These last Sundays of the Ecclesiastical year, we are faced with the mystery of the Kingdom of God. The words that we always sing, this beautiful melody at the beginning of the verse, the Lord says, I am the Lord of peace. They are like the rainbow that is visible there and shines, expressing as a symbol the eternal peace that in his kingdom the Father wants to share with his children. But if you look at it and take the three Gospels that we read in these last three Sundays, And we can see that these thoughts of peace are not of a peace that the world can give, but they are the thoughts of a peace that only our Lord Jesus Christ gives us, and He gives us this peace through His sufferings, through His death, and through His resurrection.

[01:20]

As in the last week And the gospel accompanied us from day to day, the gospel that speaks of the raging storm on the lake of Galilee and the little boat of the apostles. threatened by the waves, in danger, and then turning to the peace, the Father's peace, the Lord, who sleeps there in the boat, and asking him, turning to him and asking him to save, because we are in deadly peril. And then today this gospel that we read, this morning, here this morning, there the kingdom of God is presented to us as a field, and on this field there are the weeds and there is the wheat.

[02:25]

And there is the impatience of the servants and they say, how can we get rid of this, of all these weeds that the enemy has sown in between in order to spoil the house. But they are punished not to do so. And then finally, the next coming Sunday, there will be the gospel about the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed and is like a leather. And the little seed develops into a big tree. And the little piece of leaven in an invisible way works in the whole dough and before we know it, the entire dough is in fermentation. So it seems to me that in these three pictures of the kingdom of God, three ways are expressed to us in which the thoughts of God's peace, peace of God in us works.

[03:37]

The one is the first, the situation of external danger and of fear. and catastrophe, and then turning to the Lord who sleeps there, waking him up in prayer, Lord, help us, but why not him? There is, in Syria, is an act of faith. Faith answers the danger that comes to us from the outside. And the danger itself wakes up faith in our hearts. And so we cry for help. To the one who is right there in the boat bears our peace. And that certainly is a picture also of our own community and of every individual soul. We are not a tremendous ocean climber that goes peacefully and majestically to the smiling blue waves, but we are a beautiful school.

[04:50]

And the world is not always a smiling sea. But the world, like often, it consists of raging waves manifesting its instability and its threat and fear that emanates from it. So there we are. But what do we do? We are all trying and we are all interiorly working at it. And when these dangers come, when the waves are rising high, when then the peace of God seems to be threatened, destroyed and swallowed up, then we turn to the one who is the peace. Sleeping in our midst, in the community, in the heart of everyone, turning to him and returning into his peace and then channeling the powers of his resurrection into our own lives.

[05:55]

And then there is today's gospel, and there we find the wheat and the copper rolling together. And again that aspect of the kingdom of God is so familiar and so real to us in every community life that is the situation here on earth. And again it is not a thought by which God would try to destroy us, but it's a thought of God's peace. And the thought of God's peace, which is behind the mixture of weeds and of wheat, is patience. But not the patience that is simply a patience of resignation. But the creative patience, the patience of love, the patience which is so beautifully described in today's epistle.

[06:59]

Bear with one another. Bear one another's patience. Forgive one another. Forgive one another with that forgiveness with which Christ has forgiven you and his creative love. And that is the way in which then the wheat grows among the thistles and skintails. And then again we have that little mustard seed. And we have that little piece of leather. And from such a small little thing, such a big effect, And that reminds us again of another thing. So often, every time, constantly we are surrounded and we meet our own livingness. How much have we experienced that here in our monastery starting from nothing?

[08:02]

how beautifully we see in our little foundation in that little seed down in New Mexico. This little small insignificant seed earns therefore wheat. But what is the meaning in this weakness that barely endures greatness and barely develops the peace of Christ? And what is this littleness then all about? Humanity. Our humanity. That humanity which is a descending In one way and spiritually and really it is an ascending, it's a rising. You see that in some way it is a shrinking power of all the bloated things of our time and it is at the same time a growth, infinite growth, of a new life of Christ in us, of Christ's resurrection, who descends in the heavenly passage.

[09:13]

So then it is the other thoughts of God's peace as they are working in our hearts and building the kingdom of God. of your thoughts, then your almighty Word, O Lord, leaked down from heaven from His Holy Cross. These words are taken from the Book of Wisdom and they are applied by the Church today to the mystery that we are celebrating in this night, the mystery of our redemption, of the incarnation of the world, of the eternity of our Savior.

[10:16]

My dear brothers and sisters, we must confess By nature, we are children of the dead. We love the dead, its brilliant light. It gives us courage to live. It gives us energy. It gives us joy. It gives us victory. But we must also realize And even the most brilliant death, the most successful death, burns out. Our initiative and our zeal are smothered by fatigue. Our energy comes to an end.

[11:20]

and even success may at the end be a war. In those moments then, when the day runs out, then we begin to realize and to appreciate the blessing of the night. The night that appears to us like a friend, that helps us to forget our cares and to forget even our sins. The night then appears to us even like a mother who under the shadow of her wings keeps us like a hen keeps and protects the little chicks. And then we begin to realize that the night is an expression and a symbol of a deep reality.

[12:35]

Not only of death, but of rebirth. Rebirth through a norm that reaches us when our own energies are ending the mind. Now, my dear friends, you have been waiting and you have been waiting at this night that she may reach the midst of her cause. And now you are here. Are you here as those who simply want to turn the night into day? No. You don't keep up to night in order to work in your office and your business.

[13:37]

You don't want to turn the night into day by browsing. You come here in the midst of the night to celebrate the divine mystery of the night. You come here as those who are eager to listen through the glad tidings of great joy that the angel gives to the shepherds on the plain of Bethlehem. A savior is born to us. That are the tidings that you want to love to hear tonight in the midst of this saving night. You come therefore as those who feel and realize that their human energy cannot save us.

[14:51]

You come as those who realize that only eternal love can save us. That love that leads in the midst of the night from the heavenly throne down here to this earth. This love you are longing for. there is, it seems to me, the real mystery of the night when we consider it not with the eyes of the human philosopher or of the scientist, but with the eyes of the one who has been. They see by the grace of our Heavenly Father.

[15:54]

My dear friends, the mystery of the night that we want to realize today, the words that we want to receive and read from the Heavenly Father, We can hear it only when we put ourselves and our things to silence. The word of the day that conquers and turns the night into day, that springs out of our own human power. But where this power reaches its end, the word of love that descends from the heart of our Heavenly Father reaches us only in the night of silence. What is it?

[17:00]

We can see it in those who During this night are put before us as our examples, as our representatives. There is for the men among us, there is St. Joseph, poor St. Joseph. Who is Saint Joseph, who is not, if I may say so, an active part in this mystery of love tonight? because we celebrate the incarnation of the Son, Jesus Christ, who was not born out of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but clearly of God. So St. Joseph, not a real God, but a foster God,

[18:05]

In some way we may say he seems not to be a man of the day, but rather of the night. He receives his directions from the angel in his dreams, in visions, and he acts them accordingly. And there is a message which goes to all, to all of us men. we should realize that when we are ready to receive the word of redemption that leaps down from the heavenly throne, then we have to resign as it were. We have to realize that we are not the beginning and the end of everything, but that we are fostered by then we are here on earth as ministers. Ministers and instruments of that fatherhood which descends alone from the Father of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer.

[19:21]

We are servants also as fathers. Not simply beginning, but servants. Then there are the women, and there is hell on earth. The mother, but mother as a virgin. Again, why? Because the Word of God made flesh was not made flesh to the will of man, to the will of the flesh, but from God, from God. as the messenger of the eternal love of the Father. So the virgin mother has received and brings to life the child. The mother that listens. The mother that says, be dormant unto me according to your will.

[20:24]

The mother that ponders all these words in her heart. And out then of the riches of what she hears, she becomes immortal, full of mercy, full of understanding. That is the word, that is the example that tonight is directed to every Christian woman. But then we as nots, who is our God? I would say the shepherds. The shepherds were, in the antiquity, clothed the way we are, with a hood and with a scapular and a tube, as people who live exposed to wind and to weather, as poor people. The shepherds were outcasts. The shepherds were not the powerful ones.

[21:26]

The shepherds were the poor. But in the silence of their poverty, how they were able to listen. What a joy was there in the simplicity of their hearts when they listened to the message of the angel. Let us go to Bethlehem, they said, full of enthusiasm. as the monk who leaves his daily surroundings and goes to the monastery to seek to find what the bird may fish, the child in the manger, and to kneel down and to adore And they went back praising God. And it's the example of the shepherds for us as monks. But men or women or monks, one thing is that we all desire in this night from the bottom of our hearts

[22:42]

One thing that composing all the unrest and all the loud things in ourselves into the silence of humility, into the silence of confession, into the silence of the repentance of the polytheism, that we may listen and hear the word that tonight leaps from heaven out of the depths of the eternal power and says to us, you are my child. Says that descending out of God's eternal love and therefore bringing us eternal peace. Says that at the same time as the world directed fully and totally to us as human beings the way we are here on this earth.

[23:57]

That means as poor sinners directed to us because this Word became that, took upon Himself our flesh and our sins, the Lamb of God, and made this Lamb of God enable us, poor sinners, Then to say again from the bottom of our hearts, with fullness of inner conviction and at the same time with tremendous relief and with tremendous joy, When we answer the word that leaps down from heaven and says to us, you are my child, may we answer it with the other one, you are my Father.

[25:01]

That is the message of this blessed night, my dear friends. May the Holy Spirit, that quiet Lord of the Father, The deep, quiet, loving mystery of the night. May he descend into our hearts. May he fill us with his peace. so that we, as children of our Heavenly Father, may sing in the fullness of this peace, glory be to God the Highest, and peace to men of good will. Make yourself nice for me then.

[26:04]

In the dark these days of sadness, I'll be through the day I spend. There with joy your praises Unto him whose grace abounded, as his sacred head were founded, I bore all of heaven's evil in. yet to them with you he gave.

[27:05]

Now I sing before you, Lord, till this joy goes deep and holy. as is How I miss the eternal, as long as ever sounded, the way that you see on him.

[28:07]

Seek and tell me who I am. Glory and peace, my Lord. Glory and peace, my Lord. Lights and shadows and heaven, through her lights of grace we live. Faith for all, ye face of night, where the people of heaven stand still. and the sun who reigns on high, with the Holy Ghost proceeding, for from each river flowing, in salvation of our mercy, by heaven's hand.

[29:32]

you will let me Amen. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,

[30:56]

All the world shall praise your name In heaven and sky and sea Holy, holy, holy Merciful and mighty God in three persons Blessed be he. Holy, holy, holy, all saints are holy. As we come and go on the cross of the blessed sea, Care to give and serve of you all you have before thee. who were, who are, and evermore shall be.

[32:32]

Holy, holy, holy, though the darkness hide thee, Though the eye of sin forewarned, your glory may not see. Only you are holy, there is none beside thee. Earth, let me follow you.

[33:24]

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