We wanted to call your attention to two things. One is the harmony, the correspondence that exists, should exist between the external attitude and the internal attitude. Now that is a field, and when we read these words of St. Benedict, then we can have maybe a little feeling that there could be some hypocrisy creeping in, there could be some... artificiality about it and in our days, in our specific civilization, the general tendency is rather to hide what is inside than to manifest it. But if we look at this chapter and at the verse that we have just heard, not as a kind of a rubrical program for exact and whenever behavior,

[01:14]

which indeed so easily could be just a kind of a show and could be what St. Bernard calls superba humilitas, power humility. And that exists too, actually. But that is not the essence of the message. It seems to me that here what is expressed there is expressed in a way in which the ancients generally tried to call the attention of their readers and their hearers to something which is what we would call today a basic attitude and which therefore should stay always with the monk just as he should be the man of prayer and should in that way pray without ceasing So he should, in the depth of his heart, be humble and should express his humility also in his external actions.

[02:22]

That is the kind of characteristic of the monastic realm. In the monastery we are not in the world. The world has different standards and in the world there is a different kind of behavior, but the monastery is there to be in a special degree the manifestation of inner spiritual values. And should in that way the body should show forth in this humility, the body should show forth the inner attitude that belongs to the monastic completeness. If one, if some thing characterizes the monastic life, it is the striving. after completeness, after wholeness, and that is, of course, soul and body.

[03:24]

The two are not in that way distinct, but the body becomes transparent of the inner attitude, the spirit which dwells in the body, in the monastic environment. That is one thing. Therefore, let us not consider this thing as a rubric, and let us not in that way enter and quibble about external things. Let us take it in its inner meaning, the inner tendency, and what Benedict wants to say. It is simply this, that. And the status of the monk is that of the God's poor one and the God's humble one. And the enclosure is there to manifest that to one another. In the world it would be artificial. In a monastery it's a kind of a natural thing.

[04:27]

Then the other thing that we see in this conclusion, that is the deep association between humility and charity. That's of course also one of the basic teachings of all the monastic fathers. Humility is the forerunner to charity. And that then again gives another kind of light, another character to humility itself. Humility is not inferiority complex, but humility is simply the knowledge the soul has of itself. And whoever knows himself, he just cannot run about as if he were the king of the universe. It's impossible. And therefore, this humility, however, is in the Christian always associated with the inner certainty of grace.

[05:32]

Humility is a step into grace. The grace of being humbled frees us from ourselves and leads us into charity. Therefore, humility has something joyful in it. It has peace in it. It has an inner security. and therefore also is compatible with occasional expressions of that joy and that peace and that inner certainty. And also in the relation and the living of monks together, that aspect of humility certainly also has a right to be expressed. So let us be grateful to give these teachings that we hear, that are so important, always basic, you know, for our monastic life.

[06:38]

And let us cooperate always with any graces or humbles that are being sent.

[06:45]

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