Our dear brethren, in preparation of the Feast of Pentecost, which is the sharing with us of the fullness of the Holy Spirit, we have begun to speak a little about the problems and the essence of maturity to later to apply these things then to us as most. We spoke about the general meaning of maturity as a biological concept of course, as the full development of the potentiality of augmentation, that perfection of the organism or its full self-realization, And then the other characteristic of fullness is abundance, so the capacity to reproduce.

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These two constitute the essential marks of maturity. Now in its application to man as anima rationale, as reasonable being, this concept not only retains its biological meaning applied to our body as organism. But in addition, it can also be applied to the mental maturity which in us as human beings composed of body and soul is to a great extent depending on the biological maturity. What then is this mental maturity in man? And just to recall it to your mind, we spoke first of maturity as coming into one's own, as the self-realization, which then also is accompanied with the ability of competence or mastery.

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Man who stands on his own feet is then as a mature being also able to act freely and with a certain easiness out of this fullness of his own self. Another note of maturity is integration or unification. First of all, of the various elements which compose our inner man. We say that maturity is necessarily accompanied with the ordering of the inner faculties. Coordination, first of all, of the theoretical and the practical, of idea and action. It's a sure sign of growing maturity of a human being that man is able to coordinate idea and action, his dreams, what he wants to be, what he loves to be, and his actions, theory and practice.

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And then in a more specialized way, the coordination and integration of intellect and will and appetites. Control of the appetites through the intellect and the will as the two rational faculties practiced in the virtue of temperance. The mature person, the ordering of the inner man also consists in this that wisdom takes the lead and determines the last goal of man While prudence acts as an effective rudder, choosing the means to the scope, and stability, consistency, fortitude in execution, all these belong to the integration and maturing of the inner man. In general, then we said, in specie, or let us say in the individual,

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This coordination very often takes on the form of the emerging of a predominant theme or faculty in man. A mature soldier for that matter is a man who, through training, through many tests, has developed the fortitude and courage which subordinates, which has the other faculties of man under his sway, which excludes or dominates the other tendency, opposite tendency of the, of cowardice or whatever it may. Also in a concrete being, let us say, a mother. comes to her maturity in this way that she really, her being a mother, more and more feels and forms her entire life.

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The same is true of this scholar, the artist. Against the many varied possibilities of the young man, The mature man has come to efficiency and has crystallized as where around he is dominantly. They said the other note of the mature maturity is the integration into reality. integration into the reality as the, for example, under Marx follows the leadership of truth in the search of reality against daydreaming and so on in what we call maturity of judgment.

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In this maturity of judgments, the subordination of the unimportant to the important is again and again realized. Another characteristic node of maturity, the child is incapable of subordinating, discerning, and ordering the subordinating, the unimportant to the important. or the abandonment of the impossible for the possible, the subordinating of the intrinsic objective value to the personal appeal, for example, in our relation to things as well as to men, the elasticity and perseverance, not giving up, acting on a long-range plan, so to speak, and being able to keep the goal in sight and follow it with the possibility of elasticity in the concrete decisions.

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Then another note of the mature man was the integration in social relations. The growing maturity shows in the growing possibility or ability of meeting the other as other. Somebody who always and only can listen to himself, somebody who only and always meets the other in the light of his own preferences or ideas, is immature. Maturity consists in the possibility of listening, of opening up, giving the other chance. The taking on of social responsibility, sense of duty, sense of the function of the individual in the whole of a social body is a sign of maturity. Thinking in terms of the whole rather than of the individual.

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And of the whole also, of all the family, but then the community, and the people, and mankind. All of these, this integration in social relations means the gradual overcoming of the individualistic tendencies of the child. Its inability to feel with the other or to feel for the other. And finally, we have the integration in time, the past, present, future. The mature man keeps the continuity with the past in that faculty of memory which enables him to learn from experience, the sure sign of a mature human being. And the continuity with the future the providence and foresight, which enables man to orientate his present, more his present activities and his present being, to the possibilities of the future, that he is not constantly be caught by surprise.

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And finally, instead, like the other, Note of maturity is the self-reproduction, the expression of the abundance. It is the other element of perfection, the ability to share one's life or oneself with others. First in the field of truth, the mature man grows out of being a disciple and grows into the role of a teacher. In the field of goals, he is able to communicate to others and to gain, win others over for the worthy goal which he puts for himself, the quality of the mature man as a leader. And finally, his abundance in relation, superiority in relation to things.

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He is a maker or an administrator of the things of this creation. Finally, another thing that we should mention, this connection, which is of great importance, of course, is the relation also and stabilizing and deeper realization of the relation between man and woman. which is an essential part of the maturity of man. But, as we said then in the end, the price of maturity is labor. Now, in connection to that, if we turn to the bulk, Then we see right away there a completely new factor. And this new factor is the Holy Spirit, who is independent to a certain extent of the biological foundation and often upsets the biological pattern.

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In the rule of St. Benedict we meet it in the chapter which we are reading right now at this moment. the convocation of the chapter, where Saint Benedict says that the Holy Spirit very often reveals to the earnest one what really is right. Or, on the other hand, the maturity also in this way, that of Ipsu, Pluritius, to a temple called Gerensenele, that from the very time of his early youth already, he, St. Benedict, as we say in the antiform which we sing at his feast, he had the heart of a grown-up man, or etatem loricus transiens, a beautiful word. He consented his age, the biological age,

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or, as it were, by the maturity of his morals. So, as we see there, Christianity in that way brings a new element into this problem of maturity, upsetting, as it were, the pattern. The Holy Spirit is not depending on age. Faith does not know age. That means the supernatural world. So that somebody who may be young, years at the same time, may already at the same time be mature, not through his biological development, but through the divine endowment of divine grace.

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This new thing that we meet as soon as we enter in the Christian realm is the element of grace, the element of the Holy Spirit, which descends from above and therefore already lifts up the child into the realm of maturity. But at the same time, in the other direction, it keeps the old one young. That's the other side that we see, and that is also absolutely clear in the Holy Room. The monk in that way constantly keeps that elasticity, that eagerness to learn. In that way, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, he remains a child. As our Lord himself said in Matthew 11, 25, I praise thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and prudent, and this revealed them to the little ones.

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Yes, Father, for such was thy good pleasure. So in these two ways, giving to youth a supernatural spiritual maturity and keeping spiritual youth also in old age. In these two ways, roughly speaking, the new world power of Christianity upsets the pattern of immaturity which would be solely based on a biological foundation as we have it Now in order to understand a little more the extent and the nature of this new world, which evidently opens new possibility of maturity, we have just to mention, I've done it so often, but still it may be good for us to remember, remind ourselves,

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Thus, we as Christians are members of what we call the messianic age. And this messianic age is not only an external measure of time, but it is an inner reality, an intrinsic reality, the reality in last analysis of the Holy Spirit that has entered the history of the human race. And this messianic age is the age of the fullness. It is intrinsically the age of fullness. The messianic age is in that way in the course of the whole history of man, is certain through divine intervention, realized age of maturity offered to all of mankind. That we find already expressed in the words of St.

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Peter on the feast on the day of Pentecost. When he says, explaining why all this enthusiasm in the apostles and disciples that come out from the house in which was filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, He says to the Jews who were surprised that people could already be drunk at nine o'clock in the morning, the time of Turth, he says, this is, my dear friends, the realization of Joel's prophecy. And then it comes, this prophecy was, and it shall come to pass in the last days, says the Lord, Then I will pour forth of my spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. And your young men shall see visions.

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And your old men shall dream dreams. And moreover, upon my servants and my handmaids in those days will I pour forth of my Spirit and they shall prophesy. So the beginning of this new messianic era is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in its fullness, therefore producing supernaturally and from above A new equality, the equality of the old man and the young man, as realized, for example, in the rule of St. Benedict, what we said before, and the equality also of the free and of the slave. All these social or natural inequalities, the natural inequality of age and the artificial inequality of slave and free man,

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will be replaced by a new equality of opportunity given from above, ruled over the fullness of the Holy Spirit, who is given to all. And we see how clearly and faithfully the rule of Saint Benedict reflects this special quality of the messianic age. A monastic community wants to be the ideal community of the Messianic faith. Now the source of this maturity, of this fullness of the Holy Spirit is, as we have tried to explain already the other day, is the risen Saviour, the Transfigured Lord, who sits at the right hand of his Father and through him and in him also of a human nature, is sitting in heaven at the right hand of the Father.

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Already in the incarnate world, the earthly mortal flesh in Christ is united to the full divine nature. In Christ, the very essence of the messianic age is in this one person in a concrete way anticipated. But the Old Testament never had because it was a stretching oneself out towards the promise. It was a waiting for the coming of that fullness Now in Christ, in the incarnate Lord, it has taken place. The fullness of divinity tabernacles, as it were, in the human nature of Christ. And those two are united in the unity of one person.

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The Old Testament expressed this stable and definite and final union that we have in christ the incarnate word of god with the word the god dwells dwells it means forever with all possibility of any future separation dwells in Christ. So as I say, in the person of our Lord and Savior, this new characteristic of the messianic age is fully realized. That means the stable final union of mortal man with eternal God. Now through our Lord's resurrection and ascension, our human nature in Christ is also glorified. I mean the human nature of Christ, that means which is our nature naturally, is not only united to God as in the mystery of the incarnation, but is glorified, transformed, that means filled with the fullness of the Spirit.

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And therefore St. Paul calls this glorified Lord the Spirit. The Lord is Spirit. So from this fullness of the glorified and transformed humanity of humanity of Christ, the Holy Spirit is poured out upon men here on earth. That means that Pentecost in that way is on the line, moves on the line of this transfiguration of Christ. It is, if I may say so, and I am sure you understand how I mean it, it is in some way not only the application in our human, mortal, ritually way, of the incarnation to us, but it is also the application of the transfiguration, of the exaltation to us.

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That we should not forget. Pentecost, that means the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, takes place not after the incarnation, after Christ was born in Bethlehem, It takes place after the Ascension. Therefore, this gift of the Holy Spirit does not radiate simply from the Word of God made man as we celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation of Christmas, but it proceeds from The man, Jesus Christ, transfigured and glorified and enthroned at the right hand of the Father. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is given to us. Constitution establishes in us the connection, not simply to the humanity of Christ, but to the glorified, transfigured humanity of Christ.

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That is the reason why the devotion of the church is, after Pentecost, constantly directed, in the fullness of the Spirit, to the one with whom the church is united, and that is the glorified Christ, who now, as he now is enthroned at the right hand of the Father. So I just give you now a few texts just to make you realize what Holy Scripture means with this new maturity which descends upon us human beings here on earth from the love of our Christ. There, for example, St. Paul says in the epistle to the Ephesians, second chapter, verse 13, How rich is God in mercy. With what an excess of love he loved us.

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Our sins had made dead men of us. And he, in giving life to Christ, that is the resurrection and ascension, gave life to us too. It is His grace that saved you, raised us up to above the heavens in Christ Jesus. Yes, it was grace that saved you with faith for its instrument. It did not come from yourselves. It was God's gift, not from any action of yours, or there would be room for pride. No, we are his creation. God has created us in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared that we should walk in them.

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That's a beautiful passage in which we see that, yes, the resurrection, ascension of Christ is our own exaltation. that we are connected with him as members of that head which thrones in heaven, and that therefore also we partake through faith, not through our works, because the exhortation of Christ is completely outside of our works. And therefore, in faith, And we can add, maybe already here, through the sacraments, we are connected with this, our transcending glorified head. Or take the words of Colossians 1.19, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him, in Jesus.

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And you, Christians, are in him, Now the vulgar translated replete, that means fulfilled, or you can also perhaps say filled. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in the glorified Christ, and you are in him fulfilled of him. A beautiful commentary to the words of the first chapter of St. John, of his fullness. We have all received grace after grace. Or remember the beautiful opening of the epistle to the Ephesians, which we had the other day. First chapter, third verse. Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed us in all spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ.

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Or, in a similar vein, the first epistle of St. Peter, 4th chapter, verse 14, The ex pobramini non iniquisti, If you are upgraded for the name of Christ, beati, does not say in the Greek text beati, iritis. Beati, you are blessed. Quod iam protestonoris, because honor and glory and the power of God and his spirit rests upon you. There is the characteristic key word of the messianic age. The honor, glory, power of God and his spirit rests upon you. Words of St. Peter in the first epistle, which is commonly regarded as a sermon for neophytes.

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And the same letter closes with the words in which the whole or the contents of this letter are summarized. Now I assure you, and I say firmly, This is the true grace of God in which you stand. Could not be more strongly expressed what the apostles meant and how they interpreted and applied the fullness of the messianic age to the Christians they were living with. In the epistle to the Hebrews, we have so many other testimonies in the same direction.

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And again, I just read a few of you that you see what we say is from the very heart of our Christian faith. It's not a kind of fancy doctrine. Hebrews 4.9. This very beautiful word that St. Paul there says, Therefore, there is a Sabbath rest ready for the people of God. And this Sabbath rest, of which St. Pauline speaks, is of course not something in the future, but there is something already realized now, in this messianic age. And he explains it. We who believe are in this rest. Because why? We who believe are in this rest. What is the object of our faith?

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It's the rest of Christ, enthroned at the right hand of the Father. The one of whom this same epistle to the Hebrews says in the fifth chapter and the ninth verse, consummatus, He himself perfected, consummatus, has become to all those who follow him, that means in faith, the source of eternal salvation. Or in 4.14, where the same perfection and fullness of the risen, ascended Christ is described as the source of our own fullness in this messianic age. Habentes ergo pontificem magnum, qui penetravit jodos, Jesum filium Dei, teneamus confession.

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We who have the high priest, a high priest who penetrated into the heavens, he has said, Jesus, the Son of God, we teneamus confessionem, we should hold on to our confession. That means the glorious confession of our faith, Christ is risen. And so I could steal so many other places. Quote, do you love the same spirit and the same truth to you? And for example, just to mention this once, in the sixth chapter, verse four, In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the author says, We are once enlightened.

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We have tasted the heavenly gift. We have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit. We have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, typically thought and spoken out of the fullness of the messianic age. So that is, you know, to give you an idea of the objective heavenly maturity which is being given to us. And it is being given to us this maturity in the sacrament of baptism and in that of confirmation. These two are so closely united. You see what the fullness of the Holy Spirit, I repeat, is exclusively a gift that descends from heaven from the free disposition of the Father, the economy of our salvation.

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and therefore it is in no way the result of any of our works. Therefore, how can it be communicated to us? Not as a prize or as a reward which we receive for something we have done, but it can be only communicated to us through what we call the sacramentum, the sacrum, the mysterium. In the very center of the messianic age stands the mysterium. This mysterium is the sharing with us of divine perfection through Christ's work, or let us say, through the sacrament of repetition and renewal of Christ's work for us, Christ's work for salvation. Only by entering into what Christ has done for us are we able to pass over the bridge, the bridge of our high priest, into this heavenly world of the messianic age.

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Therefore, the decisive thing in this messianic age for us as human beings is that in faith we appropriate to ourselves what Christ has done for us through the sacrament. That is therefore so important to our whole Christian life. That's the center. Only who has understood that understands what really the messianic age is all about. St. Paul addresses this in the Corinthians, it says it so clearly, it says, the first man, Adam, became a living organism. The word soul is used, which means organism. The last Adam became life-giving spirit. It is not the spiritual that comes first, but the organic, the bodily, and then the spiritual.

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The first man was of the earth, earthly. The second man is from heaven, heavenly. As was the earthly man, such also are the earthly. And as is the heavenly man, such also are the heavenly. You see, there are simply two orders, and you cannot jump from one order to the other out of your own power. By nature, we are earth. And therefore, we are not heavenly and we cannot become heavenly. We can only become heavenly if the heavenly man who descends, you know, communicates to us what is heavenly, his heavenly generating power, and that is the Holy Spirit. Therefore, St. Paul concludes and says, therefore, even as we have borne the likeness of the earthly, that means to our natural birth, then he goes on to say, let us bear also the likeness of the heavenly, through our heavenly birth, that means through baptism.

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That baptism is meant here is absolutely clear if you compare the third chapter of St. John, verse 3 and 6, the words of our Lord to Nicodemus, Truly, truly, verily I tell you if somebody is not born again from God, that means in the spirit, not from the earth, earthly, it cannot see the kingdom of God. If he is not born ex aqua in spiritual solitude, In that way, our Lord specifies what this new birth is. Exiled from the water and the Holy Spirit. He cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven because the kingdom of heaven is heavenly.

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And the earthly man is not, let's say, on the plane of the heavenly spirit. And that is emphasized by the following sentence, Quod natum est ex calne cargos, what is born from the flesh is flesh. Quod natum est expiritu spiritus les, what is born from the spirit is spirit. Therefore, there we have clearly set foot against the difference between the natural order in which we are born as earthly men and the supernatural order of the mystery, the sacraments, baptism first of all, in which we are born in the power of the risen Christ. You could compare here still, just to make that more clear to you, the epistle to the Romans, the sixth chapter, the ninth verse and so on, where St.

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Paul says, in baptism, we are buried with Christ through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ has arisen from the dead, through the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives unto God. Thus do you consider yourself also as dead to sin? but a life to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin ride again in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts. And do not yield your members to sin as weapons of iniquity, but present yourselves to God as those who have come to life

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from the dead and your members as weapons of justice to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you since you are not under the law but under grace. Again, so beautifully these two orders set forth, the mystery of baptism is the transition from one into the other This transition from one angel to the other does not mean, however, that man reborn in baptism in the glory of the risen Christ is not still accessible to the co-officiatia, to the apostles. Berkeley has a completely new attitude towards them. He is not helplessly delivered into their hell. But he has a new power. So beautiful. How St.

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Paul describes it here to the Christian, how he has reborn in the glory of God, what attitude he takes towards the lust of his lower self, that one is still in him, still tempt him. He says, how do we do it? present yourselves to God as those who have come to life from the dead, and your members as weapons of justice to God. Present yourselves to God as those who have come to life from the dead. That means we meet The temptations of the lower self, as reborn Christians, we present ourselves in the moment of temptation to God as those who have received a completely new nature, a completely new self, the self of the risen Christ.

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So in this way you can see, and that was the meaning of this conference tonight, you can see the spirit of the messianic age which we celebrate. And you can also, maybe you do that yourself, and now apply the various categories of maturity that we have outlined before to this new reality that is given to us from the risen, exalted Christ. The curious, the Lord, is the mature man. He is the, let us say, the ideal, the realization of the fullness of maturity. And therefore, he is the head. The mature is the head because in him all the other members come to their coordination. From him they receive their life. From him they receive their leadership. In him they have their eyes. And all this is essential for the mature man.

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In Christ it is fully realized. But then also let us apply that to ourselves. How we receive through grace a new maturity. So that we can realize that, for example, in a monastic community, it is nonsense and it is dangerous to analyze this one or that one on, let us say, the basis of some pilotic and pilotically conceived ideas of maturity. In the line of human nature, the struggle for maturity can be a cruel one. And can be one that is connected with all kinds of condemning judgments, killing one another. This man, immature man. And then the poor man who maybe is immature in his character, finished forever. In the monastic community, it just is not so.

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There is the question of a completely different maturity. The maturity that is given from above is given as a grace. Maturity, therefore, is not an accomplishment which, I have to say, distinguishes man and puts him on a high basis on a pedestal so that all the others look up to him and regret that they haven't reached the same degree of maturity and get stuck in some kind of inferiority complexes. But at the monastery, it's different. Therefore, St. Paul says, in the light of the new maturity that we have received through grace, in my infirmities, I am strong. That is, of course, a concept which, in that cruel, stoic maturity of man, has no room whatsoever. But that is, for us, the decisive thing.

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And that is what the Holy Word is meant for. The Holy Word is strength in iniquities. So about that, sir.

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