It is. Grateful to John Smith for offering, for his sacrifice to God. For us this beautiful mouse, the golden mouse, the Orate, was for us a great joy to have it offered to us as hermetical as I had anticipated. We have it offered by the Red Dog, but it is our way, it is so closely who are deeply devoted to Our Lady Anne. It's her mystery that we celebrate today in this mass. Well, rather than surely disappear, we do this through Andriushka. We have in the slides that we have seen of the Holy Land, we realize we have seen that that is one of the characteristics.

[01:04]

Jerusalem is high, one ascends and then one gets into that field, into that area where the clouds have to do the rain, the fertility and the life, and the earth is waiting. thirsty and waiting for the rain that the clouds, the heavenly elements, the symbol of divine grace, the symbol really of the divine agape, the descending love of God, gives. So we are right in the beginning of this mass, taken up into that huge sphere of thinking. Well, in Egypt everything we have seen is quite at man's disposal and under man's control and security and all these things. And then comes Palestine, this land that depends on the things that are above.

[02:06]

And it is also so, I think, in this convention of the prophet Elias. was in the Old Testament one of the outstanding figures which foreshadow this new order that then, through the faith and the obedience of Our Lady, as instruments, came into being and became a reality here on Earth, because he was the one who, on the top of Mount Carmel, was asking and praying and sighing for rain. He was then the first to see the little cloud appearing. That means here we see a picture of the Virgin, the Virgin Mother.

[03:07]

He was the one who Later went to Mount Horeb where he heard the voice, as we say, the voice of quiet silence, which indicates the difference from the voice of campfire and the big noise of warfare that fills this world under the regime of human ambitions and human arrows, as we call it. And that is the important thing also in today's gospel. There is Our Lady as the one who makes at this moment that big step into a completely new world. In some way she is already in it. I don't know where.

[04:08]

That's of course not only in that way a vow of virginity, but in this context it gets such a much more deeper meaning. It's not only a vow of chastity, matter, but I do not know man. That means I do not know the world of man, what man really on this earth represents, what he is. That means with all his trust in horses and in power and in his own qualities and potentialities that he has, Because as Elias, who was firstly, had this decidedly manly temperament, was a man who called down heel and brimstone and fire upon his enemies, and went around the whole way full of complaint against his own nation, his own people.

[05:25]

And then on Mount Horeb met the revelation of God's mercy of that quiet, silent voice, that is the voice of forgiveness, and that is the voice which then became flesh in the Our Lady's womb. And if she was the instrument that was up and prepared to receive this silent voice, because she did not know that, she had interiorly filled with grace, filled with that new life, with that new love that God wanted to send to us and give us from above, She had entered already through divine grace into this new world was the instrument. Fiat me. It may be done unto me according to your word. But we should consider that this is not only, say, a word of obedience, that this is not only a word of giving up one's old will, but only

[06:35]

In that way, a passive thing, we often say, Our Lady is mankind's open hand. That is so absolutely true, but we should also consider the positive thing. It's a turning to something, to the message of the angel. A power is overshadowed from above. And what you give life to, what you will bear, will be called the son of the Most High, Helios Altissimi. There is that new world, the world of redemption. the works that our Heavenly Father in His eternal charity had in store for us, that mystery that was hidden before the ages. Of course, the ages are the ages of man, the ages of power.

[07:38]

All that is like a veil and a barrier which separated man ever since the fall from the manifestation of this new light, this new life. And then we can also see then again in the epistles or in the first lesson beautifully that all people All people will go up to Jerusalem, to the hill town, means to the town on the top of the mountain. And that of God is the other world. It's the heavenly world, the world of faith, the source of God. Lift up your hearts to that new power that the grace of God gives you. and there all your weapons will be changed into plowshares. That is again this beautiful lesson, the indication and the prophecy of that new order that through Our Lady, through Her intermediation

[08:48]

instrumentality came into the world and is first seen by the poor shepherds in their simplicity of faith by people who are barred from and excluded, as it were, from the whole world of glory and of power and of influence, by them it is seen first. They see the sign. And so, Our Lady too is the sign, as the second lesson has it, that is given to us from heaven, the sign of that new offering. The Virgin is for us the letter which reads Agape, which reads descending, forgiving love. So, let us rejoice on this day and let us also see the concrete conclusions that we have to do, the practical things. Everybody is an Elias, you know, he's a son of thunder in one way or the other.

[09:55]

and he has to accept, he has to learn, he has to enter into the mind of Our Lady and of course into, which is in last analysis, the mind of the Heavenly Father with what he has in store for us. I think just yesterday's chapter meeting that we had was such a concrete example how a new world, you know, enters and becomes real in the monastic life of a concrete little community like ours. Without faith and without this lifting up of the hearts, Without going up to Jerusalem, where the law of the Lord can be heard and can be learned, it would be impossible. Without seeing the little cloud that will be bigger and bigger and will give the rain, it could not be possible without faith.

[11:03]

And without this inner willingness to put down one's arms and to resign the world and the initiative and the anxieties and the fears of the world of man, it would be impossible. It could not be done. But how much do we enlist, how we see it in our daily experience, we are constantly caught in it again. We have our anxiety. We have our fears. We have all these categories, as we call it, political categories. Political categories. The human respect. Human respect. In one way or the other. Then we feel, and we feel, oh my, where is what we could contribute, where we could, in that way, be the giver, and all these things, you know, and then we get, oh my, we don't have enough in us, you know, and then we are afraid of the other one.

[12:11]

Now, the other one is a human being too. Therefore I should not, as they say, tread on ground on which angels are not there to tread, as we say. Thank God the angel tread on ground here when he came to see Our Lady and greet her. confidence, you know, in her openness and her inner obedience and willingness to listen and the willingness then to avail to this new, enter into the new world, law of the new world. The Virtus Artissim, the power that comes on high that will overshadow you. That's of course exactly the life of a monk. But in some way one can say, why do we wear a black habit or let's say a grey habit? No, because we are overshadowed by this cloud that appears on the blue sky.

[13:18]

But that is the cloud which is loaded as a blessing. That water which then makes the hillside green and turns the desert into a garden. That is the new world. So let us think about it. Let us celebrate this beautiful past day. of the Golden Mass, as it is called in tradition. Let us everyone in himself, you know, again, interiorly renounce all these things that are born of man, that are born out of the will of the flesh. And let us turn to those things that are born of God. and become a reality up on the top of the mountain of faith where we see the clouds and where we then are watered from above and then our earth is pure hillside earth that then gives its fruit in the offering of thanksgiving as we did it this morning.

[14:33]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v004
@Score_JJ