Have mercy upon us. Thanks be to God. We all realize that weeks after Christmas are always especially blessed. The external activities and so on are not too pressing. The nature itself invites us to turn inside to the things of the spiritual life these weeks after the epiphany where the whole church remains for a while in the quiet and peace of contemplation. They all were wondering at the words that proceed from the mouth of God. So let us then continue also in these considerations that we put before you in these weeks about the contemplative life.

[01:19]

I started the idea of explaining what contemplation is from the word, the coincidence of the two Templar, the heavenly Templum and the earthly Templum. Now, that is of course a very wide application of that word contemplation. But I did that on purpose. because it immediately then gives us a basis, a way to see the contemplation, therefore also the contemplative life in its context, in the context of life, the entire total existence of the individual. and prevents us from becoming specialized too soon because that is a great danger that today speaking about contemplative life in an age like ours which is so specialized and which is in many ways so intellectualistic

[02:44]

And therefore when a term like this occurs, contemplation or contemplative life, people immediately are inclined to take it in a more intellectualistic way. contemplation, let's say, in the more narrow sense of focusing one's intellectual attention immovably on an object. But we shall speak about those ramifications and those more, let's say, definite meaning later. Let us first just rejoice in the universal context which is manifest first there where the contemplatio is fulfilled in the highest possible sense and that is in the Holy Trinity in the relation between the Father

[04:03]

and the Son. But even if we consider that, then right away what do we see? The Father and the Son are united as the Principium and the Principiatum, as the divine archetype and its perfect mirror. Son is the perfect, absolutely perfect image of the Father. So perfect that he is equal in nature and substance to the Father. But this equality right away brings before us the fact that when we speak about contemplation, and then understand by contemplation especially the intellectual cognition, and by contemplative life, a life which is first of all, let us say, devoted to the search for truth,

[05:20]

to the study, while the active life would be more devoted to the, primarily devoted to the needs of this, our actual existence here on earth. And we realize that that is the distinction which is mostly in our mind when we speak about contemplative and active life. Contemplative life is the life which is devoted to the contemplation of the truth. The theoria, as the Greeks said, theoretical life. While the active life is the life which is devoted to the needs of this, our earthly existence. Therefore, what we call the practical life, practical approach. But if we rise, you know, and say to the home of contemplation, the contemplative life, then we right away see how the relation between the father and the son

[06:38]

Now transcends this division. That division becomes in the bosom of the Holy Trinity, it becomes, as we may say so, useless, superfluous. Because in that triune divine life, there are no needs to take care of. therefore that triune life and the contemplation that unites the father and the son while not serving any needs or any practical purposes so to speak nevertheless is the most perfect communication of life it is the highest culmination

[07:40]

of all life its complete absolute fullness of life and that is the reason why here the act of contemplation also conceived by us conceived by us i say at the analogy and the example of our intellectual life Conceived as the producing of the word. Not the visible or sensible word, but the invisible word. That means the producing of the concept. Like in our intellect. The concept is produced. So the father in his absolute reality produces the word, and this word is the son, the absolute image of his own perfection.

[08:42]

So therefore it is this act of contemplation. It's in itself an act of highest vitality. The generation of the Son from the part of the Father. It is the highest act of life. And on the part of the Son it is the glorification of the Father. Glorification of the Father. Again, the highest act, fullness of life. And the Father and the Son in this way united. The Father to the Son by the act of generation. The Son to the Father by the act of glorification. Between those two united in that vital unity then is the bond of the Holy Spirit. This bond of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit proceeding being.

[09:46]

of the Father and the Son. As the fruit, let us say again, of that mutual communication, of that mutual relation between the Father and the Son. So the act of contemplation in the Divine Trinity is absolute vitality. Generation glorification, mutual love, the Holy Spirit. So that there you see the act of contemplation and that is of course is the danger when we as intellectual beings, as human beings, limited as we are, approach it, see on our level of life, These things, the intellectual cognition, the search for truth, is on our level of life, on this low level of life, distinguished and truly and really distinguished from, for example, the act of love.

[11:02]

Also from the various practical activities. which follow our concepts and our ideas. It's a long way in our intellectual life, in the human life, from the idea to the realization. From that intellectual cognition to the life, the love, and the practical realization that should follow. Therefore, to us, the contemplative attitude, let us say the theoretical attitude, has the character also of a certain coldness, of a certain abstractness, of, as many very often, as you say, we have even philosophers who consider, let's say, somebody like Schopenhauer, who would consider the intellect as a sickness which destroys the spontaneity of life.

[12:19]

A lot of us see the fact that man is capable of reflection, see that as the tragedy of because he is capable of reflection, because he is capable of seeing the truth as truth, a split comes into his life. He loses the simplicity and wholeness of the animal. That's in our level of life. But you see, as soon as we rise with our thoughts to the source of our contemplation, into the mystery of the Holy Trinity, that we see there is no abstraction. Contemplation is free from that split between the theoretical and the practical.

[13:23]

but in that contemplation is fullness of reality, actus tuus, as we say. And that then has to be, you know, has to be taken very much into account, because what is all Christian contemplation? The Son is being sent, see, we said that last time, after the procession follows the mission, The Son is being sent by the Father. And the Son becomes man. The Word becomes flesh. Now the unity which the Word carries is by that, by this incarnation, is planted, as it were, right in the human flesh. Right in that. The word becoming flesh, that means that the divine I, that contemplative I, is being inserted, engrafted into the new Adam, into mankind, into all flesh.

[14:43]

So we are called then through the word made flesh to enter into the contemplation of the word. to enter and participate in that realization that the Word has to the Father, and therefore to participate in the life of the Holy Trinity. So there you can, by the way, you can see that Christian contemplation is in itself a part or is, let us say, the culmination of that new unity between theory and practice, which we find in the fullest sense realized in the Divine Trinity. And from that you can also see that when we speak here as Christians about the contemplative life, that speaking about that, speaking about contemplation and contemplative life,

[15:50]

For us here on earth and as Christians and through grace made partakers of the life of the Word made flesh, it means wholeness. It cannot be without wholeness. It is a restoring to unity, the greatest possible unity that creatures can reach to. Therefore, contemplation and wholeness in the Christian life cannot be separated. Our contemplative life is not that of the Greek philosophers. In the Greek philosophers, there the theoretical life and the practical life, they were two things, you know, completely different, so that even The contemplative, the one who is dedicated to the pursuit of truth, could not and should not defile himself with any kind of work.

[17:01]

The only atmosphere in which the contemplative life in the Greek philosophy could flourish would be the atmosphere that's called a scolae. The scolae, that means the sacrum otium, that sacred or good idleness, which enables man with his other faculties at rest to concentrate on the contemplation of the absolute. But that is not so in the Christian realm. That division between the theoretical and the practical, and between the pursuit of truth and the practical activities of man, that is really a result of original sin. But Christianity leads us to the restoring of the original unity.

[18:07]

and therefore contemplation in the Christian life is part of and can never be separated to that practical uniting of the whole human being, the whole human person through that new divine life that is given us and that is nothing but an extension of the triune life where contemplation and life form an absolute unity. Have mercy upon us. I'm lying straight to God. Speaking of about alternative life ways. started from above from the inner life from the most holy trinity the home of contemplation and the place which one can say the place of privacy place of honours the contemplative life holds in

[19:33]

Christianity is just from this, that Christianity here is really an extension of that inner life of God, of the Trinity, into this world. The Father sends the Son, the Word is made flesh, and in that way that heavenly eye is as it were put upon the new Adam and then this new Adam by dying for us and rising for us collects, gathers all the various those who are called sons, the children into the unity of the one mystical body with himself as the head That is, by the way, it's clear then that all those who are gathered into an intimate union with the world made flesh are by that very fact also called to that, to participation, to share in that sublime inner life of the Holy Trinity which is essentially contemplative life.

[20:54]

And as we saw yesterday, the meaning of, let's say, the mystery of the Holy Trinity as the Church teaches us, as we have it received from our Lord Jesus Christ, as that the theoretical and the practical are united. This contemplative life of the Divine Trinity is highest reality. is in itself absolute life. Therefore, it's complete unity between the truth and law, between, let's put it that way, the theoretical and the practical. Only in the lower stages here, especially in the state of fallen man, These two things, the theoretical and the practical, are so different, so divided.

[21:58]

Such a long way it is from one to the other, from the theoretical to the practical, and very often also from the practical to the theoretical. We see very often that here on this earth and in this human life, See, the scholar has a certain ineptitude, sometimes a certain aversion from the practical. He remains in a realm of irreality. The theoretical becomes something aesthetical and therefore then loses its contact with reality. While on the other hand, we also see very often that the practical seems to show a certain enmity towards the theoretical. Take Martha and Mary. Martha, busy about many things, representing either the active or the practical life.

[23:08]

and then wondering about what Mary is doing all the time. Why does she not take part in the labor that has to be done there at this point? So those things and so those, say, oppositions, they belong to the lower sphere, to the sphere of life which really has been thrown out of balance and destroyed in its harmony and unity by the original sin. But in its very essence, we lift up our eyes to the Holy Trinity, where Theoria and Life are absolutely one. Now we shall see later Deo volente et spiritus vivante, how this principle then has to be applied to the monastic life.

[24:13]

The monastic life really is, especially the monastic life of the rule, as St. Benedict describes it. Yet you know the rule of St. Benedict is limited or concerned with what we call the first two conversions, from the world to God. The world is conceived, as I said before, as this organism, organization of selfishness, which is broken by the renouncement of property and by the renouncement of one's own will. Poverty and obedience. are the ways in which the man breaks with the world but then comes the second conversion which is the conversion from vice to virtue and that is the conversion which with this holy rule is substantially concerned

[25:20]

It leads to Mentabonuro-Nopo, which we read right now. We see wonderfully represented also that stage in the life of St. Anthony, where St. Anthony, after he has sold everything, moves out of his little village and then looks for the examples that he can imitate in the virtuous life. All kinds of things. Somebody who is eminent in hospitality, another one who is Evident in prayer, another one in humility, another one has this virtue, another one that virtue. Just as it is in the Instrumenta Honorum. Then St. Anthony tries to imitate this one, imitate that one. That's the conversion from vice to virtue. Then, of course, comes the third one, and that is from the visible to the invisible. That's the contemplation problem, contemplative life.

[26:27]

That is in St. Anthony's life in the third stage, where he moves out of the sepulchre into the desert. That is the conversion from the visible to the invisible, or what we call the unitive. So that is what the voliwul is concerned with. Voliwul is concerned, one can say, with, let's say, Thomas would call it, the disposition that are required for the contemplatively. St. Thomas makes that distinction. He says we must distinguish in the question of the contemplative life between what is contemplatio formalita and what belongs to the contemplative life dispositiva. Contemplative life formalita is the actus intellectus, that is, the contemplation of the divine truth.

[27:30]

the knowing God as he is in himself. But then that is not the whole of the contemplative life. This is the climax. That's the fruit. Well, that fruit has to be preceded, has to be prepared by the conversion from Christ to virtue. and that is what we call the things that belong to the contemplative life not formality but dispositive and that is what we have to consider later that the contemplative life fruit of contemplation demands certain dispositions and the rule of saint benedict is concerned with these dispositions now if we We don't want to go to that yet, but we want to still to consider a little the contemplative life which centers or finds its fulfillment, its highest realization in the divine trinity, how Christianity is determined in its character by this very fact.

[28:53]

The inner divine life is contemplative life. And since Christianity is the extension of this inner life of God to those who are incorporated into the Son, therefore also Christianity here on this earth is essentially contemplative. But if you want to see that next, I thought we could do that by explaining to you a little this picture that we see here before us in the chapter room. This picture is one of the great things of Pritchard painting. It seems to be one of the real classical moments where where in the mind of this inspired painter, Andrew Rublev, himself a monk, a contemplative, really this inner essence of Christianity has crystallized in a real marvelous, masterful way.

[30:14]

If you look at that picture, then you see right away the object of the picture is the representation of the what we may call the conversatio divina. Just this inner life of the Holy Trinity. The conversatio divina, the relation between the three divine persons. That is the essence of the contemplative mind. And that is their manifesto. according to and is manifested in a way if you look let's look at it just to say from the outside one thing i think that you all realize there is in this painting is one way the softness of the colors which corresponds also to the softness of the lines lines especially insofar as the life is concerned that with these lines is expressed in these lines i mean the lines in which which the angels show there is a tender and attentive reverent

[31:33]

bending of lines, as it were, of heads towards the second and the third person, towards the angel who represents the first person. It's not a picture of the divine trinity. It's a symbol of the conversatio divina, of the divine, inner divine life, and the lines which you see there are lines of tenderness. One could say that this whole picture is really the revelation of a friend. Anything threatening or anything harsh has been completely eliminated. The picture is in itself a piece of paradise. is of tremendous tenderness of inner life, inner recollection. Then also to that corresponds the very scene which is represented, the scene of a meal.

[32:44]

A meal is the intimate life. of human persons. Meal is not just there that everybody gets his food, you know, and so on, but it is an act of intimate union. Meal is in itself an act of friendship, symposium, as the ancients used to call it, as Plato called it. The symposium is the manifestation of the highest form of personal friendship. It's the moment in which the inner secrets of the person are communicated and shared. And it's the wine which gladdens the heart and in that way opens the heart. In vino veritas, in the wine there is truth.

[33:50]

The way which the ancients understand it is that the wine is the thing that loosens the tongue. not for boasting and not for laughter only, but it enables man to pour out really the innermost what he has in his heart and the love that is in his heart. Wine makes it easier on the physical level to open up And that has to be, of course, is a symbol of what happens on the spiritual level. That we see most in the most perfect way in the symposium of our Lord, the Last Supper. There it is. We find the same scene.

[34:52]

Last Supper is really taken, especially in the Gospel according to St. John, as the manifestation of the Lord's heart, where he pours out the most intimate secrets of his heart to his disciples as his friends. And right in the very center say in the very heart of the talks that our Lord gives to his disciples in the course of the Last Supper is this word which really is a key word for the understanding of the contemplative character of the Christian life and that is I do not call you servants anymore I call you friends Because the reason for that is decisive.

[35:53]

Because the servant does not know what his Lord does. But I tell you everything that I have heard from my Father. There we see the whole difference. Between the Old and the New Testament, the servant does not really know what his Lord is doing. He has no insight into the inner motives, into the designs, the intentions of the Lord. He just gets the letter of the Lord, and he fulfills the letter of the Lord. And that is the Old Testament. The New Testament is, however, another one. The relation between servant and Lord is replaced by the relation between the friend and the soul.

[37:05]

The friends and the soul. And the characteristic of friendship, that's the important thing, of divine friendship is that the friend knows the inner secret of the, say, the friend's heart. St. Thomas explains that so beautifully in the fourth book of the Contra Gentiles. I think it's the 23rd chapter in which he explains that. The essence of friendship is that the friend considers his friend as his own heart, so that he wants to share the secrets of his heart with his friend. By that as it were, not losing or not to failing in any way,

[38:13]

the secrets of his heart. That means his most intimate life. When he speaks to his friends about the things he has in his heart, they don't leave, as it were, the realm of the heart. Therefore, they keep that character of intimacy. And that is the essence of Christianity. We are gathered around the table of the Lord And the Lord invites us to serve with Him. That's also the essence of what later on in the Apocalypse is called, what we call the eternal life. Just to remind you, the definition which our Lord gives in the 17th chapter in the High Sacerdotal Prayer, High Priestly Prayer, of the eternal life, he says, but what is the life of this new Ion, of this new age, the Christian age?

[39:21]

It is to know you, the Father. You see, the new life that we receive has contemplative power. It's essentially contemplative. And that is here in this picture, it's expressed in such a wonderful, beautiful way. It is a picture in which the friendship, the divine friendship, is open, as it were, to those who are called to contemplate this picture. If you look at the structure of it, it is all these wonderful soft, let us say, bent lines, you know, which express inclination The inclination of the hearts of the friends towards one another. But there are some also straight lines. But if you look at it, what do these straight lines do in this picture? They are there in order to draw us, the one who looks at it, into it.

[40:28]

To give that picture a certain inner opening which draws us into its set. These lines which run, you know, in triangular form, we'll see that later. But they are there in order to open up something to us, to make us, share us in the inner secret of the divine intimate life. Therefore, they serve, again, the friendship they are, the friendship extended to us, the one who looks. So let us then continue that later on. But what I wanted to say is this, you see that you see from there that Christian life also here on earth absolutely carries that contemplative character.

[41:33]

And that therefore for us as Christians, you know, at no point could we in any way, let us say, exclude or develop a certain, how may I say, a certain reserve towards the contemplation. Our whole life must be open for contemplation. That all the lines have to be drawn out into this direction. Therefore our heart should long for that. That's so important for us as disciples of Sigmund.

[42:09]

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