The smothering of limbs is life. It outrages the church. The church tries to wake us up. We hear St. Paul saying in the reading of today's epistle, in a faint little time I heard of and on the day of salvation I lived. It continues, now is the people of the time, now is the day of salvation. And the church applies these words to this specific exercise that she undergoes during these days as a community, as Christ's mystical body here upon earth, as a time of purification is evident from the context that's involved in it, in this way that after the coming of Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit, that day has begun in which the Spirit reigns, in which therefore the acceptable time is present, the time of the Last Mass,

[01:26]

was not in the original context limited to a specific time, I agree, like the weeks of this Lenten season. But the Church has realized, in the promise of her history, that although the Messianic time is the day of salvation, still practicing the life of the Holy Spirit in us does not, as it were, change us essentially, does not change us in the way that came to an end, but that we are subject to the wear and tear of time. That when the days and the weeks of our Christian life go on, the dust settles over us. Our negligence and our infirmity simply is there and is a factor to be counted.

[02:32]

And therefore, it is an act without understanding of mercy, this our infirmity and our negligence, that this specific opportune opportunity of a special eternal time is given to us. As you know, this is one of the differences between the Protestant and the Catholic practice. Protestant practice is only, as they say, of the power of the Spirit to leave the practice of the community indeterminate, leave it to the contents of the Holy Spirit from day to day. The practice of the Church means to observe certain times and seasons. And we must ask ourselves again and again.

[03:38]

revolving in a likeness of such a costume, and God is asked of us that we may celebrate His Lent season really and truly in a way which corresponds interiorly and essentially to the new spirit that determines this Messianic day. And I think it is evident from the history, the story of the temptation of Christ, what this inner attitude should be for. You know, in a certain way, and in these days especially, in this men's season, where the external practice is and has been reduced, for themselves, to a minimal We are therefore no misgiver to much more freedom for the individual. And therefore this summer, and this Lenten season, in a very special way, demands of us this process of interiorization, of an inner understanding of what we are about to do in these weeks of the Lenten season, which lie now before us.

[04:58]

Christ the Lord shows us the way. He was tempted as a human, as human, as our brother. He was tempted in his human nature, was tempted in his human will. Temptation is, one can say, the misery and at the same time the greatness of the creature man. It's unique to us as human beings to be exposed to temptation. Why? Because we ourselves, we are composed of these two elements, of infirmity and of greatness. The past itself has taken this upon itself. And He has shown us the way because His temptation is typical.

[06:01]

The temptation which we have to undergo and which we have to resist. To fall into temptation, that is the result of our weakness. To conquer in temptation, that is our glory. And we see so clearly in Christ the Lord. He was taken by the Spirit into the desert, and there he was exposed to the temptation of the power of being tempted. And these were the three temptations. It's always clear in the answers that Christ our Lord gives to the temptation of the devil. The devil's words are always unbiased. If you want to really understand what he intends with these ambiguous words, then listen to the answer that Christ gives to him, because in this answer he interprets Catherine in the light of the divine truth, that sovereignty which is proper to the dead.

[07:18]

So he answers the first temptation in this world, not from where the Lord lives man, but from the only Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. That is our first temptation, that we trust as it were in where the Lord. That means that we have in ourselves this tendency to use the things that are given to us in the act of creation and to be at our disposal when we serve our material beings, that we use them without reference to the Creator, that we use them as a means to establish our independence and our security, and thus be described We don't see the gifts of creation as those who use them in the service of God, but we take them as a throne in which we build upon which we build upon our empire.

[08:33]

And to all we all know of action and how acute such a temptation is in our depth. Therefore, if we enter in these specific depths into this Lenten season, then we should realize that our fasting means experiencing the spiritual setting. Then we realize that not from where the Lord just happened, but from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Our fasting means that we reduce our own independence. We give ourselves, in a special way, into the hands of God. We planet fit and bright and bold, material subsistence, material riches, material wealth, material means, are not the throne on which we can up-angle to build an independent empire, but that we have to listen to the word of God.

[09:47]

Therefore, our material activity has to be subordinated to the listening, the passing-receiving of the Word of God. because this Word of God is the Word of redemption, it is the Word of God, it is the blessing which we, as men here living in this world, because of our intermediate weakness, which we need. The second temptation is one can say the temptation of the man who, on the other side, puts is trust and be serving in a way in God, which, on the other hand, excludes all the sick and deprived ones, excludes all the beings. Everyone who practices and enters into the living season realizes in itself that there is a certain danger.

[10:56]

The danger not of the materialist, but the danger of the spiritualist. The danger of the one who does not want to consider the reality of the material world surrounding. To live on bread alone, it means to declare the all-sufficiency of material means. to throw oneself down from the balcony of the temple, in this expectation that God and his angels will intervene and kill, that is the sin of the spiritualist, other than the one who loses the totality of reality out onto misdirected spiritual. He wants to take a shortcut. He wants to be carried immediately by God himself, and this, according to his own inspiration, enters our wings.

[12:05]

We could have such an approach, but of false, a false kind of magic. to get the opponent of God through our actions, through our defiling ourselves, though as enforced as it were, to protect us. This again is wrong. Indeed, in the first two months, late in the season, for example, we cannot be cast in a way which, for example, would disregard the needs of the body. It's not this kind of, let us say, radicalism, misdirected radicalism, which the Church respects a lot. But in all of impurity, we know and we realize that in approaching God, we approach Him in this hour. And, therefore, we receive it, the things of the bottom, material things, as an expression of God's will upon us and also as a part of our being.

[13:19]

The third temptation, then, is the temptation of power. That is, this all which I shall give to you. There is the temptation of the dead. All of the statues, all of the kings of the world, all have come out and shall give unto you. One would say that perhaps one needs this temptation and needs it, that at first glance it seems to be unrealistic, because God is the one who is the ruler of the king. And how can then the devil offer these to the Lord? For there is a great mystery that we come up against every single day in our relation to the powers of the external, especially the political power. It is simply a fact that power has been given into the hands of man.

[14:29]

Therefore, the devil has power at his disposal. Also, in order to triumph, how much shall we triumph? Through the hands of power which is in the hands of men. Our Lord himself, the hour of darkness had come upon him, and all power was given to his enemies to exercise over him to kill him. That is, as it were, the extreme and realist case of this German-Holland delineation of life. And that constitutes, actually, for us as human beings, constitutes a tremendous temptation. And we, first of all, that we in the thirst of life,

[15:32]

try in an illegitimate way to bring power at our disposal in order to take some steps forward. And of course, on the other hand, too, it is the same appealing to man's weakness to carry on our vow to the powers of bliss. Anybody who has gone through the experience of the Nazi regime in Germany knows how meaner these things are, in fact. And therefore, in looking on this situation, that save the conflicts which, by making them up, produce a lot of struggles of the human, illegitimate use of power. We ask ourselves, what is the way to meet this greatest of all temptations?

[16:39]

Now it is, as the Lord says, when adulation the prayer in which the power of God, the kingdom of God, is as it were, working in us. Therefore, the act of adoration, the act of worship, of the worship of God, has the source of all power. this legal way in which we counteract the temptation of either exercising or serving power in an illegitimate way in the world of Britain. Let us therefore realize that in this holiday season our fasting is there in order to recognize and to acknowledge publicly that we don't live on bread alone. We wish to know how real this thing is in our time of absence and our abundance.

[17:48]

It is so easy and so tempting for us to kind of overlook this necessity of hurting God will carry out of our love and of our eagerness to affirm the power and the value of the Spirit. Our fasting is a profession of our faith in the spiritual blessing that we receive from the blood of God, from the Father, and not through the work of our hands. And our prayer that we in these days have been contemplating, our worship, For example, for us as monks, we come on with ours. For all of us, for all captains, we celebrate on a Sunday.

[18:51]

For example, let us consider it, let us read the lines, let us say, a war against the dangers of political totalitarianism and of the slavery that we reserve on the illegitimate use of power. Finally, do we think of second temptation? Throw ourselves down in water? Christians always realize that in our fasting we do not, as it were, take each other. It is not the expression of a wrong spirituality or angelism. What? It is the expression of that inner service that we give to God who works our salvation through the means, for example, of the community that is sponsored, of our domestic community, of our family, who works our salvation with the material source of the sacrament,

[20:13]

makes our salvation in the framework of church, and therefore in the framework of living with one another, adapting ourselves to one another, and in this way of obedient following of what we call the secondary course. This is the graveness of our new season, and we can easily see that the Spirit which really annihilates it is the Spirit of the Resurrection, and that means the Spirit of the One who is the Word of God, who is a Son of God. of the one who has given himself as a victim into the hands of his enemies, and the one who has conquered, in such a way, that of the vital mind, he rules this entire universe and leads us to the resurrection of

[21:18]

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