May they hold on the message of thy gospel. For they think we are also thy blessed commandments, and we, trampling down all earthly lusts, may follow after the light of the Spirit, both thinking and doing always such things as shall be well-pleasing to thee. For thou art the light of our souls and of our bodies, O Christ our God. We have celebrated with great joy the feast of Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit, that blessed fruit of our Lord's work of salvation. The Holy Spirit, who is we give it, that means God sharing his inner life with us.

[01:04]

The spirit of truth is that divine reality which in a unique way is being communicated to those who are incorporated into Christ. Now, the second Sunday after Pentecost still continues that happy theme, gives us renewed opportunity to taste, as it were, the reality of that Holy Spirit, which is God's love for us. So we sing in the introit tomorrow as a song of thanksgiving. David sang this song at the end of his life. It was the litany of God's mercies that God had restored upon him during his life.

[02:08]

And in this great, beautiful Psalm 17, he summarizes all these manifestations of God's mercy within. And then Christ, the Son of David, sings this psalm at the end of his life, that means of his earthly Pascha. And in thanksgiving offers it, to the Heavenly Father, and then the Church sings it, as we do it tomorrow, after we have lived through the sacramental representation of the work of salvation, beginning with those days of preparation for Christmas, and going to the Epiphany, the Lord's Baptism, and then entering with them into the desert of Lent, the Lenten season, and up to Golgotha, lifted up on the cross, and then being flooded with the plenitude that the love of Christ then sheds upon His Church.

[03:25]

So that is, therefore, at this Sunday tomorrow, hours of the Psalm 17. And I would recommend especially to the members of the community tomorrow maybe to take this beautiful and comprehensive song, make it the litany of God's mercies in your own life. We sing there, the Lord became my protector. and He brought me forth into a large place. He saved me, He freed me, because He loved me. To me, I'll call it because He loved me. That is the essence of our thanksgiving. It is the echo to God loving us. We all know so well the tragedy of the unwanted child, of the unwanted human being.

[04:37]

We know, perhaps in our own loving, the sorrow and sadness which results from the fear, or the suspicion, that we are not wanted. and how that narrows our heart, how our heart shrinks, how we become the captives of all kinds of fears, seeing ourselves surrounded by enemies. And what a wonderful blessing it is to realize I am being loved, I am wanted, And that is the wonderful thing that every baptized Christian can say in absolute truth and in absolute assurance. We have died with Christ, we rose with Him, and in this way, through that opus operatum of the sacrament of baptism, God the Father has put His hand upon us, His hand is the Son, and He has said to us, You are mine.

[06:01]

He wanted me. He loves me. And that should be to us the very substance of our love, that inner assurance. That gives us security. That is for us a rock of refuge. That is our strength. That is our peace. And therefore, out of that assurance, We can then sing these words of liberty with which the 17th Psalm begins. I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. I will love thee. It's the only time in any knowing the Hebrew text of this psalm, which is so important in many cases.

[07:08]

This is a psalm, is the word which in the Old Testament expresses, let us say, that feeling, that specific feeling of love which rises out of the viscera of man. out of the heart of the parent, the father and the mother, for the child, for their own flesh. That specific emotion or movement of the love of the heart of the parent or of the child. And here it is that answer from the child to the parent. This Deiligah, Te Domine Virtus Mea, is I love you like a child, my Lord.

[08:13]

And it's the true and literal translation of that word. I love you with the love of a child, my Lord. You are my child, Virtus Mea. So, in the deepest sense, that is true of our Lord Jesus Christ, but also of us, of the Church as a whole, and of every baptized Christian, because we are redeemed through the blood of Christ. And we have received this body and this blood. And therefore, we are children in that specific intimate sense. of in true affinity, consanguinity with God. I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. And then the Lord is my parent, and my refuge, and my deliverer.

[09:20]

The whole absent of this mass is, if you listen into it right, is the solilitas de lecciones, the unique solidity which, not our poor efforts at loving God, but God's perfect love of us gives to us. That divine magaphy is something eternal, is something that is like heaven. It's the only thing on which we can really and truly rely. But all those who understand that law, and all those who make use of that love, I mean apply it to themselves, should absolutely also have that feeling and that conviction of absolute solidity.

[10:29]

Never let the wavering of fairly varying moods interfere with the solidity of God's love for you. That is in the comments, beautifully expressed, where we say, Grant, O Lord, that we may have in continuous, perpetual fear and love of thy holy name. That means reverent love. Our love to the love of the child for the parent is not a presumption, but it is something which rises in our heart together with the greatest wonderment and admiration because this love is given to us while we do not deserve it.

[11:47]

Because God loved us while we were still his enemies. And therefore his love for us is absolute grace. And therefore we can never make God's love for us either be a kind of excuse or a title to display and to live according to our own will, We can never make that a title to be presumptuous in any way. But our true love for God, as answer to His infinite mercy, will always ought to have with it that filial fear of which this colleague speaks. But the important thing that I would like to emphasize is that it is perpetual. Because one sees that so often, also among those who have officially given their lives to the service of God in the monastery and have taken vows, and still there is that way, still there is that easy forgetting about

[13:14]

what God has done for us and is constantly doing for us. We get lost in our sins, looking too much at what we have at our disposal. We forget what is being given to us. and for thou never failest nunc grantua governatione destituis, never failest to direct and govern us by thy grace. Us, those whom you have brought up and you whom you have established, one can say, in the steadfastness of thy love, Therefore, the whole course of our life, not only the beginning, baptism, but the whole course of our life, and not only one day, not only a Sunday, and not only a feast day, not only a day of special graces, not only a day of special elation of the heart,

[14:34]

is a day in which we may rest in that hubernatio divina, in that government of God's grace. Though every moment of our If God's love of us is an absolute love, is an eternal love, in other words, is a divine love, then also constantly our life is being lived in its beautiful and light moments, as well as in its dark moments, always under the wings of the Father's love. whose insolidity targeted to a delectionis instituis, whom you have established in the solidity or steadfastness of your love.

[15:37]

That's naturally a baptism. That is the whole sacramental word of the Church. who and which Christian should not and has not an idea of the mystery of the sacrament. We know that the Church is not established, as Octavius of Melevis says, on a superior and pride of persons, of certain people. But the Church is established on the rock of Christ's love for us, which is weakened, strengthened, or kept alive, kept effective among us, present among us, through the sacramental And so the Church is established on a self-reliance, what we call the opus operatum, that what divine love does for us, not on what we do for God, but what divine love does for us.

[16:58]

And in that solidity we are established. As I told you before, whoever, as a Christian, enters into the regnum filii elecciones in the kingdom of the Son of God's love, he, to him, the beginning is the fullness, is an absolute beginning. That's the difference between Christianity and the Old Testament and Paganism. Paganism lives on a precarious hope, constantly shaken by fears and doubts, and always smashes. Every life a disappointment. And also in the Old Testament, The beginning is a word, it's an exhortation, it's the proclamation of the Lord.

[18:04]

But in the New Testament, the beginning is the Holy Spirit, God Himself, Christ in us, in us, for us, through us. That's the beginning. And therefore the beginning is already in itself the power of the end. Therefore what is required of us? Faith is required. Faith in the absoluteness of the beginning that God has made with us. So then of course the question arises. Is then this beginning which has been made with us a beginning which leaves us in complete passivity, to which we could not add anything? And that is then the question which is answered in the Epistle to Mormons, perhaps.

[19:09]

Dearly beloved, wonder not if the word which We know that we have passed from death to life. You see, that is the solilitas divina elecciones. That is the pasca. That is the beginning. In this beginning, passing from death to life, our baptism. But of course, King Francis, who passes with us, for us, from death to life. In this is our beginning. But this Pascha is, of course, a reality in us. It is not, as you know, the unfortunate heresy of Luther, of Protestantism, to say that this beginning is merely a juridical act, an external act, that God declares.

[20:14]

This baptised Christian to be Joseph, in these words, in this sense, that God from now on, as it were, overlooks his sins. Simul perpetua Christus, at the same time, is sinner and a Joseph, which in that cognition is an unfortunate and heretical formulation, and leaves us interiorly and in reality where we always were. But that is not the way God loves. God does not love simply in a juridical way. His love for us is not simply a sentence, a sentence that now he considers not our citizen anymore. See, that would be an external state, which does not change our own interior being.

[21:16]

God's love is creative. God loves us, that means we are changed into this love. But if that is the case, then of course, if God's love for us is a reality in us, Then, of course, St. John has to say, but my dear brethren, who hateth then his brother is not in God, he is dead. If God loves you, then you also love your brother. If the love, I would put it this way, if God's love for you is real, then you really love your brother. If God's love for you is real, that means it is a power in you, then his love for you is incompatible with your hatred of him.

[22:21]

And that is the lesson of this epistle. He that loves not, he abides in them. Whosoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. In this we have known the charity of God, means God's specific adult has been made known to us in this unusual way. He has laid down his life for us, Christ done. But then, if that is a reality, if that is not something I look at, if that is not only an event which does not change me, if that through baptism has become a reality for me, then also we ought to lay down our lives for the greater.

[23:26]

Therefore he that hath the substance of this world shall see his brother in me, shall up his bowels from him. How does the charity of God is real in me? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. So the love of God is given to us not in the form of a juridical sentence, but in the form of the distinct of the Holy Spirit, the mission of the Holy Spirit. And therefore also the Spiritus Veritatis, this one should translate that word, the Spirit of Divinity, this Spirit which is Divine Reality, then also makes us love in deed and in truth. The gradual which follows this and forms as a way of the bridge to the gospel is tomorrow in my trouble I cry to the Lord and he heard me.

[24:42]

O Lord deliver my soul from wicked lips and a deceitful tongue. What is this wicked lips and this deceitful tongue? That is the one who says, there is no God. That is the one who says, as we have it in the psalm 4, it is the one who declares, non exsalus ex in Deo ex. There is no salvation for me in God. There are all those who run round and point out, but look, this world is buried in sorrow, so much evil in this world. And therefore, there is no God. If there were a God, he could not for a moment tolerate all the evil that is in this world.

[25:48]

Therefore, all those are wicked tongues. And wicked hearts who stare at the naked things of life and of this world, and complain and burn, close up their hearts. They don't draw out the lines until the lines of faith reach the heart of all creation, which is the goodness and the mercy of God. the enemies that try to tear out of our hearts that faith in God's love for us. And therefore the answer is that is in the Hallelujah, O Lord my God, in Thee have I put my trust. Save me then from all of them that persecute me and deliver

[26:53]

See, it is there, it's beautiful also that in these, just in these songs which precede the Gospel, we make us aware that inner decision, which is the basic decision that every man has to make. He has to make up his mind. In what current of the world does he think he lives? is embraced in the world, which is simply given to the powers of chance, or what the Pagans used to call faith, that neutral text. which really takes the whole meaning out of our lives, which necessarily makes us suspicious, which makes us nervous, which makes us pessimists, or makes us sick. Or is this life, Marlene, is it

[28:00]

Institute to establish in the solidity of God's love for me. Is this world that surrounds me? Am I myself? Am I the fruit of God's love? Or just the product of chance? And this decision, of course, has to be made again and again. Because we as human beings, the lights may go out, we may not see it anymore. But every time we don't see it anymore, we have to ask ourselves, what has changed? Has the love of God for me changed? And that question then should be answered with that inner, emphatic, absolute no. which is the answer to this steadfastness, this soliditas, divina delegationis, of God's love for us.

[29:08]

Now then we have in the Gospel, we have the Gospel tomorrow, at that time Jesus spoke to the Pharisees this parable, a certain man made a great supper and invited many. And he sent his servant at the hour of supper to say to them that they were invited and they should come, for now all things are ready. They began all at once to make excuse. The first said to him, I have bought a fowl, I must needs go out and see it, and I pray thee hold me excuse. Another said, I have bought five loaves of oxen, I try, go to a trial, I pray the Lord, yet another said I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come. And the servant returning told these things to his Lord. So we see here right away, we see the conflict. The conflict between two plans, two desires.

[30:09]

One is the design of the one who is busy and who has grown master plan. And this master plan is expressed in these words, he's preparing a supper. Now the supper is the expression of love, it is the manifestation and realization of happiness, the union between the creator and his creation is the me. There, the meal is the expression of friendship that is the sharing of God. And there is the intention then of the God, instead, the Father, whose whole plan with mankind is to prepare the supper, that means the wedding feast of the Lamb. God is to mankind a person. And He treats, looks, turns towards mankind as His wife.

[31:16]

The wedding feast, the great meal, is the end of the ministry as it is envisaged by the Heavenly Father. But then, of course, they are the men themselves. They have their own minds, they have their own tasks, and their own little monetary purposes and aims, and they are terribly important. Every one of us lives on that, on what we call this conveyor belt of time. And on that, one thing after the other is brought to us. And we think that everything that is brought is tremendously important. That's what I have to do. And then, this short language, terribly important, and terribly tactically detailed, is then and obscures the great divine design.

[32:22]

And the will of God for us cannot be told, because we are too busy about ourselves. We have our preconceived plans. We have to do this. These are not laws. Our lay of work, of our own intentions, takes a hold of us, becomes exclusive. There comes the invitation to take part in the circle, and the reaction is, what? I'm so busy from the morning to the night, now I should interrupt it all, and I should just give myself to celebrate? Impossible. Too busy. So there, these two words, these two plans clash. And we can see here clearly, God has his theme. And God's theme for us is the wheel. And then we, as human beings, we have our themes. And of course, they are all different things.

[33:24]

One has to buy a thought. The other, very soon. The other one has bought a yoke of oxen, a thousand things. The things that man finds absolutely necessary are infinite in number, while God's being is only one. And the tremendous task of our life, of course, is to realize at every moment what is now the being of God. And that is what these poor men don't do. They are too sure what they have to do. And at this moment, this is it. And they already hear their eyes, their ears are simply not open to the theme of God. And the theme of God is this theme of a feast. And that is the tremendous tragedy. I cannot come to your beer, because I have just bought a young oxen, and I have to try.

[34:32]

Poor man. But that is the reality of the war. So then, therefore, great strengths are sent out. God's love is not tired, but go quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, bringing hither the poor and the feeble and the blind and the lame. There are those who cannot work. Thank God, it's a tremendous privilege. It's a wonderful disposition to them. that in that way they are hindered in their natural powers, in their things, that they are blind and lame and poor, and therefore they have nothing to do, as it were. And that is the disposition into which then the divine invitation reaches into their lives. And then the hand of mercy is grabbed by these, by the poor and the feeble and the blind and the lame, and they fill God's house.

[35:40]

So at the end, that becomes, of course, for us, a reality at Holy Communion. There we are, the feeble and the lame. That means we ask questions. the poor in spirit, those who put things out of their hands, who do not just desperately try always to put and have and keep everything under their own control. For those who can, let things go. And come into the house, come into the church, forget about the thousands of things that the world puts before us and forces upon us. And we, coming from the hedges and the byways, we fill the house of the Lord, and we seem then receiving the meal We sing, I will sing to the Lord, who giveth me good things.

[36:45]

And I will sing to the name of the Lord the most high, and that is the communion sovereign to all. And that is what I wish to all of you, that coming to this meal of the King, hearing his voice, hearing his invitation, put out of your hands all the other things that you think are tremendously important, and follow the Lord into that violent state of His love for you.

[37:17]

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