There are two aspects, two ways of looking at it. The way of man, of man as he is, lost in himself, suffering, therefore delivered to the hands of death. And therefore seeing in death the miserable end of the Lord Jesus and the death on the cross, the destruction of everything he is striving for because he is striving for honor, he is striving for glory, but an honor and a glory that he builds out of himself with his own resources. And therefore, as I say, catastrophe is something evil that deserves only contempt as an answer and horror. And then the other way of looking at it, the eyes of faith, to experience what faith, the Christian faith, is, that it is faith in the resurrection.

[01:15]

And that means faith that takes part in the creative power which the Father has called his Son into life has glorified him, the one who did the Father's will. Hence, therefore, faith penetrates through the external picture of disaster and of misery and reaches behind into glory Because the connection between the two, the misery and the glory, the emptying of oneself and the being raised to the heights of the right hand of the Father, the connection between the two things is the Father's love for us, the Father's love for his Son and through his Son for all of us. So that is the way of the monk.

[02:18]

Speaking of that, these last months we are talking about, so often about the Christianity, Western Christianity and the East. The picture that is of course the figure of Christ in his sufferings, is something which cannot be understood by those who are initiated, by those who are baptized, by those who experience in themselves that creative power of faith, virtue of which we are called sons of light, really a light, sons of light. The day where this image of the tortured and crucified Savior meets the eyes of the unredeemed man, the reaction actually is only one of aversion and of withdrawing, even turning against it, combating.

[03:32]

in a natural desperate attempt combating with evidence of the deadly weakness to which the human nature is subjected after the fall of the revolution against But Christianity and the great shepherd like Leo, the great paints before the eyes, of course, of his flock and of the believing Christians, the glory of the cross, Christ in glory, Christ as the conqueror of the world. And that is what we, of course, in our days, what we need to, especially we need that in the monastic life the experience monastic life is the life of the cross it's geared to weakness it's geared to to misery to the deep experience of our own insufficiency and our own weakness but for what purpose so that the creative power of faith may transform

[04:38]

life interiorly and make it a way to a taste of the divine eternal glory that is waiting for us

[04:50]

@Transcribed_v005
@Text_v005
@Score_90.64