So, in speaking about the way I set the foot of the altar, we explained and meditated a little on this beginning of the psalm, 42, judge me, O God, according and separate my cause from that of the unholy nation. There is another verse in this psalm I wanted to call your attention to, and that is, Why are you sad, my soul, and why do you trouble me? And then comes the answer. Spera in Deo, put your trust and hope in God.

[01:04]

Coniam attu confitebor illi. I shall always praise him, the salvation of my face and my God. That is certainly one of the common grounds on which we find ourselves constantly in so often the sadness of our heart. We all suffer occasionally from these depressions which come over us, discouragements, be it with the work we are doing, the circumstances in which We live, also our own ego, how many disappointments, disappointments in ourselves and disappointments with other people, and necessarily they create great sadness and sorrow in our heart.

[02:16]

There are moments, as we say, when the lights go out. The psalm here encourages us and admonishes us, put your trust really and truly in God. That is one of the reasons why so often we feel how our own life is ebbing low, that we may use that kind of depression and of sadness and make of it a stepping stone through which we rise into the glory and power of God. So often then, when we consider things a little more deeply, as we should do in a retreat, we also see how much self-love and how much hurt pride and how much vanity

[03:20]

goes into these sadnesses and how often it is really created by a wrong pride in our own soul. So that leaving ourselves and leaving our own standards that we have set, either for our success in ourselves, in the spiritual life, and also for our success in our work and with others, that we become like children and that we simply accept these circumstances to which we are placed, and that we see that there are opportunities that God offers to us, these disappointments, really to put our entire hope and trust more totally, completely in God.

[04:29]

See, it's the whole that we cannot understand the Mass, we cannot understand here the prayers at the foot of the altar without being aware of the basic fact that Christianity is essentially the manifestation of God's grace. And certainly in the Old Testament, it was God gave his help to his people by giving his law. And the law that is the signpost along our road pointing us to God telling us, this is the way, do this and you shall live. If you don't do this, then there is the penalty.

[05:37]

That was the quintessence of the law, the law that Moses received on top of Mount Sinai, And that was written by God's finger in tablets of stone. And that letter he brought down. Here, this is the word of God. And as St. Paul describes it in the 12th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, his voice was so terrifying. that they all asked Moses, tell him not to speak to us anymore. So there God appeared, as it were, in his majesty on the top of the mountain, and, if we may speak that way, he let down a ladder, the ladder of the law, to the people,

[06:48]

with the admonition to ascent on the rungs of the Ten Commandments and all the other commandments that crystallize around this center and heart of the law. So it's an invitation to climb under the guidance of the divine commandment, the guidance of the law. But, of course, as St Paul describes it, especially in the letter to the Romans, the law in itself is empty. It is enormous, it points into a certain direction. It judges the one who does not follow the law. But the law does not give the power to follow it.

[07:55]

And that is the new revelation in the New Testament where our Lord Jesus Christ meets his Apostles on Mount Zion, and he invites them to come with him and share with him the intimacy of the cenacle, of the room where he celebrates with them the Last Supper. And while in the Old Testament, by the manifestation of the law, a fence had to be erected around the mountain to keep the people away that they may not touch the mountain of the presence of God's glorious majesty. Nobody can see my glory and live. That was the word directed to Moses in the Old Testament.

[09:00]

So in order to mark absolutely clearly that here a word descended, a word of commandment descended from the Almighty God to the people who were separated and kept aloof, as it were, from the presence of the glory. so that nobody could say that these commandments, this order, was in any way influenced or was the expression of any human desires or devices. Here was really a revelation, the word descended, it was a word of divine authority. not the expression of the desires or wishes of a congregation.

[10:03]

So there was that fix, which made it absolutely clear here is a basic distinction. Here is the will of Almighty God, hewn, as it were, into tablets of stone, there to stand as a letter, that nobody could alter, inalterable, clearly a demand and commandment of the Lord of heaven and earth. In the New Testament, the word of God is made flesh. The glory descended, as St. Paul said, put ye on the mind of Christ, who did not think it robbery to be equal to God. So our Lord, as he said himself, left the glory that he had from all eternity with the Father.

[11:10]

He emptied himself in order to become one of us in the mystery of the Incarnation. He descended. The Lord became a slave, a slave who was obedient unto death, unto the death of the cross. So there we see clearly also a ladder is being set upon this earth. But this time it is the Son of God who descends himself and who shares with us his life. No fence is around the mountain of God's presence, of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Word of God made flesh. On the contrary, he invites his own to sup with him, which is the act of greatest intimacy and sharing of life.

[12:19]

And there he is in with his little group of faithful followers and he takes the bread into his hands and he says, this is my body, take it and eat. This is my blood, drink it. So there is not only no fence anymore around God's presence forbays the invitation to unite oneself most intimately by eating and drinking in the Word of God made flesh. And then the commandment is given. But this new commandment that the Lord, who in this way has descended from heaven, has himself approached his own, has given himself completely to his disciples.

[13:30]

One can say, one should say, physically given himself to his disciples. He then asks or sets, proclaims, promulgates a new commandment. And that new commandment is the commandment of love, of the agape. So it is in the New Testament that the divine love descends, feeds us, nourishes us. shares his life with, and then out of that fullness comes the fulfillment of a commandment which is nothing but the propagation, so to speak, the fruit of that life that God has shared with us, the

[14:44]

Charity of Christ, Christ's agape, urges us, presses us. So the commandment of love in that way is not an empty letter. It is not a simple external commandment which leaves us to our own and leaves it to our own power to fulfill it, but it is God, let us put it this way, first becomes a gift. And then entering into us in that way, then the commandment of love, the life of love is shared. That is also the meaning of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit has the characteristic personal word, the word dono.

[15:55]

He is in his personal character. The Holy Spirit is the gift. And this gift descends to earth from the Father through the glorified humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it is the Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son and brings to us the divine fullness which flows and is the fruit of the complete sacrifice that the Word of God made man has offered to his father on Golgotha, and that has been accepted in his glorious resurrection and in his ascension. And now the whole house of the ecclesia, of the church, is filled with that spirit, and in that fullness then the apostles

[17:04]

go out and they proclaim the Magnalia Dei, the great deeds of the Lord. So that is, you see that right away, that is the quintessence of Christianity. It is not anymore a law, it is a spirit. A spirit which is given to us and given to us not on any merit of our own and not as the divine answer to our worthiness or to certain acts through which we would have proved our worthiness, but it is a gift that is given to us in spite of our enmity and in spite of our infirmities. Just in my infirmities I am strong, as St.

[18:11]

Paul says. So there is a completely new idea and a new power which enters into mankind and into history and which really makes and marks the essence of this messianic age. The ascension of our Lord is his enthronization, and his enthronization as curious is really the beginning of a new era. The beginning of that new era is the outpouring of the fullness of the Holy Spirit. As St. Peter says in his first sermon on Pentecost, he says, now you think that these people here are drunk already at nine o'clock in the morning. But in fact, what has happened is that the prophecy of Joel has been fulfilled.

[19:11]

He says, I shall send my spirit, words of the Lord, over all of you, over the young men and the old men, over the women and the men, over the slaves and the free. They all participate in the fullness of my Spirit. They all shall prophesy. They all shall announce the great deeds of God. That is the essence of the Messianic Age. It is not, therefore, the fulfillment of a letter, to the letter, so that we may escape hell, and in this way, see, make heaven. But it is the outpouring of the fullness of the Spirit that carried by that fullness, we may then give room to the Spirit in us, as it were, and in this way abound in that way which descends to us from the very heart of God through the gloriously reigning Lord in the Holy Spirit.

[20:39]

So that we have to see clearly that we as Christians, and especially we as priests, we are not building the Tower of Babel. In other words, we don't look for any human devices, brick making brick, technical thing, clever thing. But in substance, a brick is a piece of dirt, you know. burnt in fire, that is true, hardened in that way, then these bricks being put one upon the other, one slowly, with the organized mass effort, one builds a tower that one hopes may reach heaven. One peats with the divine omnipotence, and by all that, making a name for ourselves, as Holy Scripture says.

[21:44]

That is the Babylon, the Babel of the 11th chapter of Genesis. I once saw that it was so interesting and beautiful in an old Romanesque chapel. near the Steinhuder Meer, that's near Hanover, my birthplace, and there it was. You know, it had been whitewashed by the Protestants in the Reformation, and now in these times it was discovered that beneath this, under this whitewash, there were these beautiful, very beautiful Romanesque paintings of the 13th century, and there it was, that whole The vault of that church consisted of a series of parallel scenes of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, a real Bible of the poor, as they did it in the Middle Ages in such a beautiful way so that people really, you know, were led by seeing them into the very, one can say, into the thoughts of God.

[22:59]

especially using the contrast between the Old and the New Testament, because we as human beings, we learn and we are introduced into the New Covenant by contrasting it with the Old. That sets our mind and our emotions and our imagination really into motion, the contrast. So there it was. And then the first pair in these buildings, in these paintings, was on one side you could see the painting of the Tower of Babel. And there were this structure of bricks and ladders leading up, leaning at it and leaning up from all sides. And then there were these people, you know, that had to work in the sweat of their brows, you know, and carried the, what is it, the mortar, is it?

[24:18]

carried it in these hods, you know, up on their shoulders, you know, up the ladder. And one could see that, their faces, you know, with the lines deeply, you know, and then all the sadness of their slavery on their faces because it's no easy matter to compete with the Almighty. And it makes man a pessimist. So there they were, you know, climbing up these ladders in that really desperate effort by piling dirt upon dirt to reach the glory of God. And then on the other side, a completely different picture than was the picture of Pentecost. And there you have the inside of the house, And there the apostles were sitting, Our Lady in the center. And then from the hand of God, which reached down these ways, coming forth, the right hand of God is the risen Savior in that connection.

[25:32]

And from there, the waves coming down and descending upon each one of those who were sitting there in this house in the attitude of prayer. So there is this organized effort and mobilization of human resources on one side, and there is this reign of God's mercy and of God's grace, the descent of the divine life upon those who sit there, not in an inactive, complete passivity or indifference, but it is the attitude of waiting. but waiting with a patient, expecting, trusting heart in prayer.

[26:35]

And then there descends the fullness of the divine life and of the divine light into these hearts, two flames of the love of God and of the love of men. So the contrast is so striking that I never forgot this beautiful parallel between the two cities, the city of the devil, the city of this earth, and the city of God. And they are all so completely different. One, the ascending human effort, and the other one, the descending divine grace, so divine as we call it, agape, the characters of God, seeking not her own, but simply sharing the divine life with us, not in proportion in that way to our worthiness, but in an absolute, abundant, in that way, miraculous way,

[27:52]

creative way, making us new creatures and giving us a garment which really is completely beyond the reach and the imagination of our human nature. I mean the glory of the risen Christ that descends upon us. So there is that difference you must clearly see. And into that we have to enter. We enter into the mystery of this love which descends. And while being worn out by the futile effort of our human life, we may get depressed, the remembrance of the one who loves me eternally is for us the source of a new life and gives us a new strength with which we do, as St.

[29:08]

Paul says it so beautifully in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, in which we do the works which have been prepared for us by God from all eternity. And the works that have been prepared for us by God from all eternity is really the death and the resurrection of Christ, into which we enter in this act of faith. Therefore, we also say in the psalm, 42, so beautifully when we stand at the foot of the altar of the sacred mountain representing whole earth. Send out your light and your truth because they will lead me to the holy mountain and into your tabernacles.

[30:11]

That is the beauty of it, that the divine agape sends out the light and truth, and that light and truth is the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ himself, who said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life and the resurrection. and united to him as our head, one body with him through the Holy Eucharist, we enter into the tabernacles, into that divine of the kingdom of God. So in some way this entering, one can say, into the tabernacle of God, the sending out of light and truth, is also in a very specific way then made concrete to us in the Confitio, which immediately follows.

[31:14]

I confess to Almighty God and to Our Lady, Blessed Virgin Mary, to St. John the Baptist, St. Michael the Archangel, St. John the Baptist, St. Peter and Paul, There we enter, as it were, into the communion of saints. We are there in the divine covenant. We open, as it were, in all truth and all humility, we lay open our misery to them. In this confitio, sin, of course, in an inevitable way, isolates us, separates us, excommunicates us, cuts us off. We are that way cut off as from the vine through sin, but confessing our sin, we overcome.

[32:28]

The separation, the excommunication, as it were, overcome the devil, who tries, of course, to conquer us by pushing us into some dark corner. We arise out of that separateness, loneliness, and we address ourselves to... God, the God of mercy, the one who judges us, is the one who died for us. The God to whom we as Christians address ourselves is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then, too, Our Lady, who is the refuge of sinners, whose great mission it is as the Mother to represent just this forgiving, healing, caring love that she really brought into this world.

[33:38]

By an act of faith, be it done unto me according to your word. That is, Our Lady, as the open hand of mankind. That is Our Lady as the, one can say, incarnation of faith in God's descending love. Be done unto me. That is the blessed passivity or patience of faith. And she, of course, is our advocate. He is the one who, as the understanding mother, presents our case unto her heavenly glorified Son. And then on the other side of that picture stands St. John the Baptist, or St. Michael the Archangel in the Romans. But he too is the mediator between God and man.

[34:42]

He is the one who presents our soul to God at the moment of judgment. And St. John the Baptist, the great preacher of repentance, but the one who pointed to the Lamb, which carries our sins, the sin of the world, and therefore is the patron of the repentant sinner. And then St. Peter and St. Paul, both St. Peter and St. Paul, great sinner, but then both in their and through their sin, were led to the realization, a living realization for themselves, of the infinite mercy of the Father as it appeared in Christ. You know that I love you. That was St.

[35:52]

Peter's word. You know that I know. Before his conversion, he was always eager to fight for the Lord. He wanted to do everything in his power to prevent him to go to Jerusalem where he would be spit upon and where he would be killed, delivered into the hands of his enemies. O Lord, you should not go there. But then our Lord answered, Out of my way, Satan, because you think the thoughts of men and not of God. The thoughts of men are the thoughts of human prudence and of human power, in which Saint Peter did not want the Lord to risk his career by delivering himself helplessly into the hands of his enemies.

[36:56]

But that was exactly the thought of God, of the Heavenly Father, who thinks in the lines of that eternal love which loves us first and which draws us eternally to himself by and through the sacrifice of his Son for us. Later on, too, when our Lord comes and wants to kneel down and wash the feet of his apostles, it's St. Peter who says, Lord, you should never wash my feet. Again, St. Peter did not understand why he wanted to kneel down and wash our dirty feet. what he does now every time in receiving the sacrament of penance, what is it else but our Lord kneeling down and washing our feet.

[37:58]

But St. Peter considered that as something that was just not, could not be done by the Lord, was the matter for a slave to do because he did not understand The tremendous revolution, the change of order, which the descending love of God introduced into this world, is certainly a foolishness to the pagans and a scandal to the Jews. Foolishness to the pagans because the pagans always naturally think that you have the goal in life is to reach the maximum of power. And you reach the maximum of power by associating with the right people. While our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God, but he became one of us, a slave.

[39:07]

Foolishness to the heathen. and a scandal to the Jews, because for the Jews it was blasphemy to think that the Son of God made man, that in that way God should die for us. That was a blasphemy to the Jews, because they believed in that divine majesty which had appeared in the top, of Mount Sinai in fire, and there in thunder and lightning, had proclaimed his law, Do this, or dying you shall die. So it was really for St. Peter a long way until he understood the law and the life of God's law. That's why he said, you know, then, oh, if I have no part in you without your washing my feet, not only the feet, but everything, you see.

[40:14]

Because he thought again, you know, depended on his washing. He didn't see the descending and the kneeling. And when our Lord later at the same Last Supper, you know, revealed that I have to go where I go, you cannot follow me. It was again St. Peter that said, and I follow you, I want to follow you now. He was not satisfied with our Lord's remark, you cannot follow me now, you will do it later. No, he had to do it now. It's always that human impatience which wants to prescribe to God how he has to act in order to save us. And then later he was the one who drew the sword. And then, of course, just cut the kind of piece of the ear of one of the servants of the high priest. It certainly did not change, let us say, the, if we may say so, the strategical situation of that moment.

[41:26]

Therefore, put your sword aside, satisfied. I have enough. Put your sword. This is not the hour of the sword. This is the hour of the complete surrender of that love that seeketh not her own, and that once and forever wants to offer himself for us, that in this way we may reap from that saving deed of the Savior eternal salvation. And therefore, when then, you see, that we can see that so often, if people and St. Peter's fate is really the fate of man, you know, it's typically for man, typical for man. St. Mary Magdalene is typical for the woman and her attitude in front of the mystery of the divine agape.

[42:30]

St. Peter is typical for the attitude of man. And there, the one who wants to follow, who draws the sword, you know, who keeps close to the Savior while he is being arrested, always with this idea, maybe I can do something for him. Maybe I can prevent him from doing something really foolish. With that attitude, St. Peter followed. Certainly it's all love for the Saviour, but it's not the understanding really of his divine heart. So then, you see, with all this bragging and all this bloated figure, you know, of self-assurance, then comes one trick and the whole thing just collapses.

[43:31]

And that trick is the anchilla, you know, a maid. who comes and says, oh, you are one. You speak. You are one of those. You know, we belong to him. And then St. Peter says, I don't know him. No, he did not know the Lord when he finally was standing there as a public criminal, arrested in the hands of the authorities. deprived of all glory. Saint Peter loved the Lord in his glory. Therefore, when on Mount Tabor our Lord manifested his glory, Saint Peter said, this is it. Here let us stay. Here we remain. This is the kingdom. That is what he had waited for, for the kingdom. And so when our Lord stood there deprived of

[44:33]

of any human support, and in complete helplessness, chained, fused, without any glory, and St. Peter did not recognize it, because his eyes were not yet opened for the real glory of God's descending Lord. He did not know that this was the glorification of the Father through the Son. But then our Lord, and that is the beautiful thing, turns around and looks at him, not with the eyes of judgment, that means of condemnation, but with the eyes of a friend that peers through this, through this, one couldn't call it apostasy, I mean, through this failure, into that very center of St.

[45:51]

Peter's heart where he loved the Saviour. And the eyes of Christ were directed to him into his last dip. And there St. Peter failed and realized. He went out and he wept bitterly. That means that he as man had now reached that stage in which he could not anymore. whole control of himself what man always tried to do the last moment he could not control himself anymore tears in that way are always the expression of overwhelming joy or of overwhelming sadness years indicate that here man is overwhelmed, that means he is taken out of his own self-control and he is delivered into the hands of an impression which is beyond his control.

[47:08]

And that is here, that is the rebirth of Saint Peter through The tears of repentance, metanoia, of a thinking in a completely new and different way. And that is therefore then ended, you know, in the last word. You, O Lord, you know that I love you. So, in the end, St. Peter gives his whole interior, everything that he has in himself, simply into the knowledge of the Lord. He knows, and there he is safe. He is safe in the knowledge of that God. of whom St. John the Apostle says so beautifully again in his first epistle, When your heart accuses you, God is greater than your heart and knows everything.

[48:11]

@Transcribed_v005
@Text_v005
@Score_95.55