Okay. We've talked about the structure of God's love in the Trinity, how it's a going out of the Father to the Son, the Son to the Father, and that relationship resulting in or being the possession of the Holy Spirit And then we saw how God's love for us is the going out of Christ from God to the world and involving all of us in that structure of love. And it's not that God did this, I mean, I'm sure God did it with some kind of care and planning, if you take the Rublev trinity to be any indication of that kind of speculation.

[01:02]

That's supposed to be the Trinity deciding to send the Son to save the world. But there's also this aspect, if we're going to identify God's love in the way that we've been looking at it, there's also the aspect of joy and anticipation and even excitement. enthusiasm to include us. It's not like God is saying, well, these poor blokes, you know, I guess I'll have to, but he just kind of seems to be running towards us with a kind of force that if we could really feel it or understand it in the spirit would really brighten the socks off us, I think. And I'm getting that from scripture. You remember in Hebrews 12, 2, for the joy, for the sake of the joy that was set before him, Christ suffered the cross, endured the shame, and all of that. So there's a real indication there in the Revelation that Christ, despite all that he suffered, and all of the, in his humanity, the doubts and the temptations and the agony, nevertheless, as the Word, as the second person of the Trinity is kind of

[02:13]

running towards us, running towards our salvation with the speed of a sprinter and with the joy of the Holy Spirit. So there's that idea too. So often we are lethargic in our lives, lethargic in our bodies, lethargic in our service because we're tired or we're bored or we're afraid. And yet, this life of God And this is not to be confused with some kind of fanaticism. The life of God, as it's communicated to us in the church, is full of energy and warmth and heat and speed and illumination and enthusiasm, the right kind of enthusiasm. It is really the stuff of life. Okay, so that's true. then we also know that, as I've been trying to show, that's the structure of life and that's who God is.

[03:19]

Then we also love God in the same way, in a reflected way. I don't want to say the same way, but in a sense we do love in the same way now that we love in Christ. That's the whole point. We don't love on our own. We love now theologically in Christ because of our incorporation into Christ. It's Christ who loves in us, not we who love God. It's God loving God, or as St. Augustine said in the Eucharist, it's Christ, head and members, offering up Christ, head and members, to God. We can't be separated now, since the Paschal Mystery, we can't be separated from Christ, that's who we are. Or, to fight that, to deny that, is to run in the opposite direction, is to put oneself in the deepest kind of futility, because the reality is that we are in Christ whether we like it or not.

[04:21]

You can deny it, as Sarge did, but to what purpose? God's not going to... It's just like, you know, the boxer, you know, the little kid and the bully. The bully's standing there, the little kid fighting, and the hand is... You can shadow box all you want, but it's not going to matter. All right, so that's the structure of our love. We ought to be able to start to see that not only is Christ in Christ, do we love God the way Christ has loved us, in this ecstasy this is going out of, and going back up to God in Christ. But we love each other that way, too. And I tried to explain the four marks that you look for for this kind of ecstasy. It's when I, in my service or in my love of others, become bigger than myself because of God's gift in me. And so the marks, as I said last night, are We find that we can do the impossible, number one. Number two, we find that we can't always do the impossible.

[05:24]

We're called at certain times and certain places that love is episodic. It has its moments. And three, that love is always magnanimous, exaggerated. I hate to even use the term Mediterranean, but it has that quality about it. Semitic, if you will. And fourth, that love is justified by Christ in some way, shape, or form. Now, when you have... I want to spend today on human relationships. When you have human relationships, people trying to deal with one another, you have, in Christ anyway, you have the idea that it's okay to discern the presence and action of Christ in a human encounter. In fact, in every encounter, but this kind of love and this kind of perspective invites the discernment of an encounter with Christ in the midst of a human encounter.

[06:27]

Okay, so it's okay to discern the presence and action of Christ in a human encounter. Secondly, it's okay to act with the full assurance in faith that Christ is going to be with me. No risk, no love. It's okay to act to do something. Third, well, let me just dwell on that a little bit. You know, so often with the pastoral care that abbots and superiors have, or priors, whatever, and the bishops of the church, so often people are afraid to discern that in conflict might be Christ People are even more afraid to act because they might get burnt, forgetting that it's no longer their action, but it's the action of Christ. How often I see that. I work closely with the diocese in Charleston. You know, people, instead of, you know, everyone is determined not to look silly or to get their hands, their fingers burnt, so they don't act.

[07:37]

And egregious things happen. All right, so it's okay to discern the presence and action of Christ. It's okay to act if you believe in that the presence and action of Christ is there. It's okay to lose. That's the big one. It's okay in a human encounter, in a fight, if you want to call it, as John Courtney Murray would say, in an argument, a civil argument, it's okay to lose. St. Paul said that. You take someone to court, you who are Christians, because you want to win a lawsuit, why not suffer loss? As a child of God, God will take care of you. In the optic of God, who wins and who loses? When might and pride and greed win out, that's no victory. That's not even a Pyrrhic victory. That's shame and disgrace for a Christian. All right, so it's okay to lose, and fourthly, it's okay to give, to give of my very substance, to give of my life to the point where I seem to lose something that I need.

[08:48]

Now, love has those characteristics, and a human encounter might have those characteristics, if we discern, number one, that we are in the presence and action of Christ. So, that's how I'd like to view what I'm going to say about human relationships. I'd like to get it a little bit deeper, or tease it out a little more, by suggesting that everything that we do in Christ, because our world is sacramental now because of the Paschal Mystery, everything that we do in Christ makes us a co-heir with Christ. And I want to emphasize this fact that we are so closely united with Christ that ontologically, metaphysically, we cannot be separated. And therefore, the things we do cannot be separated from the Lord Jesus.

[09:48]

If our love is going to have any meaning at all, then it's love in Christ for another. And we show not just ourselves to one another, but we show Christ to one another, and we share Christ to one another. In all our human differences, but you know, God never said that it all has to be the same. It all has to be like God, but what does that mean? Has any of us ever seen God? Has any of us ever seen that there might be... Has anyone ever seen God to the point we could deny that there's multifaceted aspects to God? No, no one has seen God. So all we have is our human variety, the tremendous differences that we are. Does that mean that Christ cannot be present there? Does that mean that when you have two people who are trying to be friends, or they're trying to argue out something, or they're trying to, especially in the context of a monastic community, that Christ isn't there?

[10:52]

So, this idea of co-air with Christ, and that action, that human encounter, almost a sacrament going up to God, He prays on Thanksgiving, that's the important thing. And I think that, you know, we never want to lose that aspect, that possibility in our human encounter. We can't keep on that wavelength all the time, but we can get there frequently. and see in a moment, in a grace-filled moment that an encounter might be a sacrament in almost the fullest sense of the term. We'll see how that can be later on. It might be that in any And all human life, any episode, negotiations in Bosnia, secret negotiations in the Vatican to appease the angry Americans, both right and left, and that does happen. All the behind-the-scenes negotiations of any kind of institution, when there's conflict or when there are things that have to be judged and discerned,

[12:04]

there's always the possibility of the presence and action of Christ. See, if someone is ready to do these four marks that I talked about, the discernment, the action, the possibility of loss and losing and being a fool, and the giving of one's substance. In fact, whenever someone is willing to die or to take the higher ground, you know, to take the higher ground and to be bigger than life, as I talked about last night, then there's the possibility of Christ being in that encounter. In fact, it goes like this, you know, it's the high road, certainly, that one is asked to take if there's going to be, if this is going to be a sacrament of Christ, will be the high road from which I can see what to do. It's going to be the high road, the person who is suddenly bigger than life, who's going to be able to act and to do the right thing from that perspective.

[13:09]

It's going to be the person who has grown bigger than the situation who knows that it's okay to lose. Because, you know, it's not that I'm willing to lose and go down in humiliation and defeat. Yeah, that's part of it. But most people aren't going to do that willingly. They'll only do it if they know you know, that okay, it's okay to lose the battle if they can win the war. And the war is bigger than all of us. And the war is what's going to be the best for this situation, regardless of personal loss or gain. Try this one, try that on any human encounter, even in the monastery. You know, we're told in chapter 72 to anticipate one another in honor. No one doing what he thinks is best for himself and doing it according to his own opinions, but always doing it according to what somebody else thinks is best. That's really hard.

[14:11]

We all know that's impossible. We give it lip service, of course, but it's impossible because it means that, you know, I'm a carpenter. I know how to split wood. I know how to get that stove going. And Brother X just arrives, and he thinks he knows. He hasn't been doing it for two months. I've been doing it for ten years. The wise monk, the really gracious monk, is going to say, OK, Brother, you know. And when the guy falls on his face and comes and asks for help, well, then maybe I can give. But to insist that, no, I've been here longer than you, and I know how to do it. Now, you get two men together, and they'll bullet out until someone gives in. I mean, this is... Women act differently on that school, on chapter 72. They have a different dynamic altogether. Father Mark might have told you that yesterday. Different, there's a different kind of dynamic completely. But men, guys, just, you know, bullet out. So this is my turf, my place, I'm going to do it my way, and you're going to get scarce.

[15:12]

We do this all day long. If you're halfway normal, that's what happens. I'm sure we all chuckle, but we do that. At Metkin, the big thing is driving. Who's going to drive to town? The big thing is to get one over on the abbot and say to me, you sit in the back seat, I'm driving. So I took that for a couple of years, and I thought, you know, in one moment of weakness, by damn, I'm going to show them who's boss. So I just got out and said, oh, get out of the car. I'm driving. And no one else ever drive in this car again. You know, this kind of boom. But monks do this kind of thing, and it's just part of who we are as human persons, as men. And the Gospel is saying, Blessed are the meek. The Gospel, according to St. Benedict's interpretation, is saying, try a bigger one on.

[16:15]

And you know what happens? You don't become a wimp then, and you don't become less than a man. You start to become a father. And that's the big insight. You know, you get fathers and sons going together. I'm sure you've got brothers or you've got sisters who have husbands and all that. You watch this dynamic or maybe you've seen it in your own family because you had older brothers, maybe you were younger, or you were much older and you saw this going on with the relationship between fathers and sons, how that works. The tragedy in our time is that so many fathers are trying to get even with their sons. You see this. They take them out to play tennis, and boy, they're going to beat their own son at tennis, and they're going to mash it down his throat. I'm better than you, I'm bigger than you, I'm stronger than you, and I'm smarter than you, and I always will be. Now, maybe that didn't happen in your family, but it happens. The real art of being a father is neither to be so dominant and domineering because I've got to keep up my own ego, and then there's the opposite, and maybe most of us have experienced this, where Dad just isn't interested in this family life thing at all.

[17:33]

It's just too many women around and all that. So Dad just emotionally absents himself. Now, that happens a lot, too. And you talk to any psychiatrist, and most men, if they're willing to talk about their fathers, have to talk about the guy who was never there. Because emotionally, it was just too much. I mean, he wasn't honored as a man. He couldn't see a way to deal with this woman, this mother figure, and all that. And he wasn't really happy. Maybe he had problems to deal with. And maybe he was too overwhelmed by trying to make money. I've worked all day for these people. Now I come home, and I want to just sit and watch them arrive. Emotionally, he's out of there. He's just not there. That's the way to do it, too. But what it is is kind of the reverse of the bull. He's still getting his own way, but in a very kind of negative way. Okay, it's very hard to do the thing that's really going to be nurturing for life.

[18:38]

And that's why I'm saying, as a father, you've got to be willing to be vulnerable, to lose, just like I think two brothers in a monastery have to be willing to do that. Then you can nurture life, and no one is fooling anybody. You give in to somebody else over an incident, an argument, they'll remember that. And they'll also know that they made a fool of themselves by insisting and getting their own way. And then they have to, you know, it's like eating real bad cabbage, sauerkraut or something. I get real bitter vinegar. Because, yeah, I got my way, but it's not very sweet. you know, especially when the thing boomerangs and the way I want to do it turns out to be not the very good way to do it. Brother X was right after all, you know. So just as there, when that happens to me, I think to myself, my, there is a God of justice. There is a God after all.

[19:41]

And it happens more often than not, because God, in my perspective, God is always watching all these little incidents in the monastery just to see who's going to make hay and who's going to burn it. All right, so I think that that's real important when it comes to human encounter. Any human encounter, there's the possibility. And wherever somebody does this, you have the presence and action of Christ, whether people know it or not. or our faith is silly. Our faith isn't for real. If we believe that the Paschal Mystery has transformed the world, then wherever someone gives a cup of cold water for an unselfish reason, there you have somehow the presence and action of Christ, even if they don't know it. You have that going on. All right, if that's the case, then we have to see how to access or ask the question, has the Christian dispensation Since it's all so much based on this structure of the love of God, how does it work then?

[20:47]

How do we access it in our daily lives in the church? According to John 4, what is it, 4-2, God is love, and those who abide in God abide in love, and God abides in them. In other words, the whole thing is a structure of love. God is love, and those who abide in God abide in love, and God abides in them. Now if that's true, take our sacramental system. And I think that you will see that that's what the sacraments are all about. They're trying to access this structure of love, which is God. They're trying to access Christ in our lives in His sacrificial giving to the Father, in His paschal mystery from God to this world and back up to God, now with us.

[21:50]

You see, that's what the sacramental system is trying to do. And it's trying to say, whether you've got seven sacraments or 40, You know, in the Middle Ages, there were some 40 sacraments. And it was in the scholastic period, with Thomas, starting with Thomas, and later on, that they got it down to seven. But there were many more actions. And the whole idea being, in this sacramental dispensation, that every human act is pregnant with the presence and action of the paschal mystery of Christ. The whole thing is shot through now because Christ has come in the flesh. It was one thing to listen to the Law and the Prophets, to have the Word of God and to interiorize the Word of God in the Hebrew Testament with this Word that would always do God's bidding. But the full ontological presence, where human life really is now the God life,

[22:57]

where it's possible to really live in the Trinity, even in the here and now, you know, in a kind of realized eschatology, that's what the Word made flesh is all about. And if that's true, then there has to be a way to access that, to celebrate it, to say that all of human life has this possibility, if you're open to it. And that's what I'm suggesting, that's what the sacraments are all about. Now, it would be interesting to look at monastic life from the point of view of our sacramental system. We do all the sacraments that we can. We can't do all of them all the time, but we're doing them in significant ways. And it seems to me one of the challenges of present-day monastic theology is to re-access, re-appropriate the sacramental system, because it's come on hard times. And so I want to spend a little time doing that now, remembering all this structure of human relationships, of God relationships and human relationships that we've talked about.

[24:03]

Because ultimately, what we're doing in a human relationship in the monastery is being Christ for one another, giving Christ to one another. Otherwise, the rule of St. Benedict doesn't make any sense. And why doesn't it make any sense? Well, I don't want to get off on this. One could have a whole discourses on this. First Corinthians 13, 5, love is patient, love is kind, love never gets angry, that is impossible. The early monks saw that, that it's impossible on your own. It's a great Socratic idea. You can do it if you're Socrates, but you can't do it if you're like the rest of us. Even St. Thomas said, you know, it's quite possible to love unto death, Without Christ, people have done it. But God in his mercy knows that most of us can't. In fact, we need Christ. In fact, we really can't go to God without Christ.

[25:07]

And that's why Christ came. So it's important to realize that in other traditions, it's possible to do what Christianity says one should do. A little bit of comparative religion there. But in our system, Most of us are pretty weak to do that. 1 Corinthians 13 is impossible. We spend a lifetime trying to do it. Now I was reading this wonderful book by Fedotov, Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind. Does anyone know how you pronounce his name? Does anyone know who I'm talking about? George P. Fedotov. F-E-D-O-T-O-B. He was a Russian emigre, and he taught at Harvard. He's supposed to be one of the great, his three or four volume work, The Russian Religious Mind, is supposed to be the body make-up for understanding Russian Orthodoxy from the very beginning, from Kiev on, and its relationship to Byzantine Christianity.

[26:07]

But he says in there, in analyzing early Russian texts, the Ismaragad, or whatever you call it, the pearl, which is a collection of pithy sayings for lay people in Russian Orthodoxy, saying, you know, the Russians, as the Russian mind has emphasized or has realized in this text, this pearl, that they call it the pearl, is has all to do with judgment and fear, and that's the basis for the Russian religious mind. But it's too bad, he goes on to say, that they were so afraid of love and voided the word love until the very end. Well, the poor man, as eminent a scholar as he is, and I really, if you don't know the books, I would really recommend them, is he is the voice, the scholar on this stuff, because he was lived in Russia till 1917 and knew where a lot of the manuscripts were.

[27:11]

And people who are doing a lot of this work, until very recently, because he couldn't get easily into Russia, had to be content with his work. And they were kind of secondary sources. Okay, but what he failed to realize was this is the great monastic insight. Not that love, not that you don't forget about love, or that you build your system on another virtue, but that love is impossible. You start with love, sure, it's shot through your whole monastic observance. But what we're talking about is gospel love, the love that lays down one's life for somebody else, not courtesy and civility and, oh, how are you, and how nice to see you, and all that kind of thing. We're talking about the real thing. And that's the only way you have a monastic community. So what I think poor George misinterpreted was the fact that these are, yeah, they're supposed to be texts for lay people, but they come from a monastic milieu.

[28:12]

where you have this Cassian-Avagrian concept that 1 Corinthians 13 is the goal to which all our monastic observance is aimed. Okay, so we know that it's impossible. except in, through, and with Christ, then it becomes not only possible, but cogent, necessary. And we're enabled, we're empowered to do it by the power of Christ, or St. Paul didn't know what he was talking about. So I'm trying to really emphasize that dynamic so that we don't get too thinned down by all sorts of spiritualities out there that talk about being nice to one another, but insisting on the right, and it's okay to get angry. I mean, I don't want to put any of that down because it all has a place. But I'm saying that what is offered in Christian community and monastic community is a much more dynamic system than what is usually out there on the shelves.

[29:21]

And I'm saying it's possible to have the presence and action of the paschal mystery in every human encounter. So that's why I'm going off on that to such an extent. Baptism. We come to the monastic community having been baptized. But so often, we re-access our baptism in the midst of the monastic community. And, you know, in almost every monastic liturgy on Sunday, you have the reminder of our baptism. It should be more than a reminder. It's in the liturgy there because it forms part of the presence and action of Christ. As Cazal said, it becomes part of the Mysterium. It makes our baptism re-effective, newly effective. If it's memory you're after, well then this is the Hebrew memory. This is memory that makes it present. It's very significant in a monastery that we do this liturgy of the water in the Sunday.

[30:26]

I'm sure you do it here. If you don't, maybe you could think about it. Because it re-emphasizes the fact that the whole community is nothing but the kingdom of God, that everything we do here now has the perspective of Christ, and there's nothing outside Christ. There is nothing that is profane any longer. You know, you get this dichotomy between the sacred and the profane. That's gone in this perspective. Everything speaks of Christ, and there is nothing outside that pale. So you don't have the holies over here and the profanities over here. No, everything. And just the way the early fathers talked about Christ, there is one unique order of self. That everything we do here now has the perspective of Christ and there's nothing outside Christ. There is nothing that is profane any longer. You know, you get this dichotomy between the sacred and the profane. That's gone in this perspective. Everything speaks of Christ. And there is nothing outside that pale. So you don't have the holies over here and the profanities over here.

[31:29]

No, everything. And just the way the early fathers talked about Christ, there is one unique order of salvation. Not earth down here and heaven up there. Not a nature and a supernature. But everything is fraught with the presence and action of Christ's Spirit. Therefore, government, politics, argument, recreation, whatever you're going to do, cooking meals, all has to be seen in the perspective of the rule, or in the perspective of the kingdom. That's what our baptism means. It means that as we go up to get sprinkled, or however you do it, that you're saying that, as a child of God, I did this monastery. And as a child of God, I can love God and be with God and in God, in Christ, and I can be Christ and receive Christ You know, let's not get too active-oriented here. I'm also receiving Christ in you, and [...] you, if I've got the humanity enough to do that.

[32:33]

It's a two-way street. I give, but I'm also receiving Christ. Yes. You know, people laugh at that, but, you know, it's kind of a pietistic thing. Yeah. And Leclerc was right to kind of, he wrote about it and then poked fun at it. But in this perspective, it's deadly true and should be. So this idea of our baptism as the source for our Christian community, our monastic community, I think is right on. Because only in this perspective of baptism do you have John 9, that that can be understood, where there's no such thing as gifts that put us above or below anybody else. Remember that perspective that we first began with?

[33:36]

You know, everybody, but everybody is in process towards the kingdom. And if someone seems to be without gifts, it's because the glory of God is being revealed in them. And we better look at that person very carefully. If we're ready to marginalize people that are stupid or that we can't use or bring into the community, or if we're ready to marginalize the old, Because, you know, they can't do a lot anymore. That's a great sin in a monastery. Because God's not withholding youth from them. They're on the way. They're closer than we are. Matthew Kelty once said that, and this is a great story, He was sitting in the guest house, and he was on duty one afternoon, and this kind of this bustling person comes in. She was painted all up, and she says, I want to see a monk. I want a monk. Get me a monk. I want to see a real monk.

[34:38]

I want to see one. I want to see one. Right here. I'll pay you. I want to see a monk. Get me a monk. Get me a monk. So Matthew said, well, OK now. The funny thing is, he was in his habit. So she obviously wanted some Cary Grant or something like that. I don't know. So Matthew goes and gets Brother So-and-so, the handsomest guy you could think of in the monastery, and brings him out. She looks. She says, oh, no, [...] no. No, that's all right. See you later. Bye. See you later. She walked out. That was the end of that. So Matthew's sitting there and he says, there's something more going on here than this. And he's just sitting there thinking. And then he started to say to himself, you know, what is it that people come to when they come to a monastery? Or what is it they're looking for? When they actually come in contact, they want to see the monks. They want to be with the monks. When they actually come in contact with one, they're not very impressed.

[35:41]

You know? You are the abbot? I like that one. You? Timothy of Gethsemane was standing, and maybe you were there at the... there was a joint meeting of American abbots and both Travis and Benedict and their superiors at Mount Angel. And so I forget who it was. Was it the abbot of St. John's? And Timothy was with the abbot of Mount Angel. The abbot of St. John's, was it John Iden? She was a rather tall man. Who was a real tall... It was one who was real tall. I think it was Baldwin, yeah. And he had this tremendously imposing pectoral cross. And so the Abbot of Mount Angel was standing there with Abbot Timothy of Gethsemane, who is, on the short side, very sensitive about it. And so he had Abbot St.

[36:45]

John's come down. Of course, and he's standing on this step up there, the largest monastery in the world. And the Abbot of Mount Angelus said, oh, I think it was Abbot Baldwin. This is Abbot Timothy of Gethsemane. And Abbot Baldwin just put out his hand and said, oh, how are you, little fellow there? Well. I mean, you know, I don't think Timothy's ever gotten over that. He told it when he came back and then uttered a few epithets. But, you know, it's just, okay, we do this kind of thing. We come to a monastery looking to be impressed, and then we see the inmates, and that's not it. So Matthew's thinking about all this. He's saying, what is it that people come to a monastery looking for? And they can't usually articulate it, but probably, more often than not, what they're coming and they're looking for is someone or a group of people who know how to live life and who are

[37:55]

who have already gone and departed, having lived this life in the monastery. In other words, they come, they don't even know it, but maybe they come because the cemetery is there, because the graduates are there, people who have lived their whole lives in this useless, fruitless, seemingly fruitless way, but who, in the end, are the most justified, because they died in their vows. They're a witness that there's more to life than the TV and the car and this and that and petty concerns and even nationalism and politics and all that kind of thing. And so Matthew's saying, you know, it's the graduates that people come to. It's the holy ground. It's the fact that the place has been the carpet where people who have believed this have lived it unto death. And they're buried here. And they're the ones that give the place the alarm. They're the ones that give the place its magic. They're the ones that draw people to this place.

[39:00]

We're still students. We're still undergraduates. We're still on the way. Now, in a monastic community, that kind of honor of God's acre, or whatever you call it, the holy place, whatever your tradition is, where you honor the community of the dead, That perspective is extremely important in a monastery, as is also the care of the elderly, because they're on the way. They're closer than most of us. extremely important, and how counter-cultural it is, and how full of the Gospel it is, especially in our day. Okay, that's baptism. Baptism introduces us into these perspectives, and it makes our encounters with one another to be real, to be so that I really am giving you Christ, and you really are giving me, ontologically, metaphysically speaking. This is the Kingdom of Heaven and the Court of the Holy God. What about Eucharist? Well, Eucharist is obvious, but let's talk about it a little bit. Eucharist is where the sacrificial table on which Christ offered himself to God, and in doing that, included us, becomes the banquet table.

[40:09]

This standoff between the Mass as sacrifice and the Mass as banquet has got to end. It's both. One passes into the other and passes back into the other. So, the sacrificial altar is also the banquet table from which we're fed. It is food for the journey. And we, I think, one of the best symbols or the best images for the Eucharist is St. Ignatius, his own, St. Ignatius of Antioch, when he talked about, I am the wheat that's being ground up to be bread for the people of God. And in the monastic community, that's what it means to celebrate the Eucharist. We become the wheat, the grain of wheat that's going to be, that's going to sink into the ground and die bare fruit and then be taken as part of the dough for the loaf of bread that's going to feed the people of God. So when we come to celebrate Eucharist, especially on Sunday, We come with our entire week of service, we come with our entire week of trying to live the vows, we come with all our failures and everything, and we let that, we let ourselves be taken up into the people of God, into the food of the people of God.

[41:25]

It's a wonderfully dynamic understanding of Eucharist, one that cannot be gainsaid. one that is extremely important for a monastic community to celebrate, and how wonderful to celebrate that in the context of guests, because it's through that that our monastic labor, our struggle, especially our ascetical effort, now is made available to the people of God, for everybody. Our prayer and all that is made available to the people of God. There is no greater way to be Christ for one another than in the celebration of the Eucharist. There is no greater way to be the bread that feeds my brother, to be that in menial service, in whatever you call it, than in the context of the Eucharist. The Eucharist gives it meaning and makes it real. And everything that we do in sacrifice for one another should be referred back to the Eucharist. And every nourishment and every consolation that we receive in the monastery should also be referred back to the Eucharist, so that it's Christ loving Christ.

[42:34]

And that's what happens when we come to celebrate Jesus. It's a sacred moment in the week. Of course, most places do it on a daily basis, but that should not take away from the uniqueness of the Sunday celebration. The daily celebrations are derivative from the Sunday celebration. And unfortunately, that hasn't been emphasized enough since the Vatican Council. Almost all monastic legislation, if there is any, in our constitutions, whatever statements have come out of other Benedictine places, they all insist on the daily Eucharist and all that. And I'm not knocking that. I mean, you know, I sing Mass every day and all that kind of thing. But that's to miss the sacramental dispensation here. The Sunday celebration is where all of this takes place, and that's extremely important that we not minimalize the Sunday celebration. I'm sure you don't, but it's to give it new life again.

[43:35]

You know, unless we keep talking about these realities, they start to fade. They start to, you know, what does it really mean? Well, it means everything in a monastic context. Going on, For some of the other sacraments, you can think of confirmation or the anointing of the Spirit. This one has also come on hard times because we don't know what to make of it. It never touches us as monks. It's important for people who are in RCIA. They get to look at conformational theology or the theology of confirmation. We don't. Well, I think that's a big mistake. And I think there should be some sacramental theologian around who can resurrect this anointing for us, because that's where our monastic charism comes from. We're a charism in the Church. We're not part of the Church, we're a gift. We're a gift from Christ through His Spirit in the Church.

[44:36]

Remember, the very earliest monastic documents emphasize that. It was because, in the introduction to the Pacomian literature, the the preface to both the Greek and the Boheric life of Bacchomius make that quite clear. You can see it's an English translation. I'd recommend that you look at it. It's a pregnant paragraph. Because of the grace of the martyrs, because God was so pleased with the fragrance of the sacrifice of the martyrs that he gave to the church, he started to raise up in the church holy men and women who went out from their society to fight the battle in the desert. You see, it's very clear that, in that perspective, monasticism was not there to make up for the lukewarmness that came over the church after the persecution stopped. It's not that at all. as if we try to be martyrs by beating ourselves silly in monastic life, or torturing ourselves with some kind of complex of martyrdom.

[45:46]

That's not it at all. There could be nothing that's more incorrect than that. You have it right in the most ancient documents of the monastic church, what their perspective was. The phenomenon of the martyrs and the persecutions was so wonderful. And this person who ever wrote this, who ever thought this, knew what he was talking about, because there weren't too many actual martyrs. Most people ran the other way. We now know, with careful study of this time, yeah, there were a number of people, but not nearly so many. as once was thought, most Christians turned around and ran the other way. There were a few, and there were notable ones, and God was so pleased with their sacrifice. We think of people like Cyprian and Hippolytus, these great people who had a lot to lose and lost a lot, and thought about it carefully before they kind of handed in their ticket for death. When that happens,

[46:49]

There's a theophany in heaven that's so great that God decides that he's going to do something wonderful in the church, wonderful for these people, the people of God, his own people. And so he gave the gift of monasticism. Because it's a life of such complete and selfless devotion to God's love. What could be a better gift, a better idea? So this whole thing of monasticism as a make-up or, you know, suffering, is wrong. Monasticism is a celebration of the gift of God. That's what it is, more than anything else. It should be people who are convinced of the love of God, and so convinced about it, that they're going to spend their entire lives studying it. And so, from that perspective, confirmation or the anointing of the Spirit is our sacrament as monks. It's our sacrament. Now, we don't do Confirmation in the monastery in the same way that we don't do Baptism in the monastery.

[47:52]

But that doesn't mean that Baptism isn't at the center of our monastic life. Just as I mentioned, we reenact this every Sunday. So too with the anointing of the Spirit. We have to be explicit. When we remember our Baptism in the Sunday Liturgy, we should also remember our anointing with the Spirit. Because that's the place and that's the time. I mean, it's that mechanism in the sacramental dispensation which results in us. We are a gift of the Spirit, a charism within the Church. The Spirit raising up something concrete to celebrate God. And that's who we are. So when we go back to monastic sources, when we think of new creative ideas in our monastic life today, when we kind of push forward the monastic charism into the 21st century by going back to the sources and not slavishly repeating them, but moving forward with new ideas of community, new ideas of buildings, new ideas of all, that's in function

[48:56]

of our grace, of our anointing in the Spirit. That's part of the grace of confirmation. It's a dynamic reality which we have forgotten about or we choose not to emphasize for whatever reason. Confirmation is not for kids. Confirmation is for those who are convinced that their baptism is present and efficacious. then it works. So I would move that when we have our reenactment, our memoria of baptism in the Sunday Liturgy, we also think about the anointing of the Spirit. The other sacraments I want to talk about tonight, because they're important, I want to talk about marriage and celibacy as a sacrament in the monastic community. Marriage is a very important sacrament to look at for us because of its dynamics, what it's meant to do, and celibacy in the same way. And we want to look at reconciliation and how that has come on hard times in the monastic community.

[50:01]

And we want to look at anointing of the sick, very important for us. In our context, we also want to look at whole orders. But we'll do that tonight in the context of this structure of ecstasies of God's love. Any questions? Well, we manifest the gift of prayer. We have a special I think I would almost call it a sacramental function to embark on the inner journey of this whole world of perceptions, collective humanity, whatever you want to call it, this unseen world which is out there governing most of what happens on the planet, but is hidden.

[51:08]

It's not obvious. because it's only gotten to by the journey into the heart. Someone's got to do that. Not everyone can do that. Most people are called by God, notice I said called by God, to spend their time building up the human fabric, because that's blessed and holy in God's sight. There's nothing wrong with that. And I think it's also wrong to think that, according to the medieval perspective, that you really can't be a Christian, you really can't live the gospel, except in a monastery. That's patently untrue, according to the Vatican Council. So, we've got to re-find a place since the Vatican Council, because our place was kind of pulled out from under us by a Lumen Gentium, by the dogmatic constitution of the Church, where religious, the people of God are the first chapter and religious are the seventh. That perspective is very important to keep in mind.

[52:10]

So who are we then? And what do we do? Well, the monastic charism is one of the few charisms of religious life in the Church that has the pedigree. necessary to continue on into the future. We are the ones, through us, was given the gift of prayer, the tradition of mystical prayer, of contemplative prayer, whatever you want to call it. To us is given the insight into education, monastic education. That's why it's no mystery that Benedictines and others are into education. We have in our charism what it means to be Western in our civilization. And that's not to be laughed at. As we approach the East more and more, as the world becomes smaller and smaller, we have to re-identify who we are in the Latin West. And monasticism will give that to you faster than anything. I see monks as being pure.

[53:12]

And I see monks as coming to the monastery a little older. because it's a more rarefied charism than it used to be. But that's okay. There are other newer charisms that will rise up and take a place for 100 years or 150 years or something and then fade, but not monasticism. Monasticism has been around too long and by its very age and by its very ability to reform itself has been manifested as a great gift of God and one of the principal ways people of God learn to access the Christian mystery. you know, through prayer, through asceticism, through anthropology, through philosophical psychology. That is, what is the real makeup of the human person? You've got to have people who come apart from the society and study that exclusively. And that's what we do. That's what the rule is about. Now, for those monks who are more oriented towards parishes and schools, I still say there's a charism, and I still say the complaint.

[54:19]

I'm not one of these people who say, well, you're less monks because you've got... I mean, I don't believe that at all. I studied with those people. They gave me everything I know. I'm not about to say they're not monks. They are. But their charism is slightly different. For me, where I am now in monastic life, the important thing is to re-emphasize this charism of prayer and the inward journey, because so few people are doing it. And that is so important in our tradition. And then I think also the charism of hospitality has taken on a new urgency and a new cogency in our time. Without, you know, the kind of hospitality that doesn't diminish our monastic life. But, you know, with mature people it means that you've just got more of our energy, I think, has to be poured into creating a place. Now, that's not my idea, that's Paul VI's. I once did a study of the monastic statements of Paul VI and published them. Very, very intriguing.

[55:21]

Paul VI had his finger on the problem of the time, I think more so than the present Holenthalman. and knew the place of monasticism and knew what it was about. He talked to several of our general chapters and wrote, in 1977, the year before his death, he wrote to our general chapter and said, you, though you're enclosed, you have to go out and make the contacts with people so that they know that you have an authentic gift of prayer and that you would be not afraid to share that with people. So that's a big challenge. So I think that instead of just resting on the concept of centering prayer and a kind of watered-down monasticism for people who don't live in a monastery, I think we have to remake that charism and talk about what the monastic charism can really do for people who don't live in it. And I think that has to be looked at far more effectively and in far greater detail than we have done up till now.

[56:28]

I don't think the Centering Prayer movement has gone far enough. And I don't know whether it's a new form of religious life, like you have springing up in Paris with this Communité de Jérusalem, at Saint-Gervais, you know, that's very, very important, very intriguing. That movement, of course, they're now in Chicago, or the Échang Baptisé, or We're talking about a new foundation in Charleston, which would be a kind of halfway house on the way to the monastery. People who've got two or three years in their 20s, they don't know what to do with themselves, they're not ready to commit to anything, but they'll give a year. Well, there should be a community for them around the Liturgy of the Hours and with service as their work. let them, you know, get their energy off for a little bit, for a couple of years, and then maybe they'll see what the praying church really is, and maybe ten years later they'll come to the monastery. That's my thought, and so we're about to do that in Charleston. To have a new foundation, we're not calling it a monastery, we're calling it a community.

[57:35]

Just simply that, a community. And there'll be a core group there of four or five people who are in some kind of promise for life, men and women. And then the idea is to catch, to kind of build a mill over this tremendously energized stream of young people who've got all the goodwill in the world and want to give a year or two years, either before they're married or right when the beginning of their marriage, before kids. They're ready to go, but there's no structure for them. There's nothing for them to do except lay volunteer and all that. Well, let's give them a life, a monastic kind of life, you know, with a promise of a year or two, that kind of thing, and let's see what they'll do. Maybe ten years from now, a couple of them will come back to the monastery. It didn't prosper, no, but I think because I think I know why. The monks... No, that's right.

[58:38]

No, yeah. The wrong type of people in the wrong place at the wrong time trying to do the right thing. It's just, you know. But I think that's not to say that it can't work. There's too much of this coming. It's out there. And somewhere, sometime, some way, shape or form, it's going to take off and it's going to go. I really believe that. So that's what we're, you know, you've got all these beautiful old churches in Charleston, and half of them are empty, so we've got our eye on one. You know, it's going to be a nice liturgy and all that, but it's going to be kind of ecumenical. The Sunday Eucharist is going to be a problem, but the Liturgy of the Hours, it will be interracial, because that's very important where we are. In other words, you've got all these churches in the South, And what do they say? What kind of impact are they making on the community at large? So we're really going to make a move there. And I can't believe I've got complete support of the bishop, who's giving me the cathedral building there for a house.

[59:42]

And that's where I'm going. That's what I see. We've got a college at Charleston, a big medical school there. There's all sorts of young people around with all sorts of energy, all sorts of goodwill and time and ideas. Let them run with it. Give them a structure and give them a way of prayer. I think that's what they're missing. And they have a right to that tradition. Yeah, he's already approved of it. I work quite closely with him. I don't know what's going to happen when he retires, but I've got some canonical advisors that are going to get me set up so they don't have to worry about who the next bishop is.

[60:29]

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