In preparation for the Nativity, let us still speak about the obedience as a mysterion, as we started to explain it the last time. Christ came as an infant, as a child. That means that he comes here as the obedient Son. We have, as you well know, I wouldn't say two traditions, but two tendencies among the evangelists. One, not in early Christianity, one which starts the Messianic activity and the report on the Messianic activity with the baptism of our Lord in the Jordan. You know, St. Matthew and St. Luke give us the story of the Nativity, and that has some people attempted to consider that as the beginning of a kind of a more historical approach to Christ.

[01:17]

It certainly is not true. The meaning of the Nativity and that the Nativity becomes a part of the Gospel is that our Lord's becoming a child is the beginning of his appearing among us as a servant, in the form of the servant. And because as long as the child is under tutelage, the child is, as St. Paul says, not different from the servant. And that also is the meaning of Christ's, of the story of the Nativity. and we saw that that is as a symbol all taken together in our Lord's being wound up in the winding sheets and his being put by the hands of his mother into the manger. That is the summing up of his whole, one can say, career as the servant of God.

[02:22]

and this is symbolic for this beginning, really, again, as we see it so often contains the whole meaning of his mission. Then we made the difference, as you remember, between the Old Testament and the New Testament, that in the Old Testament the obedience is, so to say, more still an external one. There is such a great difference, cleavage, between the commanding will and word of God and the instruments which God chooses that this His will may be done. that is visible in Moses who does not write himself but brings the written book where the letter is the umbra or the shadow of God's finger while the prophets are the voice of one crying as we see it in

[03:31]

in St John, the mere instruments upon whose lips the word of God is being placed, so that they say, Thus speaks the Lord. So that obedience in the Old Testament, let us sum up and let us put it in that way, is the obedience of instruments. But in the New Testament it's different. The obedience is the obedience of the psalm. the one who is really God in his essence. He is the Son of God, but he is God's Son. He does the work of God, and at the same time also he acts in his own power, raising Lazarus by his creative word. And in speaking and teaching, He does not say, thus speaks the Lord, but he says, to the former generations it has been said, but I say to you.

[04:41]

So he speaks there as one, as St John puts it, as one who has power. But at the same time he proclaims and says, and still my doctrine is not my doctrine, but the word of the one, the doctrine of the one who has sent me. Just as in the other quotation from St John he says, I work the works of the one who has sent me, the works of my Father. So that is the sonship and that is his obedience, but it is an obedience which is a personal one. which is, one can say, identical with the very person of the Son of God, our Lord as the Son. And so the cleavage between the will of the Lord and the act of the servant is fused, as it were, into the unity of the sonship.

[05:50]

And that new concept of the sonship That then is continued in the New Testament by the very fact that we are baptised in the baptism of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, the highest act of his obedience, we become children of obedience. We partake in that specific obedience of the Son which our Lord Jesus Christ has shown and has, one can say, brought into this world. Now that obedience then is continued in the church, therefore the authorities that we have in the church practice and exercise their authority and their command in the sign of the closure, as we have said that so often, and not in the sign of the scepter.

[06:52]

The scepter is the sign of a power that commands through, one can say, its might, but in the Crozer that is that the obedience in the New Testament in the body of Christ by the bishops is an obedience which is the obedience of love. The love of Christ dictates obedience. It is the obedience to the divine agape. Do you love me, Peter? Then you may take care of my sheep. That's the principle in the church of ecclesiastical obedience. And that is, of course, then, in a much more perfect sense, that kind of obedience is realised in the monastery because the monastery is a church in miniature and... and strives after perfection, that means after the fullness of the Christian spirit and therefore also the fullness and perfection of obedience.

[08:02]

Now we have seen that just as we have in the Old Testament the law and the prophets and so also in the church we have the Ten Commandments and the living authority of the bishops and the priests. So also in the Holy Rule we have the instrumenta bonorum operum, that is, that code of monastic life, really a reinterpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, and we have then the living interpretation through the superiors, the majores. And that obedience then is treated in the seventh in the fifth chapter, that personal obedience is not obedience to a law, to a code, but the obedience to persons, the mayores, so to say, in the wider sense of that word.

[09:03]

Now, if we take the fifth chapter, I want to just go through with you through the fifth chapter and just call your attention to a few things which immediately there become evident As I said, in the monastery wants and strives after perfection the perfect obedience. This perfect obedience is called in obedience without delay. That is the note of the monastic obedience, perfect obedience. And this perfect obedience is part of the monastic life. The meaning of the monastic life is not to prefer anything to Christ. and therefore the absolute love to Christ finds in the obedience one of its most efficient instruments, so that the meaning of obedience is to free, make the individual monk free to love Christ before anything else.

[10:17]

That's the meaning of obedience. freeing the monk to love Christ more than anything else. This perfection, this loving Christ more than anything else, as you know very well, is not a commandment. It belongs into the realm of the council, and it is voluntarily accepted by the monk through the profession, through his profession. His profession is the ground, as it were, and is the plane and the milieu which shapes his obedience as obediência sine mora. What the monk professes is just this specific, absolute, and perfect obedience, which is not, I repeat, a general law for all Christians. but the monk voluntarily pledges himself to this specific kind, and therefore Saint Benedict says, because of the holy service which they have professed.

[11:29]

That is the foundation and that's the reason. That is, if you want the canonical ground or the juridical ground, the legal reason, which obliges them to the specific obedience without delay, that perfect obedience. Now, this profession, of course, as you know very well, therefore St Benedict right away adds it, the fear of hell and the glory of life everlasting. Through the profession, the monk pledges himself voluntarily to a life of perfection. That, of course, also immediately places him into a much more critical position than any other question. One cannot wear the habit and just trot along as anybody else. That is impossible. Then we lie to God.

[12:30]

If one pledges perfection in a vow, then naturally also the not living up to it is infinitely more dangerous than the not living up to the laws of the ordinary Christian. And therefore, right away, Saint Benedict adds that one practises this obedience without delay for a reason of one's profession. but immediately also the fear of hell and the hope of life everlasting, because profession puts us right away into extremas, into the last things. If we don't, then we are much closer to hell than anybody else. If we do, of course, we also have a greater hope for the eternal life. so that our profession is the way in which every action of our life right away has to be judged also by us and has to be seen as a decision which either leads to hell or leads to life everlasting.

[13:46]

St. Benedict very much emphasizes that seriousness also in the prologue, as we may see some other time. So then, therefore, as soon as anything has been ordered by the superior, the major, receive it as a divine command. There is the other thing. A monk who has professed that holy service out of absolute love of Christ meets Christ everywhere, and therefore he has to draw out, as we say in the school, he has to draw out the lines. When an order reaches him, he does not live on a human level, he does not live on a political level, it is not a person that tells him to do this and that. The answer and the reaction that he may have, oh my, but the superior doesn't know anything more about it than I do, therefore his order, you know, is just, let us say, binding as far as his knowledge of the thing goes, that are absolute considerations which do not fit into any life that is based on the vows.

[15:07]

but there one must, in the order that is given, one cannot see it simply as an order of a human being, one must see it as an order of God, you know, and therefore not that, as I say always, again and again would be nonsense to say, therefore every major is God, no, I mean, represents him, and therefore what is said, you know, in that way, should be taken as if it came from, That is simply the meaning of the monastic life. That is the mysterium of obedience and the mysterium of the monastic life. That's why we wear a habit. We are not human persons. We stand in another order. Therefore, he says, receive it as a divine command. We would say in the school, draw out the lines to Christ. Realize that this word that is being given to you is a word which comes from Christ, and you obey it for what reason?

[16:13]

Not to please any human being, but you obey it because the will of God is there manifest for you. and therefore you do it with that absolute promptness, the higher the one is who commands, the more speedily we obey. That is a common law in human life. Therefore, if in the monastic world, in that world which is constituted, I repeat it, not through natural law, not through human wisdom, but which is constituted by the monastic vows, In that world, God commands to the superior and superiors, and therefore the obedience has to be with absolute speed. It therefore cannot suffer any delay because it is God who there asks us.

[17:15]

Therefore, a divine command. The monk has to break through the surface of human relations to the reality which is behind it and which is signified in these human relations, and that reality is God himself. Of these, then, does the Lord say at the hearing of the ear, yes, obeyed me. And again he says to teachers, he that heareth you, heareth me. That is the scriptural ground and foundation for the concept, for this specific concept of absolute and perfect obedience. And then comes the execution of this obedience in the next paragraph. Such as these, therefore, immediately abandoning their own affairs, forsaking their own will, dropping the work they were engaged on, and leaving it unfinished with swift obedience, follow up with their deeds the voice of him who commands them.

[18:18]

Nobody can overhear in this or overlook in these words the affinity of the very wording and of the thought with the decisive chapter of Abraham, Abraham's leaving his country and Abraham's offering Isaac. In these two chapters, the chapter 12 and the chapter, if I'm not mistaken, isn't it 18, In those two chapters, in leaving the country and offering Isaac, there is, one can say, the same divine policy is followed where an act of absolute obedience is required. It is, as it were, drummed into the individual. It is clearly brought home to him what is he going to leave. Leave your country, leave your father's home, leave your family, always, three times, in ever more emphatic way.

[19:21]

Take Isaac, take your son, your only beloved son, and bring him. So you're also immediately abandoning for the leaving part, you know, let us say for the negative part, immediately abandoning their own affairs. That means leaving sua, que sua sunt. Saint Benedict uses there the same word which we have in the Gospels when the Apostles did just the opposite and in the presence of the crucified left and went into their own, as the Apostle says. So what are these sua? that Saint Benedict means here, it's what the evangelists mean by it, their own world, their own world, the world of their own ego, that what they have built up, that we should leave, abandoning their own affairs, emerging out of that world that everybody, every person carries with it,

[20:30]

as his own field. One can say, man's island. No man is an island. It's so true, you know, because the meaning of obedience is to leave that island. How many people live in the monastery and always carry with them their island, you know, living on their island. So, then is the first thing, Kwesuasun, And good or bad things, everything, the whole world that a man builds up around him, that are the sua, his island, and that is what he should leave. Forsaking their own will, that means going deeper into that inner, the own will is the source which builds up and which creates the sua. So down into the root, of, one can say, that island world of the individual, the individual forsaking that, his own will, dropping the work they were engaged on.

[21:40]

That means C. St. Benedict enumerates, he knows very well the sacrifice and the difficulty of obedience, therefore he enumerates every step in that obedience. the leaving of one's own world, second, that forsaking and resigning one's own will, and then stopping with the work of one's hands, stopping one's work, because everybody likes his own activity, everybody likes to be busy. and to stop his business and to leave, to stop his activity, is in itself a very specific sacrifice. Not only that, but leaving it unfinished. Nothing can be a greater sacrifice and nothing that is more often required in the monastic life than leaving something unfinished.

[22:48]

In leaving something unfinished we make a special act of resignation because just as we enjoy our doing things and just as we resent our being stopped and not being able to continue this, our activity, just as much also do we resent, and it is a real a sorrow for the individual not to be able to finish his work. The work has its own law. The work wants to be a stance that clamours to be finished. So many people, and the general great majority of men, really love to finish a work. To finish a work gives them a specific kind of satisfaction. finished work is the seal of one's lordship here in this world.

[23:50]

And therefore to leave a work unfinished in the moment in which one is asked to do something else is a very special sacrifice. It's a service one really... nowhere, maybe, does somebody realise more his position, let us say, as a slave then when he is asked, now do something else. This has not been finished, now one should do something else. Because that is a real mortification. And how often does that happen, really, in the monastic life? Therefore, leaving it unfinished, Saint Benedict adds, and then the positive, with swift obedience follow up with their deeds the voice of him who commands them, and almost in the same moment of time that the Master's order is issued is the disciple's work completed in the swiftness of the fear of the Lord.

[24:53]

Here another tone, another sound is sounded, and that is taken evidently from the example of Our Lady, who hastens over the hills in order to serve Elizabeth. So that swift obedience which, as we have just read the other day in St. Ambrose in that beautiful homily, you know, nesci tarda mulimina spiritus sancti gratia, the grace of the Holy Spirit does not know slow movements, slow reactions, you know, nesci tarda mulimina spiritus sancti spiritus gratia, that swiftness which is inspired, as Saint Benedict says, at the same time, the fear of the Lord, because one realizes who is ordering, who is commanding, it's God himself. The higher the one who commands, the greater our reverence, the faster our service.

[25:55]

And the other one, not only the fear of the Lord, but two things being rapidly accomplished together by those who are impelled by the desire, the armour, the love of life everlasting. That is the other thing. So in this, that is the foundation of the swiftness with which we, that inner union that originates between the word of command and our own action, which, as I said the other day, is that wonderful meeting, really, of the justice which looks down from heaven and the truth that springs up from the earth. So that this meeting that is described here, this union, is such a beautiful picture also of the union of the divine and the human that we have in the incarnation through the obedience of Mary.

[26:57]

by those who are impaled by the dire desire of attaining life everlasting. This sentence then gives Saint Benedict the bridge, so to speak, to the following paragraph, and one could continue and say, for this reason do they choose the narrow way. What does it mean? For the reason of life, in order to live, Obedience looks for the first time as a way of death. Obedience looks as suicide, one can say. But what is the reason why the monk chooses obedience? Life. Life. It's the narrow way that leads to life. As St. Bennington right away quotes from the Scripture, narrow is the way which leadeth unto life. The narrowness becomes never more evident than in and through the obedience.

[27:59]

because in that obedience, as St. Benedict, right away, explains that narrowness so beautifully, not living by their own will in the service of their own desires and pleasures, but walking by another's judgment and orders, he could not in a better way indicate what constitutes the narrowness of obedience. the fact that we live by another's judgment and orders. They dwell in monasteries and desire to have an abbot over them. Beautiful description of the fullness of obedience. What is that narrowness? What does it mean to live by another's judgment and orders? We do that as monks. We live by another's judgment and orders in two ways. Once, because through stability we unite ourselves to a monastic community.

[29:04]

Obedience is a community virtue. The obedience is given not only to a major, to a superior, but to the whole setup of the monastic family. Therefore, the obedience is living and for those who live and dwell in a monastery. That is very important. People so often forget that. that their monastic obedience is their yes and amen, and is dictated by not only the will of a superior, but by the whole setup of the place in which they live, by the monastery in which they live, by the combination of people they live with. All these are elements which the monk has to obey to, He has to follow the exempla majorum. He should not do nothing what is not the common rule of the monastery.

[30:09]

All that are forms of obedience. Therefore, obedience is being offered by a member of the community within the framework of a definite community. Therefore, obedience asks from the individual monk something completely different from a place that is in a pioneering and a beginning state and something different from a place that is firmly established. It is different if we have our obedience and live our obedience in a monastery that, for example, has a farm attached to it or a monastery that has a school attached to it. But it would be absolutely wrong to kind of live in a world of an abstract obedience. There are always people who are inclined to live up to some kind of an an sich, as we say in German here. an abstract absoluteness.

[31:10]

Things should be this way, and therefore they are that way. No, that is just not the case. Obedience is obedience, and part of the obedience is to have an instinct for the requirements of the place in which one lives. And that is, for example, in our case, is the circumstances of our beginning, the circumstances of Our work, you know, the work in the farm, the work here and there, that are part of our obedience. Our obedience cannot abstract, and it is not an obedience simply to a superior, it's an obedience to the circumstances of the place. We have to fit into the framework, and that is part of our obedience. Therefore, Saint Benedict says, they dwell in monasteries, those who pledge obedience. They are not dwelling in any clouds, but they are dwelling in a monastery, and in this monastery, and under these circumstances.

[32:15]

And they desire to have an abbot over them. That's another element, you know, which is so important. The obedience, of course, as you can already see, the obedience here is filial obedience. That's the whole meaning of monastic obedience. And therefore that obedience is not only a half-hearted, strict, let us say, complying with the rules of the game, you know, not doing anything that could be one could pin down to and said, now, here you were off and there you evidently violated an express command. No, that is not, those people do not desire to have an abbot over them. They simply accept the fact that they have an abbot over them as a dire necessity and as a canonical situation, which one has to comply with juridically. But that is not the meaning of St.

[33:17]

Benedict. But he wants desire to have an habit over them. That means also that that obedience is an obedience in which one, as I've said so often, in which the individual takes the side of the superior, takes in, for example, the thinking of the superior, tries to follow and to live himself into the mind of the superior. Maybe sometimes that's difficult. And I'll make you wrong, you see. That doesn't matter, you know. I mean, that's not essential. So desire to have, therefore, to, for example, also to enter into the world of thinking, the doctrine of the superior. All that is here expressed in this desire to have an abbot over them. Therefore, not only using the abbot, you know, as a kind of a disciplinary valve, you know, but entering into a living relation, you know, live therefore that obedience as real sons in relation to the abbot as a father.

[34:31]

assuredly such as these, imitate that saying of the Lord when he says, I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. That is, again, the whole obedience is likeness and confirmation to Christ, but not only an external one, but an internal one. And to that, then, the next last paragraph is devoted, but this obedience itself, will then be acceptable to God and pleasing to men. So the obedience here is not a military obedience. It's not the obedience for the sake of efficiency or anything like that. But it is an obedience which is offered as a sacrifice. A sacrifice must be a matter of the heart, cannot be anything else, must be a matter of the spirit. Only the Spirit is a sacrifice in the New Testament.

[35:34]

We live in the order of the Spirit. And therefore it will be pleasing to many what is commanded be not done timorously or tardily or tepidly, not with murmuring or the raising of objections. Again, in a very simple sentence, still a carefully way and carefully graded, no, not graded, but how is it? Ordered. Ordered, you know, intensification. Be not done timorously. Now, there are always the timid people who, in any commandment that is given to them, first of all consider themselves, I can't do it, you know, that kind of poor me-ism, you know, that we find so often timidly. You see, oh my, now I, of course, again have to do it, and so on.

[36:36]

then looking at oneself instead of acting, you know, as we have it in the life of Saint Benedict, there's the command is given, get this classic, you know, out of the way, running over... LAUGHTER running over the waters and seeing the abbot's mantle covering one. Such a beautiful way in which to indicate the way in which that timorousness can be overcome. Timorously, therefore not looking at one's self and at one's incapacity, at the difficulty of the order, comparing oneself with, oh, why didn't he ask the other one, you see, who could do it much better, more easily, and so on, not timidly. Or tardily, that means with the kind of some delaying actions, yes, I will do it, you know, but first of all I have to attend to this, or that, with a little...

[37:44]

typically in that attitude in which one doesn't really interiorly join the heart of the one who commands, but in which one considers that as something that is like ice-cold water, like a douche. One withdraws from it, you know. No, one enters into the spirit of the thing, you know, and with the fullness of readiness, not typically or in a divided, with a divided soul, nor with murmuring, which again is another step, either interiorly or exteriorly, or the raising of objections, which is exteriorly, the raising of objections. We know, and you know from your own experience, how often these things happen, when things have to be done,

[38:45]

First, a long discussion starts, but this one wants to do it this way, another one wants to do it another way, and all this business, you know, which very, very often is simply the expression of that holding onto oneself. and that holding or that will of holding one to oneself always then has and finds a hundred big stones that one could put in the way of obedience point, you know, all kinds of difficulties. without the raising of objections, for, and the reason is again the same, the obedience which is given to the superior is given to God. So wonderful how St. Benedict always helps us in the first part of the chapter as well as in the second part of the chapter to break through that human crust, and that whole world of appearances into the reality of it.

[39:47]

It's God who orders us, and therefore, In the first way, it's just as the beauty also of this chapter. I mean, I don't know if Saint Benedict intended those things, but it is. Simply, the chapter constantly leads us, you know, to Abraham, who is the symbol and the figure of obedience. And the two acts required of him, one was leaving fast, get out of that country and go to the city that I, to the place that I shall show you. And that's the first part. And the other one is the offering of Isaac, the offerings. which is here, the obedience simply has these two aspects. It's a leaving and it's an offering, a leaving and an approaching, as we say, approaching, adhering to. And that's what we do. God loves a cheerful giver.

[40:50]

That is the fullness. The Holy Spirit gives us these two things, that swiftness of obedience and nesci tada mulimina, and at the same time the joy, as St Ambrose explains it also in the same homily. For if the disciple obey with ill-will and murmur not only in words, but if it's only even in the heart, though he fulfil the command, his work will not be acceptable to God, who sees that his heart is murmuring. In other words, again, obedience, this perfect obedience, without delay, by a cheerful giver in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, that obedience is not going through the motions, and in one's inner fortress, keeping to oneself. keeping that island. That is not the meaning of obedience.

[41:51]

It's not a juridical correctness, but it is the inner entering into the spirit of it, taking it upon oneself in that inner cheerfulness. And otherwise, and Benedict makes it absolutely clear, again, you know, otherwise what is the result? The result is hell, the result is punishment. So the monk simply is placed into that situation, a dangerous situation, as long as he, in spite of the holy service that he has solemnly and publicly professed, still holds on and does not go on this road of the obedience sine mora without delay, that perfect obedience, and a dangerous thing as long as he wants to live, but at the same time a glorious thing as soon as he jumps over the wall, as soon as he lets loose, as soon as he resigns his stubbornness and enters fully into the spirit of adoption of sons in which we cry,

[43:05]

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