It's a great privilege for me to come and visit you here at Mount Sagar. I've heard a great deal of your monastery, my remote monastery in India. I feel that something very significant, if I may say so, in this reaching of extremes, we are experimenting in the monastic life in South India. as you, I think, are experiencing in the monastic life in America. And though the circumstances of our life are very different, I feel sure that we are really faced with the same problems. The fundamental problems of, we may say, the Christian life in the world today, whether it's the Far East or the United States, and the particular problems of a monastic life, and in particular the contemplative life in the world today.

[01:09]

I think you all feel, as I know we do, that we have to rethink all our principles. The principles are fair, but the world in which we have to live has changed and is changing day by day so rapidly that we have continually to be rethinking our fundamental principles. And I think you'll agree that that should be the purpose of a retreat. Sometimes when I was a younger monk, I used to think that a retreat to the monastery really wasn't very necessary. We were in retreats once a month, live. And, in fact, I must honestly say that sometimes I used to regard the retreat as a distraction. We had some worldly Jesuits who came into the monastery for a week and entertained us with very amusing stories very often, and gave us the gifts of the outside world, and then we should turn again for a fantastic life.

[02:12]

Well, I don't regret the purpose of the retreat, but as I grow older, I feel more and more convinced that we have, year by year, and I would almost say day by day, to be asking ourselves, for instance, Bernard, you saw after yourself, why did you come here? What is the purpose of our life? And as I say, it's not a a superficial question at all, because that radical changes are taking place in the world, in the Church, and therefore in the whole place of elastic light within the Church and the world, and I feel we need to make a very, very deep study of our principles, and a very deep questioning of our own hearts as to what is our real intention. And I don't think it's at all easy. And I would like to say at the beginning that I've not come here with any retreat or regularly prepared.

[03:19]

I really want to think out these principles together with you during this retreat, because it is something in which I and my companion, Fr. Francis, are engaged day by day, and something which I'm sure you also are engaged, and it is really a question of thinking these things out together. So that is really simply the program which I've set before me. I should be very glad to see any of you when you like to come to my room or rather I think to St. Joseph's Library where I can be available. It was suggested that the best time would be in the morning after the conference to about 11.30 and in the evening before rest of the lecture. So I would be very grateful actually for that kind of context because I do feel a retreat is something which we have to share and a retreat giver really has to learn as much as he has to teach and I certainly feel that in regards to myself.

[04:37]

Let's say we are experimenting in our life in India and quite honestly we are roosting our way from day to day. Then I think you also are certainly a growing community. with problems arising day by day which have to be faced. And I think there is something very close in our different positions. First of all, for this reason, you know my own community actually still is the area of Greenwich in Gloucestershire in England. And this monastery was originally founded, as some of you may not know it, in the Church of England. It was an attempt to restore the Benedictine life to the Church of England. But founder Albert Carlyle, a very remarkable man, and he had this vision before him, and he started this Benedictine life.

[05:40]

on very, very sound lines. He went to Buckford Abbey in England and he learnt the main principles there. And then he started his work. And they followed very, very closely the customs of the Roman Church. even celebrating the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, having benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and in fact living exactly like Catholic monks. And this eventually led to a crisis. They found that they could not continue their life in that way within the Church of England, and they had to make up their minds either to give up what to them had become the most sacred practices and beliefs, what else to make their submission to Rome. And it was a very remarkable thing. The whole community, with two exceptions I think, individually made their decision to submit to Rome.

[06:46]

That took place in 1913. And when the community was received by Pope Pius X, He allowed them to keep all their customs and traditions, and among them there were three which I think may be of interest to you. The first was that they were a contemplative community. As you know, most Benedictines have adopted some form of active apocryphal very good reasons in most cases, but this community was founded to live a contemplative life. That has always been our tradition, and there I feel we have a very close bond. We were trying within the Catholic Church to live this contemptive life according to the rules of St. Benedict, neither as the Sturgeons, nor as the Benedictine, the English congregation, which is very much like our American congregation.

[07:49]

So I should say that your problems here are very much what God's always been, to steer this rather difficult middle course. And I must say, we often had novices who perhaps transferred from one side to the Church and from the other side to the English Benedictine, because it's always easier to hold the middle. But I still think that it is a very, very important work for the Church today. The Church and obviously have a very great tradition and are doing a very great work, especially in America now, and the English Benedictines and the American Benedictines in general. are obviously doing a great work. But there is a place, I feel sure, for this kind of contemplative life, especially based on the rule of Saint Benedict, and trying to adapt it in all that is necessary to the circumstances of the world in which we live. Well, that has been our attempt at Greenwich all these years, and I was

[08:53]

thirty years nearly, twenty-five at least, as a monk of Primrige, before I went out to India. So that on this point of a contemplative life, I feel we have a very close bond, and so that while we try to see the crux of our life together, I think we shall see very much eye to eye. Another custom which they had in this community from the beginning was of professing monks to the choir who would not be brief. We did have, or rather we later introduced lay brothers, but the principle has always been that you come to the monastery to be a monk and the priesthood is something which is added to your monastic vocation. It is not an essential part of it. And then again I think of following the same principle and it is being very widely recognized throughout the church today that that is the monastic tradition and where it is possible we should try to return to it.

[10:02]

I may say in our monastery in India we are making that a very firm rule. We have no lay brothers and the boldest thieves of course, would have come for us to be monks, and they are trained in a monastic vocation, and the priestly vocation is made quite subordinate to that. The other point, which is of much importance, or of certain significance, is that we wore the white habit, that was custom in the community in the Anglican days, and we retained it when the community became Catholic. And it has a certain significance, I think, in that it was intended partly to be a sign of devotion to Our Lady, but partly also to be a sign of its dedication to contemplation. And so those three principles were rather basic, I think, in our life, and each of them was an indication of this attempt to renew the Benedictine life within the Church, without taking on any external work, and without adding anything to the rules.

[11:21]

So there I think we have as I say, very much in common. And in our monastery in India, we have been following the same principles. We have tried to adapt ourselves more radically to circumstances of life in India. I won't say very much about those, because they don't concern you so much. Perhaps I may mention, and I'm sure it's a cause of surprise, consternation, but the habit which I wear is an adaptation to the normal dress which is worn by what is called a sanyasi in India. Sanyasa means renunciation, and it goes back actually to the laws of Manu, the most ancient of the laws in India. about 500 B.C. at least, which laid down rules for sannyati, that is, people who had renounced the world altogether, in order to seek, in Hindu terms, for moksha, or liberation, but which in our terms is very near to what many declare to be seeking God, the life which is simply devoted to seeking God.

[12:42]

I think you can say that is what a sannyati is in the eyes of the devout Hindus. So that has its tradition for many, over 2,000 years. And it is very deep in Indian life. And we felt that coming out there to live this life of contemplation, not as missionaries, as all Catholic priests do come, but as contemplatives, to live a life of prayer, of contemplation, of dedication to God, we were answering Joseph's call of Sanyasa. And in fact we find that is how a monk is normally described in our part of the world. When an apostle comes to us, he says, I want to be a Sannyasi. So there we feel we are making a link with this ancient tradition of India. And I'd like just to show, give you some idea of the significance of this, because though it may seem a little remote from our own lives, I think you'll see that it really has a very definite bearing on them.

[13:56]

And the reason for it perhaps is this, that we are now living, as we all recognize, in one world. We can't really legislate for the church in America, apart from the Church in India or in any other part of the world. And we are all involved in this same new world which is coming into being with its many different facets and aspects. And as I said, we all have to face this problem which confronts us wherever we are. Well, now, I believe that the tradition of monasticism in India, particularly the Hindu, but also the Buddhist tradition, has very much to teach us. I don't honestly think that the Church can go on into the new world without taking into serious consideration this wonderful tradition of monasticism, going back at least to 500 or 600 BC.

[14:59]

with a continuous growth through all these centuries and still very much alive all over India. I think I've been told that there are several hundred thousand ashrams, monasteries of one sort or another in India. That may be an exaggeration, but there are certainly several hundred thousand sannyasis, men living this kind of life, so that you could see that it's still a very powerful influence in the whole life of the country. And, as I say, I believe that the Church in these coming years cannot remain European, it cannot remain American. It has got to bring into the life of the Christians as a whole These traditions of the East, I think we've reached that period in the history of the Church and in the history of humanity, really it's a wonderful period in which to be living, where East and West are meeting.

[16:02]

They've grown up apart, Hinduism apart, Buddhism apart, Christianity apart, and now it's a time that's come when they can no longer live apart. The Hindus need us, I'm firmly convinced of that. And I think also the Church needs to learn from this Eastern tradition. So, as I say, that is something which we all have to learn from this Eastern tradition, if we are to grow to the fullness of our own monastic lives. And that is what I want to put before you in the course of these conferences simply to share our experience of the monastic life in India with you and to see where we can learn from one another. Well now, when we consider this Eastern tradition, I think what strikes us most strongly is the singleness of culture, of where it is,

[17:06]

of faith-going, which is to pass beyond this world, to renounce this world, in order to experience the fullness of life in God. I think that is the best way one can express it, that India has for all her history been seeking God in the sense not simply to learn about God, but to actually to share in the life and being of God. That has really been the goal of Indian asceticism and Indian religious life from the very earliest times. And I like to think that the time is coming now when India will find Christ and will find in him and through him the fulfilment of this quest. So far we can say it has not met rising. But now the meeting must take place.

[18:08]

And when it does, it will be, I believe, the fulfilment of this Indian tradition, but it will also be an immeasurable enrichment of our Catholic tradition, so that those two things will work together. Now, in this dedication to the knowledge of God, the knowledge of God not in the sense of abstract, speculative knowledge, but of experimental knowledge, of a mystical knowledge of God, there we have, as I say, the root of this whole movement of religious life in India, and that surely is what we, as Benedictine monks and consensitives, We are trying to recover in this very difficult world in which we live, especially here for you in the United States. We are living in a world which is moving always very rapidly in this opposite direction. Everybody is moving outwards.

[19:10]

You can say that the whole of Europe from the Renaissance has been moving outward, this study of nature developing through the different stances, more and more comprehensive, more and more complex, more and more wonderful, really, in its discoveries, but always taking us outwards, into the world of asceticism, the world of matter, actually now, of course, into exploration of the world of matter further and further, to the moon and to spaces beyond, And always our minds are being moved in that direction, so that when we seek God in the interior depths of our souls, which is what the Indians, the Nazis, have always been seeking, and what the monks, what the Benedicts had to seek, we are moving against the tide, and I think that is our great difficulty. When you read the history of the early monks, the time of St. Anthony, or St. Thomas, or St. Benedict, or St. Basil, You feel that they were simply being swept along on the tide.

[20:12]

Everybody was going out into the desert, and you found everything you could want there. And you know this wonderful story, these thousands of men going out from a civilization very like our own, I think, a Roman civilization of the 4th century, was the nearest thing in part history to the present, was the greatest advance in material civilization which the world has seen. But it bred this reaction and there was this surge of life in the desert, to find God in solitude and in retirement. Well now, when we see the same thing now, we do not find ourselves working with the Kai, but against it. And I think that is one of our great difficulties. And that is why we have to use all our resources, as it were, to try and find the right direction, to try and find the means which will help us to reach this goal.

[21:12]

So I would say that this Hindu tradition helps us to see how this quest for God, this quest to know God in the interior depth of the soul, is something very fundamental in human nature. It's not something simply Christian, it's something fundamental in human nature. We compare this wonderful development all through the East, through all these centuries, and something which was canonized in Eurus, in the Christian tradition, by the monks of the East, and then above all by Saint Benedict, and which has come down to us in our Benedictine tradition. And we are really trying, I think we'll agree, to go back to St. Benedict, to go back to the rule, to go back to the sources of St. Benedict, St. Edith, St. Anthony, St. Prokofiev, St. Balthasar, and all those he mentions, questions, lives.

[22:15]

to try to find this secret of life, this secret of speaking for God, which they possessed so clearly. And that is a very difficult task, I'd say, because we're working against the times. If we go out and have large schools and colleges and parishes and do external work, we're carried along very easily. But the moment we try to go back to St. Benedict, back to the early monasticism, back to the contemplative life, we find ourselves working against the times, and therefore confronted with many difficulties. And I think probably not only as a community, but each individual monk feels the strain and the stress of that now. It is not easy. to live a contented life in this 20th century. And that is why we need to think very deeply on this and try to get our bearings as to how we ought to do it.

[23:18]

Well now, I suggest that we can take from this injustice an awareness of the depth of this impulse in human nature. I think that is something to keep in our minds. We are not doing something eccentric We're not doing something which is actually peculiar to Christianity. I do think that this impulse to know God experimentally, to experience in the depths of the soul the reality of God's presence, is something which is very, very deep into human nature. I would be inclined to say that you can find it in the earliest, most primitive religion of which we have any knowledge. It seems to me really that is the basis of religion, that man in the innermost depths of his heart has this awareness of God's presence. a sign of his original paradise.

[24:21]

We'll come back to that theme, which I think is very important for the monastic life. That man is aware, in the dim depth of his unconscious, that at one time he enjoyed the fullness of his fullness of God. And still in primitive man we see quite clearly the signs of that awareness. He was aware of the reality of God in his life, At fault, his religion was really concerned with finding means to bring himself into the presence of God, into the experience of that divine mystery. I don't want to go into the details of the comparative religion, but I'm sure many of you know the principles of primitive life, for instance, the primitive dogs. It was all through its means by which you separate yourself from the external world, and by certain rhythmical patterns, sometimes inscribed on the ground, or certain rhythmical patterns in the dance, or by certain poetic devices, whatever it may be, you were always seeking to find its inner center of life.

[25:38]

I feel that that is the key to ancient religion. In all their rituals and sacrifices, in their dance and their songs, they were seeking this inner center of life. M. Eliade, the upright Romanian student of comparative religion, has brought this out very wonderfully in his book, The Patterns of Comparative Religion. And there, I think, one can see, beyond any question, how this idea has governed mankind from the very beginning of its history. So I will say, therefore, that we are dealing with something which is most fundamental in the human soul. Man has the desire to know God in the center of his being, and to discover that inner center where he is once more at harmony with God and with the universe. Now this is a very important thing, that in our search for God, we are not going away from this life and from this world, we are finding a center

[26:46]

in which all of this world, the whole of our human life, and the whole of this modern civilization can find its center and its point of harmony and control. That is what we are really seeking in our monastic life. We are trying to find a center for which we can live and in which and through which we can integrate all our human experience of this present age. And there surely is something which we as monks can do for the Church and for the world. The Church needs her missionaries and her preachers and her teachers and all the other work that is being done. She needs, I think now perhaps more than ever, she needs the principles of the monastic life to bring her back to this center where we are in harmony with God and with our set of men and I may also say in harmony with the creative universe.

[27:53]

It is in this center that all things return to their original harmony. And you know the ancient conception of the monastic life was a return to paradise. And paradise is precisely this unity of mankind in harmony with God, in harmony with the set of men, and in harmony with the whole created universe. Often given the illustration of the early monks who had such charming relations with animals, which is a very good example of this kind of restoration of paradise. So that is what I would like to suggest to you, that we're living in this new and complex world. We cannot try to build our lives apart there in America or there in India. We have to consider that we're citizens of one world, all alike, facing the same kind of problems in different circumstances. And these problems of the modern world are problems of the Church as a whole.

[28:59]

The Church cannot separate herself from anything that is taking place in the modern world, or from anything which has taken place in the past, past, immediate, and occult. That, I think, is a very, very definite, clear work of the Church in the future, to bring the truth of these ancient cultures, Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim, and the primitive cultures of Africa and Polynesia, etc., into their true relation with Christ. We've got to learn to see how Christ is the fulfillment of all man's religious strivings from the beginning of the world. from the most primitive religion through the most developed religions, up till it finally reached its consummation in the church, so that our perspective must embrace the whole world geographically, we must see that we are working together, towards its end, and it must embrace the whole world in time.

[30:00]

We must go right back to the past, and see how all things, and all men, and all religions, is gradually converging on Christ. And we are placed here, in the church, and in our monastery, at the center. That is what I feel we must discover in our life, and in our monastic life in particular, this should be the center upon which everything converges. And that, you know, was the work of the monasteries in the ancient world. They were always regarded as centers, very simply in the way that people think that in a monastery you'll find God. And in India, you know, we're very conscious of that. The Indus are very simple people with very primitive religion, many of the poor, but with a very definite consciousness that God is a reality who has to be sought and to be found. And he can be found especially in holy men and in holy women.

[31:03]

We go and set up a monastery there in India. All the people around, quite spontaneous, they feel this is a place where God is present. And they will come, you know, and bring their children to receive a blessing. When they're ill, they're still not used to taking them to a doctor. They will often take them, first of all, to a priest or a holy man. And it's very like the atmosphere at times, it's very like this. You know, it's rather overwhelming at times to see the sort of simplicity of faith. But there it is, this awareness of the reality of God, and of God's presence in a holy place, where people are engaged in dedicating their lives to Him. Well, actually, that was always traditionally the place of a monastery. It is a place where men are seeking God, and where God will normally be found. And so, for each of us as monks, surely, our task is to try to realize this holiness, if I may say so, of our vocation, that within this monastery we have to find this center, we have to bring our own personal human lives into harmony with that of our brethren, into harmony with that of the Catholics in our neighborhood and the people who are seeking our health,

[32:30]

in harmony with the old church in America. And then we have, as I say, to extend our gaze. Nowadays we can't think of the church, the visible Roman Catholic church, apart from the much wider unity of Christians. And again, we can't think of this wider unity of Christians apart from the still wider unity of all men who are seeking God, in one way or another, in their different religions, or even without religions. Wherever men are seeking God, there are at least potential members of the Church of Christ. And so, this sense of must be a place where we look out on the whole world and we're aware of our relationship to everybody in the world here in America, there in India, covering all Asia and Africa and the whole of this new world which is coming into being and we won't find a really living center to our own lives unless it embraces all mankind.

[33:42]

That is I feel the Christian vocation today to realize our calling to witness to Christ as the head of all mankind not separating anyone because he by his incarnation has taken on himself a human nature and there is nothing human which is separated or divided from him And that is our work, to realize in ourselves and to help others to realize, through our lives, this call of Christ to all men, without any exception. There's a wonderful phrase of one of the early fathers, which some of you may know, which I think very well describes the ideal of a monk. A monk is one who has separated himself from all men in order that he may be united to all men. And I think that very well expresses this ideal which we should put before ourselves.

[34:44]

We must, and we'll go into this I hope in more detail, separate ourselves from the world. It's no good thinking that you've simply got to give yourself to the world to be engaged, as they say. That is a certain aspect and a necessary aspect of Christian life. But it's impossible to be engaged in the right way unless we first of all make this separation. For every Christian, that is to say, in some way, for a monk it is fundamental. We separate from the world, we construct this centre, as they say, this place of heart. where we are no longer subject to these outer influences which may draw us away from God, and within this center we can concentrate our lives upon God and upon our own relation to God. But then from that center and within that center we must be able to find our true relationship to one another, to the whole church,

[35:45]

to the whole Christian world, to the whole of mankind. That is how I like to see a monastery. We mustn't have anything in our ideal which falls short of that. I think that we should be living the Christian life here in this world today to the fullest extent. And that is the theme I want to take actually for our conference is the saying of St. Paul in the Second Epistle of Corinthians in Greek it goes, I tis in Christo kynetesis. I put it like that because if anybody knows Greek they'll know it's so compact you can hardly translate it. Literally, give anyone in Christ and your creation To me it's a tremendously dramatic expression of the Christian vocation. What does it mean to be in Christ? It means the new creation.

[36:47]

And that is the theme I would like to follow up in these conferences, to see how our being in Christ involves this participation in a new creation, and how this new creation embraces the whole of mankind, And we must also add, the owner of the creative universe, how in it and through it Christ is bringing all things to completion. It's God's good pleasure, as Paul says, to bring all things to a head in Him. That is how we should talk on our Christian vocation, and that is how surely we must look on our monastic vocation. To be a monk is simply to consecrate our life wholly to Christ and wholly to this work of Christ, to the reunions of all men and of all things, But that reunion can only take place if it first of all takes place in ourselves. We have to find this center in ourselves.

[37:50]

Each one individually has to find this inner center of his being where he is really deeply related to Christ. I think it's finding that inner center from which we can live our whole life. That is the real work of a monk, which we have to take up day by day, and I've been a monk for 33 years, I think it is now, and I have to begin it all over again, day by day. It's such an immense task, and it's surely the one which we can be always thankful for us, to be working towards this center, never to be content with any kind of external performance of any kind, the external performance of the Shrine Office, or the external performance of any good work whatsoever, but this interior relationship to Christ, personal relationship in the depths of our souls, in which and through which alone we could find our right relationship to our brethren,

[38:56]

and to the world. That is our task, to be seeking that inner center. And so, that I'll take as the general theme, and into it I hope, as I say, we can weave all the different elements in the monastic life, particularly those which concern us most. And as I say, I will be grateful for your cooperation in this. indicate to me where your particular difficulties lie and how we can work out this problem together, then I think the retreat may be helpful for us all because again I would say I feel a retreat is the work of God it's the work of the Holy Spirit in a community and a retreat giver should really only be a kind of conductor through which this grace which God has in store for you may be conducted it's essentially the channel and let us leave tonight on that

[40:03]

for the God-blessed purpose that you are here in this monastery, and for each of you, you are a speaker of faith in the monastery, and in particular, during this time. I would be the work of such and such agent.

[40:34]

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