We are beginning a retreat. And for the first question, perhaps, to be asked, would be, what's a retreat? It seems to be a new invention of the new canon law. In fact, it's a very ancient monastic practice. And I think it's good for us to discern the meaning of this exercise to evoke... briefly the history of retreats in the church. I think there are two periods. The first one is the longest, the monastic period. There was a constant use in ancient monasticism that many monks in one period of the year, at least once a year, And retreat, the word itself corresponds exactly to the Greek form anarchoesis.

[01:11]

Retreat. Retreat. In all these words, you see, in re and ana, we find the idea of a certain retirement, a certain isolation as we got the usual way of life. a certain retirement in which different monks were allowed to go in a sort of hermos, of hermitage, of solitude for a time to recover spiritually, to prepare themselves to be better celibates afterwards. We find this practice in the Eastern monasticity, there are many, many examples, and we find it also in the Western monasticity. maybe you, in this preface, to the actors and told, must gather different facts, and we could find others. What was the meaning of this retreat?

[02:14]

It was, the meaning is indicated by the period of the year in which this retreat was made. It was usually during Lent, both in Eastern and Western monasticity. And this already indicates something of the content of this retreat. It was a sort of intensification for months of this great paschal retreat, which Lent is for the whole church. And it was characterized as the Lent for the church by more prayer. more austerity and more solitude, more separation from the world. And we find something of that in the chapter of Saint Benedict.

[03:18]

They observe that's the only Corinthians when he speaks of Lent. And I think what he says of the spirit we have to cultivate during the time of Lent is very appropriate. to the time of retreat, which normally was a Paschal retreat. And now, in different monasteries, the practice begins again to be introduced to have the retreat during Lent, or at the beginning of Lent. We do that, for instance, in our monastery of St. Jerome in Rome. And I think now they introduce that in different places. Of course, it is not absolutely necessary that in the current act was the retreat during Lent. But I think it's always good that a retreat remains a Paschal retreat. Always a preparation to a revival, a renovation, intensification of our participation into the Paschal mystery.

[04:20]

Every retreat must remain a Paschal retreat. And must remain in the spirit which St. Benedict's He also, as the whole tradition, you remember, insists on more mortification, more prayer, and chiefly on the internal dispositions which prepare to the celebration of and the participation in the mystery of death and resurrection of Christ. And that's compunction. Underses is two aspects. Compunction of fear means a certain part of penance, regret of our sins. And then compunction of desire, of joy.

[05:22]

And that's expressed a part of Contemplative prayer we must intensify during this period of Lent and of retreat. And all that in the joy of the Holy Spirit. And I think that must remain the main disposition during a retreat, a monastic retreat. So we have not tried to get too many ideas, to deal with too many problems. And I hope I shall not trouble you with new problems, with problems which you have not. or I shall not interfere in your real problem. I hope you have some problems. The community, most times, is confined to a problem. Otherwise, it will be a sign of death. The lack of problem is the lack of vitality. But I'm not to interfere. I'm not to know what they are. It's better that I don't know. So I just remind you some very general topics of monastic life, elements of the monastic ideal. And you, with a spare, have to see Each one, and perhaps the community, how far you have to, you introduce them in practice.

[06:30]

But, you see, the main disposition for all of us must remain this disposition of joy, cum gardio spiritu santum, santum pasca expected. So, disposition of joy, of desire, what we have to do all together is to try to share always more in the spirit of of the resurrection of Christ. Now, in modern times, since about the 16th century, there is a new period in the history of retreats, which I think we have not a right to despise, because we are monks, we have a long tradition, but we are also men of the church of today. So we have to try to get advantage of all the riches of the Catholic tradition. First, the world has checked. Instead of Anachoresis, the retreat, it was called exercitio. It's still called, so in German, exercitio, in Spanish, exercitios.

[07:34]

Meanwhile, for the monastic tradition, the retreat was just one of the spiritual exercise. But then, chiefly, a new aspect was introduced since the, especially Saint Ignatius, namely, The retreat is an occasion for each one to ask himself, what does God want from him now, this year? That's not absolutely strange to our church. I don't think we have too much to examine ourselves, to know exactly at which step of the... scale, spiritual scale we are, in which mention of the tassel, and so on, you know, to know exactly the initial of our sanctification, of our progress, and so on. Our virtues, all that is not very interesting. So, and you notice that St.

[08:36]

Benedict, of course, wants us to make promises. But, and then he mentioned 12 degrees of humility, that in some views that says the grief, we have not to practice them successively but simultaneously. So I don't think we have to get too anxious to know about our spiritual progress. But nevertheless, I think we must take advantage of the retreat to ask us this very simple question. Am I right with God? the moment to check, to verify if we are not more or less misleading ourselves in our search of God. So that may be also an opportunity for each one to make a sort of examination of conscience and to see what are the things more or less important in which we may take new resolutions, ask permissions, or make a

[09:46]

interior detachment, and so on. And that will be also a way, I think, for us to remain in this traditional attitude of desire, of joy, of desire of sharing always more in the joy of the Holy Spirit with Christ's sanctus after his death and resurrection. Now, just to introduce the topics of this retreat, We could ask another question. What is the monk? I don't intend tonight to come back to this question I think I chat about last year. But I think it is good for us to remember always what's the essence of our monastic life. What we came to do here. And As always, the history of words is revealing.

[10:48]

And this time, we could perhaps start from the history of the word eros and evident. Be quiet. I don't want to make all of you eros. You are xenobites and you actually are normal. Exceptional. Maybe they are normal also, but always exceptional. But we must never forget. And that's for me, the more I... Today, in the monastic text, tradition, and so on, I am persuaded of that. That monks must remain solitary. A monk is essentially a solitary. And if we want to discern, again, the meaning of this monastic solitude, we can also try to evoke briefly the history of the world, Eremus and Eremita.

[11:51]

If the Christian houses, since Tertullian, the founders, creators, creators of the Latin Christian language, created these worlds, Eremus and Eremita, while there already existed desertus solitudo in the classical Latinx, It was because the Christian solitude was something essentially different from any other form of solitude which ancient philosophers may have now. That's why each time they found in the Greek Bible eros, they simply adopted it and made the Latin word eros. It is just later, it's paradoxically, a monastic doctor, Saint Jerome, But he was at the same time always, more or less, a man of literature. He is the first who, each time, in the ancient biblical versions, Latin versions, he found Eleus.

[12:52]

He introduced solitude and desert, where the classical were. But the whole tradition remained in the monastic tradition, even in the West. And what was this religious tradition? new religious sultan which was expressed by the word Erebus. It was just the prolongation of the successive preparations through which God educated his people and then each of us to be united with him in Christ. It was the Erebus, the different Erebus we read about in the Bible, the heremus of the Exodus, which was a preparation, again, to the paschal mystery, anticipation, and a symbol, a sign of the mystery of Christ, of our redemption, of our baptism.

[13:56]

And monastic, also, since the beginning, always developed the heremus, Moïse, the heremus of this heremus, the solitude of 40 years, which the people was prepared to enter in the promised land. Then the Eremus of the prophets, Elias, Eliseus, and the sons of the prophets, who also were the prefiguration, anticipation of what is monastic life. They went, they separated themselves from the community to go in an Eremus, which was not... Very far from the community, we see that still again in Jericho and so in the grottoes, not very far, but a lot from the community. That was the desert, the Erebus, which was already a sort of an enrichment of the previous Erebus of the Exodus, a more spiritual, more interior, more praying subject.

[14:58]

And then, that was the Erebus of the last of the prophets. of the Old Testament, and the first of the New Testament, St. John the Baptist, who went in the desert, in a religious solitude, as did the prophets, the whole prophetic tradition of the Old Testament, and in which he was waiting until the Lord comes, and in which he saw and shewed the Lord. That was the Heremus of John the Baptist, in which he preached the baptism of Penance, and began this life of eschatological expectation and desire, which is also an essential element of monastic contemplative life. And then all that was in the elements of our law. And according to the monastic tradition, answering other monastic consul, there are three periods of the life of the Lord in which he taught

[16:01]

to go into solitude. Because, you know, it is difficult to justify monastic life according to explicit declarations of the law. He never said he has to go to solitude. He never taught that. He taught many things, but this, we have no... He taught, for instance, to preach, to do all sorts of good, but he did not do that, to go to solitude. But It's a matter of fact that since the beginning of the church, as soon as there is somewhere a church, a material church, appears a monastic life. That means men who are going into solitude. And what? How did they justify their life of solitude? By the examples of the Lord, who taught not only in saying things, but in doing things. And the three solitudes of the Lord, which were two examples of monastic life, are first his solitude in the desert during Lent.

[17:03]

During the 40 days he went to be tempted. After he received a spirit, remember, in the day of his baptism, he was pushed by the same spirit in the desert. And there he was tempted by the devil. He was infesting, he was in life of penance, living with the beasts of the desert. I remember some monastic, some spiritualists of the Middle Ages, saying that this life with the beast of the desert was a symbol of community life. I'm not convinced. I think the community must keep, you know, because the desert is the refuge of the devil. And the beast of the desert... since the first snake are the symbol of the presence of the devil.

[18:06]

And then that was the place during the Lord wanted to be tempted and to fight, not for himself, but to teach us that we have to do it. That was a desert in which he prepared himself then to his life of redeemer. It is just afterward that he began his public life. with the first miracle of Cana. There's three elements, as you know, which belong to the manifestation, to the epiphania of the Lord, adoration of the kings, baptism, and we still have in the octave of the epiphany, and then Cana, and he prepared himself by the solitude in the desert. And then, mainly, The chief solitude, the most important of which the Lord wanted to make the experience was his solitude on the cross.

[19:07]

Not only because he was alone, he was abandoned by all except by marriage, but he wanted to experience also this sort of abandonment by his father in his agony and on the cross. And I think that's essential, that the summit, you see, of every Christian solitude, as long as solitary, as long as, and I should say, even a Christian hasn't experienced this solitude with Christ. He don't know what is Christian life. He may be a good church-going Christian and so on, but, you see, interior life is that. interiority of life is this participation in the solitude of Christ, with Christ. And that may go very far. We don't know through which way, through which trial, God may lead us to the experience very rich and very, which may be very painful, experience of the solitude with Christ.

[20:24]

maybe from difficulties in monastic life, in conventual life, in obedience, some consequence of the celibacy, this solitudo cordis, which is inherent to consecrate celibacy. It may be a sort of trial, virtue, or prayer, but maybe it's sickness. But as long as we have not met the experience of the solitude of this kind, we don't know what is Christianity. and which is the real value, efficiency of Christian life. It was, at the moment, Jesus was the more alone, that he saved the more. When he was quite alone, then he saved the good work. And then he went through his death to the resurrection. He had to go through this story, a portrait back at the Christian, a posterior intralect and glorious. And I think we can share in the mystery of his resurrection if we don't share in the mystery of his death, of his great passion.

[21:31]

We used to speak of Catholic action, but there are things of the Catholic passion in the moment when Christ suffered alone for all. And that's, I think, the real meaning of our monastic salvation. That's the end of our monastic life, to share in this real life. mystery of salvation, mystery of the death and of the resurrection of Christ. That's what we came to do in the monastic life. And that's what we have to enforce during the retreat. That's the purpose we have to renew. That's the thing we have to prepare for our future life in the monastic life. And so we shall be really monks, even in Cenobitic life, The cenobelic life is a life of solitaries. It's a community of solitaries who, all together, help each other to find this solitude of God, thanks to charity, to the order of which charity is introduced in our lives.

[22:41]

Taritas ordinata, ordo caritatis, says that Bernard And that's what we have to do in monastic life. All together, helping ourselves in chatty, in love, in mutual assistance, to be each one a salutary with God. To reach this union with God in prayer, in union with the reality of the mysteries accomplished in the life of Christ. So we must not only imagine a sort of community life which could be just a sort of substitute of the family we left in the world. So nice to live in common and so on, but that's necessary. But you see, that's not the end of one's life. I think we must face this necessity, this exigency of our life always to reach more to this union with God in Christ, to this participation in the solitude of Christ

[23:46]

And that will be our way of realizing the problem, some analytics presences in the Prologue, when he says, and in the rule, different verses, that when he says that we have to seek God, prayer in a day. Thank you. The Reverend Father mentioned that some don't hear what I say, but maybe also that they hear and don't understand. Because my English improved a little perhaps since the first time I came, but still far from being perfect.

[24:47]

So if there is some difficulty, Do ask an explanation to manifest that you don't follow. I shall be, of course, available to all of you any time, except during an hour afternoon. Yesterday I mentioned that the ancient monastic also insisted on three examples of solitude in the life of our Lord. And I just spoke of two of them, 14 days in the desert and the solitude on the cross. But the second one was the night the Lord's Painted Prayer, Solus. And then we have seen that the monk is and must be and remain solitary.

[25:51]

And the first exigency of this life is to be isolated from what is not God. I just found recently this quotation of St. Bernard somewhere. You see, it's a play of words, desolatio, consolatio. Desolatio does not mean necessarily sorrow, but... the fact of being isolated in order to be consoled by the Lord. We receive the help of grace in the measure we feel the abandonment of the world. And to suggest this idea of detachment from the world, from what is not God, we could develop a traditional theme in monastic spirituality the theme of exile.

[26:54]

It's the fact that this way of speaking has been so important, so frequent, that exile has become as a definition of monastic life. Saint Jerome, for instance, wrote, Monacum perfectum in patria sua est senon posse. It's impossible to be a real monk to be truly a monk in one's own country. Is there only rhetoric in this formula? Is there any exaggeration? Actually, monarchism, since its origins, has been considered by its most representative members as a form of exile. And in order to understand it, let's remind First, the biblical basis of this theme, then its meaning in monastic tradition, and thirdly, and finally, some particular consequences will immediately appear.

[28:04]

First, Christian exile according to the Bible. What's the essence of Christian mystery? That means of the mystery of Christ. as the Church presents and renews it in its liturgy, as we have to reproduce and to live it. Nothing else than this mystery of divine love, of which the Lord himself has said, I came forth from the Father, and I have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and I go to the Father. Exil, in Greek, exilton. In Greek as well as in Latin, the world evokes an exodus, an exile. It implies a departure.

[29:08]

It's a matter of a journey from God to God through a foreign country, this world. All the mysteries of Christ are those of his incarnation, then of his return to the Father. And from Advent to Ascension and to the last Sunday of the Pentecost, the Church makes us consider this succession of times through which Christ leads to the parousia, this mankind which he has redeemed. And it is significant that the whole This rule has been called in the liturgical books of the Middle Ages a cycle . And if we want to consider in the light of the New Testament the whole history of salvation, preparation in the Old Testament, life, death, glorification of Christ, mystery of the Church, we may take as a guide the epistle to Hebrews.

[30:16]

You know that the author of this epistle writes to Jews who, expelled from Jerusalem, were exiles, immigrants, people without own country. Displaced persons, we should say now. Exiled. In Spanish we say des tierros, without tierra, you see, out of this one territory. Under which point of view does the epistle to Hebrews present the whole work of salvation? As an exile, of which the example has been given by the one who was per excellence an exile of Christ. And then the author shows that the life of every Christian is an exodus, an immigration, an exile. it has had its preparations, its models, in the exodus, the exiles, the emigrations, of which speaks the Old Testament, and especially in the emigration of Abraham, then in the exodus of the whole people through the desert.

[31:39]

And finally, the Greek priest of the New Testament, who, through... the way of sacrifice and death, enter the tabernacle, will introduce us in this rest of the Lord as a participation of his sacrifice. And the Christian vocation is to enter as the elect of the Old Testament and as Jesus himself in requiem. Remember, they also quote this verse of the song we sing every day at the Invitatorio in Requiem Mea. And then we shall be forever in the light of God. Meanwhile, we still live in faith. Now, of this attitude, the perfect model has been the one the liturgy calls

[32:46]

the father of our faith, Abraham. And the epistle to Hebrews says, by faith he obeyed to go out, and he went out, not knowing whither he went. The Greek text uses here twice the verb to live. went out. Then the verb parrocheo, which translates the word to sojourn, speaks of a dwelling which is not stable, definite, but passing, provisional. In the modern language of your country, it would be the fact of being non-resident. The matter is and expectations, and that is the condition of the exile who is going towards God in faith and hope.

[33:58]

And you remember that in his first speech to Jews, St. Stephen, in the Acts of Apostles 7, quotes the order given by God to Hebra in Genesis, where the Latin text has the word egregory, but the Latin text of the speech of Stephen used the word and so on. And it is this form which will always be quoted afterwards in Christian and monastic tradition. It's a good example of the way in which they used the Old Testament according to the New. Anyway, it's a matter of a departure, of going out. And that is the problem of every Christian life, and chiefly of monastic life.

[35:02]

Christian is a traveller, homo viato. The justs of the Old Testament, of the Old Covenant, were in the way towards the mystery of Christ. And now the Christians are... en route toward the mystery of the kingdom to come, toward eschatology. And they have to live in hope and faith. And if it is essential today to pray to hope in God alone, it is because such an existence involves a part of temporal insecurity, as it was The Christian, and chiefly the monk, doesn't know by which ways, which trials, God will lead him to him.

[36:09]

His hope is certain, but his faith remains obscure. Life in Christ involves a risk. The life of the monk consecrated only to the search of God is a great adventure. For the Christian, as for Abraham, there is security, no security but in God. And the more the Christian, especially in religious life, becomes aware of the exigencies of the gospel, the more he realizes that he is in exile. far from the face of God the more he desires God and the more he feels that at the years of passing his faith is being purified and he says

[37:19]

In this last verse of the psalm, ancient Latin versions used the term exile. Prolongratio primirinatio is synonymous of incolatus. Both mean the idea of exile, peregrinus, peregrinari, peregrin, in ancient and medieval Latinity, and in the scripture, in the biblical Latinity. Peregrinus does not mean primarily a man who is visiting holy places. Peregrin, as we say now. It may just be a sort of pious story.

[38:20]

But peregrinus in Lappin means the man who is peregrine, who is out of his country, who is in a foreign country, and therefore, and chiefly in the end, in the world of antiquity, an indigent, pauper. He is not a civis, a citizen, but a welfare, an incolour. Incola egosum inter, which is scenario of a great state of poverty. For instance, we have an example in Ezekiel 12, 3, 7, of the description, very concrete and vivid, of the immigrants. And to realize it, you have just remembered the images of all these thousands and thousands of people Hungarians and all sorts of people which the Russians decide to deport from their country.

[39:24]

And how they have to leave everything just going with the small belongings they could carry with them and so on. Tired, hungry and so on. That's the condition of the peregrinus. Incola egosu inter. These were Africans in the early scripture. peregrinus and peregrinari. By the way, you may also notice that in the so-called peregrinatio egerie, the word peregrinari, nor peregrina, and its derivative of peregrinatio does not occur, neither in the text nor in the title. It is not a peregrinatio, it is an itinerary. A pious Spanish lady traveling in the Holy Land, has been compared to an English miss. And she says, she says, she was very curious, and we must be very grateful to her, like a sense to her, and only to her, we know something about Jerusalem liturgy and so on.

[40:34]

But she was not a peregrina, you see, she was just visiting, visitare loca sacra. Meanwhile, in the scripture, peregrinus, translates the Greek word parochia, which also the epistle to Hebrews applies to Abraham, his sojourn, in the land of promise, as in a foreign country. And from this verb has come parochia and its derivatives like parois, parish, which means a church, and primitively towards the diocese, now it is a local community, congregation. But the deep thinnification of this world is to evoke the idea that the Church is stranger in the world, on the way towards God. To speak of a Christian congregation, they just said, ecclesia que perivinatur in taliloc, the Church who is in exile in such place.

[41:38]

And in this meaning, of course, every monastic community has to be parochial. Incollatus and peregrinatio, we find again this, the first of this word, and the idea that both express in the preface of the dead. You see, the habitatio is opposed to something definitive. to the incollatus, which is just provisional. And so, you see, every Christian and the whole church are in a state of expectation, of desire, as was Abraham, the father of our faith. He looked for a city that had foundations, whose builder and maker is God, says the epistle to Hebrews.

[42:39]

Now, second part. Monks' exile according to monastic tradition. The witnesses of this team of exile are very numerous. Cassian is one of the most ancient, and he is important because St. Benedict, as we know, wants us to lead him, and because in fact his writings were one of the most important sources of the spirituality of Western monasticism. And you remember that in his third conference on the three renouncements, he is a fundamental text where he just comments the call of Abraham. And further again, he sums up this commentary of the call of Abraham to exile.

[43:40]

And then he explains again this call of Abra, which is so the most important element of this whole conference. And in other places again, Cassian speaks again of these three renouncements. You know that according to Cassian there are three renouncements, which must lead to the purity of heart, which is nothing else but charity, that is, union with God without anything else, without any self-interest. The first renouncement is exterior. The monk despised all the riches of this world. The second renouncement consists in denying one's past life, breaking with sins and bad patience.

[44:41]

And the third renouncement, consists in trying to contemplate the things to come, to desire only the invisible realities. And this, and thus the last one, the last renouncement, opens directly on contemplation of the eternal goods. The detachment involved in the two first renouncements is the condition, the first step. toward purity of heart. What matters is always the kingdom of God, the true fatherland, which has to be expected, anticipated, owing to renouncement, to exile. Practically, what matters is the purification of heart, the liberation of heart from all that is an obstacle to contemplation, which is reserved to the pure of heart.

[45:41]

This will be true in heaven, but this is already true and must already be true in this present life. Cation goes on to purify the body and the soul is to detach them from all what is sin and seed of sin. It is to examine always what is our intention, our scope. This is the whole, he says. And so we have to become free from every self-interest, every selfishness. That means to live in charity for God, for our brethren. And this is the best, the only way to have charity for ourselves. For the trust, the best in us, in ourselves, which is the presence of God, the image of God. the exigencies of charity of God.

[46:43]

And this is the doctrine Tushin exposes on occasions of the call of Abra, of the exile of Abra, of the triple exile, exide terratua, befamiliatoa e decognatiole. And this text had a great influence. And in fact, in the whole monastic tradition, We find this theme of exile. It's possible that St. Gregory remembered it when he tells the way according to which St. Benedict left his fatherland, his house. And St. Benedict himself, as you know, often presents the life of the monk as an itinerary. In more than 20 passages, the rule he speaks of way of going and even of running. And it has been observed that the last work of the rule gives security of going to the aim pervenius.

[47:54]

And it is to reach this aim that monks have left everything at the cost of a double renunciation, interior and exterior. according to the example of Abra. And in fact, when we see the monastic history, how many monks in the early Middle Ages and even up to the 12th century left their fatherland and sometimes even their monastery, the monastery where they were first entered and given themselves to God, they left to become sort of traveling witnesses of God, making themselves cool and solitary in order to be more radically monks, they imitate these saints, which has been characterized recently in a book of Eleonore Duckett, the wandering saints of the early Middle Ages.

[49:00]

And so, sometimes, They had the opportunity of preaching the gospel to those who didn't know it. But primarily, primarily, they didn't go out of their country in order to preach. They were not missionaries. The idea of monks missionaries in the Middle Ages is a myth. They were angry. They were solitary. They were exiled. And then... By chance, after some years, for instance, many of the Celtic country came to the coast of Britain, and then we know by archaeological provings that there was first a chapel, just an armitage, a cell with a small chapel. During years they lived there. And then only much later, when they attracted people and so on, and they begin to know the language, they enter in the inner land, and that was second. But they didn't. leave their country for that.

[50:05]

They live to be with God alone, as hermits, as solitary, as exiled. And even those who didn't live so externally, they're puzzled, renounced interiorly to all, renounced all that attached them to this world. And the monastic hagiography shows that the motives which justified the monastic vocation is an ardent love for our Lord Jesus Christ. One doesn't leave the world because one refuses under the influence of whatever any philosophical theory, catonic or else. One leaves the world in order to follow Christ, to obey his voice. And after this evangelical text, One of the most frequently quoted to justify, to explain the monastic vocation, is the exe de Taratua, which God sent to Abra.

[51:15]

It is not here the moment to quote many texts. I just mentioned that Mabillon, speaking of one of their saints, says that he was bis peregrinus ut pote monacus et extra patria, extra patria solum existence. He was a foreigner for two reasons. First, he was a monk, and secondly, he was out of his country. He was in exile. And this had very practical consequences. They were rarely, without rights, without protection, absolutely stranger to this world. And I think we must keep something of that. For instance, I think we must not be too much interested in politics and so on, reading newspapers for us, for monks. does not mean much, you know. And recently I saw in a monastic chronicle of the 12th century, there was this short declaration. Quote de Romanis imperatoribus niquil aut poca ixung exalat. Of the Roman antelope, in this monastic chronicle, you don't find any many.

[52:21]

It's published in the Monumenta Germania Historica, as an historical source, but it does not say much about the Greek politics. Nemine Morphea, nobody has to be to be surprised of that. So they were expecting that. In the future they will read this chronicle. All these international conferences and so on, each one tries to show that the other is wrong and so on, that Hitler is the stronger and so on, and everything are confused. So I don't think we are not to try to know too much of the details of this contemporary history, as did the monks of the Middle Ages for the time. So there were many, many witnesses, you see, in the tradition of this attitude of real detachment

[53:33]

from the life. The present life is like an exile, fatherland, family, human society, worldly goods, material pleasures, glory, everything which can give the illusion that this world either possesses contemptibility, even momentary, or that has intrinsic value, everything should be abandoned. And remember we have in our liturgy still this wonderful response already is taken from a patristic sermon in arc peregrinatione solo corpore constitutus cogitatione et aviditate in la eterna patria conversatus so in this exile we are just with the body still living but all the day our avidity our thinking our desire is in la patria We already must live in this eternal tasselah.

[54:35]

Now, finally, how to reduce in practice this biblical and traditional idea? I think we may sum it up under two aspects. One, so to speak, negative detachment and the other positive attachment. Detachment. We must really renounce, exit, egregore, everything, relinquere, omnia. But we must, anywhere we are, leave everything, as did the apostles, as did these ancient monks whose vocation was explained with the vocation, with the call of tabla and the apostles. Abraham is really the father of the monk. We must renounce intimately all that could bind us to this world.

[55:46]

Unwill, advantage, interest, glory, and so on. This is the way of humility and obedience, which makes us accept everything. Even difficult. Because everything is provisional. Nothing matters. I think I already quoted this saying of a theologian that when God had created the world, he said, that's provisional. And that's absolutely true. Everything will pass. There will be a catastrophe. So, why should we be attached? That means giving a definitive importance to anything. The exile is free. He uses this world as if he would not use it. Remember this paradoxical situation of the Christian, of which St.

[56:49]

Paul so often speaks, this paradox. We do things, I feel they were important, knowing that they are not. Detached from the things does not mean to live without interest for the things. We must make our jobs seriously and in the same time with a smile, with humour. We must make them as if they were important, and they are in the own order of provisional jobs in the church, but always ready to leave them. the church if the church by the voice of obedience of our superiors tells us not to make any to make them anymore we must never assume that we are indispensable and that is that it is indispensable that we make this job nobody except God is indispensable and you know it has always also been said that

[57:57]

indispensable people, there is plenty in cemeteries. And that may be very practical, you know, because I'm not a great experience of monastic literate, but I know that sometimes it may be an opportunity. Sometimes the abbot does not know how to manage to take this monk. out of this job. He's so attached and he thinks only he can be a good porter or a good whatever it is, you see. And then they think it could be another. But he's so attached. He considers himself as indispensable at the porter lodge or elsewhere, you see. You see, the retreat may be a good occasion for instance to renounce and perhaps to go and say to the superior, you know, you are free if you want to change me. So... This is this basic detachment, reliancement, of which we have to renew sometimes the decision and chiefly during the treaty.

[59:03]

And of this basic attitude, I would like to indicate two particular applications related to faith and charity. Faith is an exile, is a fundamental exile. Abraham went away, risked. because he believed, pater fidei. The object of faith is beyond this world and must be obtained through the cross of Christ. Far from the world we reach God. This is the Exodus. A sort of existential flight from the world. This is the Fugamond. Faith is a desert. It includes a death to this world with Christ.

[60:05]

And then, beyond this flight, this renouncement, the real values which are in this world will be given back to us. But we are first to renounce We must receive them from God, as, when, in the measure, in the way he wants them for each of us. We have not to try to catch them by ourselves and from ourselves and for ourselves. Man and world can only be reconciled in God, by God. And then comes this friendship. Friendship with the world, of which has spoken, for instance, Father Rahner, the Weltfreundlichkeit. That's a friendship with the world. But there is no natural, spontaneous, so to speak, pre-established harmony and friendship between men and the world.

[61:11]

Because, actually, the world is under the sin. Under sin. We have to renounce sin. to die in Christ to sin, in order to find again a peaceful relation with the world, which will be a supernatural relation and friendship. And thus every man, but chiefly the religious, the monk, is called out of this world and of its normal, natural realities, in the kingdom of grace, in the faith, which reveals to us the true values of things and of the world. The faith is an exile, a flight out of the realities which the world can reveal in order to adhere to the realities of above. And this is a requirement of the eschatological character of Christianity.

[62:16]

There is a fraternity land in God. We have to go out of this world to enter in it. This will be someday through the physical death in heaven. But this is already now through the sacramental death of baptism and through the spiritual death of faith. Thus we enter in the church, in the grace, in the supernatural world, as we say, which is the true world for the Christians. The natural world helps us to reach the supernatural world. It only helps, and more or less, but it is not sufficient. We must necessarily transcend it, pass it. This flight in God is a movement ahead. It's supposed that we leave things behind. The practical renouncement is essentially a consequence of faith.

[63:17]

It is included, it is not only a sort of of psychological or moral attitude, it is a consequence of the mystery of faith itself. As Abraham, we must renounce, leave things, because we believe in God. Some of the things we left will may follow perhaps, but we must first leave them. And then we shall go back to the world if the occasion occurs, if we are asked to do it in the church. But we have to go. from God to the world, not from the world itself to God. We must first break with the world, leave the world, go out of the world in order to find God. Faith is first and always necessary. Renouncement is a consequence of faith. The second aspect of renouncements, I would suggest, regards charity. Saint Benedict says...

[64:16]

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