These conferences were begun in July with the idea of making the community more familiar with the Or they say the spirit of the liturgy. Because we know that the liturgical celebration is not a form only. Therefore it's not a question of techniques, of the education of the masses. but that is naturally the approach of the monk to the liturgy. It is God's saving power reaching us and meeting us and transforming us and making us true.

[01:01]

His word may flesh with the high priest of the new covenant and through his death entered into the Holy of Holies, now has been enthroned at the right hand of God, and now lives to intercede for us. And that is the liberty, his constant intercession for us. But intercession, you understood that in the right sense. And this is the essence of the liturgy as a mysterium. Now, when we spoke about this thing, I would like to make that clear again. Speaking to you about the liturgy as a mysterium certainly does not mean that I want to win support or make propaganda. for the theory of the Mysterio, as the controversial theological position which concerns the Mass as a sacrifice.

[02:17]

But naturally, I think of these conferences rather as a kind of mystagogical catechesis. a help given to the initiate, to the initiate, to realize the divine reality with which we come in contact during, through the celebration, especially of the Mass. Now in our days we celebrate Mass daily, but still The Sunday Mass has a special promise, as the Sunday has in the course of the week. Yet the Saturday evening that is the start, the stop of hope, which concludes a busy week,

[03:25]

which usually throws us off in one way or the other. And now in this sunless evening, we must put it all into the hands of God and become free once more to rest in God. And that means to meet him as God, as the other not as a projection or prolongation of our own thinking or our human longing, but meeting him in his own awe-inspiring majesty. And in this sense, we spoke to remember about the Mysterium as the Mysterium Tremendum, before which we are burst and anxious because nobody can see God and live.

[04:31]

Mysterium in this way is, as Father Ola explains in his book, a protest against what we call humanism, as that attitude which tries to make man the law of all things. The mysterious leper is a solemn proclamation, a setting forth beyond this earth and among men of God in his otherness, in his divinity. But this invisible God, this abyss of silence, this absolute transcendence, that has revealed himself. We as human beings could not possibly find him out.

[05:38]

But he has revealed himself by sending his song. Now, when we say song, that we have to stop and we have to read. So that means the one who is in the Father's bosom. And the one who is in the Father's bosom, that means the manifestation and communication of the Father's infinite love. He says in this song of prayer in the 17th chapter of St. John, I have made known to them, Father, you will be. And I continuously, I continue to make it known in order that the love which is done has loved me may be in them

[06:49]

and I in them. Now this is the other aspect of the Mysterio. Mysterio means, always has this connotation of something being it beyond our human reach, not of our human making. Mysterio. But he did hidden from man, not only because the transcendent greatness, but hidden because of his interiority. That is the other aspect of the mystery. God is great. God is beyond our reach. One way because he is the Lord, the majesty, the king.

[07:54]

But the other reason, because he is the father. And that is what the Mysterium expresses, the hiddenness of the heart, which is the center of all intimacy. And intimacy means, in the realm of love, absolute sheer. God therefore does not manifest his reality only through the display of his glory as king in the epiphany. And that means as judge meeting our justice as we say in the British language of the Bible, taking vengeance on his enemies and exhorting his friends.

[09:02]

No, not only that. There's that capital importance of the witness of the prophet Osiris. Not only as the judge and as the king, but God is the bridegroom, and his chosen people his bride. As Isaiah says that later on so beautifully, and the canopy over us is love. And this is what Osi testifies. How can I deal with you? My heart is turned within me. I just call your attention. These are turns of intimacy. That is the dimension of interiority.

[10:08]

Not the universality of room. A voluntate to adore in a universal sleep. but the interiority of the dead. My heart is turned within me. My inside is keen like a blade. I will not execute the fierceness of my wrath. I will not destroy it. Because I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst. As if still, still as a place where bride and bridegroom meet. For this reason, the son needs the father and the mother to cling to his wife.

[11:15]

And the Mysterium is the perpetual memorial of this eternal wedding feast, the wedding feast of the Lamb. Now then we spoke in another conference, remember, in connection with our 10th anniversary, all in this connection of the aspect of the Mysterium which is concerned with time. And I called your attention to the fact that in Holy Scripture, not only in Holy Scripture, in philosophy, time is not only that external measure, but it is duration, duration and existence, and continued existence. Time is seen in Holy Scripture not as it were for without, from within, not as a measure, but as power, not as a shell, as it were, but from the part of its contents.

[12:28]

And the daily week, in a kind of audacious, just uttering the thought, the time as duration is fulfilled for merit. in the meeting of love, in loving union, the hopes of it. The high time, the time, is the miracle. Now then, in the following Sundays, we had to take into consideration the fact that very often there were many friends of ours and guests, and we could not launch out, you know, into theological, theoretical discussions. But we always remembered the year is running out, and we feel it. We feel it. The year is running out. And that kind of consideration and that feeling that prompted us to compare.

[13:38]

That's what we would like today to do tonight, too. The year of man and the year of the Lord. Man's year and man's duration. Paul, saying as Holy Scripture says, light the bread. But that is here of the Lord. And that means, of course, that here which is filled. And that means that its time or its duration is filled with the mystery as the presence of God's saving deeds among us. This here, then, and that is what I try to, in connection and following, Bodo Castle, who in the book that we are discussing here, has one chapter about the ecclesiastical year.

[14:41]

In explaining and looking at the Ecclesiastical Year, and let us do it, because the new year is approaching soon. We will celebrate the first Sunday of Advent. And as I say, repeat, in this time, the celebration of one side certainly of all saints and of the kingdom of Christ is on that hand. On the other hand, we remember also the deceased and their graves, not only into our sight, but also into the company of our inner life, which and rather of our inner life. So the year therefore, and let us look at it and let us try to realize the tremendous happiness which should result from the fact that we, especially we as monks, that we, through our liturgical life here at the altar, are taken to such closeness and totality into that cycle, which we call the year of the Lord.

[16:05]

It is, and that is the first thing, a cycle. And let's just, let's just stop there and think about it. A cycle. One cannot pass again there, and I point that out so that you see the difference between, say, the human world and the mysterious. One cannot pass by to pray, and that is not at all. Consider the Ecclesiastical Year as a wonderful school for instruction. And as we all know, repetition is the mother of instruction. And the ecclesiastical year as a cycle is, in its succession of years, a wonderful opportunity of repetition and therefore instruction. But naturally, that is not the real essence of the ecclesiastical year.

[17:12]

Why? Because this here is not carried by men. It is therefore not the time of men. It is not their duration. But the Mysterium is and belongs to a way of life, the divine life. And we as human beings Joy, that's the essence of the mystery, and that's why we call it mystery. We joy, we enter into a higher plane, a higher kind of duration of existence. We take part, through the celebration of the ecclesiastical year, in the duration of the existence of the curious, the glorified Christ. Because the curious glorified Christ is not something that is somewhere far away, but he is the head of his church.

[18:22]

And of course, being the head of his church means being the life of his church. And in order to emphasize that, for this head of the church receives the life-giving Spirit. So he there, this glorified, curious, enthroned, at the right hand of the Father. He is the leader of that hope of the ecclesiastical year, of that dance of the years. And he leads, in this dance of the year, the ecclesia as his blood. And the Ecclesia naturally errs the one who is intimately joined to me. His Ecclesia errs his one, as the one whom he has constituted for himself without wrinkle.

[19:24]

The new Jerusalem, adorned for her pride, Or as St. Paul puts it in the epistle to the Galatians, the root Jerusalem on the heart, which is our mother. Or as he says it in another place, God has us verified together with Christ, has raised us up with Christ, has enthralled us with him in heavenly places, He requires Jesus. This is another cause one must see again clearly. This is the Ecclesia. This is the bride. This Ecclesia, united to the curious, she celebrates the ecclesiastical year. So it is, we can see that. What is the center of the Ecclesiastical year?

[20:29]

It's the Eucharist. It's the celebration of Holy Mass that makes the year. The other sacraments, baptism, confirmation, exaltation, ordination, they don't make the year. It is the Eucharist which makes the year. The cycle of the ecclesiastical year is based on the Eucharist. But, of course, the Eucharist can be celebrated only by those who are absolutely drawn into Christ as their only by themselves. Those who are not baptized, those who are not initiated, cannot celebrate the Eucharist. So, I only wanted to make that clear, that you see that. The ecclesiastical year, let us repeat it, is not a course of instructions, lasting a year.

[21:30]

The ecclesiastical year is a celebration. The ecclesiastical year is a feast. A feast, of course, only for those who are reborn and risen in Christ. Full sense of it. So the end. Therefore we celebrate. And we celebrate this feast. And this feast is a feast of heaven on earth. Now, let us focus then and see that clearly first. I would say this divine character of the ecclesiastical, because that constitutes the ecclesiastical view as a mystery. If it's only in its structure, it would not be a mystic. If it is only, if it would be only, say, a passion play, repeat it, even repeat it every day, it would not be a mystic. If we speak of the ecclesiastical years, mysteriously being this divine reality of the risen Christ, or carried by the risen Christ and joined in by the church as the unspotted prophet of that bride, we celebrate.

[22:49]

Therefore, celebrating the feast, that means that we, with our head, are really reaching to heaven. So that is the one aspect. But on the other side, there is no doubt that our feet are still standing here on this earth. That we are still in the pilgrimage. That therefore our celebration is still the celebration of pilgrims. It is not yet the celebration of him. Therefore, but anyhow, I think what was explained up to now shows clearly to you that who celebrates the exasperation? Not simply the mortal human being as subject to death. to that constant and only and exclusive, the flux of the days, the flux of time, is continuous change, that not.

[23:55]

But it is man, the Christian, who is already enthroned with Christ in heavenly places. And that is the reason why the Ecclesiastical Year is celebrated as a cycle, as a church, The original word for ecclesiastical years read, and the circle naturally is a symbol of the divine fullness, of the divine perfection, of the eternal life. And there is originally the sun of this circle, from which it radiates the whole circle, is the Easter celebration. It's Easter. And let us say the original idea of the ecclesiastical year really consists in the continuation or perpetuation of Easter carried on through the entire year every day or every first day of the week.

[25:15]

Constantly in that way, every day they repeat. That, if we can make that, maybe it would be good, you know, to make that clear to us, that we see that this is the cycle of the ecclesiasticals. And naturally, it's subject to what now carries this, is the risen Lord, the one who was born equal all year generally, Today, that means on Easter Sunday, I have brought you forth. And then with him, all those who through baptism have entered into this day. So Christ the Lord, the risen Savior is the day. All we can also say is the year. But that, of course, means right away, here is the day that knows no evening.

[26:20]

Here is the day of full and eternal life. And, actually, here is the year, but the year that carries on, that is carried on, and is, in fact, the Lord of the ages. So that in order to make it clear to us that that is one aspect and the essential aspect of the ecclesiastical year as a mystery. Not in any way a method of instruction or the kind of making it easy to say to live with Christ, we live his historical life. but entering into joyfully the bridegroom who has chosen and celebrates the marriage feast with his bride.

[27:28]

Now, we are naturally, we are still here on earth. But here on earth, again we must say, as initiated and baptized as members of this body of which the risen Christ is the head, we here possess this curious and his spirit. But naturally, now we must add, in his mysterious, As St. Ambrose said in some beautiful English prayer, I find you, O Lord, in your mysteries. We don't see the Lord face to face. Our vision is not yet there of the blessed vision of eternity. We possess him, yes, but in the still. And therefore the Mysterium has this double character, divine, eternal reality, and still it's in full action.

[28:33]

In the course of the year, therefore, this Mysterium gives us the possibility to live as human beings with Christ, and with that life that he has lived on earth here for us, but in a special way. Not simply as a living, we could say, would be destroyed for Christ. As then Paul says to Will, we do not know Christ any more because of the flesh. We know him now in the Spirit, as initiated, I say again. And here we must make a distinction between the historical Christ and the Christ of faith. But let us never surrender to any kind of temptation to separate the Christ of our faith.

[29:35]

the one who appeared here on earth, the one who became risen, the one who was exposed to trial, the one who was condemned, and the one who was executed on God, the historic Christ. Still, it should be absolutely clear that the meaning of the type of the ecclesiastical here as a mysterious is not to imitate, as I say, this Christ as he is described in the Gospels, as long as we take these Gospels as historical documents only. And, of course, they are historical documents, but not only. They are new. And Christ is, of course, can, and is for that matter, his life is accessible to a historian. A man without faith can read the gospel and he can see the life of Christ, the person of Christ.

[30:49]

He can imitate his virtue. He can be a poor man like him. He can take an example from Christ's charity. He can imitate or repeat his teachings. serves on the mound. He can meditate on this historic request. An idealistic young man can do the same thing, and he can be very enthusiastic about it, as he would be enthusiastic, let us say, if he would have lived with Gandhi, or if he reads a book on Gandhi, and then says, now that is my idea. So we may read the Gospels and say, that is my idea. But that is, of course, not yet the Christ of our faith. That is what we call Christ as he can be, let us say, ascertained through historical documents as far as he is really in his reality as a historical person.

[32:07]

But, of course, faith, energy, what we celebrate at the Ecclesiastical here, that is much more. The initiated, the one who believes, the baptized, the one who is reborn as son of the Eternal Father, as brother of Christ, he celebrates, celebrates, Let us put that again, you know, and emphasize it. He celebrates these saving events which people mock the time of Christ. And, first of all, his death and his resurrection. The Pascha. The Pascha ends the historical fact and ends the world in which we, through faith, joined in and passed from our human earthly fleeting life into the eternal life.

[33:15]

That is the way through which and the reality with which the ecclesiastical year is filled. Therefore, Mysterium and the Ecclesiastical Year, the Mysterium is the Ecclesiastical Year and the life of Christ, life of Christ on earth and in history, but that's on that of our faith. That faith that Thomas showed you. Open and put your hand into my side and be not an unbeliever, but able And then falling down, casting himself down a doorway, he says, my Lord and my God. That is the object of the ecclesiastical here as Messiah. And therefore, if you look at the literature, the way in which we are there, we might make maybe a distinction.

[34:21]

You see, in the liturgy we celebrate this, as I say, this mystery of Christ. We celebrate it, one can say, through two human ways. Through symbols which consist of things and through words. The things and words, of course, are, in vast analogies, the symbols, or let us say, the sacraments of the same divine reality, of the curious. The things, however, already in their very nature, are much more than expressed. First of all, one can say the unity and the remaining static as the essence of the mystery.

[35:23]

While the world, actually, is much more flexible, and has had a much greater variety, the world is like the like the gear light, which in that way enriches and is an ornamentation of that temple of the mystery. We celebrate the mystery in the bread and in the water, the body and the blood, our food and our drink. And these things, these sacred things, what the church always in the prayers calls the mysteria, the bread of life, consecrated, the body of Christ, the blood of Christ, our food and our drink, they represent the remaining unity of the mystery.

[36:24]

That what is, one can say, interiorly in every celebration, the Sabbath, the Pascha. In that way, every feast is essentially a sermon. Every feast is essentially an evening. But then we have the Word joining. Now, the Word, too, naturally, In this whole realm of the initiation, one can say, in the realm of the risen Savior, the word which is proclaimed, directly celebration of the holy things, in the mystery, the word that is proclaimed there naturally is not empty of reality. It is also a presence, It is not the same presence that the holy things give to us. Nevertheless, the word of the Lord gives us and brings us into real and immediate contact with the risen Savior.

[37:34]

Glory to you, Lord. Glory be to you, Lord. And that is the reason why we rise at the gospel. Or as St. Betty says at the end of Matins, when the gospel is proclaimed, all was here where within his ecclesia the word of the white moon is solemnly proclaimed. Naturally, the full reality of the inner spiritual union and presence that marriage is exclaimed So we should not, let us say, at the expense of the world, concentrate our whole attention in the Mysterium, at the reality of the Mysterium, on, let us say, the mystery of the Transubstantiation. Transubstantiation there is the anatomy, is the base, or let us say,

[38:38]

The way in which Christ clears himself becomes our food and our drink, becomes our body, our soul, our spirit with us. And that is the eternal center of Christianity. Nevertheless, there are the words, there are the gospels, there are also the words of those that Christ has sent. And the word of God, as you know, from the prophet Isaiah, so beautifully, it descends upon this earth, you know, like a wave, like a fruit-wearing, light-wearing wave. And it returns again after having done his work. Follow the Lord with the blessing that it has given, communicate. So the world, therefore, has and is not bale to say of that sacramental reality and presence of the risen Savior.

[39:49]

But it is naturally, to come back to that, closer and more flexible and therefore expresses the historical event. There is the narration. Let us therefore listen. The Word paints the history, and in that way brings us in closer contact with the various events that build the course of the historical life of Christ. But let us never forget that every piece that is important To remember that, we all know it, but when we speak about the ecclesiastical year as a mystery, and very often, as you know, there has been in the past a great question. On Christmas we say, today the Lord is born. And we say on Easter today Christ is present.

[40:50]

And we say on Pentecost, you know, today the Holy Spirit ascended as a flame, a flame of fire for the apostles. The question has been raised, what is, let's say, the reality of this? And there comes the, let's say, the theological controversy. And there is the thing which I would on an evening like that, not like to go into it, to speak about it extensively, because that then carries us necessarily into all kinds of subtleties or differences which are necessary to be made. But still, sometimes, they can, as I say, kind of fog up the essential aspects. It is certainly not the idea of Father Odukas, because then one has said, yes, but how is this when we celebrate Christmas?

[41:52]

How can the birth of the Lord become a present reality? Or how can... How can the epiphany become a reality? Well, the annunciation. Now, of course, one thing is clear that Father Odo speaks about the ecclesiastical year and various feasts that make the year. As an exterior, it focuses on that which is always brought in the celebration. And that is the mass. And the mass is always the totality of the Holy Spirit. There is, in that way, that comprehends the incarnation, because without incarnation, no sacrifice. When I entered this world, when I entered this world, that are the words of the epistle to the Hebrews, you did not want sacrifice, but you gave me a body.

[43:01]

And here I am ready to do your will. So the incarnation therefore is in that way already leading to a part of the sacrifice of Christ. It is the beginning of the death of Christ because he took on all the flesh. But at the same time, and that is the beautiful thing in the ecclesiastical year, you see, we do not, we have to keep that very clear, we do not celebrate various phases of the life of Christ or various events of the life of Christ in an isolated way. That would be, you know, if we did that, then it would move on the historical plane. And if we move on the historical plane, we will not move on the plane of faith, we will not move on the plane of mysterium, we will not move on the plane of divinity.

[44:08]

If someone had to say, a human being is remembered, as I say, by his relatives, then they can say, now today, so-and-so, my dear comrade, was vocal. And then, phew, that's where the memorial stops. Or, on the other day, they can say, and today, my dear Uncle Doug, phew. That's the event. And these events are then different from one another. But naturally, as soon as you pull it into and on the plane of the ecclesiastical year of energy, there you have an entire world of salvation, all works as one. There is his death, his death cannot and implies, involves as it were, the mystery of his incarnation. That is the reason why in the Eastern Liturgy, the otter toy is always accompanied by the whole symbolism of the nativity.

[45:16]

Because these are the elements in which the sacrifice takes place, the body of the blood, the blood of the body. So then there are also this mystery, this mysterious. cannot be celebrated, celebrated by us. They cannot be celebrated without the presence of the resurrection. Because what is there? What to call this is your mass in receiving the body and the blood of Christ. But as a meal, as a food, I could never receive the means, let us say, of blood, you know, of somebody dead, you know. One, two, three, as our Lord says in the sixth chapter, when the, of St. John, this whole fleshly historical approach of the Jews, when he was confronted with it, he said, the flesh alone is no good for death.

[46:20]

And that's absolutely true. One can say, death alone is no good for death. The death of Christ becomes a thing that we can celebrate because it ends in a resurrection, because it is a Pascha. So therefore, again you see, the one constant inner element of the ecclesiastical here is the making present again and the celebration on the part of the Church, you know, of our Lord's death and resurrection. which actually there is made a justified reality. It's not simply a projection of our mental way, but it is actually One could not end it without within me, everywhere not in present reality. And that is the, as I say, the remaining essence.

[47:23]

But this mysterium is war. It is, it comprehends the entire, everything that Christ has done for man and everything that there was as it were. taken up by him into heaven into his eternal existence where he is living as we say as what who has been dead So, that is this reality of the Mysterium, that is the center of the ecclesiastical year, and that is therefore, as I say, the essence of our time. And it is for us, our celebrating, this holy mystery, we approach, we join Christ in his death and in his resurrection. But naturally then, the various events which we celebrate across the ecclesiastical year, we see, and that is the meaning of the texts that accompany every one of these celebrations.

[48:35]

We see it in the light of this central mystery. And if you take Christmas, you can see right away that Christmas, the church does not celebrate Christmas simply on the level of a human remembering Christ's nativity. And how nice it was to be divorced and how it all took place. But by the way, the church remembers this as the beginning of the way of nature, as we have it in the beautiful responses of the Christmas night. So, and later on, there are priests, you know, all the same way. And that is, seems to me, is the essential thing, you know, for us as monks and for our contemplation, And then is what makes the difference between a historian and a Christian.

[49:36]

A historian will analyze the various events in their own segment. The Christian will celebrate the various events, but not only historical data of simple succession in time, But we can only say on the divine level of the Mysterio, where these various events are culminating, are a practice, brought together in a one epic event of Christ passing his death and his resurrection.

[50:15]

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