But I console myself when I think about poor Descartes because Queen Catherine of Sweden, what? Oh, Christina, somebody apparently knows this story. She brought Descartes up to Sweden and made him lecture to her on philosophy at four in the morning. And he soon died of pneumonia. And then, when they were bringing his body back to Paris on a barge, on the Seine, the barge sunk. So he had rough luck. Poor guy. Now, this particular lecture is called, Fear God and Never Forget God. We have mentioned many times in these talks that the basic scheme in this chapter on humility has love replacing fear.

[01:05]

That is the basic movement. As a proposition of pop psychology, we can accept that. and it's probably pretty attractive, but it bears closer scrutiny, I think. We know that Saint Benedict has purposely moved fear of God into Cassian's list as numbers 1 and 12. Now, here's where a little bit of literary criticism is necessary. See, you start out with ten indices, or signs of humility, with cash-in, and the master expands this into twelve, a ladder of twelve. Well, you've got to add two. At the beginning and at the end, he adds, I think, he adds fear.

[02:12]

Now, Not everybody would agree with me that number 12 is fear, but it certainly includes a good deal of that theme. And notice here that what you have in literary terms is what is called inclusio. If you repeat a theme at the beginning and at the end of a unit, you create a You frame it, see, with a certain idea. And for the ancients, and that applies to the scriptures and so forth. The Gospel of John has lots of inclusion in it. Okay. So what I'm saying, though, is that apparently the fear of the Lord is very important for both the Master and for Saint Benedict. That is the vital element that has been added to Cassian's scheme.

[03:18]

One wonders if the famous saying from Proverbs, the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord, isn't at work here. To put fear first in the list seems to confirm that. the beginning of wisdom. But what does beginning really mean? In fact, the book of Proverbs itself seems to be ambivalent about beginning. The same saying occurs twice in the book of Proverbs, but in different form. In Proverbs 1-7, what we have is the verb of Hebrew, reshit. which really means epitome. But in Proverbs 9, 10, we have tehillah, meaning first step.

[04:23]

So, in the first chapter, the epitome of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and the second one is the first step of wisdom. I'd have to say that, by and large, in the Hebrew Bible, the fear of the Lord, there's nothing rudimentary about it at all. It's the highest compliment you can pay to somebody is that he fears the Lord. And it's equivalent to saying that someone is, in fact, a truly pious Jew. You know, he's a really faithful, obedient servant of Yahweh. He fears the Lord. So it's not any kind of low grade of holiness. Of course, the idea of fear in itself is something negative.

[05:34]

It's a sensation or an experience that we don't want, by and large. Nobody wants to be afraid. And surely there are kinds of fear which are the most excruciating human experience. It's kind of terror. Where, you know, physiologically, I mean, you sweat, your hair stands on end, your heart, your blood vessels constrict, your heart stops, and all this stuff. Nobody can recommend that. I think that now there is a kind of attitude around, amongst Catholics, you see, that the old church was a church of fear. And they don't want any more of that. The nuns knocked my head against the wall, see?

[06:35]

And they're not gonna knock my kid's head against the wall. And the pastor, he screamed at me when I was an altar boy. Well, in fact, the pastor did scream at me, and I deserved it. But anyway, a lot of people say, that old church of terror is gone, and it's not coming back. Okay, so we can agree that there's certain kinds of fear that are unattractive and unacceptable. However, there are many kinds of fear. And some of it is salutary, obviously. For a three-year-old kid to be afraid of the stove is good. It's very helpful kind of information. In fact, a stove can hurt you. Cassian already was well aware of this, and he said, the lowest fear is the fear of punishment, and that is the fear of slaves.

[07:41]

And perhaps, probably, that was the only fear that kept a lot of slaves in line, because slavery was awful and a terrible thing. Then, he said, there's the fear of losing something good that you possess. And that's a kind of jealousy. That's what jealousy is. I'm afraid you're going to take from me what I possess. On a higher level yet, said Cassian, there is the fear of hurting or saddening someone you love. The fear of children that don't want to sadden their parents, or vice versa, because they love them. Or lovers who are very, very sensitive about each other's feelings and so on. So this whole business of perfect love drives out fear, yes, we have to say, but what kind of fear?

[08:53]

See, because there's lots of kinds of fear. And that is the saying, of course, that is quoted by Cassian and by the Master and Benedict at the end of this progression of humility, then they quote, perfect love drives out fear, you see. So we, humility ought to move us from fear to perfect love. That's fine, but we also have to ask, well, what is perfect love, you see? And I think that when you do that, what you find out is that he's saying that the lowest He's putting the lowest kind of fear against the highest kind of love. I mean, it's like, you're worst against my best. You know, sometimes when you argue, that's a tactic. You pick out sort of the lowest aspect of the other guy's point of view.

[09:55]

It should not blind us to the fact that there is some fear that is absolutely essential to all true religion. And with that, we'll take a drink. Cassian should know better. That's a great one-liner, huh? Cassian should know better, as if I know better than Cassian. By the way, we're all going to know more about Cassian pretty soon, because Columbus Stuart from St. John's, a great coming man, I mean, a tremendous scholar, is just completing a book on Cassian. It's really an overall survey of Cassian from a kind of literary point of view, and I expect that it's really going to be quite a breakthrough on Cassian, because we really have not had a great book on Cassian, at least in English, not at all, even though there are good scholars.

[11:02]

In fact, Volgawe is a great scholar of Cassian. But you see, Cassian is so prolix, I mean, it's so much stuff that it's a terrible challenge to cover it all and sort of handle it, master it. So Stuart's book is coming out in another year or two. And then the new translation, the new English translation of Cassian by Boniface Ramsey, will be coming out in the Ancient Christian Writers series. Paul has got that now and they're working on it. So we will have a fresh translation because we haven't had one for 100 years in English. And I think that's a problem. We got a Victorian translation now. Whenever I give it to somebody in a formation class, these young people, they say, It's almost like reading Hebrew. The sentences are endless and the diction is stilted and so forth.

[12:06]

Okay. Anyway, Cashun should know better. When he says that fear of the Lord is a first preliminary step to be surpassed, he is dealing with something very sacred to Jewish religion. All right, I've already said that. So there, you know, you've got a kind of problem, I would say. I would like to quote a couple of other texts from the Jewish Bible, just to make this point even more strongly. Deuteronomy 10, 12. What then, Israel, does the Lord your God ask of you? Only this, to fear the Lord your God, to conform to all his ways, to love him, and to serve him with all your heart and soul. And here we have love and fear spoken of in the same breath, synonymously, as if they're virtually the same faithful obedience to Yahweh.

[13:19]

And then in a famous text of Isaiah 11-2, speaking about the Messiah, the most exalted Jew, on him the spirit of the Lord will rest, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and power, a spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. So the Messiah will be permeated by fear of the Lord. And obviously, that means that fear of the Lord cannot be anything rudimentary. Granted, the New Testament will speak more in terms of love than of fear. That's true. And it will introduce the totally new Trinitarian relation in which the believer is taken up into the very life stream of the Trinity.

[14:30]

Nevertheless, the fear of the Lord is a very exalted biblical concept. And even in the New Testament, they will play with it. There's a text in the Mark chapter four somewhere, this business about the storm on the lake. And then the disciples are quaking with fear, it says. And then he says to them, what are you afraid of? Why are you so hot and bothered? This idea of being all, coming all unglued. And then finally it says, and then he calms the storm, and then it says, and then they feared with great fear with Phobos. And that was not anything bad. That was the proper response. They feared with great fear. So you can see that this is a subtle idea.

[15:34]

There's nothing simplistic about this. When Rudolf Otto was searching for the basic human religious experience, this German scholar of the history of religions, he chose for his exemplary Old Testament text Isaiah 6. Swarovato wanted to see if he could find a typical characteristic of the religious experience wherever it appeared, in any country. Does it have something in common wherever it appears? And so then he goes to the great texts of the world, religious texts, and he tries to to see in the religious experience what do they have in common. And he takes out Isaiah 6 for the text from the Jewish Bible.

[16:40]

There the prophet reports on his first quintessential encounter with the Lord God. And no doubt we recall the scene. The temple is filled with the skirt of the Lord's robe. Angels are flying to and fro, calling out, Qadosh, Qadosh, Qadosh is the Lord of hosts. Holy, holy, holy. Ado said, Isaiah's reaction is complex. On the one hand, he is terrified, and he cries out, Woe to me, I am doomed, for my eyes have seen The king, the lord of hosts, I, a man of unclean lips, I who dwell among a people of unclean lips. And so he is, he's terrified.

[17:43]

But he's not only terrified and repelled, he's also drawn. Because when God calls out, who shall I send? He answers, send me. So Aro said, you see there, in the same experience, there is this complex paradoxical mixture of fascinans and tremendum. He is both attracted and repelled. And he said that he saw that same kind of complex reaction in the religious experience wherever it appeared in the world. It seems to me that this luminous experience is well chosen by Rudolf Otto as one of the most revealing in the Bible for primary religion, because here God is experienced as the Holy Other, the one who both fascinates and terrifies.

[18:53]

This God cannot be ignored and cannot be taken for granted. This God is no tin-pot idol to be manipulated. You know, because it's, and I think today there's this tendency to present God sometimes as a sort of chump and sort of a comfortable companion. And the whole thing becomes sort of banal, bourgeois business. In fact, that's one of the great criticisms of the Reformed liturgy of the Catholic Church, is that it lost its aura of mystery, and that it was no longer fascinans et tremendum, Well, I mean, that is an issue.

[19:58]

And you used a mysterious language nobody understood, Latin. You turned your back on people. You mumbled. You used smoke. You used... And you have a lot of that stuff still. And, like, your church is dark. It's luminous. You got that colored light. But very, you know, too often now you go to Mass and a priest comes out and he says, Hi. I said, oh, for crap's sake, I'm going back to bed. Hi, come on, give me a break. It's a heck of a way to start. So, yeah, you know, where the whole thing becomes just too casual. It is also instructive to notice Isaiah's reflection on himself, his reflex, I am a sinner. This does not mean just mean he has committed certain forbidden acts, but it means that compared to the All-Holy One, he is nothing.

[21:02]

He is nil, utterly powerless. He experiences creaturely dependence to the fullest. Now, I have to say that recently I've been chastised for this interpretation. There was an article, it's in the library there, it appeared in the last issue of the American Benedictine Review. I published the darn thing. I mean, nobody can say I'm not broad-minded. But anyway, in this article, he says that I have not really understood what it means to be a sinner. Just to say that I'm radically dependent is not good enough, and I agree with him. That's not quite the same thing. But on the other hand, I don't think to say, I am a sinner, is just to say, I have done certain bad things, either.

[22:05]

Okay. And I do believe that it's not bad, at least once in a while, even to make a confession in that sense, that I really am a sinner. I'm not going to name a list of details here, but I want to say I really do present myself as a sinner. Okay, now. When the master and Saint Benedict take up Cassian's fear of the Lord, they greatly develop it. To read the first step of humility, you have to feel that this is one of the most powerful passages in the whole rule of Saint Benedict. I think in a sense it is overwhelming.

[23:09]

And in that sense, it may be a problem because I don't think that the fear of the Lord is the primary religious datum. I think that the love of God is more primary and that if you haven't experienced the love of God and don't believe with all your heart that God loves you, then this tremendous first step could be damaging. It could be disconcerting. I want to read five verses from the first step. The first step of humility then is that a person keep the fear of God always before his eyes and never forgets it. He must constantly remember everything God has commanded, keeping in mind that all who despise God will burn in hell for their sins.

[24:15]

And all who fear God have everlasting life awaiting them. While he guides himself at every moment, from sins and vices of thought or tongue, of hand or foot, of self-will or bodily desire, let him recall that he is always seen by God in heaven and that his actions everywhere are in God's sight and are reported by the angels at every hour." What do we see in these five verses? Strong emphasis on God as the judge who sees all. The spotlight on the last judgment. The need to keep a close guard on ourselves.

[25:18]

It is not terribly comforting. But I think we shouldn't make it what it is not either. For example, Andrea Boreas points out that this very same constellation of ideas occurs no less than three other times in the rule. It occurs once in the instruments of good works in chapter four, it occurs again in the first degree of humility toward the end, and it occurs in chapter 19, four times this same powerful concentration of spiritual themes. And he says that in every case, in his opinion, the key idea is mindfulness, memoir. Keep in mind that God exists, and that God sees everything, and that God sees me, and all this.

[26:29]

Now, I think that these ideas have become sort of unbearable for many people. And I took a kind of a risk. I wrote an article And it's in the library there. It's in the Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality. They asked me to write the article on Benedictine spirituality, and I felt I had to try to locate sort of the key, because otherwise it would just be sort of a bunch of stuff thrown together. And I, really for, you might say formal reasons, because this theme occurred four different times in important places in the world, I chose this as the central leitmotif of the rule of Saint Benedict, the fear of the Lord.

[27:36]

And I thought, as soon as I published that, that people would start throwing tomatoes at me. And so far, not one tomato. So far, not nothing. I don't think anybody's read it. You got this huge big book and why should they read my article? But I wish they would read it and get angry at me and start cussing and we could have a good argument. Notice that St. Benedict repeats these ideas several times. Never forget the fear of God and always remember the commandments, the judgment, and so on. It appears that the particular benedictine form of the fear of God is precisely to be mindful of God, to not forget God, oblivisions. And in the 12th step, we see this repeated. The monk is to constantly remember and confess that he is a sinner. It's repeated.

[28:39]

So, you know, if you're moving from fear to love and then you go from, in the last, very last step, you've still got the fear of the Lord. I don't think it's anything to be put behind. Couldn't we not say that the monk is therefore to be the opposite of the biblical fool? The fool says in his heart, Well, at least God is nowhere to be seen around here. I mean, I don't think the fool says that theoretically there is no God, I am an atheist and so forth. No, it's just like, well, I don't see God around here, so let's have a good time. It's just a sigh of relief that God can be safely ignored for the present in this out-of-the-way place. You know, I think that's what the fool is, is simply, forgetful. Might not the monastery be seen as precisely a place, a style of life, a form where God must not and cannot be forgotten?

[29:58]

Why else do we need to pray so often? Why do we have all these sacred rituals? Why are we listening constantly to the sacred scripture? We have purposely set up a lifestyle where God is unavoidable. The modern world, on the other hand, seems to me to be bent on the opposite, forgetting. I don't think it is militantly atheistic. I think it is militantly distracted. In fact, I think that is what the media is largely all about, is distraction. I don't care what it is. I mean, even the most serious programs ultimately appear to be entertainment. Unless you convince people you're entertaining them, they won't watch. Isn't it true that a lot of what people do now is escapist?

[31:03]

A kind of psychic babysitter. Babysitting service. You know, it's incredible. I said this to somebody the other day. The poor people, and like 75% of the people, think that the TV is mindless. It's intellectual content is lousy, it's gross, it's violent, it's too violent, it's too erotic and all this stuff. But then the next question, how much do you watch? Average, four hours a day. Something very strange here. So anyway, before I become completely rabid up here, why don't I just quit? So anyway, these are my comments about the fear of the Lord. Maybe before I quit, I should just complete one idea, though. I agree that in some ways the fear of the Lord is unbearable.

[32:09]

God is love, and we are not... our only responsibilities are not just vertical, they are also to our neighbor, and we owe love to one another and so forth. But Saint Benedict also is well aware of that. And so, even though he hammers away at the fear of the Lord, he then turns around and shows that where do I encounter this fearsome Lord? most surely, and then he starts, you know, then you find the Lord, for example, in the stranger, the traveler with hospitality, or in the sick person, or in the youngest member of the community, or also in the abbot, of course, but I think that Benedict wants to show that The reason these people must be reverenced is because in them we encounter Christ, and this Christ is no one to be trifled with.

[33:22]

And we ought not to be condescending. You don't condescend to one who, you know, the Lord of the universe. You don't condescend. You truly, you are truly reverent to God. to Christ. So Benedict is both extremely verticalized in his spirituality and also horizontalized. The social dimension is very strong because there's where we meet Christ. And I hope I'm not repeating myself, but I just, there, well, I better quit. I better quit, yes. I don't know if these are my last comments. These are two words, love and fear. But I just want to say that my mother's chest has a good place.

[34:23]

It will be one word for this reason. Not love. But love is, there is a word for it in the text. But for instance, if you have a missionary going into a Nazi village, and the physician has a little pipe, and you need a reason to go into a homily, I'm telling the little boy, probably a boy, you must honor them. But they're using this word, the standard word, of shame, fear, and love. And I suspect that as they grow, at least those who are enriched in their attitude to Christianity, that if they grow in their appreciation of the faith, that standard words

[35:30]

takes on a new color, fear. The father telling the four year old, you must, he thinks, you must fear the father. But if he stays with the religion over a number of years, his attitude will be more like the father's of a father. I just wanted a video. What's that? A computer with ads? Endings? No, that was not that. Go ahead. There was evil in my own life at times. Innocent, as always, loud, and ugly, and it just wasn't fair to them. I think it's fair to imagine all computers loud. Interesting. Yeah.

[36:33]

I'm not just returning here. I think that, for example, in Benedict's Latin, honor, we would translate out as respect. And so then you get this question of respecting persons. I did a study some years ago, and I published it in Cistercian Studies, in fact, called Human Rights in Benedict's Rule. And I just followed honor around to see what that was about. I just wonder why someone can't understand the mass of benefits that can be attached to the Lord.

[37:39]

It has to be in relationship to the spirit of the Lord. But saying that the spirit of the Lord is the life and peace of the world occurs four times. What about taking Christ as the life and peace of the world? It occurs nine times. It occurs in the Torah, and it's not definitely true that there's an infusion of that. and woven through it. Yeah, right. But you know, I could also say that Christ occurs 120 times, because I like, I think every time you get dominus in the rule, it could almost, many of those certainly, the Lord is ambiguous between the Father and the Son, and yeah, okay, but I don't, I guess as a spiritual, dynamic or something. I don't know if I'd pick a person, even God. I mean, you could say, well, okay, God. Or then I think I'd say, well, the monk, because fraud terror occurs 150 times.

[38:42]

If we just want to go by numbers. But these are not just a single mention of fear, by the way. These are a constellation of these ideas of fear, mindfulness, judgment, sin, hell, and so forth. Well, I don't know. It's true that humility is the most highly developed one in the sense of the biggest chapter, 70 verses long. And in that chapter, the first step is 30 verses. The first step is huge. But of course, it's true that just quantities and so forth don't make it. And of course, all this is subjective. I mean, I... No, true. And I have to say that if I'm gonna claim that the fear of the Lord is kind of the center pole, then we've got ourselves a pretty austere spirituality.

[39:46]

I think people today are gonna say, oh, give me a break. I mean, but there's something about this and how to understand an era But for example, Christ in the rule is very austere. It's never Jesus, and it's never sort of his earthly dealings with people, but it's really his exalted Lord, and I think the judge, too. And you know, if you sort of try to do a longitudinal study, you'll notice that, for example, the art of the period, of the sixth century, especially Byzantine art, is also very austere. God is highly exalted. And like these apsidal mosaics, or like at Ravenna and so forth, it's very austere. So that is the way they related to God, but I don't think it rules out love at all.

[40:48]

It's just that it's in a somewhat different structure than what we often think of, yes. I read somewhere a comment on the use of the cross to the evangelist. It may have been by the angel. The comment was that the evangelist had a very clear instinct which the author of the comment feels reflects the spirit of the woman of the times. To make no Yeah, and don't think that ultimately behind that may be a need to not have what we call a low Christology, because, after all, the problem was Arianism. in Italy. The gods are running up and down the peninsula in the 6th century, and these gods are all Aryan.

[41:54]

And these Aryans don't believe in the divinity of Christ, or they have a very low Christology. So, you know, that may be the basic reason, theologically, I don't know. Yes, Father? Looking at this from a new view, The fact that I grew up in, for example, Cameroon and Liberia, I know very well. The word, especially in Liberia, you know, the word means, it's just, for example, has always to do with a big gathering. A what? A gathering, a big gathering, a crowd. Oh. It means pushing yourself to be acknowledged in public. I want to have the bones moving like that, so it is about ostentation, something like that. Now, it doesn't come into family fashion.

[42:57]

Well, where does humility come in? That's the opposite of this pushiness? Yeah, I just want to be acknowledged as a good one. Yeah, but what about humility, though? Is that just the mirror opposite of that attitude? Go ahead. Now, the son, the father prays to his son. Since this son or daughter of mine was born, he has never looked at me when I talk to him or her. Now, there it includes humility, but they don't want humility, they say love and reverence. Who doesn't look at who? Like your father. Yeah, yeah. whenever you are talking to me, I should know this. Okay. Okay. Oh, I don't know. That's for us now. But well, in the local sense, it's taken a lot. that you are born of this material world order than you.

[44:19]

So you feel that, not because you are different, but it's not regarded as humanity. It's love. You don't regard it as degradation, or it's nothing that makes you... People think that art is meaningless. Just love and respect. But then, when it comes to the public, if you don't... or if you are known as a very wise man, you don't speak on to other people. You end up when they are... It doesn't speak on you. It is called upon to speak, then to escape, not for itself. It doesn't push you back. Listen to it. So that's on you. It's a big rope for you to climb. Yeah, you see, somebody here after the first lecture or something said, well, what does humility mean for Benedict?

[45:21]

It's no easy thing to say. We've said many, many things here, and it's a rich picture. It has to be enriched by these various comments about, you know, that's a kind of cultural comment there that really has some density about it. So, I don't think definitions help much, but I think that these comments help a lot. What if I ask you to hear my father? At first, when he was trying to beat me, then he uses these two qualities. And I look at him in the face, and he doesn't... He still has it, but then it's no longer what it should be. It's no longer... Has he forfeited his right to your honor? Yeah, same thing.

[46:24]

Yes. Yes.

[46:24]

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