But I concern myself when I think about poor Descartes, because Queen Catherine of Sweden, huh? Oh, well, Christina, somebody apparently knows this story. She grabbed Descartes up to Sweden and made him lecture to her on philosophy at four in the morning. And he soon died of pneumonia. And then when they were bringing his body back, to Paris on a barge on the Seine, the barge sunk. So, he had rough luck. Poor guy. Now, this particular lecture is called Fear God and Never Forget God. We have mentioned many times in these talks that The basic scheme in this chapter on humility has love replacing fear.

[01:05]

That is the basic movement. As a preposition of pop psychology, we can accept that, and it's probably pretty attractive, but it bears closer scrutiny, I think. We know that St. Benedict has purposely moved fear of God into Cassian's list as Numbers 1 and 12. So here's where a little bit of literary criticism is necessary. You start out with ten imdiches, or signs of humility, with Cassian. And the master expands this into 12, a ladder of 12. Well, you've got to add two. At the beginning and at the end, he adds, I think, he adds fear.

[02:12]

Now, not everybody would agree with me that that number 12 is fear, but it certainly includes a good deal of that theme. And notice here that what you have in literary terms is what is called inclusio. If you repeat a theme at the beginning and at the end of a unit, you frame it with a certain idea. And for the ancients, and that applies to the Scriptures and so forth. The Gospel of John has lots of inclusion. it. Okay, so what I'm saying, though, is that apparently the fear of the Lord is very important for both the Master and for St. Benedict.

[03:13]

That is the vital element that has been added to Cassian's scheme. One wonders if the famous saying from Proverbs, the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord, isn't at work here. To put fear first in the list seems to confirm that, the beginning of wisdom. But what does beginning really mean? In fact, The book of Proverbs itself seems to be ambivalent about beginning. The same saying occurs twice in the book of Proverbs, but in different form. In Proverbs 1.7, what we have is the verb of Hebrew, which really means epitome.

[04:17]

But in Proverbs 9.10, we have tahila, meaning first step. So in the first chapter, the epitome of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and the second one is the first step of wisdom. I'd have to say that by and large, in the Hebrew Bible, the fear of the Lord There's nothing rudimentary about it at all. It's the highest compliment you can pay to somebody is that he fears the Lord. And it's equivalent to saying that someone is, in fact, a truly pious Jew, you know, is really faithful, obedient servant of Yahweh. He fears the Lord. So it's not any kind of low grade of holiness.

[05:20]

Of course, the idea of fear in itself is something negative. It's a sensation or an experience that we don't want, by and large. Nobody wants to be afraid. And certainly there are kinds of fear which are the most excruciating human experience. It's kind of terror. where, you know, physiologically, I mean, you sweat, your hair stands on end, your heart, your blood vessels constrict, your heart stops, and all this stuff. Nobody can recommend that. And I think that now there is a kind of... Attitude around that amongst Catholics you see that that the old church was a church of fear and I don't want any more of that the nuns Knocked my head against the wall see and they're not going to knock my kids head against the wall and the pastor he screamed at me when I was an altar boy well in fact the pastor did scream at me and I deserved it but

[06:50]

But anyway, a lot of people say that old church of terror is gone and it's not coming back. Okay, so we can agree that there are certain kinds of fear that are unattractive and unacceptable. However, there are many kinds of fear. And some of it is salutary, obviously. For a three-year-old kid to be afraid of the storm is good. It's very helpful kind of information. In fact, a stone can hurt you. Cashin already was well aware of this, and he said, the lowest fear is the fear of punishment, and that is the fear of slaves. And probably that was the only fear that kept a lot of slaves in line because slavery was awful.

[07:51]

terrible thing. Then, he said, there's the fear of losing something good that you possess. And that's a kind of jealousy. That's what jealousy is. I'm afraid you're going to take from me what I possess. On a higher level yet, said Cashin, there is the fear of hurting or saddening someone you love. And the fear of children that don't want to sadden their parents or vice versa because they love them. Or lovers who are very, very sensitive about each other's feelings and so on. So this whole business of perfect love drives out fear Yes, we have to say, but what kind of fear?

[08:54]

Because there's lots of kinds of fear. And that is the saying, of course, that is quoted by Cashin and by the Master and Benedict. At the end of this progression of humility, then they quote, perfect love drives out fear. So humility ought to move us from fear to perfect love. That's fine, but we also have to ask, well, what is perfect love, you see? And I think that when you do that, what you find out is that he's saying that the lowest, he's putting the lowest kind of fear against the highest kind of love. I mean, it's like, you're worst against my best. You know, sometimes when you argue, that's a tactic. You pick out sort of the lowest aspect of the other guy's point of view.

[09:55]

It should not blind us to the fact that there is some fear that is absolutely essential to all true religion. And with that, we'll take a drink. Cashin should know better. That's a great one-liner, huh? Cashin should know better, as if I know better than Cashin. By the way, we're all going to know more about Cashin pretty soon because Columbus Stewart from St. John's, a great coming man, I mean, a tremendous scholar, is just completing a book on Cashin. It's really an overall survey of Cashin from a kind of literary point of view. And I expect that it's really going to be quite a breakthrough on Kashin. Because we really have not had a great book on Kashin, at least in English. Not at all. Even though there are good scholars.

[11:02]

In fact, Volgaway is a great scholar of Kashin. But you see, Kashin is so prolix. I mean, it's so much stuff that it's a terrible challenge to cover it all and sort of handle it, master it. So Stuart's book is coming out in another year or two. And then the new translation, the new English translation of Cassian by Boniface Ramsey will be coming out in the Ancient Christian Writers Series. And that will, you know, Paul has got that now and they're working on it. So we will have a fresh translation because we haven't had one for 100 years in English. And I think that's a problem. We've got a Victorian translation now. Whenever I give it to somebody in a formation class, these young people, they say it's almost like reading Hebrew. The sentences are endless and the diction is stilted and so forth.

[12:07]

Okay. Anyway, Cashin should know better. When he says that fear of the Lord is a first... preliminary step to be surpassed, he is dealing with something very sacred to Jewish religion. All right, I've already said that. So there, you know, you've got a kind of problem, I would say. I would like to quote a couple of other texts from the Jewish Bible just to make this point even more strongly. Deuteronomy 10, 12. What then, Israel, does the Lord your God ask of you? Only this, to fear the Lord your God, to conform to all his ways, to love him, and to serve him with all your heart and soul. And here we have love and fear spoken of in the same breath, synonymously, as if they're virtually the same phrase.

[13:16]

faithful obedience to Yahweh. And then, in a famous text of Isaiah 11, 2, speaking about the Messiah, the most exalted Jew, on him the Spirit of the Lord will rest, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and power, a spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. So the Messiah will be permeated by fear of the Lord. And obviously that means that fear of the Lord cannot be anything rudimentary. Granted, the New Testament will speak more in terms of love than of fear. That's true.

[14:17]

and it will introduce a totally new Trinitarian relation in which the believer is taken up into the very life stream of the Trinity. Nevertheless, the fear of the Lord is a very exalted biblical concept. And even in the New Testament, they will play with it. There's a text in the Mark, chapter 4 somewhere, this business about the storm on the lake. And then the disciples are quaking with fear, it says. And then he says to them, what are you afraid? Why are you so hot and bothered? This idea of being all, coming all unglued. And then finally it says, and then he calms the storm, and then it says, and then they feared with great fear, with And that was not anything bad.

[15:27]

That was the proper response. They feared with great fear. So you can see that this is a subtle idea and there's nothing simplistic about this. When Rudolf Otto was searching for the basic human religious experience, this German scholar of the history of religions, he chose for his exemplary Old Testament text, Isaiah 6. Rudolf Otto wanted to see if he could find a typical characteristic of the religious experience wherever it appeared, in any country. Does it have something in common wherever it appears? And so then he goes to the great texts of the world, religious texts, and he tries to see in the religious experience what do they have in common.

[16:33]

And he picks out Isaiah 6 for the text from the Jewish Bible. There the prophet reports on his first quintessential text. encountered with the Lord God. And no doubt we recall this scene. The temple is filled with the skirt of the Lord's robe. Angels are flying to and fro, crawling out, Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh is the Lord of hosts. Holy, holy, holy. Ado said Isaiah's reaction was, is complex. On the one hand, he is terrified, and he cries out, Woe to me, I am doomed, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts, I, a man of unclean lips, I who dwell among a people of unclean lips.

[17:41]

And so he is terrified. But he's not only terrified and repelled, he's also drawn. Because when God calls out, whom shall I send? He answers, send me. See, so Otto said, you see there, in the same experience, there is this complex paradoxical mixture of fascinans et tremendum. He is both attracted and repelled. And he said that he saw that same kind of complex reaction in the religious experience wherever it appeared in the world. It seems to me that this luminous experience is well chosen by Rudolf Otto as one of the most revealing in the Bible for primary religion.

[18:44]

because here God is experienced as the Holy Other, the one who both fascinates and terrifies. This God cannot be ignored and cannot be taken for granted. This God is no ten-pot idol to be manipulated. You know, because it's, and I think today, there's this tendency to present God sometimes as a sort of chump and sort of a comfortable companion. And the whole thing becomes sort of banal, bourgeois business. In fact, that's one of the great criticisms of the... the Reformed liturgy of the Catholic Church is that it lost its aura of mystery and that it was no longer fascinant et tremendum.

[19:53]

Well, I mean, that is an issue. And you used a mysterious language nobody understood, Latin. You turned your back on people. You mumbled. You used smoke. You used, and you have a lot of that stuff still, like your church is dark, it's luminous, you got that colored light. But very, you know, too often now you go to mass and the priest comes out and he says, hi. I said, oh, for crap's sake, I'm going back to bed. Hi, come on, give me a break. It's a heck of a way to start. So, yeah, you know, where the whole thing becomes just too casual, It is also instructive to notice Isaiah's reflection on himself, his reflex, I am a sinner. This does not just mean he has committed certain forbidden acts, but it means that compared to the All-Holy One, he is nothing.

[21:02]

He is nil, utterly powerless. He experiences creaturely dependence to the fullest. Now, I have to say that recently I've been chastised for this interpretation. There was an article, it's in the library there. It appeared in the last issue of the American Benedictine Review. I published the darn thing. I mean, nobody can say I'm not broad-minded. But anyway, in this article, he says that I have not really understood what it means to be a sinner. Just to say that I'm radically dependent is not good enough, and I agree with him. That's not quite the same thing. But on the other hand, I don't think to say I am a sinner is just to say I have done certain bad things either.

[22:09]

And I do believe that it's not bad, at least once in a while, even to make a confession in that sense that I really am a sinner. I'm not going to name a list of details here, but I want to say I really do present myself as a sinner. Okay, now, when the Master and St. Benedict take up Cassian's fear of the Lord, they greatly develop it. To read the first step of humility, you have to feel that this is one of the most powerful passages in the Holy Rule of St. Benedict. I think, in a sense, it is overwhelming. And in that sense, it may be a problem because I don't think that the fear of the Lord is the primary religious datum.

[23:22]

I think that the love of God is more primary and that if you haven't experienced the love of God and don't believe with all your heart that God loves you, then this tremendous first step could be damaging. It could be disconcerting. I want to read five verses from the first step. The first step of humility, then, is that a person keep the fear of God always before his eyes and never forgets it. He must constantly remember everything God has commanded, keeping in mind that all who despise God will burn in hell for their sins. And all who fear God have everlasting life awaiting them. When he guards himself at every moment from sins and vices of thought or tongue, of hand or foot, of self-will or bodily desire, let him recall that he is always seen by God in heaven,

[24:41]

and that his actions everywhere are in God's sight and are reported by the angels at every hour. What do we see in these five verses? Strong emphasis on God as the judge who sees all. the spotlight on the last judgment, the need to keep a close guard on ourselves. It is not terribly comforting. But I think we shouldn't make it what it is not, either. For example, Andrei Boreas points out that this very same constellation of ideas occurs no less than three other times in the rule.

[25:42]

It occurs once in the instruments of good works in chapter four. It occurs again in the first degree of humility toward the end. And it occurs in chapter 19, four times the same powerful concentration of spiritual themes. And he says that in every case, In his opinion, the key idea is mindfulness, memoir. Keep in mind that God exists and that God sees everything and that God sees me and all this. Now, I think that... these ideas have become sort of unbearable for many people. I took a kind of a risk.

[26:48]

I wrote an article and it's in the library there. It's in the dictionary of Catholic spirituality. They asked me to write the article on Benedict and spirituality and I felt I had to try to locate sort of the key because otherwise it would just be sort of a bunch of stuff thrown together. And I, for really for, you might say, formal reasons, because this theme occurred four different times, important places in the world, I chose this as the central leitmotif of the rule of St. Benedict, the fear of the Lord. And I thought, as soon as I published that, the people started throwing tomatoes at me. And so far, not one tomato. So far, not nothing. I don't think anybody's read it. We got this huge, big book, and why should they read my article?

[27:54]

But I wish they would read it and get angry at me and start cussing, and we could have a good argument. Luminous, the Saint Benedict, repeats these ideas several times. Never forget the fear of God and always remember the commandments, the judgment, and so on. It appears that the particular benedictine form of the fear of God is precisely to be mindful of God, to not forget God, oblivions. And in the twelfth step, we see this repeated. The monk is to constantly remember and confess that he is a sinner. It's repeated. So, you know, if you're moving from fear to love and then you go from the very last step, you've still got the fear of the Lord. I don't think it's anything to be put behind. Could we not say that the monk is therefore to be the opposite of the biblical fool?

[29:01]

The fool says in his heart, well, at least God is nowhere to be seen around here. I mean, I don't think the fool says that theoretically there is no God. I am an atheist and so forth. No, it's just like, well, I don't see God around here, so let's have a good time. It's just a sigh of relief that God can be safely ignored for the present in this out-of-the-way place. You know, I think that's what the fool is. He's simply... forgetful. Might not the monastery be seen as precisely a place, a style of life, a form where God must not and cannot be forgotten? Why else do we need to pray so often?

[30:04]

Why do we have all these sacred rituals? why are we listening constantly to the sacred scripture? We have purposely set up a lifestyle where God is unavoidable. The modern world, on the other hand, seems to me to be bent on the opposite, forgetting. I don't think it is militantly atheistic. I think it is militantly distracting. In fact, I think that is what the media is largely all about, is distraction. I don't care what it is. I mean, even the most serious programs ultimately appear to be entertainment. Unless you can convince people who are entertaining them, they won't watch. Isn't it true that a lot of what people do now is escapist? a kind of psychic babysitter, babysitting servant.

[31:11]

You know, it's incredible. I said this to somebody the other day. The poor people and like 75% of the people think that the TV is mindless. Its intellectual content is lousy. It's gross, you know, it's violent. It's too violent. It's too erotic and all this stuff. But then the next question, how much do you watch? Average four hours a day. Something very strange here. So anyway, before I become completely rabid up here, why don't I just quit? So anyway, these are my comments about the fear of the Lord. Maybe before I quit, I should just complete one idea, though. I agree that in some ways the fear of the Lord is unbearable. God is love, and our only responsibilities are not just vertical.

[32:23]

They are also to our neighbor, and we owe love to one another, and so forth. But St. Benedict also is well aware of that. And so even though he hammers away at the fear of the Lord, he then turns around and ensures that where do I encounter this fearsome Lord most surely? And then he starts, you know, then you find the Lord, for example, in the stranger, the traveler with hospitality or in the sick person. or in the youngest member of the community. Well, also in the abbot, of course. But I think that Benedict wants to show that the reason these people must be reverenced is because in them we encounter Christ, and this Christ is no one to be trifled with. And we ought not to be condescending.

[33:25]

You don't condescend to one who, you know, the Lord of the universe. You don't condescend. You are truly reverent to Christ. So Benedict is both extremely verticalized in his spirituality and also horizontalized. The social dimension is very strong because there's where we meet Christ. And I hope I'm not repeating myself, but I just... Well, I better quit. I better quit. Yes? One word for...

[34:28]

Not love. But love is not, there is a word for it, but it's not a very restrictive word. Oh, really? But for example, you have a missionary going into an African village, and with Christians, like Catholics, have a little hike. And you need to go into a homily time, telling a little boy, or probably a boy, you must honor. But they're using this word in the same way that means fear and love. And I expect that as they grow, at least grow religious to be an African Christian, as they grow in their appropriation of the faith, that Stainworthy takes on a new color in fear.

[35:36]

The father telling the four-year-old, you must fear the father. But if he stayed with the religion over a number of years, his attitude will be more like the father's. I just wanted to see what the applicants here would ask for any snow or an ocean on that. Go ahead. There was in me, in my own mother's hand, there was certainly love, and only a little point here, here. What it will say of giving us is all completely love. Interesting. Yeah.

[36:42]

I'm not just returning here. I think that, for example, in Benedict's Latin, Honor, we would translate out as respect. And so then you get this question of respecting persons. I mean, I think I did a study some years ago, and I published it in Cistercian Studies, in fact, called Human Rights in Benedict's Rule. And I just followed on or around, you know, to see what that was about. And so, yes. Yeah, right.

[38:03]

But, you know, I could also say that Christ occurs 120 times because I like... I think every time you get dominos in the rule, it could almost, many of those are certainly, Lord, you know, is ambiguous between Father and the Son. And, yeah, okay, but I don't, I guess as a spiritual dynamic or something, I don't know if I'd pick a person, even God. I mean, you could say, well, okay, God. But, yeah. Or then I think I'd say, well, the monk, because spratia occurs 150 times, you know. If we just want to go by numbers. But these are not just a single mention of fear, by the way. These are a constellation of these ideas of fear, mindfulness, judgment, sin, hell, and so forth. Well, I don't know. It's true that...

[39:04]

Unity is the most highly developed one in the sense of the biggest chapter, 70 verses long. And in that chapter, the first step is 30 verses. The first step is huge. But of course, it's true that just quantities and so forth don't make it. And of course, all this is subjective. No, true. And I have to say that if I'm going to claim that the fear of the Lord is kind of the center pole, then we've got ourselves a pretty austere spirituality. I think people today are going to say, oh, give me a break. But there's something about this and how to understand an era. But, for example, Christ in the rule is very austere. It's never Jesus, and it's never sort of his earthly dealings with people, but it's really his exalted Lord, and I think the judge, too.

[40:12]

And you know, if you sort of try to do a longitudinal study, you'll notice that, for example, the art of the period of the sixth century, especially Byzantine art, is also very austere. God is highly exalted. And like these absidal mosaics or like at Ravenna and so forth, it's very austere. So that is the way they related to God, but I don't think it rules out love at all. It's just that it's in a somewhat different structure than what we often think of, yes. Yeah, and they think that ultimately behind that

[41:33]

may be a need to not have what we call a low Christology because, after all, the problem was Arianism in Italy. The Goths are running up and down the peninsula in the sixth century, and these Goths are all Arian, and these Arians don't believe in the divinity of Christ, or they have a very low Christology. You know, that may be the basic reason, theologically, I don't know. Yes, Father? Looking at this from, I mean, there was, especially in Nigeria, there was humility. It's just, Professor Bob has always used to do with a .

[42:40]

A what? A . Oh. It means pushing yourself to . That's what Professor Bob is. Moving yourself to . Something like that. Now, it doesn't mean to . Well, where does humility come in? That's the opposite of this pushiness? Yeah, but what about humility, though? Is that just the mirror opposite of that attitude? Go ahead. Now, the son, the father friend his son, since this son or daughter of mine was born, he had never looked Who doesn't look at who?

[43:41]

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Oh. Then that, for us now, it might be, oh, it might be, you see? But no, in the local territory, it's taking us whether and not that you are born of this country or not older than you. So you did that, not looking at yourself, but it's always just a real issue of love. You don't regard it as degradation or it's nothing that makes you...

[44:56]

That's interesting. Yeah, you know, you see, somebody here in the first, after the first lecture or something said, well, you know, what does humility mean for Benedict? It's no easy thing to say. We've said... many, many things here, and it's a rich picture. And it has to be enriched by these various, like, comments about, you know, that's a kind of cultural comment there that really has some density about it. So I don't think definitions help much, but I think that these comments help a lot. Does he coerpulate his right to your honor?

[46:27]

Yeah, same thing. Yes? Yeah.

[46:47]

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