And it's wonderful how everything fits in. For instance, the readings about sacrifice this morning, it couldn't have been more appropriate. The rituals, the readings fit right in. making sacrifice, St. Augustine says, sacrificially to make over to this mystery, make holy, make over to God. And in Christ, I myself and the community and the church It all fits very well to what we said here. And then the emphasis on thanksgiving, just precisely in the songs that he had and vigils, gives thanks to the Lord.

[01:03]

All the people who give thanks came over and over again. And this Thanksgiving is really what everything here led up to. Everything we said led up to grateful living, to Thanksgiving. And so I would like to devote this input now, this morning, to grateful living. Grateful living is really the monastic observance. If you want to say to somebody who comes from the outside and has no idea what this is all about, What do you do all day long in the monastery?

[02:03]

What do you call observance? You would say grateful living, to live gratefully, moment by moment. And what that really means, we need to unpack a little. Father, Damases used to say about observance, Observance is not that you observe one another. Observance is that you serve the Lord. with all your heart and don't look at the others. There are always, at all times in the monasteries, the Martha's and the Mary's. And the Martha's always say, Why do we have to do all the work and the others just sit around?

[03:05]

That was also under Father Damascus. And he didn't give no encouragement to the mothers except saying, blessed are the eyes that see what you see. We used to say, why don't the others see what needs to be done? He would only say, blessed are the eyes that see what you see. And this monastic observance is grateful living. We need to first realize very clearly What do we mean by gratitude? And there we can see gratitude is an instinctive response of the human heart. Every child has already a grateful response, and every child knows, if we can't talk and can't put it into words, what gratitude means.

[04:19]

And two things are necessary for gratefulness to spring up spontaneously in our heart. First, as the name gratitude says, something has to be given to us gratis. That is very important. It's a free gift. It's completely freely given. We have already referred to this in another context. It's not bought, it's not traded in, it's not given in any other way. It's a totally free gift. And it is valuable to us, because sometimes things are given to us but they are not valuable. In fact, we would rather not have them, and then more gratitude rises in our hearts. But if something is freely given to us, totally freely given, and is appreciated by us as being of value,

[05:23]

Then joy rises spontaneously in our hearts. We can't even prevent it. Joy rises in our heart and that joy is the gratitude of the children of God. I remember once, long, long ago, I saw one of those greeting cards and it had a little African child on it just beaming with joy, and it said, ìJoy is the gratitude of Godís children.î And that is just so true, and this image has stayed with me. is happiness, but we can distinguish it from happiness. Happiness depends on what happens, and joy is the happiness that does not depend on what happens. When something very pleasant happens, obviously we are spontaneously grateful, but joy is the gratitude also for anything that

[06:35]

for the opportunity that is given to us. It doesn't depend on what happens, because the gift within every gift is opportunity. That is really what we're grateful for. Right now, it has a pleasant temperature in this room, and I have a comfortable chair. And so I could think I'm grateful for the temperature and for the comfort of the chair, but if this chair were in a different room, it would be equally comfortable, but I wouldn't have it. And if this temperature were in a different room, and I would not have the opportunity to enjoy it, I would not be grateful. So it's really what I'm grateful for is the opportunity. The gift within every gift is opportunity.

[07:40]

And now we have to make one more step to really fully appreciate what grateful living can be, And that is that the greatest gift that anybody could receive and of greatest value and totally freely given is the present moment. The present moment is the greatest gift, and since we live moment by moment, life There's a series of moments. This grateful living, which is something different from just being grateful when something nice happens to you, is the attention, moment by moment, to the great opportunity that every moment offers us. And if we come alive to this

[08:44]

gift that life offers us now and now and now at every moment, then we live gratefully, which is a real spiritual practice. It's our monastic spiritual practice. There are practices in our life like Lectio Divina, fasting or so, but those are practices. We practice par excellence. The way we live as monks, as Benedictine monks particularly, is grateful living, and that means living in the now, living in the now, and this now living in the present, living in the now. We call it the present, there's a saying, we call it the present because it is a gift, like a present, it's a gift, that's why we call it the present.

[09:52]

Sure, it is the greatest gift and the totally free gift, and this present we call also the now, and we ought to understand this now carefully, because there is a widespread misunderstanding about the present moment and about the now, because we think it is this little stretch of time between the past and the future. And to show that this is a mistake, you can cut this little stretch of time. Imagine a long line, the timeline, and it comes from the one side, which is not, it's in the past, and then there's this little stretch of the present moment, and then it goes into the future, that's not yet. In order to see that this is a mistaken notion, you can cut this little stretch in half, and half of it is not because it is no more, it's past, and the other one is not because it is not yet.

[11:07]

As long as it remains a little stretch, you can still cut it in half and still cut it in half, until there's nothing left but the past and the future. Where is the present? And some people may say, well, there's hair splitting. Oh, that's what it is, hair splitting. As long as there's hair, you can split it. Where is the now? And we come to the understanding that the now is not in time. We all know what now means, and it is not in time. Or rather, as T.S. Eliot says in his wonderful long poem, The Four Quartets, the now is the moment in and out of time, in and out of time. Or he says, the intersection of the timeless with time, he also calls this person, the intersection of the timeless with time. That is the now.

[12:14]

But it is also correct to say that the now is not in time, but time is in the now. Because when you think of the past and when you remember the past, you remember it always in the now, and you remember it as now. You know that it was past, but try to remember anything that was in the past. You only know that it was in the past, but you remember it as now. and try to imagine something that's coming in the future, you know you're thinking about the future, but you imagine it as now. So, time is caught up in the now, or another way is to say, time is caught up in eternity, because the eternity is that point, the now is that point where time touches eternity, the section of the timeless with time.

[13:19]

And eternity, defined by Saint Augustine, is the now that does not pass away. That is eternity. He calls it so elegantly in Latin, nunc stans, the now that stands, the now that doesn't pass away. And what we experience in time is the now that doesn't stand, that keeps constantly flowing and rolling. But when our time is up, and that means death, we spoke about the I that is in time and space, and when the I dies, time is up. what remains is now. Now is not in time, now cannot be touched, and when we are in the now, therefore we are in the self. The self is timeless, so to be in the now,

[14:22]

and myself. It's in and out of time. It is time, yes, as long as we are alive in this life, but we are also truly in the self, and that self, we said, was the Christ self. So to realize, realize, make a reality out of the fact that I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me, I have to be in the now, and when I am in the now, then I myself, Christ is in me, and it's the encounter of the Son with the Father that happens in this moment of the now. So if we realize what a tremendous gift this is, this now, was a tremendous task it is to live in the present moment, we have to ask ourselves, how can we do it? That is the real great question.

[15:25]

How can I live in the now? The answer is given by the school. The answer that Father Damascus gave was by giving us the school. And if you go again over those ten points that Brother Gabriel so nicely put on one page for us, I'm sure you all have it, you see that the beginning is stop. You can sum them up, you can simplify them. The first ones mean stop. Don't rush into any decision. Stop. Stop. That's the key word. The middle is, look, look at the situation, look at your own talents and shortcomings, faults in the past, learn from them, look, look at everything that is concerned.

[16:33]

And for the, Damasus used to say, we all have our blind spot when we look. And we even have the tendency to find ourselves guides and spiritual directors whose blind spot is exactly in the same spot in which our blind spot is. Those are the ones we really like. But what we need is somebody who shows us where our blind spot is. So, look is the second. And the third, which is equally important, is go, because if you only stop and look, and not go, what good is it for you? It all leads into doing something. It leads into what Fr. Demers has called, in the peace of the Lord. Now you're at peace. Now you're at peace. Act peacefully. If you don't stop and look, you can't act peacefully. You're always in a hurry.

[17:37]

And so stop, look, go is the simplified form of the school, and it's of course also what you tell children when you teach them how to cross the street safely. First stop, then look, and then quickly go, because if you sit around, then the next car is already coming that you haven't seen, so it has to go, stop, look, go, zack, zack, zack. And that means stop with regard to the opportunity, which is the gift within every gift. It means don't rush along because then you miss the opportunity. And especially in modern life, and modern life is always a way of infiltrating also monastic lives, we are in the society and we are in touch with society and we are

[18:44]

by our whole mentality formed by the spirit of our time, and so we are the rushing ones. That's typically for us. We rush along, and if you rush along, you rush by the opportunity. The opportunity sits there and waits, and you don't even look at it. It's already gone. So, the stop is absolutely necessary to find, to even come in touch with the opportunity. And then the look means taste and seeing, taste and see how good the Lord is. It doesn't only say look and see, it says taste and see. That is sort of a reference to all the other senses, and also taste is in Latin, it's sapere, and sapere is the root for sapientia, for the Dhammas often stress that fact, that wisdom is a tasting, a tasting, taste and see how good the Lord is.

[20:02]

Remember what I quoted Saint Bernard of Cravaux saying, that what we can grasp gives us knowledge, but what grabs us gives us wisdom, sapientia, so in order to To find this wisdom, to taste and see how the Lord is good, we have to look at the opportunity, look with all our senses, look thoroughly, and that leads already to the enjoyment, taste and see how good the Lord is. appreciate it. That's already the goal. Very often, actually most of the time, the goal is simply enjoyment.

[21:05]

Human beings are made for enjoyment, but most people are not aware of that. We are not aware how much enjoyment is continuously given to us. Why? Because we take everything for granted. We take our feet for granted, most of us. We can walk, we don't care. Who stops and is grateful can make another step. But when something hurts, when you injure your foot or have an operation, suddenly you begin to see, then we are grateful. Or we don't appreciate every breath we take. What a gift it is to be able to breathe. Moment on moment we breathe. It breathes. We can't even stop it if we want. It breathes. Life breathes. And yet we don't stop to appreciate it until we get difficulties with breathing.

[22:08]

Then we really appreciate what a gift it is. thousands and hundreds of thousands of things that every present moment gives us. Therefore, I can really say with conviction that 99.9% of every opportunity that is given to us in life is opportunity to enjoy. But what about That other little tenth of a percent, can I really be grateful for everything? The answer is no, cannot be grateful. For war, I cannot be grateful for exploitation, oppression, violence, or in personal life, infidelity, lying, coldness of others, thousands of things for which we cannot be grateful.

[23:17]

How can I then be grateful at all times? Because I'm not grateful for what is given to me, but for the opportunity. I'm not grateful for my breath, but for the opportunity to breathe when I really pin it down. And so, in every moment in which something is given to me for which I cannot be grateful, In those moments, I can be grateful for the opportunity that is given to me only by this particular gift, only by an adverse gift. And the adverse gifts give us opportunities that are others than enjoyment. For instance, to learn something. If something really difficult happens to me, I can't be grateful for the difficulty, but I can be grateful for the opportunity that the difficulty gives me to learn how to overcome it.

[24:24]

Or something unpleasant happens to me, and I cannot be grateful for it, but I can be grateful for the opportunity to grow by it. Growing can be very painful, but the opportunity to grow is also a great gift. Or sometimes we are even given the opportunity to protest against something, and that we have to learn. That is one of the greatest gifts that God gives us, to say no. because that makes us also grow and makes us truly ourselves, and when we see that something is going on that ought not be so, this is the opportunity to say no and to stand on your own feet, and that also is a great gift.

[25:28]

And that is both in personal life, that we know our limits and know where to say no to someone else. And it is in political life, in public life. And the monks were demonstrators that goes back to the Desert Fathers, if you remember, how they all came for a demonstration to Alexandria. And I was always impressed by the detail of the story that it says they had all washed their clothes and they were so shining white and nice. One saw them in the population as they were protesting. Unfortunately, I've forgotten what actually they were protesting for. But then in this time of the power pyramid under which we all suffer, there is always opportunity to protest.

[26:29]

And not only protest, but also every protest is really a speaking out for something. It's a positive thing. You speak out for the right of life, and you speak out for peace against war. And for the right candidate, if you want, in your conviction against the wrong one, that is often very important. And nowadays it's made so easy for us because formerly you had to go into the streets and carry banners and now you just go to your computer and you push one button and there's your signature and you have But this is a gift of God and we should not overlook it, we should avail ourselves of it. Very monastic in a computer age. And this enjoyment also brings something up that is very timely.

[27:35]

And then we have to take a good look at how this enjoyment rises in our hearts. Remember, I have said when something purely gratis is given to us that has great value to us, then spontaneously gratefulness rises in our hearts. And when we remember how this happens, this is only an image for this feeling, but we somehow feel that our heart is filling up, it's like a vessel that's filling up with joy, but it's still very toiling. And then comes a point where, as the psalm says, my heart overflows with the happy song.

[28:38]

My heart overflows. That is another phase of this great blessing. It first fills up and then overflows. And just like a fountain, when it fills up, it's very quiet, quiet, quiet, and then suddenly it starts making noises and sparking in the sun. And so this first phase, we have to find a name for it, this first phase of gratitude gratefulness, it fills up, it's a fullness, and then thankfulness. Gratefulness and thankfulness are two different phases of the same gratitude. And why this is important to keep in mind is that in our time, just at the moment when the heart wants to overflow and when the real thankfulness comes in, Advertisement comes in and says, oh, well, there's a much newer model than the one for which you are just now grateful, or the neighbor has a bigger one, whatever it is.

[29:47]

And so instead of overflowing and giving you this joy, you make it bigger, make the vessel bigger, and you make the vessel bigger. And the overflowing never comes in our society. In our society, there's no gratefulness. Because advertising always says, oh, you need something else. Oh, you need more. And then you go to countries where the people have really very, very little compared to us. And you see how joyful they are. So obviously, they're constantly grateful. It's easy. Their vessel is so small that one drop makes it already overflow. poverty, our sense of enough out of which we should live could come if we keep that in mind. Enough is enough. How much is enough? And that is very monastic in our time, given our affluent society,

[30:57]

to know when it is enough. One is enough. There's this beautiful story, it's a passage in C.S. Lewis's, these novels by C.S. Lewis, they're wonderful spiritual books, very good for spiritual reading, and here's one, it's called Well, space now around the world is quite out of a silent planet, but I think this is out of Perilandra, and there is someone from Earth who comes to another planet, and walks through an orchard there and sees this beautiful fruit and he picks it and he eats it and you can just see that he's really grateful in the sense of joyful and

[31:58]

As soon as he has swallowed it, he licks his lips and he looks for another one, typically for an earthling. And he reaches out, and in that moment, on that planet, a voice says, one was enough. Every time we grab for a second one, we should remember maybe one was enough. And that would help in many ways. One is enough. And if you haven't enjoyed the first one, you will not enjoy the second one either. And if you have really fully enjoyed, gratefully enjoyed the first one, you don't need a second one. So it's really not something abstract, this grateful living. It's the most down-to-earth, most concrete rule of life.

[33:02]

Stop, look, go. And it at the same time immerses us in the great mystery of which we spoke all the time, because the stop is a real going down into the silence. The reason why we are rushing around like we do is that we have not cultivated that silence within us, that relationship to the mystery which we call silence. And the reason why we do not look and listen and taste is that we are not attuned to the word. The word comes out of that silence and speaks to us. We are a word spoken and spoken to. That is the great mystery of our human reality. On the one hand, we are a word, addressed to the world by God, and to the other aspect we are spoken to by God and must respond to God.

[34:14]

So in this look, it's both our attunement to the Word of God and everything that we encounter, everything, every moment, Every event is a word of God if we listen to it and it will speak to us. And at the same time, in every moment we meet, the world and the universe, and ought to be a word that speaks and says the one thing that God says, love. I love you. That's what you ought to say at every moment. That's the look. And that is at the same time the goal. The listening is the look or listen, and the goal is So we are deeply immersed in the mystery, we are deeply immersed in prayer. As we said, the stop is prayer of silence, a tiny moment of prayer of silence that we can insert in every moment.

[35:23]

moment of silence and participates in this prayer of silence by which we let ourselves down into the mystery of the Father. And the look or listen is living by the Word of God and living in the double sense, living by something is like living by a certain law, so it's following the the law of God, but it's also living by in the sense of being nourished. Every moment can be a nourishing moment for us if we look and listen and taste and see. And the goal is contemplation in action, because it's in action, and through action we understand God's love from within. silence, word, and understanding. Prayer of silence, prayer of living by the word, and contemplation in action.

[36:26]

That is our life. In God we live and move and have our being. The stop is our life in the Father. The look is our response to the logos, to the word that comes out of silence. And our goal is action in the Holy Spirit. And it's the joy, the joy of the goal, the joy of the enjoyment of every moment, the grateful enjoyment of every moment, is the joy of the Holy Spirit. And joy, remember the early Christians used to say, or no, the people used to say about the early Christians, one recognizes them by the shining of their faces, by their shiny faces, by their smiles, you recognize the Christians.

[37:28]

It was almost dangerous to smile because you're not recognizing the Christians, you know. I wish this were still today the case, and then everybody would say, oh yeah, I know these Christians, they are these shining people in the joy of the Holy Spirit, because they are grateful. And also, what we said about our life in God through the divine virtues, you can only stop in faith. in faith and trust. The reason why we rush around is that we don't trust. We want to have everything under control. We want to do it ourselves. What next? I knew somebody who was really one of those stewards. He was a good man, very good man, did a lot of good. But he was definitely an operator. And then he had an operation, a surgical operation, and he woke up from the operation, from the anesthesia, and said, what next?

[38:39]

And died. Right then and there. That was his last words. What next? You see? We don't want to die with the blood on our lips. What's next, you know? We want to trust in the Lord, let ourselves down into the silence of the Father in faith, in trust. And hope, we said, was the openness for surprise. So when you look and listen, taste, you're open for surprises. What is surprising to you? In our English language, gift and surprise is almost identical. I have a surprise for you, I have a gift for you. Every moment, the gift of every moment is a surprise, ought to be a surprise. We ought to be open to be surprised, because otherwise we have our own notions of what should come.

[39:41]

If we are really open to surprise, God will surprise us, and that leads us into that great belonging. That is really, the goal is a realization of our belonging. It's a weaving, it's an interweaving with all the other threads of this network. The goal is always a weaving. By going, I weave myself, and the yes to that network, the yes, the existential live, yes to belonging, that is love. That is love. And you can even say that our vows stop, look for. Certainly stability, fully understood, is a stop, because the essence of stability is the quietness, the silence, the inner rest in faith, in trust, in the Father.

[40:45]

That's the essence of stability. The essence of obedience is listening to the Word of God. It's the listening. And when Father Damascus stressed that we ought to graduate from the school of the Lord's service, it meant that we learn to listen moment by moment without being told. It's a great help to be told what to do, but it has a goal, and the goal is to learn to listen by yourself. And the conversatio morum is certainly a goal. It's the way we go, it's the way we act. So even there in our vows, is to stop, look, go. And so, all this is in that beautiful verse 14 of the 50th Psalm.

[41:51]

The 50th Psalm according to Hebrew, I don't know, in the grain, there's always one in parentheses. So, according to Hebrew, the 50th Psalm says, offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving and fulfill your vows to the Lord. Everything's in there. A sacrifice, we had all we said about sacrifice, of thanksgiving, sacrifice of thanksgiving, and we showed how sacrifice has the structure of thanksgiving, of recognizing, acknowledging and celebrating the gift, and fulfill your vows to the Lord. That is, at the same time, the fulfillment of our vows, of this stability, of the obedience, and of the monastic life in all its forms. So, if we keep that in mind,

[42:52]

We can really appreciate why this doxology that we always prayed at the end of our sessions really sums this all up. That is our sacrifice of thanksgiving by fulfilling our vows. It's all in there. Let's close again with that beautiful doxology. Glory be to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning. Now ever shall be world without end. Amen.

[43:43]

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