the invention of the Holy Rumour. Just a few thoughts about the end of the horloge in which Saint Benedict manages then to institute that Scola da Vinci servizi. It is evidence that Saint Benedict here addresses himself to those who, we have said before, want to be dwellers in God's Tamina. For Imta really fully and completely into the presence of God and so that her whole life is called puro, the pure heart lived in the presence of God and under the eyes of God. That is, of course, always in the Church, considered and designated as the ideal of the homo spiritualis, the spiritual man, the man of God, the man of the Spirit.

[01:18]

But you also know, naturally, that there were certain tendencies in the Church which saw this Homo spiritualis, the spiritual man of the day, in the, to say, Christian elite, in a wrong direction. There is the tendency which we call Gnosticism. Gnosticism, which puts the emphasis on the intellectual side, or, let us say, on the prophetical side, in the larger sense of that word. and which made then of these Gnostics an elite which is separate from the rest of the church and which kind of follows their own law.

[02:22]

You have that in, for example, the modernist movement, the proclamation of the a perfect prophecy, the period of prophecy. Something similar as it laid on, for example, again appears in church history, it seems to me, under the name of the Spiritualis, the Franciscan movement with Joachim of Fiore, that medieval movement. Always tendencies which lead out of the body of Christ which have the tendency of withdrawing from the authority of the church, from the obedience of the church, and which also very often end in a complete split between the body and the soul, as we laid on again.

[03:25]

In the Middle Ages, see in what we call the Kataroi, which becomes the name par excellence for the heretic or Ketzer. The Kataroi, the pure ones. in which the nexus between soul and body is really cut, so that the body does one thing and the soul does the other. And the body degenerates to the level of the animal level, while the spiritual part thinks that he approaches or lives completely on the level of the angels. And that is one of the greatest difficulties and dangers in this whole business that also St. Benedict is undertaking, founding a school of the divine service. And therefore we can also right away see that in these last two paragraphs of the prologue, where he in his own words sums up the doctrina which has been proclaimed by God himself, in the prologue emphasizes two things.

[04:48]

One is that preparanda sunt corda et corpora nostra. We have to repair our hearts and our bodies. That is a motif which later on dominates, as you know, the whole chapter on humility. The Ladder of Ascent has two posts on both sides, the soul and the body. Preparanda sum cordae corporandus. Saint Benedict here chose himself, probably not under the explicit influence, but as part of the Doctrina Ecclesiae, which at the time of the Gnostic heresies, Saint Irenaeus of Lyons had the great merit of pointing out and clearly formulating and which, as you know, had a great influence, really, on the Church.

[05:51]

That is the definition of St. Irenaeus of the Homo spiritualis, is the man in whom the soul and his body, anima et corpus, are delivered through obedience into the hand of the Spirit. And that is the essential principle on which Saint Benedict also builds his rule and the whole Scola Dominici Servizi. The arma obediensi, the weapons of obedience, they are there to purify the soul and the body. from the vices of rebellion, the soul from the vice of pride, the body from the vice of the desires of the flesh. And in that way, deliver man into the hands of the Spirit.

[06:54]

And there is then right away, we weigh that right. The other important wisdom or truth which also St. Irenaeus was the one who insisted upon it in such an outstanding way, and that is then not the gnosis, not the scientia is the highest of charism, but charitas, that charitas is the highest. And therefore, St. Benedict also then in the school of divine service warns these two things, that, as he says, if something more strict is prescribed, either to purify the soul from how long the vices were in order to serve the preservation of charity. That are really the two essential things of the homo spiritualis in the ecclesiastical, true, orthodox interpretation of the world.

[08:08]

You can also see that here, and I think that is very important in this context, that Saint Benedict does not mention that, let us say, Only those are invited to the monastic life who have, let us say, the natural aptitude for contemplation. That is a complete concept which is much later, which in fact has first been formulated clearly in the Western Church by St. Bernard. But that is a category which St. Benedict does not touch. He insists not on, and that was also, I think, part of the whole development of the experience of the Church in the struggle with the Gnostics. Because with the Gnostics it became this way that really the division

[09:14]

between what they call the psychikoi and the pneumatikoi was a division which is made by nature, by the character of the people, natural character of the people. And that, of course, is a thing which St. Benedict does not agree to. The vocation to the monastic life is a supernatural vocation, and is a vocation which affects the body and affects the soul, and leads body and soul into the realm of charity, the Caritas, through Ero Obedientiam, ad caritatem, that is, in some ways, the way which Saint Benedict foresees for his most. And that is the thing which is really of great importance, that we see that, and that we also willingly enter into this very basic idea of Saint Benedict.

[10:29]

Obedientia.

[10:31]

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