I'm not given to paranoia, I don't think, but I couldn't help noticing that the reading at supper was from a document of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Just in case I should want to say something heretical, I'll be very careful what I say about Oriental prayer. I hadn't planned to say anything anyway. And then in the airport this afternoon, I picked up a newspaper, and I don't usually read these things, but sometimes in airports you have to kill a lot of time. So I looked under Libra, which happens to be my sign, and said, all eyes will be on where your career is concerned. And your audience might not be solidly backed with admirers." And then it says, don't supply them with anything they could later use against you.

[01:07]

Well, I don't know what that means, but I'm sure it's not applicable here. We all know what a retreat is, of course, the time when we try to pull away from the usual distractions of life and deal with those things that are deeply real. I was just visiting a cousin of mine, a sister of charity, who was dying, and during December she died on Christmas Day. And she'd been a very busy person and a very productive person, fine teacher, good administrator. And I could just sense her struggling with coming to terms with the end of life.

[02:11]

Now, there's so much in our culture and so much in our Well, the air we breathe is intended to distract us from the realities of life. Now, I don't think we should be thinking every day about death and having a skull on your desk and that kind of thing. It doesn't appeal to me anyway. I don't think it's necessarily a healthy thing to do. It seems to me that when we are alive and strong, we should not be totally divorced from the situation when we are weak and barely alive. It shouldn't be like a whole new country. Now, it's going to be different, in spite of all we do,

[03:16]

But it's important that we try to keep in touch with those realities which will be valid at that time. That will, you know, be a support to us at that time. Scripture is full of that kind of reality. And it is a reality that is difficult and painful at times, but very promising. I think if one were to reduce the Bible to one word, which is a kind of foolish thing to do, perhaps, but if one had to find one single word to sum up biblical revelation, I think it would be promise. Promise. Now, we might say, well, that certainly would be a good word for the Old Testament, because they were looking for the Messiah to come.

[04:24]

But that's not just for the Old Testament. The promise is for New Testament people, too. It's true that Jesus has come, just celebrated that coming. But I think we should also keep in mind that Jesus will come. And any one of us may not yet have received Jesus in the way that makes a difference, in the way that really converts us. Many of us feel sympathetic for a Jewish brother and would like to find areas of common interest and common belief, and of course there are many of those. The one thing that seems to be a difficulty is that they're still looking for the Messiah, and we have found the Messiah.

[05:28]

That seems to open a gulf between us. Well, of course, it does make a difference. But I sometimes wonder How much the Messiah has come for us? Is it 10%? 90%? I suspect that most of us think that the Messiah has come 90% and we allow 10% for the Second Coming. But essentially and substantially it's come. And will come, of course, but it's just going to confirm everything we already know. I'm not sure that's true. I suspect that Messiah, in a very, very important, real way, still coming, has come historically, is coming presently, and will come.

[06:30]

The problem is, have we allowed the Messiah to come? I can easily affirm the historical coming of the Messiah and live as if the Messiah had not come. In every generation, we must receive the Messiah personally. And it's very easy to do it in our heads, very hard to do it in our lives. Let the Messiah come to be ready for the Lord. The Good News, the Gospel, is about what God has done. The great deeds, the manyaliya day, the creation, the giving of the law, the prophets, the wisdom, above all, the Messiah, Jesus.

[07:37]

Great deeds of God. And so, in many ways, we look back for the good news. But the good news is also promise. The good news is that which is to come. In many ways, I think we are living between two great gifts, between the Alpha and the Omega. God's goodness dominates the beginning of everything. God's goodness dominates the end of everything. We are between those two wonderful gifts of God, two wonderful manifestations of goodness. We look back to the gifts of God. We look back to the gifts that we have received.

[08:39]

And that enables us to have the courage to hope, to look forward to the gifts that are still to be. As I say, we have no control over the beginning. Not the beginning of the world and not the beginning of our own lives. And we will have no control over the end. over the time or the manner of its coming. Nor should we. And that is why suicide is such a terrible tragedy, because it's a radical distrust in God's wisdom for picking the time and picking the manner of the end. Now, what we do between beginning and end is going to, of course, be important for how we receive the gift of God at the end.

[09:49]

And so, we must learn how to appropriate the goodness that God has made available. I had a confere who's now dead. We used to take long walks together, and he was always sort of probing, questioning. And he would say at times, only half in jest, he would say, doesn't seem fair. I did not ask to be born, and yet here I am. And now I'm responsible for what I do with my life. I think I should have had a vote on whether I should be born, whether I want to take this risk? Well, I hope he has resolved that question.

[10:52]

It got me to thinking, though, and I am pretty well convinced now that the real meaning of baptism, I mean, not the pouring of the water on the infant, that theologically is baptism, but existentially that's not the baptism. The baptism occurs when I personally claim my baptism, when I personally can say what the Sponsor said for me, and accept that, embrace that. Now, this can happen in various times. I used to think this is why the church had confirmation. The confirmation was the time when the people who were baptized as infants would have a chance now, as they acquire freedom and identity, to claim their baptism.

[11:57]

And in fact, I was asked to give a homily one time for a confirmation, and I went out The Abbey Church and I had this all prepared about now is the moment when you have this wonderful opportunity to claim all those things, that commitment to unselfishness and all that. And I looked out at the children who were being confirmed, 12-year-olds, and I quickly had to adjust my homily. They were not ready to claim anything. But there is a time, there is a time, it may be, I don't know, 16, 17, 21, 35, it varies a great deal from individuals, depending on circumstances. A time when you have to claim your baptism, you have to make it your own. And I think that's when you say to the Lord, you know, up to now,

[13:01]

been wondering whether it was a good thing to be, for me to be. And now I agree with you. I agree that it was a good thing for you to make me. I accept that as a gift. And I'm going to seize this opportunity which you have given me. I'm going to use this life to open myself to the goodness that you have provided, much of it hidden, much of it requiring a deliberate decision to be open, to receive, to be ready. And then I'm going to take the blessing of that goodness, the freedom that that goodness gives me And I'm going to convert that into goodness for others.

[14:07]

People argue at great length about morality, ethics, how to live a good life. I think it's really very simple. Not easy, but simple. Simple to understand and hard to live. And it is to open oneself at all times, in every way possible, to every sign of goodness. Not only to grudgingly admit that I have been blessed in some way. All right, I guess I can't deny it any longer. That was a good thing that happened to me. No, no, not that. to be ready for it, to be looking for it, to know that there is much more goodness in life than I have ever dreamed of, to open myself to goodness, and then to translate that into becoming a sign of goodness to others, to becoming part of the goodness, part of the good news.

[15:31]

To live in promise. To live in promise means to live without being fulfilled. To live in promise is wonderful because it gives hope. It gives encouragement. It gives the ability to go on. It illuminates the horizon. But it has a dark side too. To live in hope is to be searching and yearning, aching to be fulfilled. To live in hope is to be homesick. And homesickness is a terrible malady. I recall leaving my home.

[16:41]

Nice farm. Eight brothers and sisters. Cows, pigs, chickens. All that domestic stuff. Being torn out of that and sent to St. Vincent. Big, high ceiling. Big hallways. Wax floors. I can still smell the wax. strange, alien, being sent there at age 12 while I was going on 13. It felt like six. At first, about this time, about this time of the year, September wasn't bad. There was football and there was stuff going on, but after Christmas, it was awful. homesickness, terrible, terrible thing. You get over it. But it's painful.

[17:44]

And so, to be in touch with reality is not to be devoid of pain. But it's got to be the right kind of pain. The pain of yearning, the pain of searching. That's good pain. The only people who aren't homesick are those who have no homes. Blessed are those who can be homesick, who have had an experience of home that makes homesickness possible, have an image of home. And so, to be a Christian is to be yearning, to be searching, Then, of course, there are those Christians who make a profession of searching. They're called monks. Not sufficient for them just to be Christians.

[18:47]

The ordinary search. They make it the very point, focus of their lives. To be searching and to be singing while they search in hope, living in promise. A wonderful passage in the first chapter of John. Chapter 1, verse 37. John the Baptist had just pointed out Jesus and said, Behold the Lamb of God. And two disciples heard him say this and they followed Jesus. And Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, What do you seek? What are you looking for? Now, this is the same kind of question that Benedict says the novice should be concerned about, or the novice master.

[19:52]

Does the novice truly seek God? That doesn't mean, is the novice interested in theology? It means something much more profound than that. Does the novice truly seek God? What are you seeking? I would like to, tempted to paraphrase that, have Jesus say, why, you must be earthlings, because I see that you are looking for something. It is so typical of a human being, to be searching, that that can almost be the definition of a human being. It's almost like E.T. turns around and says, Oh, I see two earthlings following me. How can I tell? They got that longing, faraway look in their eyes.

[20:55]

It has been said that the only animal on the earth that doesn't know why it's here is the human animal. And if you ever observed, you know, irrational or, you know, non-human animals, you will find that they're not sitting there saying, what am I here for? What is life for? You don't hear those sheep asking these questions. And when it comes the time to die, they die peacefully. if they'd had the chance to die naturally. But we are searchers. We are constantly looking for something, yearning for something. And if we aren't, then we're in worse trouble yet, because we don't even know what it means to be human. So Jesus says, what are you looking for? And they said to him, Rabbi,

[22:01]

I think they must have understood that if you know us that well, you must be a teacher. If you know the question that well, you must know something about the answer. Rabbi, teacher, where are you staying? Where are you staying? Versailles disappears to be a request for his address. Where are you living? But that would be a mistake, I think, because the verb used here by John for stay is meno, which means to stay, to remain, to abide. One of his favorite verbs, if you look at the back of Ray Brown's two volumes, he has a whole special appendix on meno. It occurs in John's Gospel like five times more than all the synoptics together, and occurs in those wonderful passages.

[23:13]

The Father abides in me, and I abide in the Father, and you shall abide in us. So this is not about a place, it's not about an address. Where do you live? The answer to this question is not 5th and Main. I think, again, one could paraphrase this and say, they say to Jesus, where is our home? Where is the place of abiding? Where do we belong? You're right. You have noticed correctly that we are searching and yearning. And if you have noticed that, maybe you know where we belong. Maybe you know where home is, where peace is.

[24:15]

And Jesus said to them, come and see. Come and see. Theological answer. Home is in heaven. No, no. Come and see. Come and walk with me. And gradually you will come to know where you belong, where you can find rest, where you can satisfy this ache in you. Come and walk with me. He says, they came and saw where he was staying. Well, that's got to have many levels of meaning. They came with him in Palestine, but they came and saw the whole history of John's mystical community.

[25:19]

We have come to know him, remember, first John touched him, caressed him, the Word of Life, a lifelong experience. They came to know, they came and stayed with Him. And they stayed that day, that day. If today you hear His voice, the today of a lifetime. And they stayed with Him that day, for it was about the tenth hour, It's one of those texts that, you know... Do you know where it was about the 10th hour? Because it was about the 10th hour? No, the 10th hour is supposed to give us some idea of what staying with Jesus means.

[26:20]

To stay the full day with Jesus is to enter into the 10th hour. 10th hour is 4 p.m. the cool of the day. The tenth hour was the time when Yahweh God came walking in the garden to rest with man, to bring man into his company, to keep Sabbath with man. And man was hiding. because he had distrusted the Lord. It was the cool of the day. Jesus says, come and see, come and walk with me and I will lead you to that time of rest, time of communion, the fulfillment, the only authentic fulfillment

[27:32]

It's just far-fetched to remember that the whole first chapter of John is illuminated with allusion to Genesis. Things happening on certain days, the third day, the second day, in the beginning. To be searching is to be ready. to be vulnerable, to be docile, to be listening. To be searching is not to know at all. To be searching is not to understand. There's a Quaker author, Douglas Stier, you may have read some of his works, and he

[28:35]

He wrote an article one time on readiness. And he told a story there about a Quaker minister who was visiting another congregation. And he was preparing to make his little speech or conference, whatever it was. And I've always thought that this is the perfect introduction. I've been introduced many times in many different ways, but this is the perfect introduction. When it came time for him to give his talk to this congregation, the elder or someone, the deacon, got up and turned to him and said, Reverend Smith, we are ready. Are you ready? And sat down. Those are the only two questions that are pertinent at that time.

[29:40]

And really, those are the only two questions that have any meaning. Because you can get up and say, this person went to school here and wrote these articles, but he's not going to talk about those articles. That's irrelevant, really. The only question that has any meaning for the speaker at that time is, is this audience ready? Are you ready to hear something new? Have you come to learn or to judge? Are you ready maybe to hear something that you have been waiting to hear for many years? It's when we least expect it that the Word comes. And since we never know exactly when it's going to come, we must always be attentive. I've taught long enough to know that students who are not ready to learn cannot be taught. And those who are ready to learn, well, there's a chance.

[30:45]

Then the teacher has a chance. But I don't care how good you are in teaching. If they don't want to learn, you cannot teach. And so, are you ready? We are ready, he said. We are ready. We're ready to hear something that can change our lives, that can make a difference. And are you ready, not in the sense of prepared, hopefully that too, but ready to speak not just from your head, from the safe place, but to speak from your heart, from your experience? But are you ready to speak to us about how you experience life? Which is a dangerous thing to do. Because someone may shake his head, maybe even clap a little bit.

[31:53]

He goes on, he said, Lord, you are always ready. But am I ever ready? We tend to think the Lord is not ready. Where were you, Lord? Where are you? The Lord is ready. There's no problem there. You are always ready. And then he prays, Lord, make me ready. Or at least make me more ready to be made ready. We celebrate the feast of the baptism of Jesus. Baptism. And this year's gospel from Matthew talks about Jesus protesting, objecting, oh no, pardon me, John the Baptist protesting.

[33:05]

I am not worthy. And Jesus insisted. And of course, you know, there have been times when theologians, scripture people wondered, why would Jesus insist on being baptized? Well, he just wanted to give a good example, maybe. He didn't need it, we know that. Maybe he just wanted to give a good example. Something like the rabbi used to say that God didn't need to rest on the seventh day. because God can't get tired. But he knew that we need to rest, and so he thought he'd let on he was tired and rest on the seventh day so that we would know that that's the right thing to do. Well, I don't think God does things like that. I might be wrong, but I don't think that there's a need to play act to give us a good example. No, I think Jesus really wanted to be baptized because baptism is not just for the removal of sin.

[34:12]

Baptism does deal with sin. But most of all, baptism is a declaration of readiness. And if there is any sin that prevents your coming, O Lord, I now renounce it. But the positive and the more important part of baptism is, Lord, I am ready. We are ready. And that is certainly what John the Baptist was doing. He was baptizing people who were, in effect, saying, Lord, we have been waiting all these years Several centuries now. Lord, we want you to know there are no conditions anymore. No conditions. Come in any way you wish, but please come soon.

[35:21]

Jesus joined Israel in that symbolic action of readiness. of openness to God. And when Jesus joined Israel, it was the moment of divine providence. It triggered. The times were fulfilled. The jars of time were filled up. And God saw Jesus with Israel Heavens then are torn open. And the voice from the heaven, the dove comes first of all, the sign of the new creation. Then the voice says, you are my beloved son. In effect, what God is saying is, I am ready too. I am ready now to respond to your readiness.

[36:28]

by calling my son, by naming my son, by setting my son on this mission. The new creation. What kind of new creation? Not new trees, new animals. No, the nature of the new creation is suggested in the words of the Father, who are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. The new creation will be a new manifestation of God's love. No one would ever have dared to believe that God cared that much if they had not seen Jesus. Jesus is the revelation of how much God cares.

[37:31]

The revelation of God's goodness. I recall in a theology class with Sanon Saba one time that Cipriano Vaggeni, a great professor, probably the best professor I ever had, lucid, clear, eloquent in Latin to Cipriano Vaggeni, who is living now in Comaldoli, spending his last days in contemplation. He said one time, and he was not given to, you know, wild statements by any means, he said, the single most important revelation of the New Testament is the fatherhood of God. And I remember being skeptical about that. Oh, come on! God called himself father to Israel, too, told David he was his father.

[38:38]

But what he was saying was, we have no idea to what extent God shows himself a loving father. No idea to what extent that is true. until we see what God did in Jesus. And when we see in Jesus what the love of Father can do in a human being, Jesus as man, extraordinary result of that wonderful love. to give him a freedom that would enable him to give himself totally to God, to give him a freedom and a courage to choose a path of total self-giving.

[39:49]

It's an ideal you will find difficult to imitate. the goodness of God manifested in Jesus. So when Jesus says, come and see, come and walk with me, he is saying, come and learn about the goodness of God. And he's also saying, come and learn how to turn your goodness into sacrifice and love of others.

[40:28]

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