertaken just with our own very paltry resources. And, you know, the tradition in which we find ourselves gives us this gift of sacred space. It surrounds us with a supportive community. It connects us to like-minded followers of every time and place. It's something we need to be grateful for. And I think when we speak of our ultimate transformation in Christ, we see that it's not done in isolation. not in some compartmentalized sphere, but in the everyday life of communal conversion. So our believing and our behaving become animated with this good zeal, this fervent love of our fellow monks.

[85:42]

And that's what leads us on the way to the Kingdom. I leave you with that, and I also leave you with my thanks for your hospitality and It took a while for me to get to Mount Savior, but I got here. I'm glad I did. And I assure you of my ongoing prayers. I recognize you've got a lot of work cut out for you. I go back and you have another heavy week ahead, but you will be in my prayers. Thank you. Thank you very much. I've always spoken highly about Xavier, but now I can't.

[86:59]

God bless you. We'll see you. I won't disappear quite yet. The seniors could just stay for a while.

[87:14]

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