Today the feast of the vigil of the Ascension as a day of preparation for the feast reminds us that these three feasts, there is the exaltation of our Lord, Easter, the Ascension and Pentecost, there is the feast of the Transfiguration, And there's the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, and we recognize, we see it immediately that these three feasts are in one line, in one category. They are feasts of consummation. They are feasts of our hope, and of the sure hope. But they are not only lights that shine before us in the night of this earthly pilgrimage to see what will once happen to us so that we reach out for this goal.

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But because we celebrate them as feasts, between the resurrection and the last second coming of our Lord and in the church we celebrate the mass feast that makes and involves a presence and reminds us of the fact that we are not only looking forward for the final consummation but that we also are ready this final consummation has taken a hold of us and that we therefore in celebrating it are reminded of this fact that we are really partakers of the and we know the power of the Lord's resurrection and that is of course also in our monastic life the assumption as we have said so often and thought about it in the past is in a special way the feast of the monks.

[02:14]

We therefore have still proclaimed the gospel of Mary sitting at the feet of the Lord who has chosen the better part. And this choosing the better part always, what is it, but a vivid expression, a witness to the fact that we have already in some way through Christ's coming and through the work of redemption that he has done for us and in our state that we already have access to this better path, the optima path. And therefore we celebrate this with great gratitude and also for our own monastic vocation, our monastic life. There is in it, as we all realize, a great, the power of the end, as it were, as Father Panetard alluded to in his talk when he spoke about the

[03:30]

difference between the East and the West. The East thinks in terms of the end. That is so clear, so manifest also for us just in these three feasts. Let us not forget that consummation and the end of course is And for us as human beings cannot be but in a social context. We are only full consummated in relation to others. The flesh, whose glorification and transformation we celebrate in the feast of Our Lady, is that flesh which is not an instrument of selfishness and is not the seat of hatred or of passion, but it is the flesh as intended by God as a manifestation of his glory in matter, this specific, let us say, layer of being.

[04:45]

Flesh, therefore, is a means of communication, and we don't see that anywhere better, but in the mother, and of course of all mothers, in the mother of our Lord, to whom flesh simply means that tremendous possibility to give Christ as a mother to mankind. and therefore also the glorification of her flesh being assumed into heaven and thrown at the right hand of God. crowned by God, as the tradition puts it. There we recognize that this glorification of her flesh too is something that is not done for her. She doesn't, as it were, as an isolated being, kind of swim somewhere in an ocean of glory on the height of the highest heaven.

[05:51]

but her glorified flesh, the church in the west at least, but also in the east, and always understand that as the mantle, the mantle with which the mother covers her children, and in that way also let us celebrate and let us think of it, that also in our monastic life, our imitation of the glorified virgin mother, Virgin Mother, that means also our own virginity, the life of chastity is really not in any way an egoistic and selfish thing, but it means that we make the powers of our flesh, put them into the service of others, get therefore and live as it were their the motherly character which is inherent to them. So let us think about that too and ask Our Lady to give us all this grace that we with our bodies see in the monastic life serve one another.

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