Dear brethren in Christ, Needless to say that it is a great disappointment for me not to have been able to be with you on the day when we celebrated the feast of such a great saint as Saint John the Baptist, and to give the mantle of Elias to brothers Francis and Boniface. However, we can say with Saint Augustine, Reverend Father gives the habit Christ is the one who gives it. Father Gregory gives the habit. Christ is the one who gives it. Wherever we are, whatever we do, in him we are together, and he does in us what we do, that he may increase while we decrease. The Feast of St. John the Baptist has been chosen as the day of profession for the two of our brethren, not only because he is the great model of the monk, but because of the prominent place St.

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John holds in the plan of redemption. His feast has been all through the early and late Middle Ages one of the highest feasts of the year. Like Christmas, it used to be celebrated by a triple offering of the Holy Sacrifice, at night the Present Vigil Mass, at dawn the Mass Justusul Palma, and on the day the Present Mass of the Feast. Since earliest times, the Church has given to the Baptist a unique privileged position right next to the Mother of God. In the Litany of All Saints and in the Confitia of the Roman Missal, his name follows immediately that of Our Lady and of the angels. On the icons of the Eastern Church we see him standing opposite to Our Lady, right in front of the Lord of Lords, when he comes to judge the living and the dead.

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He is placed into closest connection with the mystery of Christ. The Son of God incarnate is the source of all sanctity and of all grace, and the source of the Spirit. But next to Him are the two who cooperate in His entering into history, Mary and John, the Virgin and the Baptist, the Mother and the Precursor. The One is full of grace, the other one filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb of his mother. The one is prepared by the fullness of grace to conceive the Son of God through the Spirit of the Most High. The other one is in the Spirit and power of Elias, the precursor, the prophet, the apostle, the angel who announces the coming of the Lord and Redeemer. However, with this description of the historical function of Mary and John in the historical coming of Christ into the world, we have not yet touched their importance for us at the present time.

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But you know well that everything that has happened to Christ according to the flesh has and is now living among us in the sacramental life of the Church. And therefore also the place of Mary and John is not only and was not only a historical fact, but it is an eternal mystical fact. It is a reality which is constantly repeated in the inner spiritual life of the Church. The Mother of God becomes our Mother. and Saint John the Baptist, the one who prepares the way of the Lord, he also constantly prepares the way in our hearts for the coming of Christ. This is especially true in the case in which we find ourselves at Mount Saviour, because as a new foundation we are on our way to Christ.

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and the young men who compose this community prepare that Christ may be born in their hearts. Not only the two brothers who took their first vows yesterday, but all the others too. Is it merely by chance that the first oratory on Monte Cassino was dedicated to St John the Baptist? I am sure that St. Benedict quite deliberately put his young foundation under the patronage of the precursor that he may point the way to the Lamb of God, to all those who there began their way to Christ. Likewise do we need for our beginnings at Mount Saviour the spirit and the power of John, which is with us on the feast of his Nativity. With the help of the Holy Spirit, let us see then what the true nature, the spirit, and the power of St.

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John is, and how it should live in our midst, so that Mount Saviour may truly become a place where the Lord of Lords celebrates his advent. An inscription on an ancient reliquary expresses in a short formula everything that has to be said about St. John. It reads in this way, How shall we call him? Prophet? Apostle? Angel? Martyr? These four titles of the Baptist are not merely a rhetorical accumulation for the sake of emphasis, but each of them has behind it the authority of the Gospels of Christ himself. And when we celebrate the feast of St John, I especially remind you of the first nocturne of yesterday's vigils, and you will see that the antiphons there explain just these four titles.

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The first of them reads in this way, Before I formed you in your mother's womb, I have known you, and before you were brought forth, I sanctified you. Chosen to precede the Holy One who was in the beginning with God, Saint John is in every way created in Christ's image and likeness. He is truly the angel coming from above, chosen from all eternity, born from a barren womb in the power of God's grace, filled with the Holy Ghost in his motherly womb, receiving a name not derived from his blood relations, but given to him by an angel at the order of God.

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and his name itself, John, pointing to the day when God's grace would triumph. All this reveals that his beginnings were in plenitudine etatis Christi, in the age of Christ's fullness. He did not know infancy and growth in the sense in which human beings ordinarily know it. From the first beginnings he was established in the fullness of the Spirit and in this respect truly an angel in the flesh, as the Eastern churches used to call him. His whole life confirms this, his angelic nature. He flees the company of the citizens of this world. He finds his home in the desert, making the will of God his food rather than living on earthly nourishment.

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He lives the life of one consecrated to God's holiness, the virginal life of the Nazarene. Consecrated before birth in his mother's womb, He is not holy because he is a son of Abraham, a member of the Israelitic nation according to the flesh. But because God had chosen him before he was a Jew, therefore his mission is a universal one, not bound to any nation. Attendete insule, audite insule, et attendete populi de longe. Dedite in lucem gentium, ucis salus mea ab extremis tere.

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Listen, you Gentiles, and you far-off islands. I have given you as a light to the Gentiles, that you may be my salvation from the farthest parts of the earth. Let us take the second antiphon. Ad omnia que mitam te ibis, wherever I shall send you, you will go. John is truly Homo Missus Adeo, a man sent by God, an apostle. Without serving to the right or to the left, he moves straight in the direction indicated to him by the will of God, like a chosen arrow flying in the power of God's bow to the aim envisaged for him by his Creator.

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The power which drives him is obedience to his calling, to prepare man to receive a greater one than himself. He knows his mission is that he should decrease that the one who comes after him may increase. Although the older one, in the order of history, He realises that he is but the servant of the one whom he precedes. He points him out to his disciples. He sends his disciples to him. He baptises with the baptism of water to prepare the way for the Messiah who baptises with the Spirit. The baptism of water is the sign which shows to the people that they cannot enter the messianic kingdom without a complete change of heart, without surrendering to God who leads to the gates of death and back again.

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With fear and trembling he performs this sign on the messiahs himself, who joined the crowds of the penitents and went down to the Jordan River to be baptized that man may know that he had come to take upon himself the sins of mankind and to save them by entering into the realm of death. The third antiphon, netimias aface errorum quia ego tecum sum, dici Dominus, Don't be afraid in front of them, because I am with you, says the Lord. The sign of baptism which St. John performs on others becomes a reality on himself. He ends as a martyr. He had come that he may give witness to the light, o testimonium per iberete lumine.

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The martyr is the true and faithful witness. He seals his faithfulness to the truth with his own death. The perfect witness is Christ himself, who confesses the divine truth before the powers of this world and seals his testimony with his blood. The martyr is not afraid of the powers of this world because in him lives the divine promise, ego tecum sum, I am with you in tribulation, says the Lord. He has died to himself that God may be his strength. St. John was not like a reed which is bent by every wind, but standing up straight in the power of God's truth in the face of kings, he died a victim of their wrath.

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The Lord touched my mouth with his outstretched hand and made me a prophet among the peoples. Behold, I gave my words into your mouth, Behold, I put you in charge of nations and of kingdoms. In these two last antiphons of the first nocturne of the vigils of St. John the Baptist, he is praised in his mission as a prophet. Pro-pheta is the one who speaks for God. He himself feels like a stammering child. He does not have any words except those which God puts upon his lips. Therefore his work is like a sharp sword. He places man squarely before the decision which means life for them or death.

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His preaching is judgment for those who hear it. It asks that the hills of pride be lowered, that the valleys of doubt and despair be filled, and that the royal road may be made straight for the Messiah's King, who comes to be received into the hearts of men. It is the unique privilege of the Baptist as a prophet that he not only prepares the coming, but also points out the Messiah as present among his people. In two short sentences, the prophet John reveals the mystery of Christ. The first is, He who comes after me was before me. It is the mystery of the incarnation, of the union of the human and the divine nature in Christ. And the second one is, behold the Lamb of God, which carries off the sin of the world.

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It is the mystery of Christ's redemption, which was foreshadowed already in his being baptized by John in the baptism of water. As angel of the Lord, as apostle, as martyr, and as prophet, Saint John is a true image of the Lord, whose presence he announces. He is truly initium evangelii, as Origen says, the beginning of the whole gospel. And as such, he contains in himself, as in a seed, the whole tree of salvation. When we celebrate his feast, St. John's power and spirit are working again in his church, are working in us. He prepares actually our hearts to receive the King of glory. And now it is the second purpose of this talk to apply to ourselves and our own beginnings the spirit and the power of John.

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The first point which I would like to stress is this. You see in the person the character and the work of the Baptist the same law to which I have so often called your attention. The beginning contains the whole further development. It has the same structure. Each beginning is a totality. And when it comes to the beginning, which foreshadows and leads to the coming of Christ, then this beginning must contain already the likeness of Christ. What I mean is this, neither a monastery nor an individual can start on its growth in the fullness of the age of Christ if there is not a life in them, the kernel, the seed, where Christ is already somehow totally present. That means there must be the absoluteness of the Holy One, in some faint echo at least, must be alive in the heart.

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It may not be, and it could not be, fully developed. It may be hidden, it may be overlaid still with many wrong ideas, many fears, many ambitions. But in one deep corner of the soul there must be that total thing that thirst for the Absolute, the spirit of compunction. Somehow a monk has to be sanctified from the mother's womb, known to God before he was born. The one thing we have to be careful of is that we are not divided. A little here and a little there, as Isaiah says. Muddling around without a clear and deep and final decision. Somebody who would try to be a monk and thinks he is a monk, while in reality maybe he makes monastic life his hobby.

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That is impossible. As soon as we start looking for consolations, a little for God but then a little for myself, three miles God's way and three miles my own way, a wound in his service but then a good dressing on it of my own making to heal it as fast as possible, then we will never get there because we are not in him. The beginning is not there. Now, very often in the history of monasticism this beginning was made also in the external form which it took in Saint John the Baptist, I mean the absolute renunciation practised in the form of the most austere asceticism, the going into the desert, the crucifixion of all earthly desires through bodily mortification. Weighing it all in the peace of Christ, I definitely feel that this is not our calling here at Mount Saviour, not because we shrink away from it, not because we do not want to give ourselves completely to God, but because the whole history, the background of this foundation,

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and the people whom God has brought together, as well as the historical circumstances under which we live, our understanding of the rule and our understanding and conviction of God's call for us steers us into a different direction. We do not start here by planning sanctification first of all through bodily mortification. But we start by giving ourselves into the hands of God's love for us. We realise that out of the barren womb of our fallen nature we are born as children of God's grace, that before we were born we were sanctified by the Holy Spirit of God's love. Here is the reason why what we call the return into the peace of Christ is as fundamental to our lives as breathing.

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And you can also see what it means to return into the peace of Christ, that it is the return in faith to that divine origin of ours where we were chosen before we were conceived by God's eternal love, called by a name and sanctified by a power from on high before we were born according to our human nature. It is the constant beginning again from above, nung chupi, the shedding of the old man, the leaving of our human beginnings and relations, of the human past, of our human possibilities and characteristics. It is the stretching out toward the things which lie ahead, in the spirit of newness and of youth, which only God's absolute love for us is able to give us.

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St. John the Baptist should be to you a source of that energy which is required that we may return in obedience to the one whom we have left in the sloth of disobedience. This is truly preparing the way for the Lord. In this beginning, in this conversion, everything else is contained. It drives out of our souls the spirit of worldliness, this a little here and a little there, a little for God, a little for myself, this trying to make a compromise and to feed our lives from two sources, God and the world. It also may lead very well individuals to a great austerity of life when it becomes evident that this is the will of God for them. In any case, it is tested when the moment comes where the monk has to show in practice what he reads in theory in the Rule of Saint Benedict,

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that he is satisfied with the meanest and the least. Out of this complete inner surrender to the love of God for us then follows the next step. I mean that we become like an arrow which flies in the power of God's bow to the aim which God has in mind for us. By returning into the peace of Christ, we reach the point from which we are sent, so that we move towards persons and situations like an arrow shot from the bow of God's infinite love. Only by receiving all our life from there I mean from the love of God for us.

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Can we live an apostolic life? So that it may be said of us truly, Fuit homo missus adeo. He was a man sent by God. Here is the way how we carry the absoluteness of the beginning into our daily actions. It is the way of obedience. To surrender to God's love for us is to surrender to God's will. And it is here where Saint Benedict becomes most emphatic and most absolute. He did not espouse poverty as St Francis did in the sense, I mean, of living in destitution, but he denounced private poverty because it withdraws the individual from obedience. And where St. Benedict describes obedience itself, he does not tire to describe it in the most absolute terms, as a willing, cheerful, total, swift, immediate obedience of the heart and of the body.

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Murmuring is to him the surest sign that we are divided, that we do a little for God, and then add a little of ourselves. We have started in murmuring, we have started listening to the devil. Of course, always with the idea that we keep the situation under control and that we will stop when it becomes really dangerous. These are the ways which seem to be good to man but which lead into hell. Again let us ask Saint John to show us the way of obedience, that we may decrease so that he may increase, until we are not only with our lips but in our inmost hearts convinced that we are worms and not men, that we are useless workmen, and that we are content with the meanest and the least of everything.

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Here is to my mind the field where really we can show and prove before God and before ourselves that we are totally His. points of external observance may easily lead us away from the source of all goodness and grace, the love of God for us, and may shift the emphasis of our lives on the things that we are capable to do. But as long as in the peace of Christ we walk in the path of obedience, in the firm conviction that by doing so we channel God's love for us into our lives, into our community, and into this world, we are monks. We come from the right source. We have made a right start. We are arrows in God's hands.

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Here is also the field for true heroism, the heroism of the martyr, taking things as they come in humble obedience, nailed to the cross through the vow of stability, without fear, because humility makes enough room in our soul to let God become our strength, We have in us the stuff from which martyrs are made. We are faithful witnesses. We are at God's disposal for every contingency, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health. And if at the moment the circumstances do not call for the supreme sacrifice, Through the vow of stability we declare our readiness to follow the Lamb wherever it goes.

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I wish everybody would see the inner dimension of this true heroism which obedience and stability call for, the heroism of humility, the heroism of subduing one's own will. Here God really can become our strength. while in the field of diet and fasting and bodily mortification we run into a hundred and thousand problems and conflicts, problems of individual strength and health, conflicts between the physical effort which we have to put into building up our place, and so on. In this field, of bodily mortification. The strong should do more, but it should not spoil his merits by lack of charity in making caustic remarks about the weakness of others.

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The weak should not take advantage of their weakness, but in all humility should accept what they need. There is certainly a big difference between the power and the spirit of St. John and the spirit and the power which is at work in Mount Saviour. We have much to learn, but learn in the right order. Build up from the central point, which is the returning to the peace of Christ. Start with the love of God for you. then allow yourselves to be sent from there like God's arrow to whatever the hour requires. Alas, I see there some weak points in this respect. There is, for example, the obedience to the bells, getting up in the morning as well as during the day. It takes some of the brethren quite a while to get out of their beds. I know that it takes some people a little while to get tuned to being awake.

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but I am afraid that this difficulty may grow into a pretext to add a good measure of self-indulgence to their general readiness to answer God's call. And then they start the day divided. I have often asked the community to answer the bill during the day more promptly. The pretext there is that one is too busy with other things. Again, this can easily be an excuse for not being ready to do God's will because one has allowed the work to take over too much. Here are two concrete points which are both explicitly mentioned in the Holy Rule and where we need the power and the spirit of the Baptist to give us a good pushed to meet Christ with greater readiness. The other point which should be mentioned here is again the problem of silence.

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We should ask Saint John the Baptist to intercede for us that we receive the spirit of the true prophet, the prophet who is mindful of his natural inability to say the right word and then receives it from God. and speaks for God in his name. From my observations, I have come to the conclusion that the meaning of the day silence is not understood. Even the seniors, whose responsibility it is to help the rest of the community by their example, are far from living up to it. Times when people are together working are used for completely superfluous idle conversation or jokes. In the monastery, we don't live together to entertain one another, but in order to live in the presence of the Lord of Lords.

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He is enough company for us. As prophets, we should be possessed by God's thoughts. But lo and behold, what a tremendous amount of human curiosity is alive in us. How often we see the tendency to snoop around, to get the inside story and other childish things. Compare your own attitude in these things with that of the Baptist. Elizabeth magnum virum genuit. Elizabeth brought forth a great man. How small we are in comparison to him. Celebrate the feast and the octave of St. John the Baptist. to receive a share in his power, that you become Anjali Domini by always returning to the eternal love from which you have your origins, that you may be sent by God's love as true apostles, so that by wholehearted obedience

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which is, for those who do not prefer anything to the love of Christ, you will fail the rule of Saint Benedict, that you may have the spirit of the martyr in the patience with which you share in the sufferings of Christ, and that you may be true prophets by making your voice the voice of the word of God. In this way you prepare the ways of the Lord, And I am sure that when we live in this spirit, we have in us and we are a seed which will grow into the full tree of salvation, so that the Lord of lords will take his abode with us. When thou shalt think thyself consumed, thou shalt rise as the day star. et cum consumptum putaveris, orieris ut lucifer. A very beautiful word that can be used in retreat visits in connection with the presence of God in the distress of man.

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The exact text, says the Vulgata, 1117, et cum te consumptum putaveris orieris

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