Historical or not, Munch, a great bishop at the time, a church doctor, wanted to illustrate what it is to be a monk. And now, since about 15 years, I think, a series of letters written by Fr. Antonius, which surely, as the same man, had been discovered by a Belgian scholar in Tartarus, in Coptic. He still was a simple man, but full of good sense, you know, common sense, and not particularly educated and so forth. And the image we have of him is one of those Christians who, in time of affluence and big events of the society and party of the church, dropped out, dropped out. Right on the margin of society.

[01:03]

And he was a noble person, he was a former sinner, he didn't throw around. He was in solitude, he didn't forget, he kept his memories or something, but he was normally tempted, as everybody else, he gets thrown in there. But he grew out of that, and he became a spiritual guide of quite a group of monks, And then, at the nicest of dishes, when he wanted to terminize, to approve, officially, his life, he didn't issue a decree. He [...] didn fancy obsessions, and very funny to read, and all sorts of that. Anyway, the spiritual itinerary of the monks, which is exactly the same in the life of Buddha, after all, in the life of Christ also, and in the life of St.

[02:11]

Benedict, which we shall perhaps discuss, if we have time, we'll slide on the ox-herding parable, which you know. So, first separation, detachment, coming away, self of self and self of God, temptation, struggle, acceptance, victory, self-control, dense spiritual experience, prayer, meditation, and only after that the right to return to the marketplace and to share the experience with other people. The first monks were really this sort of people, you know, and very difficult to situate for the bishops, to absorb in the Red Society. Some of them went so far as to refuse to receive the sacrament, to go to the Eucharist, the Synaxis.

[03:14]

They said, we are monks, we don't care, you are for business, we pray, and then some refuse to be in communion with what they call the great church, you know. And all the trouble of the great bishops, I can imagine, saying about Jesus, about the sin, in Africa, in Latvia, in Germany. But they want to try to re-insert their eccentricity, their hippie in the society. But the role of monasticism has always been to remain a certain freelance organization, to remain free from the, I would say, the business, you know, of the religious society, of the church. And it's a sort of exodus, you know, and the

[04:15]

Russian Orthodox historians of monasticism are very clear about that. I have some pages here of George Slavonsky, the famous Jewish-Russian theologian on Christianity and Culture, and he has a beautiful chapter on monasticism, which was, to a great extent, an attempt to evade the imperial problem. It was a kind of new and impressive exodus, and the Empire always regarded his legions of light and his desert as a threat to its claim and to its very existence. From the times of St. Pelagius to the cruel persecution of Mons by the iconoclastic empire. It was indeed this tenuous life, tenuous life, which is unburdened and tenuous, of course. So, it was with all sorts of shocks coming in, ambiguity, but this mainly, this main manifestation of social renunciation.

[05:30]

And now this had to dissolve in the world, to become a stranger and pilgrim, a foreigner in the world. In all earthly cities, just as the church itself was, but it's fragile, the earth is parochial. And it was, it took quite a work for people like St. David to read, to make use of this not most ideal manner to do, to have them working to the reconstruction, to the social reconstruction, But their first tendency was to protest against every social structure. Early monotheism was not an ecclesiastical institution. It was precisely a spontaneous movement, a drive. And it was distinctively a lay movement. Monotheism was a permanent resistance movement in the Christian society. And of course, I don't think that's as beautiful as Tom Hall has to say that. And that applies to

[06:32]

I could play all the great monasticism and religious life, contemporary life, I could play monastic life in all the great times of reform in the Church. It's time the Church came to be secularized, to become worldly, to be identified with the secular society, with the spirits talking us, to suscite these cross-outs, protestors, there's none. These are all the Velastic reforms, for instance, in the Middle Ages, in the West, Rémy, and all these movements were started only in Perle, or ordinary man, and protested against their views in the Church, and eventually reformed the Church. Many of them, at the beginning, became bishops in their own Christianity, in the Middle Ages too, they became bishops, they became popes, groups, and then they reformed. In the 12th century, in the dispersion of the world, the reform started by a group of anonymous, it was not a great circle, it was a group of anonymous ordinary monks who wanted to return to a more simple life, less identified by the

[07:53]

And we could go on. For instance, the Franciscan life, there was a beautiful study in 1717 on Franciscanism as permanent context of protest, protestation in the church. And I think that's the value we have to be aware of and to But close to that, the end is not protest. That could mean only to be a victim, to be to separate from the Church. But it's liberation, creative liberation, affirmation of freedom in the society, in the Church, which is the result of a positive search for God. That's why another way to put it, in the language of today's sociologists, is to speak of utopia.

[08:55]

Monasticism in all its forms is a sort of, is really a utopic society. You know, the difference between ideology, and ideology is a sort of system, you know, chaotic, and all the points of the theory have to be applied. And to accept the result, we see it very clearly, the Marxist ideology, it becomes a new form of slavery, because you have to obey, to absorb all the points. The utopia is a practical example of how it should be, and could be, and how it should be, at the best, at the limit. And the perfect Christian utopia, of course, is the apostolic community, to which all the monks and the reformers have always claimed to be enough. the apostolic community, this utopic community in which everything was common, punctuality, common prayer, utilities, and performance, which felt never existed historically.

[10:06]

The Pope also said, look, in his time after setting his values back, as a sort of prayer, he said, And they were all, when heart, when mind, everything was common and so forth. It's just to show that in this community, it's the community, the prophecy, because there were veterans who were realized. So, first, you want the life of Ben Luke, you want the life of Jesus in his historical life, you know, the gospel, where he fulfilled the prophecy, and then the life of Jesus in this church, after restoration, and the prophecies are accomplished, and that the perfect utopia of what Christian life should be. And the monastic society, and also of not only Christianity, but that applies to all, and not only the official society, but groups like the Shaker, the Joyful Community of Values Denomination, you know,

[11:14]

always tended to be this sort of utopia, extreme case, showing that it can be done. Never perfectly, but at least we tend to that. Now, of course, that gave rise to various problems, even both for the people involved in this utopic sort of nationality, and for the responsibility of the whole Church. It has to embrace all people, the past and the magic, the ordinary people and the protestors. How to manage? Not easy, that's why the Spirit is necessary to keep the Sabbath. And, as I already said, that has been mainly the achievement of great Church works, with That's where we see that we need people, because they are not sufficient.

[12:17]

They exist for us, but they need us, but we need them. And the main problem for all these dropouts, this lot, this hippie, you know, those to discover foreign nations, due to the cause of charity, like Brazil, Americans, on the street. Then, the most important is not to protest, but to be denied. All this eccentric turned that to a sort of a stage performance, you know, I bark more than you, I eat less than you, I sleep less than you, I live on a... on a... on a column, I live without the minimum of clothing, without a... without a house, all sorts of things, and basically we were okay, alright sometimes.

[13:20]

But after all, the circumstances... And that was the first reaction of them. If you are going to protest against this society, let's do all the rest, all the opposite of what the liberal people do. But the bishop said, well, it's ok, but you know, there is still something more important. And it is to be of humble service to human beings. To be of service. Charity is more important than aesthetic performance. Oh, please, join us. Demand what you are. We accept, we admire you. We recognize that you are caring. But, please, don't be continuously opposed against us. And you know, that was not easy, to pass from freedom to organization, from marginality to communion, to joy.

[14:21]

to discover the value of this charism of koinonia, communion, and the actuality. So it was quite a problem and a tendency. Monks have always been sort of troublemakers for the church authority, you know. And it's normal, so that could be a fact, it still happens, you know. And eventually they come to, because it's the same spirit, you know, who is at work in the church organization, authority and so forth, and in the monks, you know, eventually they come to an agreement, you know. It demands virtue, charity, humility, on both sides. And we could illustrate that with many, many historical facts, you know, both Christian and non-Christian. In tradition, for instance, in the history of church, it's very clear that the monks either against the bishop or against the emperor or against both, you know?

[15:29]

Because they were with the people, for the people. And according to the time where it was either the bishop or the emperor or both, who were oppressing, then they were protected. But they were, that's what they were, sometimes they were And with the phenomenon of marginality goes, of course, the phenomenon of being recorded, re-inserted. And that, as I said, was the main, and it's still alive, still in effect, was the main phenomenon of monastic history. balance between being deeper and being united. Now, what are the main manifestations of this marginality?

[16:33]

In all the societies they are about the same. And the first one is that there must be some manifestations of marginality. And the first one is the way of life, the problem of the religious habit, which seems to be a modern problem and something very exterior, in fact, in this time you could tell all the history of religious life according to the history of the top habit. The important was to be too manifest that you are a protestor, you are different, you are the mass. And to wear a certain way of dressing which is different. And normally it was a very neglected way, the poor. But in Benedict's case, there was less of worry about the color of the hat or the shirt, the back hair, but the only condition is that it is the cheapest possible.

[17:41]

So you go to the market, and you buy blue jeans, or what's the minimum? And in fact, the blue jeans is a very good symbol of this common picture of marginality today. You know, in the old days, I was 10 years ago, you know, they all wear blue jeans. Because it's time-consuming. It doesn't cost much. It's not dirty, but just make them happy. And it's beautiful. What about the social class, the economic class? You have a lot of all the same. And even men and women wear the same blue jeans. And so the thing is, the symbol, very deep symbol today of this illness, of reacting against the affluence And so, a certain way of grace. And then, which is a sign, a uniqueness.

[18:47]

And, the second main manifestation, immediately, is the problem of faith. Having long hair. For example, today, or long, or no hair at all. Today, in Asia, the Hindus have the maximum of hair, you know. All the Swamis have, like, hair. And the Buddhists also have the minimum. Totally shared, you know. There are two ways of, what they think, of a man. There is a difference. here and neglect it, you know? And in fact, you notice that all these facts are common to the hippies. Ten years ago, I was still in New York, I moved in the commune of the falsehood, and in fact we see all these

[19:52]

Manifestations of good soul, I don't know if he's old or if he... You could also stay, stay, stay. Tell the whole history of monotheism and religious life with the history of hair, you know? When Saint Augustine came back to Africa after his conversion in Italy, really in the life of Anglican, which was a sort of utopia, It was a 10% value. Everybody wanted tools and gills. After the Canaries had written this bestseller, you know, all of the empire, everybody wanted to do it, you know. And so, Augustine comes back to Africa, then he's appointed bishop, and he notices that there are already many, many monks, all drunkards, protesters, hippies, and difficult to enslave the society. And they are troublemakers, both for the Bishops and for the Governors.

[20:59]

So what do you do? So one of the first things he does is to write a treaty for the monks. And the monks work, you know? They are going up there in Monaco to prove to them first that they must work. They didn't want to work. We are some lawyers who perform. We think of them like the ladies of the field, you know? We don't put forces free to do what can be a little longer. Theology comes into this more than before that. He doesn't work, he has no right to eat, of course he does work. Then they didn't want to be drafted, you know. They didn't want to pay the tax. It was a society about like the West, you know, all very affluent, the Roman Empire was at its full peak of prosperity and therefore decadent, you know.

[22:01]

Millions of slaves were working in all the parts for a minority of rich people, and all these peasants, fellows, in Africa, had to work for these Roman people. And so it was a problem for them. of oppression, and I think, as we saw, he wanted to protest, but he did not want to work for the regime, not to pay the tax, not to serve in the army, like St. Maurice, who was a black monk, African monk, who was in a TV animation, on TV, in Egypt, who was martyred, the patron of my monastery, in Auschwitz, But, you know, so they don't think much. And they didn't want to cut their hair, they didn't want to wash. And so the last chapter, long chapter, about certain pages of this treatise is entitled about the hairy Marx. So we've got the theology about hair.

[23:03]

Please, not too long, not too short, try to be reasonable, not too excessive, and so forth. And that explains, you know, that Historically, how monasticism appeared in this extremely mixed milieu, all of those pictures and manifestations of all the monastic movements The first way you have to refuse the ordinary life of society is to refuse this food. And that's a cure.

[24:05]

And sometimes in the English it's justified by a very beautiful idea, namely the respect of life, non-violence. So whoever kills a living being, never eats, he's not even aged because it contains a germ of life. I remember when I was in a small Australian bank, I was invited to a meal that they had every morning, and I described to them the quantity of cats, dogs, pets, that were in the repertory. I say, well, you know, Buddhist are totally non-violent. So when they have too many cats, they bring in the monks to be fed, and they give some meat to feed them. And in fact, then, when the entire small Christian monastery was started, I don't know, a year, I could see that there were also Christian cats. All by Christian monks.

[25:05]

So abstinence, then, something I already mentioned on which is good in the term, another manifestation of paternality is the fact of wandering. What is the name of the people who are stable? They have a house, a job, they earn their living, they are always the same and so forth. to a social relation, whereas the protester being free is a wanderer. He goes everywhere, he begs, he works, but fundamentally he is a wanderer, you know? And then, the extreme case, the extreme manifestation of this marginality and of this protest is to be a fool. for God, you know? And we have this tradition of wise fools. Apparently they are fools, but in fact they are the wise people, you know?

[26:19]

But everybody considers them as fools, never takes them seriously, they are despised exactly what they want, you know? But they are fools for God, God knows, you know? And we have that in all the religious traditions. But many of these worries you make in India, in the world, you never know whether they are serious ones or not, because somehow, of course, they are exploiting the situation. to beg without working and to wander. But it's very difficult to know, you know. And you have this idea of the wise woman, you emulate the spiritual father, particularly he's considered as a sort of paradoxical person, you know. He jokes with you, he doesn't answer, you ask him a question, the answer is out of the question, instead of just pacifying you with a comforting answer, he wants to ask you to think more, and you have this idea of the Zen master as a comic character.

[27:26]

You don't know that we have the full power in the Sufi tradition, very much so. You have it in the Buddhist tradition, in the Hindu, and you have it in the Christian tradition, and you have it in the African tradition. Last October, when I was in Africa, I didn't see the same thing, but a few weeks before, they had an election of the king in the village. And then there was some, the election was lawful, something had been wrong in the election, but the chief was there and he wanted to involve his youth, the people, and nobody dared to say anything, because he was the chief and so forth. And then there was a lot of what they call palaver, you know, palaver. And then suddenly a man appeared, totally dirty, long beard, a sort of red, heavy, totally ridiculous, you know, and he asked to speak, and he spoke, and he said all the truth to the chief, you know, and he had to listen to that, and then he went away.

[28:42]

They have to set up a comment, because there are only three persons, and that's it. The fool, you buy, you know, I hope you won't worry, a drama of Shakespeare, King Lear, for instance, the only reasonable person, the only person who says reasonable things is the fool, no? And all the councilor of the king there telling him, no, that's not to be a fool, he's wise, listen to him, you know. And that's wise, that's the meaning of all these fools that were in the court, court jester, you know. Even in the table, court they were jester, you know, and sometimes they were reminding the great man that, you are just a man, be careful, you know. You know, the fool is a person who is free in earth to say the truth, you know. And to a certain extent, as Munch has learned, we have to be that. And in the Russian Christian tradition, it's very, very strong, we have quite a series of strange foods. We used to canonize these foods.

[29:46]

In the time of the oppression by the Great Star, Ivan the Temple, it was the only people who were free enough to protest against And of course, some were killed, were martyred, but that was their vocation, their camp. Church and state were so identified that they ceased canonizing the fool. But there were still, if you read the Pilgrim of the Rushing Flood, wandering, sometimes he's taken for a fool, but in Germany for a fool. And if you have to say, in all our Christian monastic tradition, Even in this Constitution, it says that may happen, but normally not do it and so forth, but let be fooled sometimes.

[30:51]

And it was even written in German, and it was very much because of the effect on the mental care. Fantastics were a sort of fool when they saw this war. They hated me in this time, a Jesus freak, protesting in the place of Baptism. returning his clothes to his affluent father, defusing all his society, and you remember in the season of the beautiful fresco of Moses in the death of Bathyria, and then people are there, the father is there, Francis is there, and the four bishops don't know what to do, they just cover up their the new decree of this Jesus Christ, is it not? So it was full. And it was quite a tradition up to our days. And I remember a few years ago there was an international conference on occasion of the birth of Dostoyevsky in Paris. So there were 15 representatives of Soviet forget the Prussian Academy of Sciences, where they both serviced people professionally as they did, at least officially.

[32:04]

Otherwise, they would not have them from the beginning. They were always surveying one another. And there were two Christians in the group. There were both young and old men who had to speak of the hope, according to Bostoyevsky, because, in fact, he discovered hope when he was a prisoner of war in a difficult condition. on a white book, the same with Kostromazov, so he discovered all this theology of hope, clear and perverse, started from this experience. And in a way, they asked me to deal with a topic which is very convenient, for me it was the idiot. They asked me to deal with a topic which is very convenient, for me it was the idiot. You know what I mean? He said, really, I wanted to show the idea of the perfect man. He said, you see, Dmitry Minshkin, he said, is the idea of kindness.

[33:07]

I know he's a man who comes out of a mental hospital, and he gave a few talks to the Russian society of his time, denouncing the identity of power, and then He has a sort of, in a peak high, say, return to his mental hospital, which was very timely, because it was the very moment where Solzhenitsyn was receiving, or not receiving, his Nobel Prize, the President of the Academy, I don't know when it just began, was giving very important accolades. That was all, you know. He is a sort of professor, of course, in that way, you know. And, uh, you know, I'm now a professor in mental health. So, it was very timely. Anyway, the last example of... I think, in one name from God, who was also a priest, I quote St. Benedict Locke, who said that...

[34:08]

Oh, I'm glad I wrote you a few words. You're such a grown-up for dirtiness, you know. I think I'm going to make a report of my well-being now. You should be okay with all this and all the pain. Well, I'll get back to you next Thursday at 2 o'clock. You'll be right on your way. I'll be happy. [...] I told him, go on, you're on. And then, incidentally, what's going on? And then, after I knew what he did, I had a source come across to me, a source of custody, I believe. Also, he said, he said to Paloma, that it was only considerable for the following day. It was described as a monastic way of life.

[35:33]

I don't think of monastic institutions, but the monastic way of life in general is a world phenomenon. The dimensions of human life present and active in all the great civilizations and cultures of mankind. a dimension of human religious life. Religion is a dimension of human life, and religions, from Thanos' legs, are the form of monasticism. Also, we shall see at the end, also other forms, but one of the main forms of monasticism, in fact, most frequently formed in non-Christian Eastern religions, far Eastern religions, is monasticism. Now, if we illustrate that, if we have an opportunity to make comparisons, similarities, parallels between structures of spiritual ground, spiritual itinerary, or structures of organization of life, observance, but, you know, let's try to discern

[36:59]

What is the basic phenomenon which is common to all these forms of monotheism to all the nations and all civilizations, thus monotheistic, Christian, and non-Christian? And it seems to me always more that the key concept which applies to all of them is the concept of marginality. You know that marginality is very much elaborated today among sociologists, psychologists, even. There is a certain rather sophisticated distinction between marginality and liminality according to certain professors. But in a way, I think the concept of marginality for our purpose works. Namely, to be, and it's very easy to understand, When you have a bed, you know, you are in the margin, really in the margin, because there is a bed and there is the margin, and there is the space out.

[38:10]

So, to be marginal means to be there, not to be totally identified with the ordinary society, not to be outside, just to be around, you know, to belong to it without being exactly the same. And again, we find the problem of pain in a difficult balance between the page and out of the page. But this marginality appears in many historical facts. And this morning we have seen the main structures of life, but within all the structures of life, general orientations, there are still some more particular features or facts which are common to practically all the monastic forms of modernity.

[39:17]

A type of training, preparation, novices, a certain ritual of insertion, public commitment, initiation, usually, frequently at least, with a response of symbolism, entering in a new sort of love relationship with the divinity and with the group the divinity takes care of. Infractions are the law of the community, are the subject of penalty, one of which is frequently the exclusion from the group, temporarily or permanently, you know the importance in all monastic rules, like mine, of excommunication, and to check that there is a certain observer which is either opening of conscience to the Roshi, to the abbot, to the spiritual father, or a public

[40:25]

a vowel of infractions in the circle of Pauls, in some of the Buddhist monasteries, but he came out in 247 rules, he sent a new moon, read all of them, and each one said, I have felt that number, that number, and so on. So you see, that the fact of receiving a new name, the fact for many male communities of having a community of women in a double monastery of the jurisdiction of one superior man or woman. In Ionia, there was a woman, the abbess, who appointed both the abbot and the bishop. So you see, there are many, many forms of being similar.

[41:35]

And now, that brings a problem which was very clearly formulated years ago in an article in the Review for Religious Life in 1973 by Sister Agnes Cunningham. She denies being a religious life. If religious life is not in itself something Christian, you know, it's not an original Christian contribution to the history of man, there may be some non-Christian element in religious life, and it's normal, but they must not become predominant. So we have to Christianize this religious life. And so we have to see how. Now, I said that the basic phenomenon is marginality.

[42:38]

Monks are essentially marginals. Or, if you like, like eccentrics. I don't understand. There is a center and an X, you know. And often that means to be a sort of anti-society, anti-culture, or sometimes anti-religion. Normally it's counter-religion, counter-culture. But it may lead to, if it goes too far, it may be an anti. And so, it's a spontaneous marginality. And we find that very clearly in, for instance, in Buddhism. Buddhist monks have, well, protested against the dynamic Hindu society and so forth. So it's very important for us to notice the fact that the historical fact in Christianity of this phenomena of marginality,

[43:50]

And the first monks, in fact, were really sort of hippies. The first Christian monks, when they started at the end of the 3rd century and in the 4th century, spontaneously, almost everywhere. The first historical evidence we have is of a monk called Antonius. Antonius. You know that some people, including me, doubted whether St. Anthony ever existed. And after all, it does not matter very much. The important thing is that his life has been written. And... On the occasion of this, historical or not, Munch, a great bishop of Anacis, a church doctor, wanted to illustrate what it is to be a monk and what And now, since about now fifteen years, I think, seven short letters written by Sir Benantonius, surely the Zen man, have been discovered by a Belgian scholar in Papyrus, in Coptic, and it appears that he existed, he was a simple man, but full of

[45:14]

sense, you know, common sense, and not particularly educated and so forth. And the image we have of him is one of those Christians who, in a time of affluence and decadence of society and partly of the Church, dropped out, dropped out, right on the mark in society. And he was a normal person, he was a former sinner, Even in solitude, he didn't forget, he kept memorizing, but he was normally tempted, as everybody else, he gets hungry. But he grew out of that, and he became a spiritual guide of quite a group of monks. And then, at the Nile, he was a bishop. When he wanted to canonize, to approve, officially, this life, he didn't issue a decree. He just told the story of that man, but of course he was a great writer, full of imagination, so he wrote a novel at the minute.

[46:23]

So the temptation became all this sort of fancy, obsessions, and very funny to read, and all sorts of that. But it's anyway the spiritual itinerary of the monk, which is exactly the same in the life of Buddha, after all in the life of Christ also, and in the life of St. Denis. which we shall perhaps introspect, if we have time, in this slide, on the ox-herding parable, which you know. So, first separation, detachment, going away, search of self and search of God, temptation, struggle, asceticism, victory, self-control, dense spiritual experience, prayer, meditation, and only after that, the right to return to the marketplace and to share the experience with other people. And because monks were really this sort of people, you know, and very difficult to situate for their bishops, to absorb in the great society, some of them went so far as to refuse to receive the sacrament, to go to the Eucharist,

[47:41]

We are monks, we don't care, you are out of business, we pray, we go there and you are in the mess, so... And then, they refuse to be in communion with what they call the great church, you know? And all the troubles of the great bishops, I can imagine, say, of Mr. Augustine, in Africa, in Naples, in Poland, and so forth, more to type, too. He, in fact, says, eccentric. But the role of anarchism has always been to remain a certain freelance organization, to remain free from the, I would say the business, you know, of the religious society, of the church. And it's a sort of exodus, you know. Russian authors, historians of monasticism, are very clear about that.

[48:47]

I have some pages here. George Swarovski, who is a rather famous Russian theologian on Christianity and culture, and he has a beautiful chapter on monasticism, which was, to a great extent, an attempt to evade the imperial problem. It was a kind of new and impressive exodus And the empire always regarded this exodus of life into desert as a threat to its clarity and to its very existence. From the time of the Tunisians to the cruel persecutions of Mons by the iconoclasts, the iconoclastic empire. It was indeed a strenuous life, which it found burdened and dangerous, and so forth. with all sorts of shortcomings and ambiguities, but this main manifestation of social renunciation, and our needs have to dissolve in the world, to become a stranger and pilgrim, a forerunner to the world, in all earthly cities, just as the Church itself was, but a stranger to the earthly cities, parochial.

[50:07]

quite a lot for people like Saint Basil to read, to make use of the monks as he managed to do, to have them working to the reconstruction, to the social reconstruction, but their first tendency was to protest against every social structure. Early monasticism was not an ecclesiastical institution, it was precisely a spontaneous movement, a drive, and it was distinctively a lay movement. Monasticism was a permanent resistance movement in the Christian society, and so forth. And that applies to practically all the monasticism and religious life, contemporary life, contemporary monastic life, in all the great times of reform of the Church. It's time the Church tends to be secularized, to become world-led, to be justified with

[51:10]

In secular society, we see a spirit strong enough to suscite those props out, those protestors, those monsters. All the monastic reforms, for instance, in the Middle Ages, in the West, Grémy, and all those movements were started from lay people, or ordinary monks, and protested against the abuses in the Church, and eventually reformed the Church. at the beginning became bishops in the early Christianity, in the Middle Ages too, they became bishops, they became prophets, and then they reformed the Church. In the 12th century, the Cistercian order is a reform started by a group of anonymous, it was not a great search, it was a group of anonymous ordinary monks who wanted to return to a more simple life, less identified than the And we could go on.

[52:15]

For instance, the Franciscan life, there was a beautiful study in 1817 on Franciscanism as permanent contest, a protest, contestation in the church. And I think that's a value we have to be aware of and to cultivate. The end is not protest. That could mean only to be a sect, to separate from the Church. But it's liberation, creative liberation, affirmation of freedom in the society, in the Church, which is the result of a positive self-portrait. That's why another way to put it, in the language of today's sociologists, is to speak of utopia. Monotheism, in all its forms, is really a utopic society.

[53:16]

One of the differences between ideology and ideology is a sort of system, you know, theory, and all the points of the theory have to be applied. And to accept the latter, we see very clearly in the Marxist ideology, it becomes a new form of slavery, because you have to obey, to absorb all the points. Whereas a utopia is a practical example of how it should be, as could be, and how it should be, at the best, at the limit. And the perfect Christian utopia, of course, is the apostolic community, to which all the monks and the reformers and fathers have always claimed to re-enact, the apostolic community, Utopic community in which everything was commune, mutuality, common prayer, eucharist, and so forth, which perhaps never existed historically.

[54:18]

The purpose of St. Luke, each time after telling a few valuable facts, as a sort of refrain, he says, and they were all one heart, one mind, everything was common, and so forth, is just to show that in this community, Christian community, the prophecies of the Old Testament were realized. So firstly was the life of Saint Luke, was the life of Jesus in his historical life, you know, the gospel, where he fulfills the prophecies, and then the life of Jesus in his church after the Resurrection, and the prophecies are accomplished, and that's the perfect utopia of what Christian life should be. And the monastic society, and all sorts of, not only in Christianity, but what applies to all, and not only the official society, but groups like the shaker, the joyful community of various denominations, you know, always tend to be this sort of utopia.

[55:28]

Extreme cases showing that it can be done. Never perfectly, but at least we try to. Of course, that gave rise to various problems, both for the people involved in this utopic sort of nationality, and for the responsible of the world church, which has to embrace all people, the best and the marginal, the ordinary people and the potential. How to manage? Not easy, that's why the spirit is necessary to keep the balance. And as I already said, that has been mainly the achievement of great church bishops. It's not where we see that we need bishops, because they are not sufficient. They exist for us, but they need us, but we need them.

[56:32]

The main problem for all these dropouts, these mobs, these hippies, you know, those do discover progressively. You want to get doctors of charity, right? Fazio, Maggio, Augustin. Death. The most important is not to protest, but to be united. All these eccentric aesthetic performance, I fast more than you, I eat less than you, I sleep better than you, I live on a column, I live without the minimum of clothing, without a house, all sorts of things, which were okay, heroic sometimes, but after all, secondary. And that was the first reaction of them. If we are going to protest in this society, let's do all the rest, all the opposite of what the reasonable people do.

[57:38]

But the bishop said, well, okay, but you know, there is still something more important. And it is to be of humble service to your brothers. To be of service. Charity is more important than ascetic performance. Join us. Remain what you are. We accept, we admire you, we recognize that you are a kind, you know, but please don't be continuously opposed against us, or negative. You know, that's not necessary, you know, to pass from freedom to organization, from sarginality to communion, to joy. to discover the value of this charism of koinonia, of union, and its actuality. So it was quite a problem that said, you see, Mozart has always been a sort of troublemaker for the church authorities.

[58:43]

And it's normal, so let's not be afraid if it still happens, you know. And eventually they came to, because it's the same spirit, you know, who is at work in the jurisdiction of an organization, authority, and so forth, and in the mouth, you know, eventually they come to an agreement, you know, but it demands virtue, charity, humility, on both sides. Christian and non-Christian condition. For instance, in the history of Germany, it's very clear that the monks were either against the bishop or against the emperor or against both, you know, because they were with the people, for the people. And according to the time where it was either the bishop or the emperor or both, patriarch or the emperor or both, who were oppressing them, they were

[59:44]

But that's what they were, sometimes they were recuperated, you know, recovered, and with the phenomenon of marginality, God, the phenomenon of being recovered, re-inserted. And that, as I said, was the man, and he's still alive, still, in fact, what the man's phenomenon of mercy is, is a sort of dialect. difficult balance between being different and being united. Now, what are the manifestations of this marginality? In all the societies there are about the same, and the first one is that there must be some manifestations of marginality. And the first one is the way of death.

[60:49]

The problem of the religious habit, which seems to be a modern problem and something very exterior, in fact, is a sign. We could tell all the history of religious life according to the history of the habit. The important one Too many say that you are a projection, you are different, you are divine. And two have a certain way of dressing, which is different. And normally it was a very neglecting way, the poorest. And then it says, there's no need to worry about the color, or the height, or the shape, whatever. The only condition is that it is the cheapest possible. But billions can't buy a reporter. So you go to the market, and you buy blue jeans, or what minimum you would like to, and in fact the blue jeans is a very good symbol of this common victim of marginality.

[61:55]

Today, you know, in all of the protestations of almost ten years ago, you know, all wear blue jeans. It was a sign of simplicity, poverty, eternal poverty. That it's a bit, not dirty, but just neglected. It's just not smart, you know. And it's uniform, whatever the social class, economic class, you belong all to the same. And even men and women wear the same underwear routine. And so it's a simple way, a very simple way to deal with this tendency of reacting against the affluence of society. And so a certain way of dressing. And then, which is a side, by the way. And the second main manifestation immediately, it may promote for the problem of hair, having long hair. For instance, today, no hair at all.

[62:57]

For instance, today in Asia, the Hindus have the maximum of hair. All the Swamis have, like, my hair. And the Buddhist monks have the minimum, totally shaven, you know. There are two ways of protecting, and neglecting, you know? And in fact, you notice that all these facts were common to the hippies years ago, and still they are, in the communes and so forth. And in fact, we see all these manifestations, and we could show that in all these other films, and we could also state that Faye tells the whole history of fanaticism, and it is like, what is the history of Faye?

[64:01]

For instance, when St. Augustine came back to Africa after his conversion, leading the life of Anton, which was a sort of utopia for the sense of St. Martin. Everybody wanted to, and built, and they wanted, after the Canaris had written his bestseller, you know, it was all over the empire, so everybody wanted to do it, you know? And so, Augustin comes back to Africa, then he's appointed bishop, and in Autista, there are already many, many monks, all drunkards, protestors, hippies, and difficult to insert in the society as a troublemaker both for the Christians and for the governors. So what to do? So one of the first things he does is to write treaties for the monks. And the monks work, you know. They are a boy of the monarchy.

[65:04]

To prove them first that they must work. They didn't want to work. So he says, please, do work, and he has an analogy from Saint Paul and so forth, that whoever has the right to eat, of course, do work. Then, they didn't want to be drafted. They didn't want to pay the tax. It was a society about like the one in the West, normal or very affluent, or my empire was at its full peak of prosperity and therefore decadent.

[65:50]

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