We may learn about the afflictions. And I want to conclude these considerations with a word which sums up, I think, the positive reality of the monastic life of the monk in this whole field. It's a word which the bishop sings at the consecration of virgins in the preface where he says, Existere in tamen, you want it. Existere in sublimiores animae. You want it that there should be souls more sublime, who would take no pleasure in the copulare together of man and woman, but who with aspire and long

[01:19]

for the sacrament. That means the supernatural reality. Those who would not imitate what is done in married life, but they would love what is foreshadowed in you in the human face. That is indeed our goal. Monastic life, celibacy, Holy Trinity are not exhausted in a negative way by saying you cannot do this and that. But they are a fulfilling Something urgently positive.

[02:29]

Since the Lord Jesus Christ, a virgin born virgin, has descended from heaven, he has given you here on earth a new fire. And that fire, the fire of the Holy Spirit, the fire of the divine love, that burns in certain souls in such a way as to give witness that really and truly the new age has come and is already here under. That age in which we are not buried and we are not being given into marriage. But we are children of the Resurrection. And that is the positive meaning of religion. Now, I told you before, as a superior father of this community, naturally, I would look forward to the future, and I would think what will become of these young men here, who now look

[03:47]

a new enthusiasm, embrace the monastic life, enter into the mysteries of Holy Virginity, and they indeed look forward to the sacramentum which in the human life is foreshadowed. That wedding feast between Christ and his church and that kind of love which is shown there and lives there and in which we take a part. Man leaving his father, Christ leaving his father in the Incarnation, and leaving to his wife the Church in his passion and in his death, And the two shall become one flesh, the mystical body and Christ the King.

[04:50]

That is the wisdom. That is the supernatural reality. And that is what holy virginity is realized. The person ends in a full water, as much as that is possible here on earth. Now then, I think about it. Now, time will go on. This first enthusiasm may sink in. New difficulties come up. The human life does not run on an even boat of problems. One cannot, when a new year is completed, say, now I have progressed that much more. Impossible. Human life moves in cycles. And difficulties which may have subsided at one period may come up again.

[05:54]

And maybe in a more acute way, in a more passive way, even more cutting-edge. And so it is all up naturally to those who have insight into the development of a monk also to prepare the Yamarats for that what is coming and what we do. Open the house and open the eyes for the spiritual beauty and reality and power of the life of holy legitimacy. And that is, of course, in thus analysis, it is formed and is animated by the love of God, the soul and God, and the love between the two. That is the reality for which the monk lives.

[06:57]

monastic life really is a matter of the heart. It's not a matter of training. It's not a matter of a certain drill. It's not a matter of handling certain techniques of yoga. It's a matter of the heart. And therefore, the heart has to be taught. And the heart has to begin to see and sense the mysteries of them. I think that is in the monastic life of the greatest influence. In the active life, my dear brethren, the attention as well as the energies of man are directed towards certain tasks. And there is in many ways a great lightening of the burden. And it's in many ways a good way out of difficulties. But we aren't.

[08:00]

In that way, we are not taken up by the law of certain times. So we are left much more to ourselves. And therefore, how important is it that we receive the training of the heart, that we learn the art of love, The monk who, for that matter, enters the monastic life for its own sake, and that would be what I call a contemplative, he is. And having the place of the scene, of the stage, let us call it, where his life develops, is his heart, his own heart. So he has to learn the art of life. That is really the meaning of the contemplative love. Now, I just wanted tonight, you know, give a few hints.

[09:02]

This is such an enormous field you can imagine. And it is impossible in a conference to treat it in any really satisfactory way. But what can we do but just give certain hints? Drop a seed. And then you pray to the Holy Spirit and it will be taken up and it will develop. If not now, at this moment, maybe later in life. Whatever you hear, it may not become immediately practical at this moment, but later on, come the time where you realize what you have heard. Now let us speak a little about the mystery of love. and how to develop and what to observe in the development of the inner spiritual relation of the heart and the heavenly Father, the great divine lover and with the ones who are beyond.

[10:11]

I wanted to call your attention there, first of all, to what we may call the mystery of the encounter. You know that we here are now far beyond the level of the senses and of the passion and all these mutual instincts of connection. We are also beyond the level of the affections for them. I mean affections in the lower sense of the world. We come here now into that luminous realm of the heart, but of the heart that is now filled with the grace and the love of God. There the first thing is yet out. It's also so in any real human life. you know, other poets, and when they describe and interpret the history of love, the first, if always, the first encounter between the lover and the beloved, the first eye-to-eye, the first crossing of the eyes, that is the looking, full of beauty and full of importance.

[11:35]

Maybe the most important thing, because as we said before so often, the beginning in anything of great importance, in any vital thing, the beginning contains the whole thing. So also the encounter, the first seeing one another, the first recognizing one another, Now you know very well from Holy Scripture that this first encounter, recognizing one another, columns and takes a very clear, the deepest and the most decisive form. Soon as our Lord Jesus Christ, the face of God, appears here on earth, and after he has lived, when he directs his church to the Spirit, the risen Savior.

[12:43]

And you know where the first of those encounters is the encounter of St. Paul, the risen Savior. As he went on his journey, it came to pass that he drew near to Damascus, when suddenly a light from heaven shone round about him, and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me? And he trembling said, Lord, what wilt thou have me do? That is the first impact. Imagine what tremendously the apostle of the Gentiles, the vessel of election, the one who became the instrument to spread Christianity, make it a world-embracing religion, St.

[13:52]

Paul meets the risen Savior. Why dost thou persecute me? You find right away in this encounter the element of totality. Everything is contained in this first meeting of the two. That marks the whole thinking of St. Paul. Why does thou persecute me? The identity of Christ and of his church. And I said, Lord, what will thou have me do? An absolute obedience of the true apostle to the one who sets him. That is the sum total of the whole life of Satan. And from that moment on, his life is changed. So the encounter is a new beginning.

[14:55]

The encounter means a new life. This game which Christ looks at St. Paul is the beginning of a new life. You find the same in St. Augustine. You know how he met the Lord, the real encounter. When he heard the voice, the voice of the child, take and read. And there he went. And in the words he read, his whole past was judged. Not only judged. Judged in the real sense. And that means changed. Changed. He certainly saw the light. Not only saw the light, but at that very moment too, he was sure, felt it, he knew it, that there was the power

[15:57]

The power to live in that new life, that God pierced his heart, filled it with a new life. Do you know that place where he heard the voice, the voice of the child? Such things I say, weeping in the most bitter sorrow of my heart. And suddenly I heard a voice from some nearby house. A boy's voice or a girl's voice, I do not know. But it was a sort of sing-song, repeated again and again. Take and read, take and read, take and read. I ceased weeping and immediately began to search my mind most carefully as to whether children were accustomed to chant these words in any kind of game, and I could not remember that I had ever heard any such thing.

[17:13]

Then I arose, interpreting the incident as quite certainly a divine command to open my book of Scripture. and read the passage at which I should open. For it was part of what I had been told about Anthony, that from the gospel which he happened to be reading, he had failed, that he had been admonished, as though what he read was spoken directly to himself, Go, Sarah, what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me. By this experience he had been in that instant converted to you. So I was moved to return to the place where Olympias was sitting, where I put down the Apostles' Book there when I rose. I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the passage upon which my eyes first met.

[18:18]

Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy, but put ye on the law of Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscence. I had no wish to read further, and no need, for in that instant, with the very ending of the sentence, It was as though a light of utter confidence shone in all my heart, and all the darkness of uncertainty vanished away. Then, leaving my finger in the place of walking across another side, I closed the book, and in complete calm told the road then clearly pierced, And he similarly told me what had been going on in himself, of which I knew nothing.

[19:22]

He asked to see what I had read. I showed him, and he looked further than I had read. I had not known what followed, and this is what followed. Now him that is weak in faith, take unto him. He applied this to himself and told me so. And he was confirmed by this message and with no troubled way gave himself to God's goodwill and purpose. A purpose indeed most suited to his character. For in these matters he had been immeasurably better than I. Then we went to my mother and told her to her great joy. We related how it had come about. She was filled with triumphant exultation and praised you, who are mighty beyond what we ask or could see.

[20:25]

For she saw that you had given her more than with all the pitiful weeping she had ever asked. For you converted me to your save, so that I no longer sought a wife nor any of this world's promises, but stood upon that same rule of faith in which you had shown me to her so many years before. Thus you changed her warning into joy, a joy far richer than she had thought to wish, a joy much nearer and purer than she had thought to find in grandchildren of my flesh. In this encounter, St. Augustine and the world. St. Augustine reminds us of a similar experience in the life of St. Anthony. In this encounter we find again the whole life as it were of St.

[21:28]

Augustine sundown and in a moment, in an instant one can say it is love. The world in very light And light was made, was fulfilled again in that moment. Now in our many other lives that is the case. But we should now, and that is first advice. In our own life, that has happened. Remember what I have told you so often. And I go back to it with great joy. It's a source of strength, courage, Go back to those days, cold and rainy November days, in dirty water through the streets. Then my eyes fell on this little hand-painted little picture of Our Lady going, painted there as going through the thorn bush in the snow in the winters and carrying the child.

[22:38]

Maria Luciana Dornbart gave Kyrie eleis. And we walked up through the thorns, Kyrie eleis. An old Christmas journal, Christmas song. That was the first thing that we read, that we touched on, reached on, until then later, the encounter became definitely that we are involved in which this message of the month of Mariana, in which Christ, the gloriously reigning Lord, who calls us into His church, so that this is, again, completely of a new life. Be unsure that you will have the same experience in your own life. Everyone in a different form. It seems to me that this remembrance should always be maintained in us.

[23:49]

And it should be deliberately renewed. And that is what the monastic life is geared to. And we must respond to that. It's as in the mansion dog between man and woman, and in marriage life. This first encounter has to be renewed every day. The, should we speak that way, but the success of marriage depends, for example, and I'll just mention that, very much in the way in which the husband When he comes back from work, he's greeted by his wife in his own house. That's a tremendously important event in the living together of two people who love one another and who want to continue this love. That welcome, repeated every day, that welcome kiss,

[24:56]

that the husband receives from his wife. That is a renewal, that's a going back to that first source of their married life. And so it is also with us as monks. The encounter is a tremendously important thing in a monastic life. And the art of love and of loving God consists to a great extent in this constant renewal of this personal encounter, loving encounter with God, with our Heavenly Father, with our Lord Jesus Christ. Because the great danger that the apparatus of monastic life we call a kind of a warp which separates so that we cannot break through to that personal, meaty, eye to eye. That we must do this.

[25:58]

We cannot live on day after day in a kind of a fog, in the midst of neutral things, of feelings unanalyzed, of melancholy, of bitterness, of loneliness. Those things between form a wall and prevent us from going back and reviewing the mystery of the encounter, of the first meeting. The essence of a monastic life is function to adornment and requiem. O Lord, I am seeking your face. And that, for example, was in the Old Testament, the mystery of the piety of the chosen people. The feast, what is the essence of the feast? As the Jews always expressed it, to appear before the face of God.

[27:02]

To appear before the face of God. That is the word, the technical term for going to Jerusalem and celebrating their feast. And that's also for us. The going to church is going and appearing before the face of God. The face of our Lord Jesus Christ. In our life, when things are there that we cannot look or pierce through, so that we cannot see the face of Christ in what we are doing. Then what the school says was to draw out the lines to Christ. Don't let them get stuck in some neutral in-between. That is, for example, also the role of items in the growth and the cultivating of our love. I say that because right at this moment I have that wonderful experience of this beautiful icon of the Transfiguration.

[28:10]

Balduin Schwab sent us for our 10th anniversary. It's a marvelous, most beautiful icon of the Transfiguration I have ever seen. Now to face that. For example, to prepare a retreat conference in face of this icon, looking at the Transfigured Lord. For example, speaking of a mystery like this, the mystery of real and true spiritual love and its power and its transforming power and its quality of really and truly feeling the heart Now just one glance at the transfigured Lord as he is represented in such an icon points the way, lifts up the spirit. The icon is the face, and if you notice, it's always the full face of the Lord, of the Son, of his Holy Mother, so that meeting the icon is a true encounter, a looking eye to us.

[29:19]

I rejoice in the things that I have stolen, and I go to the house of the Lord. Then the encounter includes another element, the art of love. It's another thing I wanted to call your attention to. One thing our love and the love of God suffers, and that's our laziness and our sometimes not wanting to really make this act of confrontation with God. We want to stay with ourselves. But no, we have to get out of it and put ourselves into the full light of our Lord's loving, merciful gifts.

[30:27]

But then, another thing, we should realize that any such encounter is a visitation. It is a grace. Therefore it includes always on our part the element of great surprise that one is being loved. We should not in any careless or fresh way take it for granted. The love of God is a gift and we have not deserved it. Entering my room, under my roof, there is a humble petition. Sometimes I have the feeling that this so essential element is lacking in us. That it will certainly extinct, maybe it is the result of our upbringing.

[31:31]

Because in our upbringing we were taught a different approach. We were taught, you have to love God. And there we were. You have to love God. But we did what here? This other message and these words. I, God, love you. And that is, of course, the basis for our entire Christian life. I love you. So every encounter that we have with God is perceiving this message. I doubt it. And the reaction on our part, what else can it be? But God is our God. I want to read to you that beautiful poem to find in the little book of Father Zidane on the poor of John. and which poor Indian, a parallel Indian, says, a prayer to the deity of the great blessing.

[32:41]

And it is this one, the great blessing passed by my house, my house, my, the barbershop. The barber was the nose of the parents. Because you have to cut hair, let us consider, wearing them pure. So there he comes, the great blessing, passes by the barber's house. So then it continues, I ran after him. He turned and waited, waited for me, the barber. I said, may I talk to you, O Lord? And he said, you may. I may, I, the Bible. And I said, is there any peace for a being like me?

[33:47]

And he said, yes, even for me, a Bible. And I said, may I follow him? And he said, yes, even I, the father. And I said, may I stay with you, O Lord? And he said, you may, even I, the poor father. Now there's something like that, don't you realize? That also happens to us when we receive the invitation of the divine blessing. And he passes our house and invites us to follow him and to stay with him. But please compare your own attitude to this one and ask yourself if you also are aware then, in true humility, of the tremendous grace that you receive.

[35:02]

Is your attitude to the presence of God, to the house of God, to your vocation, of staying and living in the house of God? Can it be compared with this answer and attitude of the poor Indian path? Or are you rather one of the members of the usually snobbish Aryan race that always thinks the world holds us illiterate? and in that way don't realize maybe what we bring to the world but what the presence of the divine blessing means and that we are not worthy of it that may be not so alive in our own hearts so let us do that if we think in this whole art of loving if we renew that first grace of the encounter

[36:07]

Let us also again in our heart renew that inner surprise. He loves me. There is a poem to know. You are familiar with these two names outstanding in English literature. I mean Robert Brownlee and Elizabeth Brownlee. Now those two, yes, it's true that's a Victorian thing, but that's not only a Victorian thing, that's also an eternal thing, because there is the case, we see it, of an earthly love, husband and wife of two souls are like much better. But with a tremendous spiritual depth and spiritual purity And for somebody who at all, you know, looks for his way in the art of loving, he should, just also in order to realize the depth of love already on the, say, on the human plane, he sees in the love of two people like that, indeed, you know, the foreshadowing of that sacramentum,

[37:33]

which for us as monk, as dean, war, but really all filling and all satisfying reality. Yet there it is, something of the same order, it has fell into my hands, so I really take this upon it. And dost thou lift this house's latch to pool for a hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear to let thy music drop here unaware it falls of golden fullness at mine door. There's that same tremendous surprise. I think you, yourself, realize that in the natural sphere if you meet an invitation or an expression of great love for you, the first reaction is that of a surprise.

[38:39]

How does this come to me? And if that is so on the genuine, sincere, humble, everyday human level, how much more is it the case in our relation to God? But, my dear friends, I must say, dear brethren, I sometimes have really the fear that we forget about it, that we take that divine love too much for granted, that we don't draw out the lines on the personal reaction, and that, therefore, we do not realize what the art of love in those moments asks us. Then there is another element of this art of love, and that is, I would call it, the newness. The experience of love makes all things new. The face of all the world is changed, I think, since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul move still, oh still, beside me, as they stole betwixt me and the dreadful outer brim of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink, was caught up into love

[40:08]

and taught the whole of life in a new rhythm. That's indeed the experience, reality also, of that love that snatches us out of the outer ring of death and takes us up into a new rhythm, the rhythm of the new life, which the love of God for us opens to us. That is the meaning of the monastic life, the rhythm of the Holy Spirit. That starts with the Obedientia Sinum Org, with that obedience without delay, in which we answer to the divine voice that we hear in this encounter, and where we Really, because Spiritus Sanctus, the Holy Spirit, does not know and want any lazy reactions.

[41:17]

Therefore, with wings we ask the invitation. The rhythm of prayer, of lecture and will, even the dealing with the things of the monastery, Vasa, Sacra, and Tarth, all things take on a new look. But only as long as my love is really, deeply alive in my heart. So the art of the divine love just includes this. It makes things new. I look at things in a different way. If I start in my reactions to follow the fact that God loves me through his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, every brother, every human being, appears in a new light.

[42:18]

I see into the eyes of somebody else, and there I see the divine image. I see the glory of a God-created soul. This seeing all things in a new light is again, of course, an invitation and is a thing that has to be cultivated. But then I wanted to say here, in favor of monastic observances, that it is true that entering a monastery means that one has to start to learn all things all over again. One cannot run around as other people run around. One may forget, one says, the two discussions as part of one's gentleman, but one really should, in a retreat, as a good opportunity, reminds oneself that a monk should not be seen, for example, a really running monk.

[43:24]

Thank you. that they should go, you know, with very certain, you know, whole thing, you know, with a certain, now, very slow, peaceful rhythm, because that can again add, you know, the whole settledness and peacefulness of the monastic life. Perhaps then there are many other things that we have to learn from the beginning. How to behave with fire, what to do. That way, every gesture that we do is of course artificial. Why is it artificial? Because it is the expression of a new thing, of a new life, the new events, the coming of the Holy Spirit.

[44:27]

For that matter, I make a deep vow. And when I hear something is great, the gospel is great, or a prayer in public is great. Now the one who enters into a monastic community and he hears about the mysteries of the encounter, the meeting, that this solemn public announcement of the divine word at all includes that he should not, at just at that time, draw out his handkerchief and launch on the tremendous, what one called it, cleaning of his nose, cleaning of his dimensions. And so, in order to, not in order to disturb, but by that disturbing of the So that was things that we have in the past, here and there, we have called attention to it.

[45:30]

And I was just waiting for someone where I could put that in. Oh, maybe he is, at the moment. And I'm sure you take it in good graces. Because all these things, that is, of course, that's how I know this thing. Also, the profuda, sometimes I wonder, you know, I would never have thought it's a kind of seasonal fact, you know, that for some people to let their hands hang, but you see in our cowl, the cowl is made in such a way as to cover also the hands, so the sleeves are a little longer. And then we are invited as old Christian system and custom, old monastic custom, all that wherever we are in the presence of God or our ancestors. covered you can see that in all the icons of the eastern and the western church and has a old custom that where the presence of god is in a special way realized i mean this encounter of which i spoke before that then on stands you know with

[46:49]

Let us stand in a beautiful way. And that is, of course, just this, letting one's hands on both sides, you know, down. That is the attitude of complete attention and of reverence before the presence of the cubes. That is absolute readiness and reverence, which is expressed in this adage. Now, I had not that idea we could have that, because that's you know very well, it's also in the monastic tradition, we have it in our days, you know, it's old, because it has later on been lost, you know, by fact, you know, because maybe, because now it's a little difficult, everybody has his own book, you have your own book, you know, then you have to kind of

[48:00]

Get your hand out of those sleeves, you know, every time one would take it. I must confess, I didn't think of these complications. Indeed, better to know also, you can see that the Trappist context has simply these unfortunate individual little books don't exist. It's a big book into which two or three or four may look. And, of course, they don't have constantly, you know, journal pages or stand with their books, you know, with their islands, you know, and all this kind of thing is then superfluous. However, at certain moments, as for example it is in Antitorium, we have the tenede, or the singing of the Magnificat, the Vedictus, or the of the te deum, the listening to the gospel. There are these moments of attention, the moments of encounter, the moments of divine presence, which is emphasized as a word, stolen colors.

[49:04]

Let us stand in a beautiful and orderly way. And that is the way. And maybe we can renew our goodwill of those lines. But I know, you know, that it's strange how those things sometimes work, you know. It's maybe something extra, you know. Or something that just works one the wrong way. I can't be sorry for that, does it? But then I think at the same time now who is responsible for this that it rubs by the wrong way. the thing itself or the personal attitude. Personally I think one should have the freedom of the mind because there is too the best way of dealing also with the external order of things, you know, because in the whole of monastic life

[50:07]

It boils down to this fact that we express in the collector of this 19th Sunday after Pentecost. But what is yours? That we may do that with a free mind. And that is indeed, of course, the whole mystery of life. The divine office, everything we do, is part of this divine wedding feast. And, of course, we are invited to this divine wedding feast. Here we stand surprised that we, as poor barbers, we would say in the Christian terminology, as poor sinners, that we are worthy to be called into the house of God. And then we express this, our surprise and our humility by giving that response, at least in our external attitude.

[51:21]

That is, if we do that liberamente, with a free mind, then it is a wonderful thing. It doesn't do us any harm. It's simply a nice step. which we go out of ourselves and enter into creaturas, into that's where the divine things are, tuas. And that is the meaning of all, of the art of love. It's the exchange, the commercium, creaturas sunt, mea sunt, cremea sunt, tuas sunt. What I, what is, what is, what I have, it's yours. What is yours is mine. It's the converse. And that converse is expressed in the Ovidiense, in the liturgical celebration, in every ceremony that we do in our whole monastic life.

[52:21]

So let us learn more and more. process and progress of our monastic life, this art of the divine love. In this prayer, O Savior, I know that none other stumbled before thee as I stood, or didst the deeds which I know. For this do I know, that the greatness of my strength and the multitude of my sins go not beyond the measure of the long supply of my God, beyond the height of his loving kindness. With the oil of sympathy thou hast cleansed and brightened them that fervently regret. Thou makest them to share in the life and participate in thy God. And thou workest with our spirit, And not a time is thou made as one first with them, as with thine own friends, of that which is stranger to angels and to the understandings of men.

[53:28]

These things made me to venture. These things gave me wings for my thoughts, and heartened by the richness of thy benefits to me, rejoicing while I trekked. I partake of the fire. I, that am of strong and strange miracle, I sprinkled with dew inevitably, even as the bush, a poor truck, he kindled, was consumed not. Therefore, giving thanks in mind, giving thanks in heart, giving thanks in the members of my soul and of my body, I worship you. I thank you for me I glorify thee, O God, that thou bidst now and forevermore. Amen.

[54:19]

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