Let us in a way grant your supply to excellent Jesus, and absorb those more admits, and receivers will be re-entered, the starlets and the steeple-beakers will be guided to the church, and the conquerors and the apostles, and all of us who were slain for them, and that all the prophets of God appear to be risen again, and clear of the spying for the evil, to all of us and to the rest. Dear sisters in Christ, Evening of which we have spoken this morning. In various times put it before us in those first opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, which in so many ways are a summary and an anticipation of the whole work of redemption

[01:17]

As various human beings, which in a story of scenes and symbols are put before us, they received a new urgency in the trumpet call of the prophets of the Old Testament. They are really the prophets of the Old Testament who show us without any hesitation in complete bluntness, the evening of this hour of human life, vitiated by the law and by forbidding sin. It is first the prophet Amos who announced to the chosen people that the day of Yahweh, the day that means of real God, the God of the chosen people, would not be to them simply a day of triumph, of victory over their enemies,

[02:43]

But then it would be the dark day of judgment. And this day would be darkness and not light. Woe to them that you long for the day of judgment. What will it be for you this day of judgment? It will be darkness and not light. It will be like a man who flees from a lion and thinks a bear comes to meet him. He runs away into his house. He thinks of a wall seeking protection. and lo, the serpent bites.

[03:47]

Is it not darkness, the day of trouble, and thought-light, obscurity in blaze of splendor? These words are tables, tribunals, entreaties, prophecies of the Old Testament, They make it clear that the election of the chosen people is by no means God binding himself to death. But it is rather they being bound to God. Then this covenant does not mean that God is their servant. But this covenant means that they are God's servants. It does not mean that God will intervene in all their wicked work.

[04:53]

But it means that they have a higher obligation. That is a truth. way to stick again and again through the century, has to be renewed in the consciousness also of the Christians. Already the first generation of Christians, they all have to call of adventure to the fact that the chosen people, yes, they are all going to the Red Sea. And they all were followed by the walk by the whale king, the spiritual whale in the desert. But still only a few of them reached the promised land.

[05:56]

The message of the prophets pointing out that the dogs they will be knifed And not light, as for experiments, to destroy all false securities in which we made our living. That false security that we made here, as the new slaves, the people of the new continent, In the fact that God has been near to him, his church, that God has been near to him, the church, as the authors of truth, that we are the ones who are fortunate enough to possess it, or to have a part in it, that we have the sacrament

[07:07]

And these sacraments assure the Church and all those who live as members of the Church of the constant presence of Christ among us. All these privileges that doubtlessly have been given to God by God through this Church bring with them a certain danger that we may turn them into a kind of human personal privilege. Then they may put us to sleep in a feeling of all security. There is, first of all, the message of Isaiah.

[08:10]

And let us just dwell a little in that word that he brings to us. Isaiah is deeply God-centered. That the ritual, the ceremonial of the sacrifice, faithfully performed in the temple according to all the rules may deceive the people in that they don't realize that all these ceremonies and all these rituals and all these sacrifices are, as he said, invented and so long as they are among the few, with the loyalty and truth that the practical day-by-day life of the people has to give to those of life itself.

[09:27]

They are an anti-mystic message, they are in themselves holy signs. But these signs have been mirrored by the justices, the virtues, the sanctity of the people. Isaias puts it into a prose in which Jeshua was writing. When he says in the first chapter of his prophecy, to what purpose do you offer me the multitude of your victims, says the Lord? I am full. I desire a lot for the cross, the bread, and fat of lamplings, and blood of hearts, and lambs, and buckles. When you came to appear before me, Who required these things that you have done? Our first sacrifice, Lord, you are giving day, in the Spirit of the Lord.

[10:38]

Your gift then is in our redemption, the new moons and the Sabbath and other blessings. I can't stand it. I can't stand it. Faced still as seven legions and wickedness, I cannot expand feasts and sin. My soul therefore hates your new moons and yours forever, and I am weary of bearing. But instead, Love to do will. Seek judgment. Receive the oppressed. Judge for the violent. Defend the weak. By all means, as I say it here, Criticize in any way external worship and such,

[11:52]

But he puts the venant of guilty sermons on the girl's chest. They are dark and lies are dark. Isaiah does not only speak the danger, the doubt of the chosen people. In this contradiction between running to the chemical of the sacrifices, being very curious about these things, and then at the same time having something completely different in the every day of the night.

[12:54]

He also warns the people against using as a way of the Lord, the very Torah, as a seal, by blurring it by part without again translating it even grasping it with their own heart and their entire life. It's not only the liturgy of the temple, but it is also the teaching of the Word of the Lord. Both these things can be used by man as escape. or as false protection. He falls against the learning by heart of the known, instead of becoming, once tailored, the fairest incarnation of them.

[14:09]

This false security which the prostration of divine liberty may give to the chosen people as a way that is considered as the greatest venture which has to be obviated or has to be paralleled, counteracted, by the truthfulness of the word of judgment, which the prophets pronounced by Jisrael, warning that the day of judgment of their God may be indeed for Jisrael a day of darkness. And then certainly is a truth which also reveals

[15:17]

of great importance for us. I always find that the religious law as such is apt to produce a certain routine, and maybe a certain routine does exist. The observation of rules may become sometimes observers of rules, may sometimes become the kind of care taking instead. And if they turn into a certain order, which I take as my own personal security, in other words, The ever-same righteousness of an observer may hide before us still.

[16:23]

The image of humility and love, realized unworthiness, that we constantly have before God. The innermost The heart of the religious climate is prostration. O Lord, I am dust and ashes before you. These words that Ephraim said, prostrating himself before judgment, collapsed on the ground, identifying himself with dust and ashes. that is the heart and remains the heart of the religious life. And that inner frustration, it seems to me, it has to be renewed in every retreat, in every inner recollection we work on.

[17:36]

Because it's only there Only if this does end our humiliation, then the gates of hope are open to us. Only when we enter into this divine judgment, in complete sincerity and humility, are we able to be saved. In that way every one of us has to enter into the dark night of dark judgment. And we should keep that judgment before our eyes day by day. And the Trinity has always teach us of the spiritual knowledge, tell us, have they

[18:38]

daily before you are up, and that death as the day of God's terrible judgment. So that entering into the night of healing is the first step as it were, but that death leads into the wrath of God. And that is the other tremendous message and revelation that Isaiah and all the prophets of the Old Testament in fact have for us. And when and if we realize that under our human age all of the and especially also the words of religion, sacrifices, and the observance of stature, both of these things.

[19:51]

May it be comfortable and honoured to speak in which the still all of us exist, in which our eyes are closed to the truth the saving debt of our unworthiness. And the other message is that the darkness of the life of judgment is not only, shall we put it this way, limited to man, but that God himself enters into this very darkness. The man will, that God's church, over his being, will be darkness and death, because there is nothing in him

[21:05]

that is really and truly pure, and everything in him is mixed with this delta, tainted by his blood. Then comes that new and truly redeeming message, that Isaiah explains to us in the Book of Consolation, starting with chapter 14, where he reveals to us the mystery, the secret of God the Redeemer. Now the secret of God the Redeemer is this, that God himself enters into that same darkness which the prophets announced as the future, as the day of judgment for the chosen people.

[22:19]

In other words, it's this one, and the chosen people is war. Not to look forward to the Day of Judgment, as with this impure and sure expectation that it will be a trial for them. Though it will be dark, obscurity, and not splendid. But still this Day of Darkness, denot obscurity, will receive in a deep state the day of Judgment, God's day. Walk not because it is the day on which God's justice and God's holiness those who are subject to his judgment.

[23:28]

Thus, then, he himself takes upon himself this day of darkness. And this hour of darkness is the hour of God. And that becomes reality in Christ, our God. in the Word of God made flesh. Not in water, Lord, but in water and blood. That is the great message of St. John. That is what the Old Testament did not know yet. St. John the Baptist preached But that judgment was then presented under the symbol of water.

[24:35]

That water that St. John the Evangelist said, He will come, but not in water alone, but in water alone. That means he himself, God himself in Christ will enter into the darkness of death. The day of judgment is indeed a day of darkness. Not that it kills men, but that it kills the Son of Man. the Son of God of Man. That is so beautifully illustrated and already foreshadowed in the fourth and third chapters of my sermons.

[25:41]

Where he reveals for the first time the mystery of that which is the God God, where he tells Alluding to those who had left Jerusalem, many of them devout servants of their gods. They carry their statues on their shoulders, as they carry them out into the Holy Land, and they are weighed down by the burden. Weighed down by the burden. And then I still guess and wait and see. You weighed down my burden. Don't you realize that you are the ones who carry? You are the ones who carry that burden.

[26:42]

But it's another one of the carryings you have heard. And that is done. You are done. so he instead enters into the darkness of their day of judgment. And by that very fact, the darkness of judgment turns into that night where blind and blind will meet. That night which is described in the chapter of chapter That is the other mystery of the night. Not only the night of judgment, as the prophets announced it, but the night of an absolute dark. In which the blind and blind speak to one another, I to my beloved and my beloved to me,

[27:52]

until the blessing rain and the shepherds die. So there is the night of death, and there is, we can read, the night of the cross. The cross is being maintained, right? where the Savior meets his church, dying for the church's life, and giving his own blood, the two united in an eternal everlasting love. And is the mystery of the night, when we see it, with the eyes of faith that the New Testament, the New Covenant has given to us.

[28:55]

The sacrament of baptism, as well as the sacrament of the Rehabilitation, that darkness of humiliation. We are baptized into the dead. and the offering of the Holy Eucharist, we enter again and offer as well the dead of our Lord on the cross. He himself becomes our supper. And there in the mystery of the canon of the balance, that in the unity is established. Now we realize immediately that this inner union, this dark night of love, does not lose anything of the tremendous seriousness that the night of judgment, that the darkness of the day of judgment has brought.

[30:14]

And that is the reason of why I'm trying to point out these things tonight. Imagine the daily separation of the morning and night, the constant weekly receiving of the staffing, and all these things just by their customs with the T-shirt that follow the good as they are, and to make in our hearts a due stocking of this infinite depth and seriousness. And what else could a retreat and such a ritual mean to us? What else is this regular lecture? What is this thing we need to think of these tremendous divine mysteries, and laying aside all other preoccupations and all thoughts of duality, so doing that, just consuming into the infinite of these mysteries themselves.

[31:38]

And they said, for us as constituted by the fact That in the celebration, one can say of Kyrgyzstan, we entered into that dark moment. We still judgement over everything that is beloved, that is valued, that is superficial, that is human, there is an abysmal health in him. Sensitivity and self-centredness do not. His church is really and truly dead. Death of man was a stupid thing. But this death of man was a stupid impulse.

[32:42]

is really perfected, is really made full in a way which truly transcends our only human possibilities. It seems all man can really and truly accomplish the ultimate self-directedness. And that in which somehow, as long as we live, we still somehow hold on to the self. And we feel and do it, just feel that barrier of separatism. But that barrier exactly has been drawn down by our Lord Jesus Christ. when he himself took upon himself the likeness of our saviour living, and that he, according to the word of the epistles to the Hebrews, opened up wide, and went some way, learned obedience, so that he, the high priest,

[34:11]

would completely come over to our side and dive forward, find me somewhere else in another. Diving forward, crossing the limit of the barrier of our holding on to others. And whilst we die, he dies for us. And in that way, we die in him. We truly die, but we die in him. How do I love it if I love it to me? So that here, in Congress, we trust in our own invention.

[35:12]

We really and truly, not in our own nature, but in Him, we've shown enough. For this, our God gave to Him, and His family will live, not any more. Judgment only of that is redemption, only redemption, entering into the Lord's infinite love for us. So that even dying to our sin means at the same time that we realize He needed the Lord for us, in His presence, more than we did. So that the dying came again, we also did, proving it for the Father.

[36:15]

This man should be the object of our meditation, and when the still mind gave an honest statement, basically the statement of holy maps, We realize then there the day of the Lord comes upon us and hauls upon us as night, as the night which kills the dead of all that is human in us. And as the night of God wears the bright moon of our soul, God makes all possible, so that we may live in Him. Bind my Father and my Beloved to me until the day it rains and the shadows return. Raising lightning clappings, we all were nodding.

[37:34]

And in the townhouse, we believed that God, our Lord and God, kicked him with a dagger, and coming with birth to the living man. To answer that question, I said, I went by. With all of my teachers, I gathered them, and nursed them. Teachers would swing scented daggers with their prayers, Jesus, the Lord of hosts, take me forward. Jesus, the power of heaven, take me. Jesus, love of God, love of God. Jesus, son of life, take me, find me. Jesus, holy God, lift me, raise me. Jesus, deliver me from sickness of soul and body. Jesus, raise me from the hands of the angels. Jesus made me from the unmeansful part and from the other eternal part.

[38:36]

Jesus cannot allow that mercy.

[38:40]

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