So let's begin again in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. This Trinitarian aspect of monastic life seems basic when I think back on what really was the monastic vision of Father Damascus. That was one of the reasons why we started with rethinking our relationship to that great mystery which we call God. I thank you for the questions that I have received. They are very helpful, of course. They help me also respond more to what is your particular interest, which is very important, otherwise I just have to guess.

[01:18]

So this is a great help to me and I'm grateful. And also I'm grateful to those who have come and seen me. a great gift for me if you visit and if you can also one-to-one exchange during this week. So in this Trinitarian vision, if you look back, We focused first on Father Damasus saying, we need to rethink everything and make it our own. And we began with the most basic aspect of this rethinking, our relationship to God, relationship to that great mystery which we call God.

[02:23]

We call it God under the aspect of our relationship to that mystery, which is twofold. On the one hand, In God, we live and move and have our being, so we are completely immersed in that mystery. It's not something that's over against us. We are immersed in God, and God is in us, and we are in God. And yet, we can call out, oh God, you are my God. We call on God. We are in the mystery, and we call on the mystery. That is grounded theologically in the notion of the Blessed Trinity, which is one God and yet allows for, not only allows for, but is based on relationship within that divine mystery. And then we said that we, as human beings, not just as Christians, but as human beings, because this word, in God we live and move and have our being, was addressed to humans by St.

[03:39]

Paul, not to Christians, but to fellow humans. As humans, we are When we discover this mystery or through three great questions which every human being is confronted with sooner or later in our life, and Those are the questions, why and what and how, on the deepest level. If you follow why to its depths, we end up in mystery. And mystery we define very clearly as that which we cannot grasp but which we can understand. We cannot grasp it, but we can be grasped by it. It can move us, and when it moves us, then we understand, which is something very different from overstanding and conceptual knowing, not comprehending.

[04:53]

Comprehendere means to grasp. We cannot grasp it, but we can be grasped by it. And our aliveness is to be grasped by life. The aliveness is our spirituality on all levels. We come alive by exposing ourselves to that divine mystery. And when we follow the why, into its deepest depths, we come to that silence which in Christian terminology we call the Father, that silence out of which the eternal Word comes. When we let ourselves down into that silence, then that is called prayer of silence.

[05:57]

any form, any way in which we let ourselves down into that silence. But that's a different silence. For instance, in the liturgy there this morning, I noticed there are two different kinds of silence. There is the silence after the reading, and that is simply a quiet time in which you think about what you have just now heard. And then there is the silence after the psalms, and that is, if you want, you can use it also to think about the psalms, but I think it is more the silence out of which the next psalm comes, or the silence into which this psalm has led you. The silence between the words, the silence out of which this word comes. Not just a space to think about, but a short time in which you can just be silent.

[07:05]

Some people find that easy, it's quite natural to them, and other people find it difficult, but it can be learned. It's just a letting go, letting go of everything, letting go of thoughts, Not chasing them away, because if you chase them away, you are also preoccupied with them. You just let them go. They come and go, and you, like if, as if you were looking at the blue sky, and the clouds and the birds come and go, and you let them come and go, and you focus on the blue sky. That would be sort of the attitude. And then the what leads us into the mystery under the aspect of word, in the sense that in the last analysis the answer of what is this thing, person, situation

[08:11]

The answer is always, it is a word of God that speaks to me. It is an expression of the eternal logos that proceeds from the Father. And the prayerful engagement with this word is, as we saw last night, living by the word, being nourished by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And everything that comes, everything that is, is word that comes from the mouth of God. If we have that listening attitude,

[08:55]

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