The idea that the monk answers, wants, desires, longs to answer the call and invitation of the Heavenly Father. Everywhere I am looking for a place to rest. in omnibus requiem Christi. Everywhere I'm looking for a place to rest. But this place was not found until the bird made flesh. Our Lord Jesus Christ was buried in the waters of the Jordan. And rising again, then the heavens opened and the voice was heard, the divine witness, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

[01:03]

There is the place of rest. Who more patches the man of my peace? And he then goes, he appears to his apostles, He says to them, I give you my peace. My peace I give to you. So it comes down that a great Christian is called to be a man of God's peace where the Father can rest. But then we have the other forces of fallen human nature busy creating chaos so that the spirit of God cannot rest there. And that is what we were considering yesterday as a danger of our own life.

[02:05]

Pride and arrogance create chaos. The juniors at St. Benedict's Synod should reverence the seniors, and the seniors love the juniors. They have the formula of peace. They are the men of peace become the resting place for God's love. But very often then instead, Pride and arrogance disturb this peace. The juniors, pride formed, becoming patient, fresh. The seniors, in turn, hit the juniors over the head with a stick of seniority. And lo and behold, chaos is the result. And they're shaking now with gloom.

[03:07]

The divine spirit cannot stay. And that is a great danger. And that's one of the warnings I wanted to issue because of this retreat. But as you certainly realize the warning that love, love for this community and love for you, everyone who is here and lives here, dictates that to me. So it's not a kind of a stern declaration, but it is an urgent appeal that you may follow this work and become, everyone, a man of God's peace. For what purpose? That you may be able to say, look how sweet the Lord is. And there is then another field which I wanted to deal with today, and which also, because we are children of wrath,

[04:29]

We are foreign. This disorder of our affections is an important part of our life. The field of the affections, the field of human love, the desires of the senses, the lower actors, the higher actors of human nature. There, too, we can see then we have experienced that and are experiencing it all the time. There is a source which may create gifts. A senior may have his favorite juniors. A junior may have his favorite superiors. And again, these relations are withdrawn from the ordo caritatis divine, and they are used as tools.

[05:37]

They are made subservient to the affectus humani. And those affectus humani are, and that is the revenge, it's called nature of mistakes, of those who are subject to it, They are unpredictable, they are ever-changing, chaos, wounds of the heart are the result of such an attitude. So it's really the field of holy virginity and of chastity I wanted to talk about. But I want to put on this, every consideration of this field, and the one guiding principle and viewpoint, and that is that of the transfiguration. Now, I hope you understand me right, and I think in the course of these explanations you will understand it better.

[06:42]

I don't speak about any attempt of what they call today sublimation. I speak about the metamorphosis, the transformation, the transfiguration, which, after all, is the basic theme of our community life, which we are dedicated in a very special feast. The word celebrating is our feast, the continuation and the assumption. So it's all really under the guiding viewpoint that in our monastic life, the powers of love, positive powers of love, must be challenged in the right way and must be transformed by grace, by the other, by that Caritas which descends

[07:48]

from above. Now we may distinguish in this whole field perhaps three states or three levels. One is the level in which love, human love, is felt in the form of these sexual instincts. in the form of lust. Then there is another stage in which the human love appears in the form of affection, friendship, for example. And then is the last form in which it appears as a total thing which involves the entire personality and orientate our own self, my self, the I, definitely and completely to the Thou.

[09:04]

That's the only possible, full, lasting, definite vision. the one we are looking for, the partner to which our faith, to whom our faith is directed, so that it can be fixed there. And that you see right away, that is then again the homo-conscious. It is our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the faith, Directed towards the Father. The Gloria Patris. Faith equal. Reflection of the Father. Equal. In essence, the Father. So this, the Son of Jesus Christ, made man.

[10:07]

He is the Homo Patris. Yes. He descended, and he humbled himself, and he became a slave, and he died for us, in obedience to God's will. And in that way, he rose again, and that was the metamorphosis, the transformation, through which he himself, and now he is at the right hand of the Father, but not alone, but as the prince, the leader of salvation. And of him we are part, of his body we are part. And therefore, we are bought for a big price, and so we carry God in our body

[11:13]

And that is the ideal of man's special way of the moment, as the Aumur touches me, the man of divine peace. Now, I thought, you know, that perhaps one way, I'd say, the best way, but one way maybe to speak about this problem, this field, would be to take the example of St. Augustine. Because St. Augustine's confessions are that Christian document, which certainly infinitely better and deeper than anything else that Christianity has ever produced, deals with this part. This was St. Augustine's problem. The transformation of the tremendous powers of love, which were as a natural gift, poured out over this truly and deeply and absolutely human, perhaps the most human of all saints,

[12:32]

Therefore, his symbol is the heart. He is the doctor of Cognizant. And that is, he has become, really, through his confession. And the heart, of course, stands as the symbol of that love which man, as the homo pacis divina, carries in him as his greatest treasure. So St. Augustine, as you all know, was not born a saint. And the tremendous possibility and richness of his nature was also a tremendous danger to him in the beginning. And he describes in his Confessions the various stages in which the soul slowly grew, as he emphatically states, through the power of divine grace, into that fullness of the hope purchased, which we find later on as a bishop and pastor of his flock in us.

[13:57]

So here St. Augustine describes life comes to that place where these sensual desires are awakened in the soul in turbulent times of adolescence. And that is the theme. That is the relation of the path or the muddle of lust and love. And that is, of course, the theme of adolescence. But it is not limited to their time, but it remains a constant thing which accompanies man through his life in various ways, in various accents of emphasis and urgency. Somehow it's always there. And so it is good to see, and as the one thing I wanted to propose to your consideration, I wanted to show to you how St.

[15:03]

Augustine deals, and again I repeat, in a positive way, in a, shall we say, creative way, with the balance for the burden of his memories, of his adolescence, the sins of his youth. And he says it right away when it begins. Speaking about Augustine, quoting something, St. Augustine has such a power of speech, of word, that the only thing which remains to us is to repeat the way he has put it. I propose now, said, and that is in the, you are, I suppose, familiar with it, in the second book, In the second book of his confessions, where he deals mostly with the 16th year of his life.

[16:07]

And looking back at it, he starts in this way. Beautiful. I propose now to set down my past wickedness and the carnal corruptions of myself. Now, for what purpose? You see, I give this to you and I read it to you because very often the memories of the past may be a hindrance, a foreign obstacle. They may grow into a burden which depresses us and which in that way then prevents us from really moving the wings of the Spirit and the wings of grace. St. Augustine therefore continues when he says, not certainly for love of them, but that I may love thee, O my God.

[17:16]

I do it for love of thine own. So that is the way in which he, as a reborn Christian, looks at the times in which, I wish to say, human love was born in history. He looks back at it, but now there's a new way for love of life. That is the end, and it's the last verse of this confession, made for the love of thy God. You see, there is very often anybody, in every human being for that matter, and especially, in a special degree, a monk. A monk may at times become very of wobbly. It is an act of wobble. The sensual instincts and the desire for human love, this heart, may bring about in our life what we may call the crisis of reality.

[18:36]

It is this instinct It's the computers, the computers, which brings about that crisis of reality. That is able and it gets out of control, takes possession. So to make the things of the spirit look pale and impotent and unruly, You see, you must not be afraid if you are faced with that crisis of reality in your own spiritual life. That is one of the results of fallen nature. At that moment in which the soul of man, through rebellion of God, is cut off from the divine light,

[19:38]

from the Caritas Divina, the divine friendship offered to him, but refused by him, then the spiritual realities, which really in the order of nature are true realities, also in the order of nature, to him they become a They lose their character of real powers. They appear to be given as figments or as pious wishes or as ways of self-deception, of wishful thinking. And very often the life of the monk is paralyzed by that feeling. that his life is artificial, that his life is in some way not spontaneous and genuine and in immediate and sincere touch with the true realities of life.

[20:54]

It's the crisis of reality. Brought about by this problem, which I just indicated, So, Saint Augustus, and that is the way, the importance of what he says about this, he shows how the breakthrough of the sensual powers, so dominating, so strong in human nature, Will you become, or let's say, the opening for grace? And then are by this grace, not suppressed, but are by this grace truly transformed, so that the end is the libertas vistas, freedom of the mind.

[21:57]

Que tuas tu liberis mentibus exequam. As we say in this beautiful collect, the 19th Sunday after Pentecost. What is yours, that means what belongs to the order of divine charity, liberamente exequam. And we may do it with the complete free living of us. That's what the monk despised. That must be the end, the plot of the monastic life. So often, to be frank, you know, I think, of course, of your future. There are many young men at the end of the month. And naturally, one wishes from the bottom of one's heart that they may reach the full fruition of the monastic life. And certainly may not get stuck in this sham solution, existing under a movement without being involved.

[23:09]

As Hubert R. Zeller put it, just yesterday, it's such a beautiful word. And one of the most important things, you know, to arrive at true monastic being is to experience, to arrive at a love of God which really completely takes possession of the moment and makes his mind free to do what is coming. That means to be a servant to the charitastid. So here, St. Augustine then continues, I do it for love of thine, passing again in the bitterness of remembrance over thy most evil ways, that thou mayst thereby grow ever loved to me.

[24:12]

You must understand this. Path me again in the bitterness of the newborns over my most evil ways, that thou mayest thereby grow ever lovely to me. O loveliness, let us not deceive. Loveliness, happy and divided. And I collect myself out of that broken state in which my very being was torn asunder, because I was turned away from thee, the one, and wasted myself upon the men. Now, the description of the love of all nature could not be done in any more masterly way than to be done by a sovereign man, just float, divine light and divine love can station life.

[25:18]

That's the important thing. And therefore, the remembrance of past sins are not a burden, are not something depressing, but they are used as a means that God may grow ever lovelier. O loveliness, O loveliness, that does not deceive. Loveliness, happy, and abiding. Of course, always in contrast to that human love that he had experienced in its bitterness, deceiving, ever-changing, and therefore always with bitterness as the taste which accompanies I collected myself out of that broken state in which my very being was turned asunder, because I was turned away from thee, the wall, and raised myself upon the wall.

[26:34]

Right now at a distance, I looked for all the satisfactions of him, and I sat to the animal in a succession of doubtless my beauty consumed away and I stand in thine eyes yet was pleasing in my own and anxious to please the eyes of men that is the folly of lust my warm delight was and that is an important thing My walk in life was to love and to be loved. So lust, that love which is dictated by lust, does not and never sickle, and never is orientated, never rests in one personal doubt.

[27:35]

What lust, what the lower points of human fallen love, orientated to a person. It's love for its own sake. That is the dominant nature and the very nature of love. Love is for its own sake. And therefore insatiable. And therefore turned to any object that counts its worth. But never resting in it. That is, I would say, the keyness inherent in lust. Therefore my one delight was to love and to be loved. But in this, and again it's such a wonderful sentence, right away you see the contrast. But in this I did not keep the measure of mind to mind, which is the luminous line of friendship.

[28:44]

Let conscious masterful in a few words describe between lust and friendship. Yet he did not keep the measure of mind to mind. Where mind meets mind, where person meets person, there is metsuwa. There is distance. There is order. And that is the luminous line of friendship. But from the muddy, he continues, from the muddy concupiscence of the flesh and the hot imagination of cruelty, mists seemed to be cloud and dark in my eye. so that I could not distinguish the wildest light of love from the fog of lust. Again, that is the thing. And of course, he reminds us, and he speaks about the fog of lust to make to our mind the light of love more clear.

[29:58]

And that is the function of this period of his life in the economy of his whole life. It is this bitter experience of lust leads him, as he in fact in his states later on, through the grace of God, through not the grace of God, to the experience of the white light of love. But love and lust boiled within me and swept my youthful immaturity over the precipice of evil desire to leave me hard drowned in a whirlpool of abominable sins. Your wrath, O Lord, had grown mighty against me and I knew it not. I had grown deaf for the cladding of the chain of my mortality, the punishment for the pride of my soul.

[31:06]

And I departed further from you, and you left me to my sin. And I was tossed about and wasted and poured out and boiling over in my fornication. And you were silent, O thy late one, joy! You were silent, and I arrogant and depressed, weary and restless. I wandered further and further from you into more and more things which could bear no fruit save sorrow. His masterful description of the troubles of his adolescence then followed too and complemented by a conservation that nobody was there who would direct these new energies that were rising up in him into the right direction.

[32:29]

There is a slight in him maybe accusation of his errors. They did not care at that moment to guide these, to channel these energies to the proper object, to marriage. Because they wanted him to go on to his father, vicious for him, Wanted him to study, but not now be lost in marriage. Nor, as he said, was there anyone. I may well have listened more heedfully to the voice from the clouds. Nevertheless, such as Mary shall have tribulation of the flesh, but I spin it, and the other It is good for a man not to touch the woman. And he that is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God.

[33:41]

But he that is with a wife is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife. I should have, St. Augustine continued, I should have listened more closely to his words. and made myself a unit for the kingdom of heaven. And so in all tranquility awaited your embraces. Instead I found in my weakness, following the rushing of my own time, leaving you and going beyond all your doors. Nor did I escape your scourges, no more to carry. You were always by me, mercifully hard upon me, and to strictly my illicit pleasures with the elements of bitterness, to draw me on to seek for pleasures in which no bitterness should be.

[34:50]

And where was I to find such pleasures, saying in you, O Lord, you who use sorrow to teach and wound us to year and kill us lest we die to you. Where then was I? And how far from the delights of your house in that sixteenth year of my life in this world When the madness of lust, needing no license from human shamelessness, receiving no license from pure laws, took complete control of me, and I surrendered wholly to it. My family took no care to save me from this mortal destruction by marriage. The only concern was that I should learn to make as foreign and persuasive speeches as possible."

[35:56]

Now, I think one could not formulate it in a better way than to see their tremendous cry for salvation, which rises out of a heart is that of St. Augustine and the complete failure of those around him to touch really the center, the reality of this rebellion, revolution, of this chaos. Now that is, I read this to you just to call your attention to that way to deal with memories of the past, to deal at any time with the temptations that lust provoked in your hearts, realize, and take St. Augustine as your guide, realize the reality, the reality of God's love.

[37:05]

your heart completely. And in such a way, too, that in the end, and that is the aim, of course, of the struggle of the monk with the lust of the flesh, that he may carry God in his body. Thank you. Let us pray, shining in our hearts, O Lord, Lord of all things, with the pure light of thy knowledge of us, and open the eyes of our minds, that we may behold the message of thy gospel. Put us in fear also of thy blessed commandments, that we, trampling down earthly lusts, may follow after the life of the Spirit, both thinking and doing always such things as shall be well-feeling to thee.

[38:10]

For thou art the light of our souls and of our bodies, O Christ our God.

[38:18]

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