and the divine assistance fills with. I want to continue today about how we are supposed to love God with our whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and our whole strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. And that's easy enough from one point of view, especially if you're a just person, like Saint Joseph, who's a just man. If you're Abraham, Abraham never seems to have sinned, really, or done anything displeasing to God. God struck up covenants with him and built a mighty nation from him.

[01:02]

take a figure like Isaac, who doesn't seem to have done anything at all, ever, to displease God. The trouble begins with Jacob, who, right from the start, built a life, built his life on falsehood and cheating, you might say. And from then on in, I won't say it's downhill, but it's there are people more like to ourselves. Look at Moses, who's a great figure and very beloved of God, and yet Moses doubted at times, ran the other way at times, and in the end was denied the vision of the promised land. Or you take David. David is a man after God's own heart, but what a mess. Now, I want to look at David for just a second.

[02:07]

It's going to be a little discursive on David, because you look at the vocation of David at the very beginning there, and David was a wholesome character, a kid, a young man, and doesn't seem to have really had time to develop evil habits or whatever. I mean, not even to discover where his rebellion against God might be. He's pictured right from the beginning as being totally wholesome, and his career for the first several years is just astronomically good. Yes, God tries him, God tests him with this terrible relationship with Saul, which is really a wonderful study in human relationships, much more common than I think most people would think. It wasn't until David is completely secure and happy, so to speak, in God's love, that things start to go wrong.

[03:10]

And it's really despicable, some of the sins of David. You wonder, what happened to all this virtue? I mean, if God treated me like He treated David, I would never do that to God. I mean, if God gave me all that, I'd be grateful, I think. But then, you know, you never know. I mean, who knows? So there's David, and then there are the disciples, you know, just skipping ahead, pages upon pages, and they were, when they're first called, you know, Nathanael is an Israelite in whom there is no guile, and Peter and Andrew seem willing enough, imagine how much they gave, and what it cost them to just jump up at the word of the Messiah and follow him. So there doesn't seem to be any conversion, does there? At least initially. But later on, even after the resurrection, there's going to be plenty of conversion, plenty of time. Now if you think, well, St. Peter was galvanized by his denial and his repentance right at the time of the enactment of the Paschal Mystery, that's not to say that Peter never had any problems after that, because we know that in the Acts of the Apostles, he got himself into theological trouble there, and Paul called him on it.

[04:29]

So, Peter, yes, is a transformed individual, but some of his character traits, some of the structures of his personality never, never seem to leave him. Okay, the point I'm trying to make, and I'll get right to it, is that any relationship with God seems to me to have to start with repentance or conversion. There are a few exceptions in the tradition, capital T, you know, like Elijah, John the Baptist, Mary, the mother of the Savior, and all that. That's fine, those people are enjoying the, you know, the almighty bliss of God, that's great. But most of us, I would say all of us, unless you're going to put yourself among the 99 that have no need of repentance, now maybe you think, that you or people you know are among those 99. I am not, and I think most people that I deal with are not.

[05:31]

We're that one lost sheep that needs to be found, and that's how we start a relationship with God. And we darn well better continue in that kind of relationship, or there's going to be trouble. So, I'm taking parables like all the people who are crippled and blind and lame who are healed by Jesus, I'm taking those physical ailments as symbols or signs of some kind of moral depravity which God heals, which Christ heals and forgives. That's the whole point, it seems to me, of the miracle stories. And it's the whole point in some of the more important parables and stories that Jesus tells, or some of the things that happen to him and that he interprets for us, for our sake, as part of his teaching. And one of the most significant, it's paradigmatic, is Luke 7, 36 to 50, the sinful woman.

[06:34]

It seems to me that we can take that story, I've done this several times in retreats, Take that story and illustrate by examining it in close detail just what Jesus is up to when he calls somebody. Now, I want to make it clear that I'm not saying that everybody that is called by Christ is in rife sin, you know, just really egregious kind of outstanding moral depravity and that God lifts them up, the great sinner. A thing like Augustine or Mary Magdalene or this woman in Luke 7. I'm not saying that, but I am saying that once we're called, even though we were raised, you know, good Christians, good Catholics, and we never committed mortal sin or whatever that might mean, and, you know, we do everything we're supposed to do, we're good conforming people, and we come to the monastery and receive a monastic vocation, and then we go through novitiate, even if then we don't have any hard time, and we go through simple profession and solemn profession, we take these three vows,

[07:41]

of stability, obedience, and conversion of life, or conversatio morum, however you're going to interpret that, we vow ourselves to monastic life, I'll bet you more often than not the problems have already begun. And even though you're righteous and God has preserved you from really serious rebellion, then it's time to start the real journey. And any real journey with Christ is going to mean this painful kind of self-knowledge that, yes, indeed, I am a sinner. And that's the only way I go to God, as a sinner. Or, what is the use of the Paschal Mystery? If we think we're outside of the Paschal Mystery and Jesus is not a Savior for us, well then, I think you're in heresy. It's that simple. We're all sinners. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and God has sent Christ to show us how to rectify it. Now, that's not to say that everybody has to be an egregious sin for this reality to come home.

[08:43]

It's just that you can be a very righteous person and live a very holy, wholesome life, and still there is this journey that you have to go on. Even Therese of Auxerre, who was told by her confessor that she had never sinned mortally, Vambalthasara went through all these contortions to show that she did know what sin was. I think that's a theological waste of time. Of course she knew what sin was. That's the basis on which her whole spirituality is built, really. Confidence about her forgiveness from God. That's what the competence is based on. We lose focus if you spend time on 16th, 17th, 18th century piety, because it's so obsessed with perfectionism. And I have nothing against that. I have nothing against the perfection that we're supposed to reach in the rule. I believe that. I think that should be held up as an ideal, and by God, I hope to reach it myself one day. But that's not where you start.

[09:44]

And if you hold that up to people and fool them into thinking that they really can be that without going this deep, dark route of conversion from sin and a knowledge of sin in their own lives, well, then I don't think there's much help. Okay, so that's where I want to start. I'm going to say that in order to love our neighbor in fraternal charity, we have to start to investigate how God in Christ can help us do that, and you only do that by taking a good hard look at this inward journey to which we're called, which begins with self-knowledge, the knowledge that I'm a sinner. Okay, and that knowledge is anyone who's really serious about the spiritual life has to go through this, this dark, deep, deep experience that I am separated from God and have to come back to God, from whom I was separated by the slope of disobedience. The prologue of the rule is absolutely clear on that. Okay. So, I want to take this story in Luke 7 and examine some of the details.

[10:49]

Now, here you have a woman. The Gospel's text says that she was a sinner. A woman in this city was a sinner. And she heard that Jesus was dining at the Pharisee's house. Now before anything else happens, knowing that she's going to get up and go to the Pharisee's house and go up to Jesus and cry on his feet and dry his feet with her hair and anoint, his feet with the ointment and cover them with kisses and all that. We know that's going to happen. But I want to look at what must have taken place, what is implied in the text before she ever got there. See, something happened to this person. First of all, she was known in the city as a sinner. And something must have happened in the privacy of her home, maybe even while she was sinning or something, that she understood also that she was a sinner.

[11:49]

And I'm saying that that is the first call of Christ to that person, the recognition of her sin, the recognition of her depravity. We are pretty safe in assuming that she was a prostitute. It doesn't say that in the Gospel text, but it's pretty strongly implied. What other kind of woman would be a public sinner in that society? So this is a woman who knows what sin is and has not just kind of sin like embezzlement or stealing, forging artworks or something. This is sin with her own body. This is real depravity. Okay, so she understands, somehow, somehow she's suddenly given a scale of values in which she falls short. She is suddenly aware that she's a sinner. Now, you can do a number of things with that kind of knowledge.

[12:56]

You know, if any of us are visited with that kind of deep understanding of my separation from God, a number of things can follow, and often do. In her case, I would say, that she probably wept deeply in great sorrow and contrition. And why? Because there was probably some kind of deep stinging remorse that kept her fueled for all that was going to follow. This is something that went to the very depths of her being, if we can understand what was going to happen in the story. In other words, I'm trying to describe the basis on which the rest of the action took place. There had to be something that happened before she ever got to the Pharisee's house. And I'm suggesting that God touched her, called her, maybe she didn't even know who it was, but she must have known something about this Jesus of Nazareth before she ever got to the house. What motivated her to go? How did she know who he was, even?

[13:58]

She must have heard. And the very thought of him, or the mention of his name, indicated to her that she was a sinner. Opened her eyes, so to speak. So the very beginnings of her conversion are this tremendous sorrow and knowledge about who and what she had become. And so then a number of things follow from this initial sorrow. It's deep, deep, right to the depths of her being sorrow. The first is a kind of transformation. You know, when you are suddenly caught up short, when any of us... I can remember one time when I was working hard to establish a musical career and And I can still remember the hurt and the smart.

[14:59]

That's why, 30 years later almost. And I was preparing for a big concert series. It was going to put me on the map in New York. And I played this preparatory recital. No critics there. It was just I had set this up among friends. It was in a church, but there was some public there, some audience there. But I was more interested in the critics, my own friends that I had asked to come and hear this performance. And this was a couple of months before I was ready to launch this big series, which had to go well. This was kind of my debut. And so I was playing Bach works. I was tired, it was in the middle of the summer, and I just was, at that point, resting on my laurels. I was working very hard. And I just started to get a little... I was getting sloppy.

[16:05]

I was depending too much on all this practicing that I was doing. I wasn't paying really careful enough attention to the interpretation of the music. And I was just caught off guard, and I played, and I thought it was okay. And I went out later with some of the people who were there, and they said, well, it was just a disaster. Didn't you hear it? And one of them said to me, what edition did you use? What's going on? It really, and then one of them said, can we get together tomorrow? And I said, sure, yeah. Well, he took me for a long walk in Central Park and he said, you know, a number of us have been following your career up till now. And he said, we've been watching, you've been overworking, you're learning far too much repertoire, you're relying on fast fingers and all that, but there's no soul in it. In fact, it's pretty boring. In fact, we think that if you don't really get your act together and go back and do some deep study and interpretation, you're going to get nowhere.

[17:10]

And this whole series that you're playing is just going to be a huge farce. Well, I can tell you. Well, that just destroyed me. It really did. I couldn't sleep for three or four days. I just didn't know what to do. I mean, my whole sandcastle of life was just washed away in one wave. It was horrendous. Horrendous. And the first splash just sent me sprawling on my rear end. I mean, I was several days in kind of shock. Because, you know, you've built your whole life on these kinds of expectations. I'll never, never forget it. And I remember, the slow, it was very slow, very slow, but after about three days, I woke up one morning, just couldn't even, couldn't practice, it was two days. Third day, I kind of, kind of started to come to, I said, well, I have some choices.

[18:11]

Am I going to accept that criticism? And if I am, if it's true, then am I going to just let it overwhelm me and give up? Or by God, am I going to show them? I'm going to take what they said and by damn, I'm going to be the best Bach interpreter that ever existed. And I'll put soul and I'll do whatever I have to do. And I did. Now, yeah, the rest of it I kind of made good. I won't say it was what I really wanted, but I mean, I did turn it around. But I really owe everything to that pivotal point, that pivotal concert that was such a disaster, and in that kindness of those people who were my friends to really be honest with me at that point. It completely destroyed my ego for the time being. But it made me delve deep into my own resources, which I really didn't know were there. Often you don't have to deal with this kind of deep, deep, dark stuff most of the time.

[19:15]

But when you get knocked off your feet and you kind of lose your breath, so to speak, what are you going to do? And I found some resources and the depth and the strength that I never even knew I had. I didn't even know. I was too young to know I was even operating off of it. I was just running for my life, my musical life. I recovered and, you know, forgot all about, couldn't think, couldn't stand to think of that night when they criticized me, so just still smarts as I think about it. Because when you, you know, you suddenly, it's like, like in, it's like when we were just going through this discernment process for my re-election at MEPCAN, we went through hell. I mean, we went through six months of this stuff, of bringing in facilitators, and I was on the block for six months, and I hated every minute of it. I'm the one who started it, because I knew we had to do this, but I hated it. It's terrible, and I remembered so often, I remembered back when I was a teenager, or in my early 20s, that experience. I kept saying, be prepared, because it could happen now.

[20:18]

After about a couple meetings, after a month or two, we could just decide that you are not really worth being the superior here. You've done certain things, but you've really lost the community. I was really prepared to hear that. And then I was thinking what I would do. First of all, how I would handle the depression, how I would handle this sense of failure, and then where would I go? I really don't have a monastic home anymore. What would I do? But I was prepared to be completely leveled flat out. Because I've been, that's happened to me a number of times in my life, where you just, all of a sudden, God kind of, whoop, and you just sprawl out, and you have nothing, or you think you have absolutely nothing. And you're forced to go back down into reserves that you usually don't operate out of. So, I'm speaking from experience here, and I'm sure all of us have had that experience. And I think that's what happened to this woman. And she was knocked off her feet, but then that's when the excitement starts.

[21:23]

You see, instead of feeling sorry for herself, like if I had been told, we really don't want you here anymore in this monastery, I was trying to think, well, how would I survive? Because my ego is so, I know myself well enough that I'm so fragile in so many ways. I mean, I have a lot of strengths, but I also have an awful lot of weaknesses. And somebody hits those weaknesses, you know, where I have, I have been, harmed through my life, someone starts to push those buttons, and I lose it. And I know that I lose it. And you try to be prepared. And I'm waiting for the day when it all crashes down at once, and I'm completely helpless, and I wonder what God is going to do for me then. But I've learned at this point to trust it, that God will help. God will be there. And that's when God is truly a Savior. Okay, for this woman, she could have groveled in self-pity, like I'm always afraid I'm going to do when something awful happens.

[22:24]

She could have groveled in despair. She could have been depressed for weeks, gone and taken pills, gone to a therapist. She could have been laid out flat and never done, just consumed with this self-degradation and this sense of sin and nonsense. But she didn't. What's implied in the Gospel story is, number one, there was a transformation that took place, and all of a sudden, this woman became a full-blooded woman, and was raised to a height that she had never known before. And it was from that height, instantly done for her by God, that she looked down and she could see the depths from which she had climbed. And that fueled the remorse and the sorrow all the more. But there's a tremendous difference between crying for my sin and feeling sorry for myself and absorbed, self-absorbed with pity and dark feelings down on the floor.

[23:29]

There's quite another thing when I allow God to raise me up to my full stature and from there look down and see from where I've climbed and then be sorry. Now I'm suggesting that this woman achieved, by God's grace, a tremendous transformation in stature there. She suddenly saw all the nonsense, and she suddenly realized that she didn't have to live that way any longer. She got free, and she stood up, as Gregory the Great says, completely straight in Christ, because it was He who called her by name. She stood up straight, and from that height she looked down to see this terrible degradation from which she had been saved. Okay, that's the first implication, a transformation. The second was of her womanhood, that she suddenly realized what it was to be a woman, and a woman in a woman's body, and she was completely transformed.

[24:29]

See? And we're going to see how that works later on. that all of a sudden she didn't have to... there was no shame any longer about her prostitution. I mean, there was sorrow. But this woman suddenly took on the strength and the power of womanhood. That's certainly implied in the text. And the third is what I would call strength for God to rebuild this person in his own image and likeness. Now that requires a heck of a lot of personal resources per psychological strength. That doesn't happen in people who can't stand or who can't support the heat of the approach of God. When God comes near to heal the human person, there are introductory signs. The heat starts to get turned up. And God then starts to empower people to take charge of their own lives.

[25:32]

We're not talking here about God zapping someone to the point where they're not involved in the transformation. I think that's wrong. What happens is, as God comes close, as the withering heat of God, of the living God, starts to come close to a person, they get sorry for their sin. That's the first thing that happens, healing. But then they receive strength like molten iron. They're melted and smelted in the fire to the point where they're strong enough to take this union that's going to happen. I'm using mystical imagery here that's quite common, but it's very, very telling imagery because, as you know, the weld is always stronger than the original material. And when God starts to come close with this heat, it's for strength. It's to give the person strength to take the transformation and then to take hold of their lives. And we're not, you know, the monastic tradition here, this is redolent of the monastic tradition, we're semi-Pelagians, remember, in the monastic tradition. We're not completely helpless and dependent on God's grace.

[26:38]

We are, but part of God's grace is it makes us strong, it gives us power. Okay. feminine though she is, starts to exhibit this tremendous strength that you find in women, these frail little things, you know, you wouldn't even think they could have strength to bear a baby, who carry the family through years and years and years of an unfaithful husband and, you know, they do all the work, they do all the... Women who are usually so emotionally messy Yeah, that is part of the woman's nature, but there's also underneath there, don't fool with it, because there's strength of steel under there too, which is often called on, and women do exhibit this, it's tremendous. I like to point that out because we are always, in the tradition, we are always feminine to God's mood. And as frail as our egos are, And as tender as we are, deep down inside, where our underparts never see the light of the sun, because we never want to let God get too close to that deep down inside place where the will resides, you see.

[27:46]

When God finally lifts up all that overlay and lets the light, his own light, shine deep down in there, are we going to have this, or are we just going to melt away? There are a lot of people that who you think are big, bustling, courageous people, oh, and the chips are down, just melting to slime. We know that. And we know when the heat is on, who are the real people? So I'm saying that when the heat was on with this woman, she was found to have what it takes. What it takes is the strength to endure the presence of God, the living God. Okay, so she made it, and in three steps, transformation, womanhood, and strength, she's going to be galvanized into action, and that's exactly what happened. Then the text continues, she went to the Pharisee's house and took with her an alabaster jar of ointment. Now, she went to the Pharisee's house, she was She knew who she was in her own right, and all the prescriptions of the law didn't matter to her.

[28:52]

She was empowered, she was emboldened. She shouldn't have done this if she was one of these wimpish kind of figures. She would never have thought to go to the Pharisee's house, even though she knew that that's where Jesus was, because you didn't do that. This woman was unclean, and she was ready to render unclean anyone, any male that she touched. Even if she wasn't a sinner, a woman was not allowed to touch a man in public. according to the rabbinical teaching, supposedly the law of Moses. She just went beyond all that, never even let that bother her, just went right to the Pharisee's house, knew what she was going to do, and took an alabaster jar of ointment. So she knew what she was going to do. She was ready, so moved and so galvanized into action, and transformed in her life, that she was going to do the most womanish, the most feminine thing that you could possibly do is wash Jesus' feet with her hair, with her tears, dry them with her hair.

[29:53]

I mean, can you think of anything more sensuous than that? Now, if this is a woman who's still dripping of impurity, I don't think she would have done that. This is a woman who in one fell swoop is totally transformed and integrated. and now ready to use the money that she made in sin to buy this extravagant gift, to do the exorbitant thing, the magnanimous thing, wasted, to show that such a rich repentance had taken place in her, and the integration was moving at such a quick pace that she had to do something on the outside that matched what was going on on the inside. This isn't the kind of transformation or conversion experience that happens in my room. ...transformed and integrated, and now ready to use the money that she made in sin to buy this extravagant gift, to do the exorbitant thing, the magnanimous thing, waste it. to show that such a rich repentance had taken place in her and the integration was moving at such a quick pace that she had to do something on the outside that matched what was going on on the inside.

[31:08]

This isn't the kind of transformation or conversion experience that happens in my room and then as soon as someone knocks on the door and I'm brought back to reality and I kind of forget about it. I may remember it a couple days later. It was a great period of Lexio or something. This went to the bottom. This woman never would forget what happened to her. And it galvanized her from potentiality into actuality, to use that Thomistic thinking there. And it made her do something concretely. Now, in good theology, based on the Acts of the Apostles, we know that anything concrete done in our lives is the work of the Holy Spirit. So here we have a complete conversion experience full of the Spirit, really. So she gets up and she's going to do this wonderful thing, and she's going to bypass all sorts of... she's going to be more than a woman. She's going to be a crusader, really. She's going to break through the tradition.

[32:10]

That's not bad, from a prostitute to a... [...] You know, he knows what's going on, according to the text, and she approaches from the back, because we know that in those days, people, when they were eating, were reclining a table and their feet were draped out behind them. So that's how that detail in the text, which is right there in the Greek text, she came up behind Jesus, it says that, came up behind Jesus and began to wash his feet with her hair. Now, he felt this before he saw it. And I love that detail because, of course, this is the living God, but what did the others, what was their reaction? You know, they saw her. Presumably, the entrance is back there, and Jesus is here with his feet behind him, and they saw her come in.

[33:13]

And Jesus probably kept on eating. And what would you do if your bare feet were exposed behind you, and all of a sudden you felt wet? I mean, think of the scene! It is just the most... I don't think Zeffirelli could even really capture Or if he was Christian enough to think about the text, I mean, here's a movie scene, beyond all movie scenes, and no one's ever done it. I can't understand why, because there's so much drama. You don't even have to say anything, the eyes. What would you do? And then if you felt this hair on your feet, I don't know, but it just, it kind of boggles the imagination. And then to see, watch these jerks, watch these Pharisees, look at this and what was going on. Now, to me, this is kind of an exposure of the love between the Creator and the creature on the most exalted level that you can possibly imagine, right out in the open for everyone to see.

[34:17]

And there's no shame. There's no kind of, let's go and do this in a closet so no one sees it. This is the creator calling his daughter to come home and to make up. I mean, it's a conversion scene like no other in the tradition. And it lasts. And then, of course, we know that what happens, the dialogue, because the Pharisee immediately says, Master, don't you realize that this woman is a sinner? With all the denim. of self-righteousness, and then Jesus has this little dialogue with him. He talks about the two creditors. I'll pass that over for the sake of time. I want to get to the point where Jesus says, Simon, I have something to tell you. When I came in You gave me no water to wash my feet. This woman has been washing my feet with her tears. You gave me no towel to wipe my feet.

[35:18]

She's been drying my feet with her hair. You gave me no kiss. She hasn't stopped kissing my feet since she came in. And you gave me no oil to anoint my face. And she's been anointing my feet with alabaster, with an alabaster jar of oil. Therefore I tell you, and this is the punchline, she has been forgiven. Though her sins were many, and they were many, she has been forgiven." Now the forgiveness took place while she was still in her room. And that's the point about the text, and the Greek text is clear there. Though her sins were many, they have been forgiven. Therefore, therefore she has shown such great love, and this gesture is a sign of her love. Now don't get the sequence wrong there. Jesus did not forgive her her sin because she paid out this money for an alabaster jar of ointment, or because she was being so repentant there kissing his feet. No, the forgiveness had already happened. God makes the first move, always in our lives.

[36:20]

It's God who makes the first move. And if you think that Jesus was moved to forgive her because of this gesture, you're wrong. The gesture is because she had already been forgiven, and she had known Jesus in her heart. somehow before that episode ever happened. The gesture of the drying, the washing, the drying, and the anointing of the feet is in response to Jesus' forgiveness, God's forgiveness in her life. Though her sins were many, they had been because the one who loves little, the one who's forgiven little, loves little. The one who's forgiven a lot, loves a lot. And if that's If that's the equation that Jesus gives us, well, I don't mind being a great sinner, and I'll find out as much about my sin as I can, if that's what's in store for me. If by being forgiven a lot, I can love a lot. You see?

[37:22]

No risk, no love. That seems to be the way it happens. That's the gospel. And the Christian tradition has sought to take that gospel story and, in the light of the Holy Spirit, to develop it. And so I'm going to give a little of St. Bernard here, because it's very, very important teaching. It's usually described as mystical teaching, but whatever your definition of mysticism is, I don't think it's so mystical. I think it's what happens to every Christian, if you're willing. and able, because I think this is really to parse and to diagram the move of God in our lives through baptism. Okay, St. Bernard takes this gospel story and he says, you know, the woman was emboldened to come into the Pharisee's house. She did all sorts of things that women weren't supposed to do. Even St. Bernard knew that. But she didn't stop at the kiss of the feet.

[38:25]

Because what she saw there was not just a man reclining a table, but the Savior who was going to be crucified for her sake. And once you've got a love that's established between the human heart and Christ the Savior, whatever happens to Christ happens to me. So there's this complete identification between the human heart and Christ the Saviour. So Saint Bernard, true to form, always begins with the passion. The woman, who stands for the Christian soul, began by kissing the crucified feet, anointing them with the ointment, because they were for the burial and all that. emboldened, further emboldened, she doesn't stop at the feet. She goes up and starts to kiss the hands. You see, she's gotten past the degrading kiss on the floor.

[39:27]

God is starting to raise her up. And in love, and this is the point that St. Bernard is making, love makes people bold. It makes them go out of the boundaries, push out the boundaries. It makes them more than they are. This is very trenchant language here. It pulls them up out of themselves to the point where they do more than they ever thought they could. See, from the kiss of the feet, the woman is pulled up out of a strong surge of love, and she doesn't care how outside of propriety it is. She wants the hands. And of course, once she gets to the hands, she's not going to stop. And here St. Bernard, he can't refrain from bringing in the whole Druze. She wants the kiss of the mouth. And of course, this is the Sermon on the Song of Songs. That's where he's leading to. Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth. Real love.

[40:29]

once it starts with repentance, that the kiss of defeat cannot stop, that it's for real, it just, by its very nature, it's going to pull out more and more and more, it's going to kind of blossom, it's going to kind of multiply, it's just going to, in a riot of reproduction, it's just going to go all out of control until it gets what it wants. And God is one who sets up that trajectory, so to speak, because he sets up the goal, which is union, which is the kiss of the mouth in the Holy Spirit. So the woman, as St. Bernard says, breaks all the laws. She's a humble creature. The Christian soul is a humble creature. thirst or pine for this kiss of God, this kiss of the Holy Spirit. But, deep is calling on deep, you know, in the roar of many waters. Suddenly, or in some mysterious fashion, God identifies deep in the human heart, like He did in the heart of this woman, some deep, deep strength that she didn't even know was there.

[41:38]

Some bottomless, bottomless heart pit where God can make His dwelling. where the power of sin never prevailed, because we're never completely deformed. We may have fallen in original sin, but the tradition is constant that the human person was not totally degraded. There was something to build on there, and that something to build on is God's breath of life, which he gave us in the beginning. So that suddenly fires up and becomes a furnace of power and strength, you see. So once God starts to make his move in the human heart, then this conflagration takes place, because of the very nature of love, as Saint Fernand says. Then it just takes over, and finally the Christian soul mounts up to this place where it has no right to be. This is the living God. This is the transcendent God. Normally, as we had it in Exodus 32 and 33, the soul would be melted, the human person wouldn't stand it.

[42:43]

But, you know, galvanized somehow by this tremendous strength, we go out of ourselves and become so much more than we ever thought we were. Now, it doesn't last, of course. I mean, we are emboldened, we mount up to the kiss of the mallet, and we fall down in a kind of exhaustion, but we start again, and we start again, and we start again until it happens again. That's what I mean when I say, as we looked at it last night, love is episodic, always. It's not that I'm suddenly taken out of this life and measured by holiness, some kind of holiness scale, and see how much how much holiness is stored up in my soul, and you know how silly that kind of imagery is. I don't know what kind of imagery we carry around with us when we think about death and meeting the Savior, but it's not going to be some kind of, well, let's use it over here as if you're in a doctor's waiting office, and then you'll be examined.

[43:45]

No, it's, what is it going to look like when sight of God is restored? And you run as if to a familiar friend, or you don't, out of shame. I don't know, I think it's going to be something like that, episodic, more than this kind of impartial cold weighing in the balance whether or not we're holy. I don't know, but it seems to me it's going to be a recognition of friends or nothing. Okay. I want to zero in on, because it's going to be important for what we're going to do tonight, This idea of being taken out of myself, being made more of myself than I ever thought I could. And being suddenly whole, psychologically, spiritually, physically. I may even use that. And I don't mean just in the sense of old limbs become young and all that. I'm thinking more in terms of the ability to accomplish what I want with my body.

[44:51]

If it's virtue I want in my body, God will give me, if I keep pursuing this journey long enough, God will give me the power. I mean, God will work all sorts of miracles, but gradually God will also give me the power to make my own changes. To me, that's very important in the spiritual life. That's not to deny God's power, to say that that's, I think, That's how God works. It's not just a question of being that. And even if it is, like with Saint Augustine, all of a sudden, not in debauchery and drunkenness, but in Christ Jesus, whatever passage that was in Romans 13, 5, that Augustine heard, tole legia, he was sent to pick up the book when he heard the little kid saying toleleji and he suddenly read it and he was suddenly empowered, the grab of the flesh suddenly left him. Yeah, but I'll bet you in his own life if he could have admitted it, and maybe we'll find that out someday, that there was a time when the power of God felt, he felt it anyway, that it left him and he had to do it on his own.

[46:04]

I really do believe that. that God eventually lets us know that his strength is inside and that we can do it. A big part of his transformation is the fact that we are suddenly transformed and we have the power. This is not very Lutheran, but I think in the mystical tradition that's what you find. Okay, so tonight I want to look at the prodigal son. and examine some more of these issues of transformation, of psychological strength that's given, and a kind of, I'll use it in our sense, an ecstasy. As Christ is a going out from God and the bridge builder to us, so we are called to be the same kind of to have the same kind of relationship with God, we're called out of ourselves to be brought up to God.

[47:11]

As God, in the structure of the Trinity, has done this ecstasy, this going out from Himself to reach out to us, so we also, in order to meet Him, like we have this great feast today of the meeting, So also, for us to come, I won't say halfway, because we don't know what the percentage is, but it's a kind of, we too are called out by God, called out of ourselves, to the point where we can have this divine relationship with God. We are Kapok's day at that point. Okay, so let that be enough for now. Our help is in the name of the Lord.

[47:51]

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