In the explanation of the prayers at the foot of the altar, we stopped the confiteor and the various saints to whom we address ourselves and to whom we confess, into whose hands we put our sins and our human frailty in the spirit of confidence, because we know we find in them the representatives of God's forgiving love. That was Our Lady, the Refuge of Sinners, the Handmaid of the Lord, and that was St. Michael, the Archangel, who takes care of the souls, presenting them to God, and then St. John the Baptist, great preacher of repentance who pointed out the Lamb of God that carries the sin of the world.

[01:09]

And then Saint Peter, whose example we studied a little yesterday also. A man, really a human being, and we know from the Gospels, what a tremendous hard time he had to understand, really, the ways of God's charity. He himself, in all his zeal and his natural goodness and his natural devotion for the Lord and his love for the glory of the Messiahs, whom he expected in the way in which every Jew expected him at his time as the one who would establish the kingdom of Israel, as the one who would be able to heal the material wounds and satisfy the needs of the people.

[02:16]

And then he had to learn slowly that the intentions of the Heavenly Father were so completely different from the expectation, impatient expectations of man. We cannot anticipate the glory before we have passed through the cross. Now that was St. Peter's great conversion, we may say, which took place really at the moment in which he saw himself guilty before the merciful eyes of his Savior. And he recognized clearly his own infirmity and his own weakness, Then the moment was there for his real conversion.

[03:20]

He wept bitterly, his tears as the sign and expression of his being overwhelmed, transcended, taken out of the limits of his own nature and of his self-control, and therefore placed, as it were, into the arms of his heavenly Father. You know that I love you. How often do we have, in fact, in every confession, in every examination of conscience, we have to follow the same example. When we look at ourselves, then we find in ourselves reason enough to just put our whole, hold up as it were, our whole infirmity to our Heavenly Father and asking him, you take care of it.

[04:24]

We cannot. And of course, Saint Paul went through the same experience and that is probably the reason why he is also one of the saints of the Confitea because, again, He too was a zealot for the law, not a bad man, just as St. Peter was not a bad man. St. Paul had to learn the decisive preeminence of grace over all our efforts. He had to be converted from the law that is written on the tablets of stone to the law of the Holy Spirit that is written into the living flesh of our hearts. So that he also, St. Paul, then ended with the confession that in my infirmities I am strong.

[05:34]

It is the grace of God in our life which is the decisive factor. And as soon as we have this attitude, as soon as we break out of the prison of trying to be good in ourselves and by ourselves, we break out into the liberty of the true children of God, where we have the humility and the courage simply to go to our Heavenly Father like the prodigal son, the one resolution that when we get there and then we see him, he takes us into our arms, that we confess to him as Father, I have sinned before heaven and before thee. So those are the patrons of our confession.

[06:37]

And that, of course, is a beautiful and wonderful encouragement for all of us. We give our sins into loving hands, into hands that know and have experienced in themselves our own fate, and therefore are willing and eager to commit to put our sins and to recommend our sins to the mercy of the Heavenly Father, the Father of our Son, Jesus Christ. Then there is still in other words that I wanted to call your attention to, and that is in a third, can we call it paragraph or section of these prayers at the foot of the altar? And that is the versicle, Deus tu conversus vilificabis nos, e plebstua le tabitua in te.

[07:41]

O God, tu conversus, you turn around, et vilificabis nos, and you give us life. E plebstua le tabitua in te, and then your people shall rejoice in you. And that again confirms, and I think sometimes it is good, you know, also for our own sake and also in speaking to others about the beauty of the Mass and of the concrete way in which we celebrate it, according to the Roman rite, to kind of use certain words, you know, as hooks or as islands of attention. I think you find that, and everybody is in the same boat, that we are easily doing and celebrating the Mass every day, we easily get into a kind of rut,

[08:54]

and the most beautiful things and words slip by and we don't pay any attention. So I think it's a good thing that during a retreat where one is taken out of the usual rush, that one can concentrate and see and form, as it were, in the whole course of the celebration of Holy Mass, certain little islands of attention or islands of where one is absolutely familiar on familiar grounds. And when these islands come up again in the daily celebration of the Mass, then we remember and we say, ah yes, here is that beautiful saving word. And these words, deus tu conversus vivificabis nos, et plebstuale tabitur ante, that certainly is worthy of our attention, our loving and rejoicing attention, because it's again a testimony to that same new spirit of the divine agape which we have

[10:13]

discovered already in the Psalm Judica and also in the Confitio. For the philosophers, it may be what we call a kind of anthropomorphism to speak about God as the one who turns around in order to give us life. But of course, in the light of Revelation, It is not an anthropomorphism, but it is the absolute truth. God really turned around in order to give us life. And he did so when the glory of the Father, I mean the Son, who gazes, as it were, into the face of the Father and reflects the glory of the Father, turns around to us sinners in the Incarnation and extends his arms to a mocking crowd on the cross and then there exclaims, Father, forgive them

[11:33]

because they do not know what they are doing. That is really a turning around. It's a conversio on the part of God. Christ the Son, the victim for our sins, extending his hands to embrace into the power of salvation all those who stand around there and praying for them, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing. That are words dictated by the spirit of the divine agape. That really is the picture and the manifestation of the deus conversus. And that conversion evidently precedes our conversions. God turns around first. He emptied himself and he became a slave and he died for our sins.

[12:42]

And that is God's turning around. And in this, through this turning around to us, he gives us the possibility for our own conversion. That is in fact the only door through which again and again we can enter into the haven of peace whenever we have lost that peace. That is another thing, I think, that we should, you know, that we should in our own spiritual life, I think it is so, of such tremendous importance, importance. You know, you know it from your own experience. We may be and we are often in the peace of Christ. We feel that peace of Christ as a healing and protecting and saving power.

[13:50]

But then something happens. some unpleasantness, to say, in our work, some misunderstanding, the people we work with, some rash judgment that we may make ourselves or that we may be exposed to, all these things of our daily life which so easily cause us to lose the peace of Christ. We are in the house of the ecclesia and then suddenly we fall out the window and we find ourselves outside in misery. We have lost the peace of Christ. Then what do we do? Shall we just, as I say, try to get back in any odd way, as I say to ourselves now, don't be a coward and just, I mean, take it easy and laugh it off or forget all about it, you know.

[15:04]

All these various means that the psychiatrist may recommend to us, but that in reality is a superficial... opportunist solution, not a real solution of the problem. I think that every time we lost the peace of Christ, what we have to do is to go back to the door, and the only door is the Deus conversus, the Son of God on the cross, looking at us, praying for us, living at this moment in heaven to intercede for us. There is the only door. It's surprising if we consider our own spiritual life, how often we are satisfied, let us say, with some kind of quasi-solution,

[16:15]

some kind of improvisation on the ground of, let us say, psychological reasons or human prudence or anything like that. And we do not go back really to the one source of our spiritual life. And that source of the spiritual life is Christ who dwells in us through faith. He is the source. There is the spring of the waters of the Holy Spirit. And only there, only through him, we can receive the Holy Spirit. So if we figure, you know, our own interior life, we could think it is like a spring out of which flow these living waters of the Spirit. Christ who died for us and who dwells in us through baptism and through faith.

[17:23]

And then what happens? Stones fall into this brain. The world takes care of the stones and throws them in. We ourselves, our own character, you know, is full of those stones. Let us say a kind of defeatist attitude. a kind of skeptical attitude, even maybe a kind of a cynical attitude. All these stones, cynicism, skepticism and so on, disappointment, disgruntled, sour attitude, all these stones fall into that spring and obstruct it. What do we have to do? We have to get these stones out of the spring so that that spring may again really be able to flow, so that the living waters may spring up again in our soul. But these living waters will not spring up in our soul as long as we kind of improvise on the dubious grounds of our nature.

[18:37]

experimenting around with our character or with our natural resources. Let us say, instead of going to Christ as the door, instead of taking the stone out of the spring so that the Holy Ghost may again take possession of us, we try to calm ourselves down with all kinds of secondary, accidental things. Let us say, diversion, or as people say so often, I need a change. That's one of the characteristic words of this country, you know, I need a change. The best solution for a thing is to a change, you know. That may very often, in a secondary way, and as far as our nature is concerned, may very often really help, you know, maybe a great help. But it is not the solution for us as priests and as Christians, as children of our Heavenly Father.

[19:43]

Any pagan can do the same thing, any psychiatrist can recommend the same thing. So it is not really for us as Christians to go to the centre of things. We can never abstract from the fact that we have been baptised, that we are members of Christ's mystical body, that Christ really lives in us, that we carry the stamp the face of Christ, as it were, in our hearts, through baptism, through confirmation, through ordination, all these sacraments give us a character. Not that character, let's say, of our nature that always stays with us, but a supernatural character, a supernatural sign, but which also stems us before God. And therefore, it is absolutely necessary that we as Christians and as priests, that we go to that very center of our inward man, that we take refuge to the one who is for us the only door.

[21:01]

Very often, you see, when we living in blissful peace, you know, suddenly see ourselves outside of the house, now we have sometimes the natural inclination to do what? Just to kind of, like we fill out the window, just to kind of go back through the window, you know, in a kind of a shortcut. We store somehow that inner balance that we have lost. But that is not right for us as Christians. If we fell out, as soon as we fell out the window, what do we have to do? We have to find our way along the wall until we find the door. So we have to take even the risk, let us say for a while, to lose out of sight the light which falls through that window which we fill.

[22:07]

We have to just find our way, try our way back, maybe into the dark, until we find the door. And then we have to knock at that door. and then that door will be opened for us from the inside. But we cannot, with our own devices, enter it, you know, with a false key or with some kind of thievish trickery to get back where we were. We have to go through the door, and that's our Lord Jesus Christ. So, and I think it's a tremendous... help in our spiritual progress and in our inner living union with Christ to use every moment and every time we lost the peace of Christ, use it to have explicit recourse to our Lord Jesus Christ and no one else.

[23:14]

so that in this way then every such disturbance becomes for us an opportunity to open up again the spring, to go again through the door, to fasten that bond which holds us to the Lord Jesus Christ, the cause of our salvation. So, and that door is the deus conversus. He then will give us life, but we have to take the stones out of the spring so that these living waters may again jump up into heaven out of our soul. And that can be done only by restored confidence. Restore in me, O Lord, the joy of your salvation. That is the decisive thing. In all states of aridity, of, let us say, any kind of disgust, any kind of clouds that may

[24:26]

cloud up our spiritual horizon, restore unto me the joy of your salvation, O Lord. And that can only be done by having explicit records to Christ, who, after all, embraced me also when he extended his arms to the mocking crowd and said, Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing. And then another thing here that we have to consider in this, Eplebstura laetavitruente. That's the other half of this verse. And your people shall rejoice in you. That's the beautiful thing. Our Lord passed over, went through His Pascha, He came from the Father, He entered into this world, He died for us, He left this world again.

[25:33]

His death was leaving this world and He returned to His Father. That is the Pascha Domini, the passing of the Lord. But this passing of the Lord leads then not to the redemption of this or that individual isolated soul, but this redemption leads to the constitution of God's people. The people, God's holy people, that is the aim and the purpose of everything that Christ the Lord did. He wanted to build the church on the rock. And it is only the people, the unity of the faithful, that really are able then to give glory to that healing power of Christ's love that saved the captives

[26:47]

who were incarcerated into their subjective individual presence, and then captivity was taken captive in the ascension, hence they were led into heaven as what we call the communion of saints. So the end or the fruit Our repentance is really the joy of the people and the taking part in the joy of God's people. We are, as sinners, receiving the sacrament of penance. We are not only individually forgiven, we are not only, say, as individuals being straightened out with God, but we are at the same time again made full members of God's holy people, so that the last fruit of repentance, as the last fruit of the Pascha Domini, of our Lord's suffering, really is the Gloria in excelsis, the hymn of praise, which is sung by the Church as a whole, et plebstura letaritur in te.

[28:09]

so in that way we can close this word i would immediately add to it you know this plebs this people of god which rejoices in the savior that becomes then in the celebration of holy mass immediately visible and manifest in the crowd which shouts, as it were, the Kyrie Eleison, Lord Mercy, nine times. This, I think, the history of the liturgy is in agreement on that, this acclamation. which Nicolaus Cabasillas, one of the Eastern commentators of the Mass, calls the voice of the people, Kyrie eleison, the voice of the people, of God's holy people.

[29:17]

That Kyrie eleison in the mouth of the people is really not only also it is, but not only a cry for mercy, but it is also an acclamation, one can say an intronization, or let us say perhaps better is the proclamation of the presence of the kingdom of Christ in his people, that is, curialization. The historical background of the Kyrie Eleison, as you know, it goes back to the acclamations, the political acclamations with which a king was enthroned and proclaimed in the Roman and also the Eastern Greek Empire. And Kyrie in that way is, in our Christian language, is directed to Christ as the risen and ascended Lord.

[30:22]

who is now enthroned at the right hand of his Father, always living to intercede for us. And therefore this Kyrie eleison is immediately a lifting up of our eyes and of our whole inner man to the glory of the risen Saviour. The Kyrios is really the one, I mean the risen Christ, is the one who presides and who really carries and fills this whole mystery action of the Mass. He is the real subject. When we speak about the opus Dei, I mean the divine office as opus Dei, we can apply that word in an even way. stricter way to the celebration of Holy Mass.

[31:24]

Holy Mass is the opus domini, the work of the risen Savior who becomes present with his church. He is the real subject of this whole celebration. And when we say, for example, as priests, when we say, Dominus vobiscum, the Lord be with you, That greeting. Now, whom do we mean by that dominus? That is referred certainly, seems to me, at least to the risen Savior. The Lord be with you. The risen Savior be with you. The one who promised that he would not leave us orphans, but that he would constantly and always be with his own. Dominus Vibiscum, the Lord, the risen Savior, be with you. And that is the reason, too, why we kiss the altar before we give that greeting to the people.

[32:31]

Kissing the altar, the altar itself, is a figure of the risen Christ. The altar is Christ. The altar cloth, the white altar cloth, which is prescribed, you know, to hang down to the ground, you know, therefore, indicates the fullness that is the body, the mystical body of Christ. We, the holy people, have been vivified by the Lord's sacrifice. So the altar there is an image of the Curios, the risen Saviour, surround us, as it were, clothed in the glory of his people, his crown and his joy. In that altar we kiss, and kissing is always a union of spirits. We receive, by kissing the altar, the spirit of the risen Saviour.

[33:36]

And then we give that, Dominus Vibiscum, the Lord be with you. after we as priests have received it in the kiss of faith, then we give it to the people. The Lord be with you. And that is the risen Savior. So we should, I think we should think of that, you know, to watch the great extent to which the risen Savior dominates the scene, as it were, when we celebrate the Mass. In fact, Some people, you know, and in some explanations of the Mass you sometimes read that there is such a tremendous change of mood between the Kyrie eleison and the Gloria in excelsis, that the Kyrie eleison would be the feigned cry of the people of the Old Testament waiting from far away in a great distance

[34:41]

for the salvation to come. So a cry for mercy has a cry from far away. And then the gloria in excelsis has the kind of fulfilment, the Christmas, as it were, the presence. Now, to my mind, those explanations they put something into the ceremonies and the words of the Mass that really is not there from the origin. As far as we can see from the history of the Mass, this Kyrie Eleison is not meant to be a cry which in which one would be kind of retrace one's steps back to the Old Testament and then from there cry out of a distance, no? The Kyrie eleison was that acclamation which really accompanies from the part of the people the entrance of the Pope, I mean the Bishop of Rome, into the church.

[35:56]

The bishop is the figure of the risen Saviour and is the reason why he is dressed with all the garments. I mean, he is the fullness of the priesthood, and the fullness of the priesthood is the ascended Christ. Habemus, we have a high priest, Who? Penetraviculus, who entered into the heavens. And the picture of that risen Christ is the bishop who enters into the church. And at the moment in which he enters into the church, then really the people, the crowd that is already gathered there, is united to its head. And then, head and members, one Christ, and those two, the priests as the representative of Christ, and the people are together, then there are really two or three gathered together in my name, and then I am in the midst of them.

[37:17]

You see, there is not the idea of being far away in a distance. That's not the New Testament. The New Testament tells us that definitely those who have been far away have now come near since the curious Jesus tore down the wall of separation between God and man when he died for us on the cross. Since then, as St. Peter says so distinctly and explicitly, those who have been far away now are near. And that Kyrie eleison is the proclamation of that nearness and that oneness. There we are gathered together in Christ's name and he is in our midst, present. Therefore the Kyrie eleison has much more the colour, let us say, and the spirit of a

[38:26]

jubilant acclamation of the king who is present among his people. Of course, we honour the king by telling him how much we need him, that we completely depend on him. Just like you honour your doctor when you call for him at critical moments in your sickness. And so here too we call upon the Lord and that calling upon the Lord is really a glorification of the Lord. And that is what it is here too. And therefore in that light you can really immediately see that the gloria in excelsis is, as far as its spirit and meaning goes, is an extension, a solemnization of that acclamation of the curialation.

[39:28]

It is not in a different spirit, but it is conceived in exactly the same spirit, only solemnized in a more solemn and explicit form. Therefore, it was originally reserved for the great feasts, Easter, and later on Christmas, originally Easter. And it was reserved then also for the bishop as the representative of the risen Saviour to intone it, Gloria in excelsis Deo. So then, consisting of short acclamations, just as the Curia Lason, Laudamus Dei, Benedicimus, adoramusti, glorificamusti, that are like waves, you know, as you can see that in the apocalypse, this people of God that rejoices in the Lord, in the curious, is in the apocalypse always compared to many waters.

[40:34]

And the singing the Alleluia of that crowd is compared to the thunder of the waves, and here it is, one wave of glorification after the other, thundering, as it were, in loving admiration against the rock of the curious, the risen Saviour. Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, And then all culminating, gratias agimus tibi, we give thee thanks for thy great glory. That is the spirit, really, of the Kyrie eleison. We give thee thanks for thy great glory. That is what we call sometimes, you know, to say objective. That means God-centered attitude of the Christian worship.

[41:39]

We are not always centering around our own infirmities. That has its place, too. And in the prayers at the foot of the altar, that is explicitly expressed in a wonderful way. But the last purpose and end of our salvation is the Eucharistia, the thanksgiving the only possible answer to God's descending love, and the only way in which we really make the purity and glory of God's love for us, in which we make that our own. We give thee thanks for thy great glory, not even for our salvation, for something that happens in us, or for something that we have received, but we give thanks just because God is.

[42:43]

Thank God. And he has manifested himself in his glory through his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, whose glory we have seen. We give thee thanks for thy great glory. And that is, of course, also really an obligation, I think, for us as priests. We have to, through the Pascha of repentance, we have to lead the people of God to that place and to that spirit and to that mood in which they are filled with the enthusiasm for the glory of God for his own sake. That is really what in the antiquity, what the fathers always called the puritas codis, purity of heart.

[43:50]

Purity of heart does not mean in its original fullness of that concept does not mean purity in the sense in which we understand it in our recent days, where the tremendous preoccupation is always the Sixth Commandment and the difficulties that are connected with it, not that they should be ignored or that we should become lax in any way, but it's something beyond, something bigger. Ruritas Cordis is not and cannot be understood just in opposition to what we call today impurity. Impurity in the sense of the antiquity was not simply sins of the flesh. but all these various situations in which worldly thinking, in which our passions, our ambitions, our individualism, our holding onto ourselves, blurs the picture and makes it impossible for our soul to be a real mirror of God's glory.

[45:06]

The Puritas cordis, And the corporum is that heart which is so centered and so turned towards the glory of God, and turned away, therefore, from any human and merely human preoccupations with ourselves, that we rejoice and find our complete fulfillment in being an echo to that voice of glory that we hear from heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ. That really is the puritas cordis, and that puritas cordis, as you can immediately see, finds its natural expression in praise, and praise is the flower of Christian worship. But right away you see also that the church, and we ask the question, never are presumptuous.

[46:15]

That is, of course, the great danger. And the great danger also, let us say, one preaches or tries to convey to people, let us say, what we call today the Christocentric attitude or, let us say, liturgical attitude, and that's the reason why that word liturgy and liturgist or liturgical so often causes irritation, you see, on the part of people, and very often absolutely rightly, because so often here, you know, in that, let us say, in that direction, the externals are taken to, it's too important for the unchanged and mixed up with the internal. And very often, let us say, the aesthetic beauty of a thought, of an idea, of the resurrection in some way, is unduly anticipated.

[47:19]

and people who, let us say, are too easily and too, let us say, much in aesthetic way attracted by the glory of the resurrection forget that the resurrection can only be the fruit of the labour of the passion. So that is absolutely right, and therefore also here The Church, in this moment, where we are so completely turned in this Gloria in excelsis, towards the glory of God, the glory of the Word incarnate, still right away, right in it, in this hymn, we say, Domine Deus agnus Dei, quitollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. So in that way, also the theme of the Kyrie, as you say, is carried on in the Gloria in excelsis.

[48:20]

So we never forget, even if we are turned with our whole heart to the glory of the Father and rejoice that He is, nevertheless, we always recognize that that we are from ourselves and by ourselves in our own nature, that we are children of wrath, that we need God's mercy, that we are poor sinners. We are not yet angels, and therefore our praise here on earth is not in that way simply the praise of the angels. We remain human beings. And then this Gloria in excelsis and this whole gathering together of the people with the priest, which then comes to a... is sealed, as it were, in this greeting, Dominus vobiscum, or when it is the bishop, you know, he says, Pax vobis,

[49:25]

by that emphasizing the fact that he as bishop is and speaks in the person of the risen Savior. He really repeats the words that our Lord Jesus Christ used when for the first time he appeared through the closed doors in the midst of his apostles after the resurrection earned Pax Vobis, gave them this new spirit of his peace, breathing on them and saying, receive you the Holy Spirit. So that's the bishop. He speaks in the person of Christ. The priest, who is merely the helper of the bishop, He does not here speak in the person of Christ. He says, Dominus obiscum, the Lord may be with you. But then he gathers in the so-called collect all these acclamations and all these intentions of this crowd that has gathered together there

[50:41]

and that now through the coming of the priest has been constituted solemnly as the ecclesia, as that solemn assembly, which, by the way, St. Paul pictures so beautifully in the twelfth chapter in his letter to the Hebrews, where he says, you know, to the, Hebrews, you have not come to a mountain that can be touched, but you have come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the festive assembly. And that is what is here, the festive assembly, in the Kyria and the Gloria expressing that festive spirit Hence there now their intentions are headed, as it were, by the priest in the collect.

[51:51]

The collect has that function to present, as it were, this people, this ecclesia, as it stands there at this moment, to the high priest, our Lord Jesus Christ, always living to intercede for us. and therefore that collect has a solemn and official character. It has again, we may say with Father Jungmann, an objective character because it is not occupied with the individual needs of an individual person, but it gathers them together as it were on a pattern and holds it up through the priest as the mediator, so in a way which is broad enough or universal enough to contain or comprehend all these various individual intentions.

[52:57]

And that is in the collect, the collect which for that matter is an official priestly prayer. And as official priestly prayer follows a certain order, official order, omnipotent sempiternadeus, the solemn calling upon the name of God. But that name of God, because we are here in the mass of the catechumens, that name of God which everybody, also the catechumens, understand. Omnipotent Sempitern Deus, the Creator of heaven and earth. While later on in the Canon, when we start the Canon of the Mass, then we say, Te igitur clementissime Pater. That we say because in the Canon we have arrived in the Holy of Holies. Here we address ourselves

[54:00]

to the omnipotent, almighty, eternal God. But we address ourselves also here through per dominum nostrum Jesum Christum firium tu. Through our Lord, that means the head of the mystical body, your Son, and therefore the bridge, the pontifex between the Church and the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit in which we are assembled here. So it's a beautiful thing, this first part of the Mass, which we could just characterize as that part of the Mass in which we become, let us say, one, ready God's people then ready, the next act in this celebration is then ready to listen to the word of God. But about that perhaps this afternoon.

[55:02]

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