rumored it about, that I was going to speak something on mysticism and liturgy. And I felt an obligation to write him back and say, I know something about liturgy, but I know absolutely nothing about mysticism. Therefore, I will talk about something else, something I'm currently working on, in which I thought, given your persuasion and whatnot, might be of interest to you. I'm going to interrupt you before you get started, Father. I'm sorry. I had promised Father Travis to have just a second to say something. And you can do that now. I'm sorry. All right. If they're all still awake when I get through, you can do it then. A friend of mine defines a liturgical scholar as an affliction sent by God so that those who never had an opportunity of suffering for the faith may not be denied the opportunity of doing so. What I want to talk to you about, and I hope I don't afflict you too badly on full tummies so you slide weeping to the floor in a heavy after-lunch thing like this, what I thought I'd talk to you about instead of mysticism is something called washed to death.

[01:22]

the baptismal roots of monasticism. And it struck me that that might be of some interest to you all, because either more directly or more indirectly, all of you, because the fact that you happen to turn up at things like this, at a time like this, must have some interest at least in the ascetical life, which is fundamentally what monasticism is all about. I want to insist that Christianity is about the same thing. and to try to defend and recover something of the baptismal roots of monasticism about which one hears very little these days. Despite some writings on monasticism as a second baptism, whatever that may mean, and some writings on the monk as martyr, which in the ancient church was associated, martyred and very closely associated with baptism, baptismal witness. Despite writings like this in recent years, the baptismal nature of monasticism has not been commented on nearly so much as other aspects, such as the medieval and romantic aspects of it.

[02:31]

Well, we can get into that a little bit later, but all these later aspects, the medieval and the romantic, emerged well after monasticism's early roots in the baptismal piety and practice of the churches in both East and West had faded or lapsed under the impact of later enculturations. Two such later aspects are the medieval notion of the monicus proctor corum, Propter Corum, the monk exists to go to choir. And then the 19th century romantic linkage between the monk and liturgy, which would astonish I think Benedict of Nursia more than anything else about modern monasticism. We thus read in the commentary on the Holy Rule by Dom Pierre de Lattes, the Abbot of Solem, written in 1913, and on which commentary on the rule I was trained as a novice at St. Minor 40 years ago, this year.

[03:36]

De Lattes wrote this, the proper and distinctive work of the monk, his lot and his mission is the liturgy. He makes his profession so as to be in the church, which is an association for the praise of God, one who glorifies God according to the forms instituted by her who knows how God should be honored. That's real counter-reformation talk right there. Now, if I had sufficient time, I could go through and refute that, I think, by getting rid of some historical undergrowth that's come to cover monasticism in subsequent years. But I think that that process would leave the last notion of the monk as essentially proctor quorum in order to go to choir, or a man of the liturgy, the official liturgy of the Universal Church, would leave all that thesis in some disarray.

[04:43]

In view of that argument, I would then want to move to offer a more appropriate statement of the rule of Benedict's view of the monk as follows, and you can set this over against what the lat just said, as I quoted it to you. I would rewrite that like this. The proper and distinctive work of the monk, from which his lot and mission flow, is practice of the degrees of humility. Holy Rule, Chapter 7. If you don't know what the degrees of humility are, you can go to your Holy Rule, which I'm sure is well-formed, turn to Chapter 7, and read them right there. The monk makes his profession so as to be in the church one who obeys God by attaining pre-eminently among his baptized peers in faith that purity of heart, which a vagaries of Pontus calls apathia, apathy, disinterestedness. That purity of heart necessary for one whose ascetical maturity will regularly be found in the aramidical state.

[05:50]

That means hermit hood. In other words, the monk, along with every other baptized Christian, is committed to all the radical demands of the gospel, but even more so. The monk's profession is thus called a second baptism, so to speak, and in that solemn profession of his or her vows, he or she dies even more so than others to the world in order to rise engrafted even more deeply into the body of Christ, That is to say, to a life that rises above the limits imposed by sin, main among which limits is death itself. To be blunt, a monk differs from his or her baptized peers in faith, not in kind, but only in degree. As Robert Taft, an internationally noted liturgical scholar, has put it, a monk is an ordinary Christian who eats less, sleeps less, and prays more than others.

[06:51]

That's pretty good coming from a Jesuit. I would add to this only that he or she also lives without spouse, which is what monarchos originally meant. It doesn't mean living alone for God. It means simply that you don't marry. And that the monk practices the degrees of humility in community in order to prepare for the eremitical state, which is the end in view the rule of Benedict seems to have for its school of the Lord's service, namely the monastery. In other words, what I'm saying here is that the Benedictine monastery, at least, is a passage from life unredeemed to ultimately redeemed Christian life, which is in the aramidical state. Not everybody is called to that, but those who go through the monastery, they don't stop there.

[07:52]

And out the other side, they learn how to be hermits in the cenobitical community. This aramidical state is where the monk becomes supremely monarchous, living not only apart from the holy ties of matrimony, but apart also from the consolations of his monastic community on a day-to-day basis. I insist, however, that so far from being a special gnosis or a special knowledge that separates the monk from the community of the merely baptized, the monk's life simply swallows the reality of the common baptism whole and swallows it straight. As Paul says in Romans 6, so the monk lives, and I quote, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

[08:56]

For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So also you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." Notice that's written to all the baptized, not just the monks. The monk is nothing more nor less than a living sacrament of this truth to the whole of the baptized community for whom these words were written. The monk and Mrs. Murphy are both washed to death in Christ Jesus by their common baptism, each supporting the other in their consequent living free of sin and death and living free from these things to God in Christ Jesus into whose body they have been spliced

[09:58]

and on whose body they feast at the common table, becoming by that feasting that same body given for the life of the world. Both the monk and Mrs. Murphy run free and in the open, sometimes the one, sometimes the other being out in front. Mrs. Murphy's cloister is her family. The monk's family is the degrees of humility. Both of them are called by their baptism to liturgical worship of God in Christ. Mrs. Murphy not less than the monk, the monk not more than Mrs. Murphy. What distinguishes the monk from Mrs. Murphy liturgically cannot be therefore a distinction in kind. Namely, that the monk is a liturgical person as Dom de Lat would have it, while Mrs. Murphy is not. No one has ever accused Mrs. Murphy of being proctorcorum, existing to go to choir.

[10:59]

Rather, what distinguishes these two liturgical persons, the monk and Mrs. Murphy, is that the monk only spends more time at liturgical worship than Mrs. Murphy is able or ought to. Just as both Mrs. Murphy and the monk fast and pray, The monk does both these more than Mrs. Murphy is able to do. She has to sling hash and keep dinner on the table for Fred and several kids. Why not? And that's a great sacrifice in itself. God knows if you knew Fred. In addition, the monk's peculiar worship is centered on the psalmotic pensum, that means 150 psalms, to a degree that Mrs. Murphy's worship probably doesn't have to be. And the monk's stated intent is to soak in Psalms in church and in the book of Proverbs out of church, in Lectio Divina, so as to become capable, both ascetically and contemplatively, of the eremitical life, a life on his own, a life to which Mrs. Murphy is not vocationally called.

[12:15]

The samenesses, notice, and the differences between Monk and Mrs. Murphy are embedded in their common baptism, which welds them both together as members of Christ's body, the church, in complementarity rather than in opposition. Let me try to be more specific about this. Elementary form analysis of the Rule of Benedict quickly reveals that its fundamental spiritual doctrine is laid out in a unit of text composed by prologue and chapters 1 through 7, ending with that chapter 7 containing the degrees of humility. Whereupon then, the so-called liturgical code, chapters 8 through 20, It's called the liturgical code because it lays out how you do the liturgy of the hours daily in the monastery, which is the liturgy of the community. So you've got the spiritual doctrine of chapters 1 through 7, ending with the degrees of humility, and then the liturgical code, chapters 8 through 20, commencing after that.

[13:28]

Most of the prologue in the Rule of Benedict is taken almost word for word from the fourth section of the introduction to something called the Rule of the Master. which was a contemporary rule, monastic rule, from which Benedict borrowed hook, line, and sinker. Without the rule of the master, there would be no rule of Benedict, because large parts of the rule of Benedict, especially chapters 1 through 7, are lifted almost verbatim from this somewhat earlier Rule of the Master. And specifically I have reference here to those sections lifted word for word, almost word for word in the Rule of the Master. Specifically, the Rule of the Master's commentary on Psalms 33, 34, and 14, 15. You'll have to figure out which numbering is yours. It's one or the other and I can never keep them straight. I don't even know which number is mine. But whenever I refer to either 33, or 14, or 15, you know which one I'm talking about.

[14:29]

This is also true, these commentaries on these Psalms 33, 34, and 14, 15. This is also true of the rule of Benedict, chapter 1 through 7, which is taken from the rule of the Master, chapters 1 through 10. Now, one of the major commentaries on the Holy Rule today, by Dom de Vogue, who is the best living commentator on the Rule, currently alive, he thinks that the prologue of the Rule of Benedict is thus based on what in the Rule of the Master may well be antique baptismal catecheses of catechumens coming to baptism, of materials explaining to those catechumens the Our Father and these two Psalms, 34 and 15. In his own introduction to the Rule of the Master, de Vauguey comments on these materials as follows. Whatever their origins, their presence in the Rule of the Master attests to a very remarkable intention on the Master's part to relate monastic life to the basic tenets of Christian life, such as baptism, after having recognized monastic life as the prolongation of baptism.

[15:44]

Now, I think de Vogelwey is on very solid ground here for several reasons. First, we know that catechumens were. at least from the fourth century, formed for their baptism by hearing scriptural lections commented on by their catechists. You want to know how a catechumen gets formed for baptism. In the early church, at least, it was by hearing the catechists, both cleric and lay, comment on the scriptural lections probably taken from the liturgy. of the day or the week or whatever in a systematic manner. This is one of the thrusts that gave rise to lectionaries in both East and West. One can still see examples of this sort of lection commentary, or at least the lections laid out on which catechists were expected to comment. One can still see examples in the mass readings, especially for the Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays of Lent.

[16:52]

in the pre-Vatican II Roman liturgy. As for example, on the first Monday of Lent's lesson taken from Ezekiel 34 verse 11, thus says the Lord, I mean to go looking for this flock of mine, to search it out for myself. That's the text that would then initiate six weeks of intensive commentary on scriptural lections in the last phase of formation of candidates for baptism preceding the Easter Vigil. Or another example, in the long story of Susanna from the book of Daniel, read in the old Roman liturgy on the third Saturday of Lent, where incidentally I got trapped one time as a subdeacon at the monastery. I think we had, we must have had something special on that third Saturday of Lent. I think there were, it was an ordination day. And I got set up as the subdeacon for the mass, and to me fell the singing of the Susanna lesson.

[17:54]

Well, it goes page after page. It took me 35 minutes to sing that lesson. That's never left me. So I have a special devotion, a real commitment to this lesson. In this lesson, if you haven't forgotten, this is where Susanna, pursued and persecuted by dirty old men around the swimming pool, is an image of the catechumen persecuted for coming both to purity and to faith. and is consciously put there because of the presence of catechumens in the church of that time. What a catechist could make out of that, you know, to somebody who's gone through all the pain and travail and temptations of giving up this world which passes and the temptations abroad in it to come to purity and to faith. Even more obvious are the Old Testament lessons read perhaps for the final time at the Easter vigil itself. the account of creation, of the exodus, of the redemption of Israel from Isaiah 4, of Moses' instructions to Israel in Deuteronomy 31, the story of Jonah and of the faithful young men in the fiery furnace, the rule of the masters explanations of the Our Father and Psalms 34 and 15,

[19:10]

should be seen also in this catechumenal context. And notice in the Rule of the Masters context, they are directed at people coming to monastic perfection. But their basis is baptism and catechumenal. Interestingly, in Gallican churches, the psalm used so often at funerals today, the inevitable Psalm 23, was in fact put on the lips of catechumens who had to memorize it as their song and recite it back in public along with the Our Father and the creed prior to their baptism. In other words, in some of the Gallican churches, you had a tradizio, a tradition not only of the Lord's Prayer, the tradizio orationis to the catechumens on the scrutiny Sundays, or the tradizio symboli, the giving of the creed to the catechumens just before their baptism, but you also had a third traditio, a traditio psalmi.

[20:13]

They got their psalm, kind of like their mantra prior to their baptism. Listen to the words of Psalm 23 as a catechumen coming to faith at baptism would hear them. Forget funerals and whatnot. Think like a catechumen standing on the verge of the font in late Lent before Easter. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside calm waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death with Susanna, I fear no evil. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

[21:14]

This psalm is a natural for catechumens and for monks as well. with its sublime air of confidence in God and mention of table, the Eucharist, and anointing the head with oil, as in the anointings, the chrismations of baptism. So that the rule of the Master and also the rule of Benedict in their prologues make a similar hermeneutical move in applying Psalms 34 and 15 to the monk. Note the applicability of Psalm 34, which was also the great communion psalm sung at the Eucharist. Since at least the 4th century, it turns up for the first time, if I'm not mistaken, in the Apostolic Constitutions. But anyway, if there is one communion psalm in the liturgical tradition, both East and West, it's this one, Psalm 33-34. Listen to this as a catechumen would have heard it, or as a monk coming to profession would have heard them.

[22:24]

Psalm 33, 34. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord. Let the afflicted hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His holy name forever. I sought the Lord, and He answered. and delivered me from all my fears. Look to him and be radiant, so your face shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps round those who fear him and delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good." There's the Eucharistic trigger that causes this song to be used at communion time. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy is the one who takes refuge in Him. O fear the Lord, you His saints, for those who fear Him have no want. The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Come, O children, and hear me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

[23:28]

What one is there who desires life and covets many days, that he may enjoy good, keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit? Depart from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. No small order. The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the Lord is against evildoers to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken. text applied to our Lord by the New Testament in his crucifixion, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems the life of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. Thus Psalm 34. Now the much shorter Psalm 15

[24:30]

Think also how a catechumen would hear this as well as a monk coming to profession. O Lord, who shall sojourn in thy tent? Who shall dwell on thy holy hill? That's one of the reasons Benedictines build their monasteries on hills. It comes from this line of this psalm. They also wanted to see what was going on too. He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth from his heart, who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his friend, nor takes up a reproach against his neighbor, and whose eyes are reprobate as despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord, who swears to his own hurt, and does not change, who does not put out his money at interest, and does not take a bribe against the innocent. I've heard this text quoted in chapter against an abbot whose financial policy one of the monks disagreed with. He who does these things shall never be moved, so there. These two Psalms

[25:36]

33, 34, and 14, 15, really encompass almost everything laid out in the prologue and first seven chapters of the Rule of Benedict for how monks are supposed to live, especially the contents of Chapter 4 of the Rule, that's the chapter on good works, and on Chapter 7, the degrees of humility. These texts, and many, many others like them, reflect catechetical teaching that reaches back through the Didache's teaching on the ways of life and death and preparation for baptism, even to Proverbs 1-7, and on into even rabbinical Judaism's aphorisms, such as, one who separates himself from uncircumcision is like one who rises from the grave. Romans 6, anybody? In all of this, The analogy between one coming to baptismal faith and one coming to spiritual life and maturity in monastic life is close, tough, dynamic, and lasting.

[26:41]

The monk thus becomes a living sacrament of baptismal fidelity for all. The catechumen and his baptism serve as a reminder in each and every local church year in and year out of what the monk's life entails every Lent and Easter. Monks could do worse than contemplate the church's catechumenal and baptismal texts set out in such liturgical richness during Lent and Easter. Perhaps this is the positive teaching of the rule of Benedict chapter 49 on the observance of Lent. We cannot forget that this chapter was influenced by the Lenten sermons of Leo the Great, who died in 461. And thus, through Leo, this chapter on the observance of Lent connects with the early church's notion of baptism as penitentia prima, first penance, and sacramental absolution, from the penitential results of sin as penitentia secunda, second penance. Monasticism in this light may validly be seen as penitentia tertia, third penance.

[27:50]

consummating its existence each year along with the other two penances, baptismal and penitential, in the public celebration of the Pascha, when penitents were reconciled to the church and catechumens were baptized into the church. This implies that even monastic penitence is baptismal at root and that every monastic solemn profession is an Easter. You'll have one of those tomorrow. And it's not just a little Easter either, as our local hierarch and my church keeps proclaiming. There is no such thing as a little Easter, for Pete's sakes. Every Easter is a big one. What's a little bit of resurrection? It's like being a little bit pregnant, for Pete's sakes. Either you're risen from the tomb or you're not. Well, needless to say, even this sketchy outline suggests rich possibilities for the renewal and refurbishing and resource of monastic and baptismal life in our day.

[28:56]

Alas, it seems that the post-medieval and romantic attitude embodied in Delatt's monicus propter corum notion has, I think, tended to blind us to all of this. While the last statement is not exactly untrue, his definition of the monk is not the whole truth either. And when it is absolutized apart from the richer context of the rule with all its baptismal ramifications, it may become numbing. It may, for example, make rigid the statement, and you see this all the time, make rigid the statement in chapter 43 of the rule that nothing is to be preferred to the work of God. You see this carved over chapel doors. Sometimes you see it carved in monks' foreheads. But nothing is to be preferred to the work of God. But if you'll be patient a little bit and look carefully at this, this statement occurs, one notices, not in the liturgical code. of the rule, chapters 8 through 20.

[30:01]

But it occurs in a section on discipline. In this case, tardiness. The message is not, therefore, a metaphysical one on the essence of the work of God, the liturgy of the hours. More simply, all it's saying is, don't be late to it. And it also, in the same chapter, says, don't be late to table either. In short, the monk is not proctor corum, for choir or for the liturgy. Rather, the monk is a baptized ascetic whose heart is purified and disinterested, whose eye is thus clear and sharp, whose life is consequently free of the usual diversions and absorptions that skew others, even well-meaning others, away from the wisdom of Psalms and Proverbs and Gospels. When Christians have someone like this in a local church, They have a treasure they have always venerated and to whose door they have always beaten a well-worn path.

[31:06]

A counter-cultural treasure, greater by far than someone who knows little else than how to get up and plot off to choir and offer it up. Worship in choir and liturgy is a symptom of purity of heart, apotheos, not a substitute for it. To suggest otherwise, he is, I think, to miss the Rule of Benedict's whole point, and indeed to confuse the ascetical essence enshrined in monasticism as its peculiar gift to the Church and the world. Delat's truth puts cart before horse. The Rule of Benedict, however, puts the prologue and the degrees of humility before the liturgical code, and concludes that code in chapter 20 by returning yet again to humility and raising the issue of purity of heart, apathia, as we have seen. So the liturgical code of the monastery is bracketed by the degrees of humility and purity of heart, which is the inescapable and peculiar virtue of the monk and of the baptized as well.

[32:19]

The liturgy in the rule of Benedict is not, I think, basically a glorification of God through forms officially approved by the church, as the lat would have it, and as pious as this sounds. Rather, the liturgy in the rule is an ascetical enterprise designed for lay people. All the monks at Benedict's time were lay people. It is a worship that revolves, therefore, around receiving God's word in psalmody, and responding to that word in prayer and obedient humility. Let me say just a word about this, because we get screwed up about the Psalms along the way. The word goes around that the Psalms are our response to God. And there is a sense in which some of those Psalms could be read that way. But the monastic tradition and monastic liturgy adamantly holds that the Psalms are not our words to God, they're God's word to us. Just like a reading from the gospel is God's word to us, or a reading from Genesis is God's word to us.

[33:26]

That's the reason you get, in the tradition, the building up of what are called psalm collects, or psalm orations, psalm prayers. These were formalized prayers that would be said in response to the community having heard a psalm read at the office. Somebody would read the psalm or all the monks would read the psalm together. Then they would prostrate on the floor and pray for a while. And then finally the abbot would wrap and they would all stand and a psalm collect would resume the community's response to that reverently received word of God. I think we could recover a good bit of vitality in the psalms if we come at it realizing it's God's word to us a long time before it becomes our words to God. This process of obediently responding to God's Word to us in the psalm, gradually, over a period of months and years and decades, has the effect of purifying the monk's heart until his whole life becomes apathia.

[34:31]

He is washed to death. He is washed down in a condition of disinterestedness. by which apatheia evagris means a lucid and abiding equilibrium of single-minded and disinterested contemplation of God in God's own mysterious Trinitarian self and for God's own sake. You can't do this easily in a shopping mall. Apatheia is the peculiar and normal monastic virtue All the monk has to offer the church and to the world, and the monk offers it to God and to the church and to the world in its purest form, perhaps. Not to say that Mrs. Murphy and all the rest of the baptized don't have this as their offering as well, but the monk shows the way to all the others as to how to attain this. For this alone do the offices in the oratory and the Lectio Divina outside the oratory exist in the monastery. It is at the center of all this that the abbot as spiritual master presides, representing that great Abba, or teacher, Jesus the Christ.

[35:40]

And it is from the abbot alone that everything in the monastery is ordered. What might be called baptismal unilateralism, runs through all of this, and it is all bone-jarringly counter-cultural. That's why it sounds so odd to many people who come, who pick it up and read this with their legs crossed sitting in a shopping mall one afternoon. Being blind to all of this may account in large part for why certain features of both the Rule of the Master and the Rule of Benedict puzzle us today. One such feature that deserves mention here, I think, is the Rule of Benedict's liturgy. It is made up, these chapters 8 through 20, of daily psalmody and communion from the reserved sacrament. Perhaps daily, as in the rule of the Master, but at least on Sundays, even in the rule of Benedict. Along with this goes the two rules forbidding entry to clergy, as in the rule of the master, or admitting clergy only with the greatest caution, as in the rule of Benedict.

[36:46]

Monks were simply regarded as lay people and monasticism was a lay movement from the beginning, at least for the first eight or nine centuries. Even more importantly, however, resident clergy would inevitably compromise the unordained abbot's spiritual authority and create other points of focus in the monastery that would compete with the abbot's unique spiritual and liturgical jurisdiction, distracting the abbot's monks from cultivating apotheia. Boy, you get a lot of clergy in a monastery, you start cultivating politics very rapidly, not disinterestedness. and thus denaturing the only gift the monk has to offer both church and world. Because of its link to the ordained, the two rules seem to consider that Eucharistic celebration within the house might well contribute to this distraction and this denaturing process. But neither the rule of the master nor of Benedict is similarly reserved about Eucharistic communion, something which the unordained could do and did

[37:54]

I submit that this reserved stance on Eucharistic celebration in the monastery is in its context far less odd than the multiplication of masses and consequently clergy in medieval monasteries and the modern fielding of clericalizing phalanxes of concelebrating priests of conventional masses today. Nothing I can think of is more foreign to the holy rule of Benedict and the early flood tide of the monastic tradition than this. And it's a polity that needs to be brought under the lens of apathia once again. And boy, you say this in a modern Roman Catholic monastery, you got fights. But it deserves to be said, and it deserves to be thought about in religious orders such as your own. Do not, even Eucharistic celebration can be made an idol. and lead us astray and complicate our lives. Well, if the current scholarship I've tried only to sketch, and then briefly, is to be credited, then we all need to reread the Rule of Benedict with fresh eyes to recover its vision.

[39:06]

I regard that vision, I don't care what order you belong to, I think this is the foundational document of Western monastic ascetical spirituality. You may want to depart from it on this or that, and we always have. But nonetheless, it is the foundational cornerstone document of all this, and it deserves to be absorbed by all in more or less full-time religious commitment. I regard that vision in the rule as liberating. It suggests, for example, that a monk is no more nor less than an ordinary Christian who happens to eat less, sleep less, and pray more than most other Christians have time to do. To accomplish this, monks must stay put. They must remain celibate. and they must work continuously at their baptismal conversion from this world to God. That is, they must remain supremely free as only God's word, both written and incarnate, can show them how. We only take two vows in our place.

[40:11]

I don't know how many vows you all take. The only two vows we take are stability, that's to stay connected to one community and it alone throughout one's monastic life, and secondly, to continue to work at our baptismal conversion of life. Those two vows cover all other vows that the human mind can conceive under the gospel. That's not to say you may not want to specify further, you know, the vows, and a lot of religious orders do. But these two were the fundamental vows that come naturally with life according to the rule of Benedict. Exposure to this liberating word. in the monk's worship is thus central. But rather than making the monk a vir liturgiae, a man of the liturgy, it makes him, as Gregory the Great called Benedict, a vir Dei, a man of God. The liturgy is nothing more nor less than a means toward this end.

[41:11]

The rule of Benedict is clear and adamant that monastic worship be not confined to the oratory alone, Rather, this worship pervades the monk's life, in the field, in the cell, in the workshop, in the library, or wherever, or even at the PC. Like every Jew and Christian and Muslim, the monk is a worshiping person, given the nature of the God in whose abiding presence all things stand. The monk stands there in solidarity with all things, not aloof from them. And this stance is what, under grace, in the monk gives rise to prayer. The monk does not take vows to be good. The monk takes vows to be godly. And that's the same reason that one comes to baptism. Not to receive baptism to be good, but to receive baptism and its grace in order to stand the demands of being godly. which is an entirely different plane of existence than being merely good.

[42:15]

When monasteries and monks and those like many of you here who may admire monks begin to lose this vision or to mistake it for something else, everything then falls apart and monasticism itself descends into confusion and becomes distrusted, as it did in the 16th century. The monk cannot reasonably be expected simultaneously to give all to God and all to everything else. When his community begins to require this of him, even unconsciously, it is putting the monk into a state of distraction and frenzy. May God's Word, no less than the rule of Benedict, constantly caution against this. The monk, like any other faithful baptized Christian, must be a person of leisure. Notice I say leisure, not indolence. One cannot turn Lectio Divina or contemplation or waiting patiently upon God in worship on and off like a light bulb for five minutes now or ten minutes then without destroying leisure or pox as we say.

[43:25]

This is, I take it, why Evagrius of Pontus said that apatheia, apathy, disinterestedness, or, in Latin, purity of heart, is the main characteristic that must mark every stage in any Christian's ascetical growth and must be recapitulated on a deeper level at each stage of that growth. Every time the monk reaches a new stage in his or her spiritual growth, at that point, that he or she is expected to become more and more deeply apathetic, and then the next stage the same way. The stages come and go, but apathia, disinterestedness, only deepens in this regard. That's why if you've ever been in monastic life for very long, and as I said I've been in it for 40 years now, you start hitting your elder. colleagues in the monastery, and you begin to notice that they're no longer where they were. They're further off from you.

[44:29]

There is more distance now between them and you. And that's simply because they've become more apathetic than you've had time to become. They're more disinterested. I don't say uninterested. I say disinterested. Not just in you, but in everything else. You can begin to palpably sense that they are increasingly in converse with God alone and with nobody else. And that's to be in converse with everything that is, because everything that exists originates in that God with whom their discourse is deepening to an alarming degree. Only when one is consumed by apathia, is one truly free and at peace, nothing can get through to you at that point. That doesn't mean you're a zombie. It just means that the kind of things that bend 15-year-olds out of shape are easily deflected, you know, by the apathetic.

[45:32]

This is the end towards which the degrees of humility in chapter 7 of the Ru, which is its spiritual core, inevitably lead. is the final living icon of it all. His state of apathia has now come to include even the community which nurtured him. He's apathetic about that, finally and at last. The hermit is like the desert monk who sold his Bible and gave the money away, and when his community fussed at him for giving the money away, not for selling the Bible, but giving the money away, he replied, But this is the very book that commanded me to sell all and give to the poor. So there. The monk is, in D. H. Lawrence's words, nothing more nor less than a man in his wholeness, wholly attending. I love that phrase. A man in his wholeness, wholly attending. To be in such a state is to breathe in prayerful worship as a fish breathes in water.

[46:39]

And such persons are the only ones who can know what true worship really is. Worship in spirit and truth doesn't come to anybody except the apathetic. I was reflecting on the lesson in this morning's Mass. It is the free ability to give worship where worth is due. And that's not always easy. with complete disinterestedness, with apathia, with total purity of heart. That's what worship in spirit and truth is all about. At its highest degree, Evagrius calls this state nothing less than contemplation of the Holy Trinity. And I doubt that Benedict of Nursia would have disagreed. Indeed, Gregory of Rome informs us that our holy founder on one occasion had to be reminded by a local pastor that it was Easter. so much for monicus propter quorum. One doubts that monasticism or Christian piety generally can or will flourish until we manage to recapture with courage under grace a more radical vision beloved of God in whom it originates and which is expressed in the rule of Benedict and in the baptismal covenant of the Church Catholic.

[47:57]

Thank you. Isn't it a shame that he didn't have anything mystical to say? I'd like now to entertain some questions. Mysticism is what he said it was this morning. I know a lot about that. I have some questions. Yes? Well, this term in Greek is coined, as far as I know, by Evagris Apontis, who deserves being looked into by all you folks, because he's the one that really puts, for the first time, I think, ever, ascetical theory into some kind of shape.

[49:18]

He dies on the Feast of the Epiphany in 399, a date easy to remember among the pious. And his greatest students in the deserts of Egypt were Cassian, about him, many of you may have heard, and Palladius, oh, and several others. Cassian and Palladius brought his teaching west into the western churches, and others of his students took them east, so that even to this day, in some of the classics of Russian spirituality, like the Philokalia, Evagris' whole treatise on prayer appears there. So this guy is really cornerstone importance for anybody who's interested in the ascetical life, either inside or outside a monastery. Now, he uses the term apatheia, which I translated as a lucid and abiding quality of contemplation of God, having God before one's eyes at all times. That's what he means by it.

[50:20]

Now, when Cashin translates it into Latin, for people in the West, he uses the term puritas cordis, purity of heart. And apatheia, which would be crudely translated apathy, but that's picked up negative dimensions today. But purity of heart has picked up negative dimensions to it too. It suggests some kind of absorption with sexual no-nos, purity. pure thoughts, things like that in popular catechetical literature become thoughts that have nothing sexual or erotic about them. So I don't know that there is any one – that's why I gave a paraphrase of all that and talked about a lucid and abiding clarity. If you want to meditate on apatheia, think of clarity, think of lucidity, think of constancy or abidingness, and you'll come pretty close, I think, to the literal sense in which Evagrius meant it.

[51:25]

I'm getting kind of, I get meaner every year, the older I get, I'm going to be a fit when I'm 80, but one of the ways in which I'm getting meaner is to think that apathy is not a bad term. I think it comes closer to the disinterestedness about which English piety has a lot to say in the 19th, well, since the 17th century to the 19th century, that it's a part of the spiritual life to learn how to become disinterested. That is to say, unplugged from things and persons as well. To not be absolutely not flat. Let's say when a loved one dies It hurts sure But we know that what's just happened to the loved one is that that loved one has just taken a short step into the light That's apathy. That's disinterestedness in the positive sense, for Pete's sakes. Not that we didn't love the individual. We probably love that individual far more than ordinary people of this world love their own.

[52:28]

It's the absolute antithesis to the bumper sticker you see around, that the one who has the most toys wins. That's the antithesis. And I maintain all the way through this and other things that I'm working up on this business that apathy is about the main thing that a baptized Christian and a baptized monastic Christian have to work at. Boy, if we had a few hundred apathetic people around, we could turn this church around and the world on its ear once again. You know, if you have this deeply embedded in your meditative life or your contemplative life, examples of apathy keep cropping up all the time, and antitheses of apathy keep cropping up all the time, from which we learn. Then if you also, if you go back and read the real monastic biblical books, and I've I don't want to be too adamant about that.

[53:32]

I think there are three special in monastic books, Psalms, Proverbs. If you'll notice in the monastic rules, Psalms and Proverbs are quoted more times than even the Gospels are quoted, but the Psalms and Proverbs and Gospels. Those are your main teaching devices for monastic living. And as you read through those things, just start off reading. Before you go to bed tonight, promise me you will read the first chapter of the book of Proverbs. It's awash in apathy. If you know what to look for. It will give you examples. If you're not clear about apathy, Proverbs and Psalms are absolutely awash in it. And that's where Vagrius and the other spiritual masters pick it up. That's far more important than whether or not you have a dark night of the soul, and God knows you will. But those things come and those things go. But apatheia must abide. Because that's the increasing indication that Christ is becoming all in you.

[54:39]

And that his discourse with the Father has become your discourse with the Father. And you've passed already beyond this world into things that can hold us down and nail our feet to the floor. And Mrs. Murphy picks this up in five seconds flat. But anything less than this, she also picks up in five seconds flat, which is why she doesn't often trust her clergy, especially on some matters. And why, you know, oddly enough, and I'm noticing this more and more all the time, Mrs. Murphy gets the point, the religious point of the gospel reading at Sunday Mass quicker than her pastor does. And it's mainly because her pastors have been trained to do exegesis by people like us. But our Lord didn't tell the parable for academic theologians, you know, looking for problems. He told it for simple people, you know, to give those people access to something about what the good news was all about. That's why Mrs. Murphy gets it. And her pastor, who's been bent out of shape by an academic education, misses it.

[55:42]

You know, frankly, every time. You don't have to have an MDiv degree to be saved. I love it. I've just been reading T.H. White's Bestiary. He quotes Augustine. They're talking about the fantastic beasts of the medieval time. And Augustine says it doesn't matter whether the animals are real or not. What matters is what they mean. That's us. And something else. Yes, John. Well, the apathetic is not competitive. The competitiveness is another one of those cultural temptations or bestiaries that can get its fangs into you, and very subtly.

[56:52]

so that you're always competing and whatnot and you're doing your friends in order to compete and you wind up with nobody who loves you at the end of the whole – that's the antithesis of being apathetic. The apathetic really doesn't give a good damn whether the other guy wins or not. It's translated in the sports term, it's more important that you run the race than whether or not you win. Now, running the race is something the apathetic can do. Racing is a good thing. It does all kinds of good things for the body and whatnot. But the world doesn't turn on that axis. And your life shouldn't turn on that axis either. So that if you win, it ruins your whole day. If you're a practicing Christian and losing a competition to somebody else ruins your whole day, then you better work on your apatheia a little bit. your disinterestedness a little bit, because you're quietly and imperceptibly setting up a little tent idol that will certainly grow if you don't do something about it till it gets big enough to do you in.

[57:59]

And it will, you can bet on it. I don't know whether that answers your question, but it's at least an attempt to respond to the question, and it's a good question. I'm sorry, yeah. You have that anyway, don't you? What it means is that you, it's not that you give up your conscious awareness of other people. It does mean you try to consistently keep that stripped down and clean. and objective and charitable, for Pete's sakes. You know, being charitable about somebody else doesn't mean you cover up their faults necessarily or their weak spots or their, you know, it's like it's the essence of humility to be candid. And sometimes that's one of the hardest virtues in the world to practice.

[59:02]

is when you see somebody that's going hell for leather, you know, right down the tube, and you say, well, it's his life, you know, let him go ahead and do it. I don't want to get involved. If that's your attitude, you've got to work on your apotheia a little bit. Because it's the most apathetic thing in the world to tell this guy, hey, why are you living like the beasts that perish? You know, don't you take the redemption of all things in Jesus Christ seriously? Are you really ignoring all this? Have you ceased functioning in your faith? An apathetic person would do that because they don't give a toot what the other individual thinks about them personally or not. But somebody should at least wave the flag. And if nobody else will do it, I'm bound to do it. And you go ahead and do that. That's a hard thing to do, especially to live with the consequences. But who in the hell cares? You know, so long as you're doing the right thing before God, God cares and that's all that matters. That's an apathetic stance. That's purity of heart.

[60:05]

And you can translate it, you know, people that go toadying into the dean, you know, to get academic advancement. I see this happening all the time. They need to work on their apathy a little bit, seems to me. You know, and simple, candid fairness to their profession, to their students, to their academy, and to their colleagues, for Pete's sakes. Life is filled with so-and-sos, and being apathetic doesn't mean you've got to let them get away with it. Well, in ascetical theology, there's a very close connection between the classical sense of recollection and apatheia. Oh, sure. Well, and I think it has.

[61:09]

That's why I cited Evagrus of Pontus, and he's 399. He dies in 399. So this goes back a tad. It's embedded all the way through your fundamental Christian monastic document. I've never understood why people think that Zen Buddhists discovered monasticism. They didn't. And a lot of the fundamental points of Zen, also philosophical Taoism, the Chinese version of Zen, and Christian monasticism, especially the Desert Fathers, up through and including Benedict, all these people are very similar. very common spiritual doctrines such as this. The only big difference between those systems and the Christian system is they are not theistic, whereas the Christian system is, and they're certainly not monotheistic or Trinitarian, whereas the Christian system is. But apart from that, a lot of the fundamental monastic modalities are in common, because they have to be, if you're really going to try to practice as a human being what philosophers call the considered life.

[62:18]

a human nature being given as what it is, you will come up with common ways of doing that. And that's why I think a lot of these modalities in Zen and Christian monasticism come up at the same time. That story I mentioned, you know, is an example of the apathetic about the monk who sold his inherited Bible and gave the money to the poor. And then when questioned about this, he said, but this is the book that told me to do that. That's a typical example of what the Zen tradition will call a koan, a sudden teaching, that is there not to communicate data, but to twist your head so you're looking backwards. It does a contretemps. It throws you back on your haunches and makes you think. That's the whole business. Like the whole business of the Desert Fathers of getting novices to go out and plant dead sticks in the desert. That's not a way to teach agriculture. What that's doing is to help change their mind.

[63:25]

Help them to start seeing the world in a different way. See the world through the eyes of the apathetic. Don't care. If the abbot says, go plant a dead stick, you must obey the abbot. You go plant a dead stick and think absolutely nothing else about it and that frees you. from trying to analyze why the abbot asked you to do this and not the next in line to do that, and thinking about whether the abbot is discriminating against you or discriminating against him. That's the antithesis of apatheia. The apathetic doesn't give a good damn, to put it bluntly, about all that. That's the purpose of the sudden teaching, both in Zen, I think, and in early Christian monasticism as well. in the effort to move away from desire. Jesse. Yeah, I just don't know enough about the sacrifice of Isaac to be able to determine how detached Abraham was, but let it pass.

[64:46]

That's something of the idea. This is not to say that you do things without wrenching. Things still hurt, things still cost and whatnot, but still there's something there that's stronger. than the perceived hurt. And I think by the time you become under grace in the last stages of apathy, I think things stop hurting. And then you've really left this world. You've already taken a half step into light at that point. And that's disinterestedness like hell won't have it. Our Lord exhibits this sort of thing all the time. And it was hard for Peter to learn. Uh, that's a good, a good way to play it off too. Yeah. There was somebody back there. Yes, Father. Brother. Not bad. Oh, I've lived among some patriarchal instincts.

[66:01]

Wrong. What is it that you are seeking? We need balance here. While I was in the dark, I used to work in the lab. Oh, I don't see anything more wrong with violence, blood, or absorption. Yeah, I just don't want to get too rationalized about this because I think it's a state that goes past rationalization. I think it starts out being rationalized and being thought about and intellectualized a lot, but I think as you – as the as the growth in the life of faith deepens, as apathia also deepens along with that, I think you finally come out beyond the brain pan stage, which is not to say you become emotional about the whole thing, but I think all things kind of quieten down.

[67:04]

level out. You see things, you know, there's no, like looking out over the lake, I haven't seen the lake yet, I've been here two days, and it's all been foggy out there, or hazy. The haze lifts, and you see things as they really are. It's, you get back to one of the crucial things in the New Testament, all the Synoptic Gospels at least really break, or put it this way, they really peak in the Transfiguration. If you'll notice, it's from the Transfiguration, and he goes up to Jerusalem for his passion. So in a ministerial way, the Transfiguration is the absolute core of the Gospel, and precisely there, notice that Peter and John misconstrued the event. They think they're seeing Jesus as somebody different than they thought he was. They're just seeing the way he always had been. They couldn't see him. So the transfiguration didn't take place in Jesus, it took place in them. I was thinking this morning in chapel, I hope the chapel is dedicated to the transfiguration.

[68:09]

Because you have the three tabernacles in there, you know, the big chairs up in the sanctuary, the tabernacles that Peter wanted to build for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. I thought it was kind of cute. But anyway, you get to that point, and it's not that you see Jesus differently than he really is. You're just seeing him for the first time the way he really is and always has been. That's the mystery of the transfiguration. And once he's let them know who he really is, on the Mount of the Transfiguration, he's ready to leave now. And from that point onward, he's in the process of his recessional. The retreat, which we'll begin tomorrow night, is based on the theme of the Transfiguration. Thank you, thank you, thank you. A greater pain?

[69:14]

Oh sure. Oh, sure. I just mentioned him. To be apathetic in any sense always involves a huge amount of self-disciplining under grace that leads into the various stages that the degrees of humility lay out in a kind of a schematic form. Each one of those degrees of humility, according to Avagrius, who is the source, I think, from where Benedict and the Rule of the Master both get that stuff. indicates that each one of the degrees of humility of those stages in the spiritual life should result in a deepening degree of apathy. Now each, you know, disciplining oneself to be humble even when spoken or to love one's enemy, That's a form of humility also. Boy, that's hard. It's pretty easy to love those who love you, but it's another – it's a pain-filled situation to really not just to simulate loving your enemies, but to really get yourself to the point of loving. That's hard as it can be.

[70:16]

Now, when you finally get to that point, you wind up in a whole new degree of apathia, that enemy is no longer bothering you. So that particular blimp on your spiritual graph, you know, is flattened out. And so that at the end, you're in the supreme degree. You are so wound up in seeing nothing anymore but God. that you're really apathetic to almost everything else. Thus, Anthony of the desert, Anthony of Egypt, you know, he's totally apathetic about food. He exists on one dried olive and a half cup of water a day. He lives to be 105, incidentally. But nonetheless, that's apathetic. And it doesn't come easy. Charles, we've got one more after this, and then we'll have to go. Well, the question is how would I compare and contrast the Zen idea of, well, it's also Buddhist, it's not just Zen, as I understand it.

[71:35]

Satori, it's similar. It's non-theistic, whereas Evagrius will Evagris' Satori is very, very similar to the Buddhist concept except that it's theistic, whereas the Buddhist concept is not necessarily theistic, it seems to me. It's more, you know, an internalized psycho-spiritual state, whereas in Evagris he will say, this is what comes when you really enter in on contemplation of the Holy Trinity in and for itself. And that you will not find in Zen or in Buddhism generally. Thank you. Todd, last question? If that's what it is, the Christian vocation is not just a baptismal vocation. Oh yeah, it comes with baptism, I think. What are the implications for catechesis in baptismal liturgy? The implication is obviously that you are representing a child in a baptismal vocation.

[72:38]

Sure. Yes. You can't handle this sort of concept if you're going to do catechetics as religious education. But if you're going to do catechesis, which I define as conversion therapy, You have to take this up. You can't avoid it, it doesn't seem to me. I was talking to some people from the diocese this morning about this, about one of the first things about catechesis is that you've got to help, like with an alcoholic going through Alcoholics Anonymous, you have to help them unlearn a fatal lifestyle. Alcoholism will kill them if they keep it up. Being unable to resist the attractions of this world which passes and which has fallen is also – it's lethal. So both the catechumen and the alcoholic have to be helped by some kind of community support structure, therapeutic structure to learn how to let go, to learn how to move away from.

[73:44]

all those things that are pumping, you know, poison into their system. And that's why I suggested to these people this morning that if you're going to start a catechumenate in your parish or something like that, getting somebody who's articulated from Alcoholics Anonymous to come in and talk to you about this would be very helpful. because they'll keep you from going the religious education route, which a lot of Christians do, just connaturally. Our bishops, for example, see the term catechesis, they think catechetics, and that equals religious ed, and they turn the whole program over to a bunch of religious education people who do it by syllabus. But one of the first things an Alcoholic Anonymous person will tell you is that you do not pass out syllabuses to a recovering alcoholic. About the main thing that you can do is to give them 24-hour, round-the-clock, 365-days support. so that anytime they feel like they're coming unglued, they can pick up the telephone or go next door and get help. There's probably more catechesis going on there than has been going on in all the Western churches for the last 400 years, if you get right down to it.

[74:51]

Now, apathia is a part, you cannot maintain that, staying clear of those things will certainly do you in. We used to call them in the old days, you know, occasions of sin. You know, shopping malls are occasions of sin. Just walk through one. Just walk through one, one day. And I know there are whole groups of people. This is showing you how apathetic I am because half of you may get up and walk out. But I'm sure there are people who live in those places. You know, they never go home. They go in flocks, in phalanxes, and you see them in there all the time. They are shopping. That doesn't mean you've got to buy anything. It's that you join in the whole commercial culture that gradually sinks its fangs into you and you begin increasingly to see the world in terms of things. And anybody comes along that threatens to take our things away from them, we'll blow the hell out of them.

[75:54]

That's not exactly an apathetic thought. Helping ordinary catechumens, adults who come seeking faith and baptism, turn loose of that is not going to be an easy business. You're going to have to teach them the rudiments of apathy. And I don't think that you can lecture about apathy. I think the only thing you can do is to try to become as apathetic yourself as you can and then give others the benefit of your experience. at that point, and you may not go very far. You know, take my Mrs. Murphy again. People say, well, Mrs. Murphy's not apathetic. She has very strong views on everything. Well, being apathetic doesn't mean you don't have strong views on things. It just means you don't care what anybody else thinks about this whole business. And that's to be commended, so long as you're right. But when you take a look at Mrs. Murphy's seven kids and her husband, Fred, who's a plumber, and what she has to go through to get him dressed and get a shirt on him for the first time during the weekend and get all the kids nose cleaned and get them into the car and getting them down the church and then getting them back and things like that.

[77:04]

That's a life of heroic sanctity as far as I'm concerned. I thank God the older I get for the gift of celibacy. And I'm not being facetious about that either. I send an absolute thunderstruck awe at that. And then Mrs. Murphy gets there and she's got a crappy liturgy with dumb hymns and a little talk on religion that passes as a homily. And she comes out and she thanks her pastor for it sincerely. That's apathy. During the course of the past year, aside from the visit of Father Aidan, the best thing that happened at this place was the appointment of the new Executive Director. And I was going to let him talk first, and then I screwed that up. And so I would like.

[78:05]

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