a headline, Ministratio Spiritus, the service of the Spirit, the service of the Spirit. As you are well aware, we are still in this month of August where the Church turns our eyes to the treasures of wisdom. And wisdom is that divine power which rejoices here on this earth, which plays before the Father a wonderful picture of the ministratio spiritus, the service of the Spirit, the wisdom playing according to the tune of the Father's eternal love.

[01:03]

Here, the game, shall we call it, the play of redemption. On this, on this, he experienced a, how in our own little measure, a part, The drama of this Ministratio Spiritus in that little meeting we had at St. John's Alley. in the Victim Academy, in the art section of it, and started out with a paper in which was read, because this meeting was held greatly in absentia of the Giants. who were involved in more important tasks at that time. So Thomas Merton's paper started it all, a paper on creativity.

[02:13]

Creativity, a word and a term which in our days is so terribly abused, as he pointed out, Everything is creative in our days. And as soon as everything is creative, nothing is creative. It's just a lot. It's a cliche. But if creativity becomes a cliche, that is really the end. So it was a great cause to reflection. on the true nature of Christian creativity in art, nature and character of creativity. All that was a little in my mind in reading and thinking about the text of Tomorrow's Mass.

[03:17]

This creativity essentially and in its first and basic manifestation is that creativity which leads and brings order out of chaos. And in the beginning of the first chapter of Genesis, there is this creativity. or which then only foreshadows the later and even, let us say, more decisive act of divine creativity when sin is overcome by the sinless agape, the love of the Redeemer. When the divine wisdom takes our human form, our human nature, and then enters into that great drama which culminates on Golgotha and in the resurrection and the fruits of it we now enjoy.

[04:36]

Because that certainly is the end and purpose of this divine creativity. the divine artist. The earth shall be filled with the fruit of thy works, O Lord, that thou mayest bring bread out of the earth and that wine may cheer the heart of man, that he may make the face cheerful with oil and that bread may strengthen man's heart. This versicle that we sing tomorrow at the sacred meal of Holy Communion, that is the great goal of all divine creativity. And to that we are drawn by participating in the drama which leads up to this wonderful life.

[05:40]

But it starts, as you see that in the introit, delus in agitorium meum intente, incline unto my aid, O Lord. O Lord, make haste to help me. Let my enemies be confounded and ashamed to seek my soul. Let them be turned backward and blush for shame, who desire illegals too. So there is the hint of the chaos. There are the enemies. This world is in disorder. And we know that also came out in Father Merton's paper so beautifully. We know and we have a taste constantly of these demonic forces. that use the title of creativity to unmake this world, to do the opposite of what the divine creative power has done and is always doing.

[07:02]

That wrong creativity which is more destructive So that we see that, and of course what we sing here in this in Troy, that is the voice of man as he is. We saw that too in all these masks. They are not something which goes along in great vocation, glory and splendor, but it's always something something that grows out, grows out of man as he really is in all his misery. So there is the one who cries for him because he is surrounded by the powers of darkness, of chaos. And the epistle then explains how

[08:08]

The ministratio spiritus, the service of the spirit, fights, transforms, overcomes this chaos. The basic, the beginning of all this service of the spirit, which is inglorious, which is the extreme opposite of all darkness. It begins such confidence we have through Christ towards God. Christ, the divine wisdom made man, in his infinite selfless love, he has done for us what we cannot. But we can appropriate in the act of faith This act of faith is always in some way an abdication, an abdication of the old natural human self.

[09:18]

And it is the complete turning, accepted, being clothed in that what Christ has done and is and lives. the confidence we have through Christ, crucified Lord, towards God. Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves. That is at the root of all wrong creativity. That wrong creativity that we see playing havoc everywhere in the field of art, tunneling all that into detail. dissolving, unmaking things instead of making them. Unmaking them. Why? Because somebody may be completely lost in his own creative powers. And he may stake, let us say, his own work on this, his own creative powers.

[10:25]

And his art is nothing but the blind, let us say, instinctive, A self-expression of these is personal power. Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves. That's the opposite. That's the debt on the cross. That is that inner act of humility in which we return into that simplicity from which we have spoken, but which we have lost through sin. in which our present destructive duplicity goes back to that fountain for a remake, for a new creation. Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves as of ourselves. That's the important thing.

[11:28]

That's self-conscious. It isn't consciousness as such that's better, but that's still consciousness. To think of ourselves as of ourselves, that repetition, that is the vicious circle in which the human genius may be caught through. But our sufficiency is from God. That is the source of the ministratio spiritus, the service of the Spirit, who also has made us fit ministers of the New Testament, not in the letter, but in the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit quickens. Now with the ministration of death and grave with letter upon stones was glorious the children of Israel as they trust thee behold the faith of Moses for the glory of his countenance which is made void how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather in glory?

[12:43]

I because the law which here St. Paul speaks that ministry of the law Do this, if you don't die, you shall die. The wages of sin are death. And the law is the instrument through which sin, as it were, is unleashed. Is there sin in all his reality? But the wages of sin are death. So the law, as such, kills. But here is the other new possibility which Christ has shown. He fulfilled the entire law, not destroyed. Fulfilled the entire law. Ceremony law ending in the action of a sacrifice on the cross where the fullness of love, the fullness of love for his heavenly Father and for mankind

[13:50]

Over the years, we can evidently put all the minds of the Lord, who did not think it robbery to be equal to God, but he emptied himself. And through this process of emptying ourselves, into that we enter. And through that we escape the letter. Because the letter is always and only a demand from the outside. This you shall do. If you don't die, you shall die. But the inner turn that we take when we approach Christ and when we enter into his death is that emptying of ourselves. We are not sufficient to do it. But all our sufficiency is from God, our heavenly Father, who has not waited until we, our enemies, would have turned and made ourselves God's friends.

[15:01]

But he, our heavenly Father, has turned to us, conversion, so to speak, was first in him, who sent his Son to become a propitiation for our sins when we were still his enemies. And so, therefore, God, the Heavenly Father, has loved us first. And therefore, the first step into the freedom of the Spirit and the first step which makes us and enables us Through an active cooperation in the ministry of the Spirit, its faith in God's redemptive, redeeming love for me manifested, sealed, in its creative power poured into my believing heart when I contemplated the death of the Son of God for me.

[16:04]

That, therefore, is the power which fills our void, that good void in which we abdicate. Not that we are sufficient to do anything of ourselves as of ourselves. That is the vicious circle of man's attempted self-sufficiency. Out of that circle We are redeemed by what Christ has done for us. That play of the divine wisdom, which in Golgotha and in the resurrection leads us out into the new realm of the Spirit. And that new realm of the Spirit is then described in all its beauty in the Gospels. It is the love, the love of God and the love of neighbor.

[17:08]

These two things, the love of God and the love of neighbor. That is, of course, again, it's an absolutely simple, basic principle of the Old Testament. That's the sum total of the entire law. That was the message of the Old Testament, the love of God and the love of neighbor. The love of God is the inner devotion in which the individual turns and surrenders to God. Listening to is to God's teaching. And burning in his heart those two things. As the rabbi said once, there are two kinds of love. There's one love, and that is the love between husband and wife.

[18:11]

And that love is hidden in secret. That's not accessible to the public. The other love, that is the love which is shown in the raising of children, in the teaching, in helping the poor. The one is the inner fervor of the heart. In every Christian's heart there is that dilemma, there is that struggle, there is that inner longing for that inhibitor and absoluteness, surrender. Mary sitting at the feet of the Lord just to listen to the outpourings of his heart. That love which is hidden, that love which is absent, that love which is a secret.

[19:14]

And then there's the other one that is the service, the adorter, the ministratio. And that is the, here, what the good Samaritan does. And that was in the Old Testament, as you know very well, as also today. There is a struggle between the two, always, in the heart of every Christian. Everybody, for that matter, who really is taken, in some way touched by the Holy Spirit, the spirit of the resurrection. He longs for the eternal rest. The rake is eternal. He longs for the pastures, the pastures of the world. He longs for those constant running wells of fresh water, of God's will, just to drink, just to be there, just to live, live.

[20:23]

just to be filled with that inimitable delight. And then there's the other. There's that turning to the neighbor, in which we have, as it were, in some way, maybe it seems to us sometimes, as it would leave the stops of living water and turn into another direction towards the needy. towards the poor walks of God. So that has solved this problem in what Christ our Lord did on Golgotha. That's what I wanted to direct your attention to, the offertory. The offertory is just that, the prayer of Moses. Moses is, for the Old Testament, the perfect union of the Hitlerbud and the apothecary.

[21:34]

For the inner fervor of devotion and for the ministry. Those two. Moses went up to Mount Sinai and he stayed in the cloud of glory for 40 days. That's the cloud. That is the fervor of devotion. That is the contemplation. He's being hidden in God's glory. And conversing with him alone. Excluding everybody else. The entering into the secret of God's heart. And there his heart becomes simple. And then in that simplicity he descends. And then he is faced with the apostasy. The duplicity. That people that in the meantime had made a new God, because they asked, where is that Moses who told us that we had to go into this desert?

[22:41]

He doesn't come back, so we need another leader. And then this Moses, the great contemplative of the Old Testament, at the same time, the leader of the people, But the leader never thought that what he was doing was his own achievement. Not as if we were sufficient to get to anything of ourselves as of ourselves. Moses said, O Lord, you take this people. It's too heavy for me to carry. This Moses then prayed in the sight of the Lord his God and said, Why, O Lord, is thy indignation unkindled against thy people?

[23:42]

That the end of thy mind feeds. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to whom thou didst swear to give a land flowing with milk and honey. And the Lord was appeased from doing the evil which he had spoken of doing against his people. He, the one who was immersed, hidden in the cloud, he then becomes the mediator when he descends to face the people. He prays for them in that love that he has for them, a love that seeketh not his own, the love of the true father of his people. And that, of course, is fulfilled on God. The prayer of Moses, which we sing tomorrow at the offertory, is the opening of that part of the Mass in which this unity of absolute love of God and absolute love of the people is represented, made present again.

[24:57]

in the sacrifice of the Holy Mass, this is my body, take it. This is my blood, drink it. Those words are the words of the Ministratio Spiritus, the servant of God in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. And into that prayer we enter. That's the meaning of the arbitrary position. We give there our little signal of the old sin, the little gesture of emptying ourselves. When we bring something, that is what the church in the liturgy always emphasizes. that is really and truly an emptying ourselves, not as really sufficient to do anything of ourselves and of ourselves.

[26:03]

The offertory possession is by no means a contradiction against that principle, as sometimes Protestant sects would interpret it. Never was thought of it in that way. It is not a contribution that, for that matter, man makes, but it is so beautifully expressed And that inimitable symbol, when the priest drops one drop of water into the vine. That is the way in which the Church symbolically expresses this principle. All our sufficiency is conquered. Not as if we were sufficient to do anything of our sins as of ourselves. That is the meaning of the drop of water in the vine.

[27:04]

So that then leads us to the communion. The communion meal where then the whole people at home The ministratio spiritus, the ministry of the Spirit, as it's evident in Moses, as it is evident in Jesus Christ, as it is evident from the very term minister, servant, has for its purpose not the individual, but the people. That is the selflessness of the rest. Nobody serves himself. Nobody serves some preferred or picked out individual. That's nice. But he serves the people. Ametores paternitas. Lover of the brotherhood. That is the meaning of the ministratio spiritus.

[28:11]

So let us again then, celebrating this mass also, pray, our head father, that he may give us that unity of the perfect love of God in that hiddenness of the absent for which we are all known, of which the enclosure is the same. But so that then this same love of God also shows himself in the love of the neighbor, in the love of the neighbor, not in any kind of individualistic way, but in that kind, that the neighbor is our brother, therefore one of the many of the world. And then it is then in the perfect, say, pattern of the divine wisdom, which is opposed to that wrong creativity, which tries to evade this inner emptying of oneself, this inner death, that we all, according to the pattern of Adam, have to go into before Eve,

[29:40]

that symbol of the church, may be constructed and built out of his wings. But that is what really what our life is. The sleep of Adam, that is the complete surrender and the fervor of devotion to God, the love of God, the building of Eve, of the church, agnes li ministratio spiritus, those two belong together. Argument of right to view and value of the truly wicked rareness they provide to the world.

[30:23]

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