I really think that, as I mentioned, that Gethsemane represents a high point, a central point of the passion story of Jesus. And if you'd like to focus on any one aspect of that story, I think this will always be a fruitful place for meditation, reflection, study, Judas soon appears with the soldiers or police of the temple and points out the Master to them, and the disciples who had been with him for several years, and notably Peter, who had just promised that he would die rather than leave him, all abandon him and flee. I suspect that Peter, who was first in everything else, also led them out of the garden.

[01:04]

And so Jesus is left alone with his enemies and those who do not understand him. He says to them, why do you come with clubs and sticks? I was with you daily in the temple. Why do you come to seize me with signs of violence? It's an interesting question. And if we reflect upon it, I think we realize that those who rely on violence must always assume that everyone else relies on violence too. They don't dare admit that there may be some who do not think that violence will work. That is why the witness of non-violence is so important, because people who are violent really are vulnerable to that witness.

[02:08]

In any case, they take Jesus, present him to the high priest, trial is held, very little firm information about what that trial was or when it was held even, whether that night or the next morning, the evangelists are not in agreement. The one thing certain, that all the charges brought against Jesus in the Sanhedrin had something to do with his prophetic activity. And they focus more or less upon what he had done in the temple just a short time before. That was the last straw, the driving out of the money changers and the animals from the temple. We must not make the mistake of thinking that this was the correction of a liturgical abuse on the part of Jesus.

[03:15]

There are liturgical abuses and they should be corrected, but this is much, much more serious than that. I like to think that Jesus not only took that whip of cords and drove out the animals and upset the money changers' tables, but he also took some swipes at the pillars of the temple. Because what he was challenging was what that temple and all that commerce symbolized. Symbolized a frozen understanding of religion. a concept of religion so dominated by human thought and human traditions that there's no longer any room in it for God's freedom and the spirit and mystery, and for those who do not think exactly as the guardians of the temple think.

[04:23]

This matter of order is very, very difficult. We see people on their bumper stickers, love it or leave it. We see judges running for office on the platform, law and order. You put me in office and there'll be law and order in this county. Trouble is, when they say they're for law and order, we always should ask, who's law and order? There is no country in the ancient world more orderly than Egypt under the Pharaoh. And yet it was a place of terrible bondage for those whom the order didn't favor. Most people who clamor for law and order, they're clamoring for an order that protects them and what they have.

[05:29]

And therefore, they're people that have things. Those who have nothing are not protected by the law and order. They are prevented from getting something. Roderick McKenzie, the Canadian Jesuit, who's written a few fine things, a very nice little book on the Old Testament, he says that The order in Egypt was admirable. Even their tombs were in perfect order. One way of putting it is to say that all the trains and buses ran on time in Egypt under the pharaoh, as they did in Italy under Mussolini. And they told me when I was in Italy in the late 40s that, oh, this is not the way it was under Mussolini. I remember one time that one of our monks, we have a little place in Vespers where you can give a little homily, you can give a reading, some freedom as to what you want to do in that six or seven minutes.

[06:44]

Don't dare go over the seven minutes, though, because the community alarm clock goes off. Anyway, somebody came in and he says, I have a little couple of paragraphs here I'd like to read to you. It's about social order, order and life, politics, and he read this beautiful description of order and law and so forth and so on. And then at the end he said, written by Adolf Hitler. That got us a reaction. No, there is an order, God's order, inspired by the Spirit, carried out by Spirit-filled men and women. But it is an order that tries to find room for everyone. That's the difference. And because there are so many people who need to benefit from the order, this order is never so neat as the order of tyrants.

[07:53]

A big family like my own nine children. My mother was an orderly person, but there were some loose ends flying most of the time. We didn't live in a neatly wrapped package. And there will always be some semblance of unkemptness in an order that is for everyone. I think that's good to keep in mind. Sometimes we get carried away with this idea of neatness and order. And so Jesus was standing for the order that comes from God and challenging the human order that prevented that order from being established, that prevented the prophet from being heard. And that is a An unacceptable challenge on the part of those who guard the order.

[08:59]

That is a matter of life and death. That is revolution. That is sedition. And so, when he performed those prophetic actions in the temple, they understood exactly what he was doing. And they knew exactly that if they were to let him continue, Their order would have to bend and break, and they would not accept that. And so, in the name of God, of course, they condemned him to death. In the name of God. Some of the most terrible crimes in history have been committed in the name of God. They then take him to Pilate, presumably because they were not able to carry out the death penalty. And Pilate enjoyed seeing them come, hat in hand, to ask a favor of the detested Roman occupier.

[10:14]

It took him about five seconds to size up the situation. to see that Jesus was no threat to him. He's a man who knows a seditionist when he sees one. And this is no problem for me. And then he begins to wonder what the real reason is. And he suspects correctly that it is something to do with jealousy and religion. But he cannot He cannot dismiss them because they have the power to stir up the crowd. And as soon as the crowd enters the picture, Pilate is vulnerable. Because the one thing he does not want on his record in Rome is public disorder. Rome would not tolerate that in the provinces.

[11:16]

And he was an ambitious man. He hoped someday to escape from Palestine. And he wanted a good record, and so he sensed right away that if they incite this crowd, and I have a riot on my hand, and I lose some good Roman soldiers, it's going to be a dark day. So, what is one more Jew sacrificed? So he refuses to accept his responsibility, condemns Jesus to death. The process of crucifixion is not described. He mentioned the scourging, but the crucifixion is not described, nor should we spend a lot of time wondering about it.

[12:23]

I cannot tolerate those books such as A Doctor at Calvary that go through and try to analyze and figure out every twitch of the muscle in the dying of Jesus. I think the evangelists do not describe this because they don't want this to be the center of the picture. They don't want us to dwell on that alone. In spite of that, we have succeeded in dwelling a great deal on that. I remember a vivid experience of my childhood. I had an aunt who was a Sister of Mercy, and my mother went to visit her, her sister, And she was very hospitable to us.

[13:30]

I was a little boy then. And she said, oh, she took us to the chapel. Of course, I want to show you something special we don't show to everybody. So I wonder what this is. Some monstrance or something? No, she took us back in this other room out of the way, and there was a small figure of Christ covered completely with a velvet cloth. And she said, we don't let most people see this, but since you're relatives, and she pulled the velvet cloth off of Jesus. I tell you, you could not have put another wound on his body if you had tried. Big red gashes all over his body. Well, I didn't know what to think of that, and I often wondered, Sis, what is that supposed to say, am I supposed to feel guilty, remorse?

[14:33]

You know, it's an interesting question, what that's supposed to say. I think it's just on the border of being completely inappropriate, just on the border. I'm glad they had it covered up for most people. No, this again focuses the attention only on the suffering of Jesus instead of on his love. It is his love that we must imitate, not his suffering. And if we imitate his love, the suffering will come, but it'll be the right kind of suffering. Suffering is a great mystery, of course, but there are some things that we need to know about suffering, to realize, seems to me, and one of them is that not all suffering has the same value. A great deal of suffering, it's hard to know how much, but certainly a fair amount of suffering, maybe even most of it, is unnecessary and even self-inflicted.

[15:51]

But the suffering that comes from pride, from stubbornness, from kicking against the goad of life, from stubbornly refusing to change, to adjust, to be converted, from disappointment, from pursuing false goals, from succumbing to the siren call of self-pity, living in the illusion that others are always to blame for my problems. These very common and very painful kinds of suffering have nothing in common with the suffering of Jesus. We must be careful not to identify them with the suffering of Jesus.

[16:58]

I don't think it's too far-fetched. I mentioned the thing about visiting the Blessed Sacrament to get away from the community. I don't think it's too far-fetched to imagine someone making their way to the cross and saying to himself, Oh, Jesus, how much you suffer. Move over, Jesus. I know what you're going through. I suffer, too." Again, I'm almost surprised that Jesus doesn't speak from the station and say, wait a minute, my friend. Are you sure that you suffer like I do? Are you sure of that? And why would he say that? Because Jesus is suffering because he loved. And a great deal of our suffering does not come from loving. It comes from much, much less worthy causes.

[18:04]

It is very, very helpful when one suffers to say, is this because I love? Or is this from stubbornness, pride? The suffering of Jesus, the only suffering that leads to salvation and resurrection, the only suffering that we really should accept, is suffering that comes from loving. Jesus suffered because he loved people. He loved his rather dull disciples. He loved the fickle crowds. He loved his betrayer. He loved the misguided religious and political leaders. But most of all he suffered because he loved his father, he loved God. And even he seems now to have become an enemy.

[19:09]

To accept human frailty and illness and loss of control, to let go of control of life, to accept life from God as it is given, and to be able to love God enough to say, I trust that this is the best for me, even though I do not understand it. And not only the best for me, but also the best for those whom I love. I think this is the heart of the mystery of suffering. and the point of deepest contact between us and Jesus. We can understand rather easily the suffering that comes from those who love other people, parents loving their children, giving up vacations, giving up their schedules for the sake of their children, for the sake of their education, sacrificing for them,

[20:23]

Teachers sometimes suffer for their students. There's a lot of cases of suffering when you can see the immediate effect, the good effect on others. A glass of cold water given in my name. But the most difficult suffering is the suffering that doesn't seem to benefit anyone. And there's a great deal of that today as we grow older. And more and more people spend their last years in a home for the aged. And they see that they are not helping their children by being there and being alive and eating up all the resources that they wanted to pass on to their children. And they wonder why God keeps them alive. and why it is necessary to go on suffering like this.

[21:31]

And I think that's the final test. Not about whether you love your children or love your friends or love humanity, but whether you love God. I have become more and more convinced that one of the ultimate signs of loving is trusting. So if I can accept a life that brings me pain and requires extraordinary patience and endurance, I can accept that from God without understanding why. That means I trust God and we don't trust people we don't love. I trust that this is best for me and not only that, it is best for those whom I love. And someday I'll see that. That's the kind of suffering we see in the passion of Jesus.

[22:42]

And that's the kind of suffering that puts us in company with Jesus. And that's the kind of suffering which is the doorway to the resurrection. We don't have to worry about the resurrection. All we have to worry about is what happens before the resurrection. That the resurrection God takes over. All we have to do is receive. And what is the resurrection? Scriptures give us various images of the resurrection, various descriptions. None of them is adequate. There is the empty tomb. What does that say? Well, it says that for the first time in human history, the tomb has been opened from the inside, and that death need no longer be feared.

[23:51]

The image I think of when death is exposed in the empty tomb. You remember that wonderful movie, The Wizard of Oz? And all this tremendous, frightening display when they finally got to the wizard's palace. And then they went back behind the scenes. And there was a little old man sitting on a stool, pushing buttons. That was The Wizard of Oz. Jesus exposes death with all his bluster and frightening power, exposes it as a little old man who really has no power at all. Big bark, no bite. Resurrection tells us that if we love, We don't ever have to be afraid of death.

[24:57]

Oh, death, where is your sting? On the positive side, Jesus appears in various places. No one has ever been able to give a consistent and logical narrative of the appearances of Jesus. And that didn't seem to bother the evangelists at all. He's in Galilee, he's in the garden, he's in the upper room. In all these years, no scholar has ever been able to put those things together in a way that is consistent. And I think there's a good reason for that because we're dealing with something that goes beyond history here. It's not against history, it's beyond history. Jesus appears and says, peace be with you. Then he says to Mary Magdalene in the garden, do not cling to me.

[25:58]

Do not think that I have come back from the dead. Oh, thank God you're back, Rabboni. No, I have not come back from the dead, Mary. I have only appeared to tell you to come over where I am and to hurry. The resurrection is not Jesus coming back from the dead. Jesus has gone into a new life and out of that life he appears transformed in this life. It is not the same Jesus in the sense that the physical living Jesus that they knew. As Moltmann pointed out, the life we know is a life toward death. Every morning we wake up, we're a little closer to death, a little older.

[27:01]

The life that Jesus entered into is a life out of death. What a wonderful thing that will be, to wake up every morning and be one day younger. The horizons are expanding and not contracting. We can hardly imagine it. We can imagine it. In John's Gospel it says, Jesus appeared to them and breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain are retained. It's important to note that Very few, if any, scholars today would maintain, as it used to be done, that this is the institution of the sacrament of reconciliation. No, these words are not spoken to the apostles and the priests who succeeded them.

[28:08]

These words are spoken to every Christian. These are spoken to all. The sign of receiving the Holy Spirit, the sign of possessing the Holy Spirit will be that you are ready to forgive. Having the Spirit will give you an awesome power to forgive or to withhold forgiveness, to give life or to cause death. I think we will be held responsible for whether we have forgiven or not. And most of the grievous sins are the things we don't do. I'm convinced of that. Lord, take me into heaven.

[29:14]

I didn't do anything. I stayed in bed all day. And so, Jesus appears and tells his disciples to hurry over to where he is, to where life is burgeoning, and not to be afraid of anything, for the joy that lays before you, hurry over to where I am. Mark's Gospel does not have appearances of Jesus. It has a secondary ending, however, which has a mysterious passage about what signs will accompany those who believe. In my name they will cast out demons.

[30:15]

In my name they will be peacemakers, reconcilers, not fomenting dissension and disorder and chaos, the demonic element in life. In my name they will be healing and reconciling and causing peace. They will speak in new tongues, They will speak the new and universal language of care, concern. It doesn't matter what language you speak. If you have love in your eyes and a smile on your lips, you will be understood. They will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them. You know, some people down in West Virginia, Appalachia, have snake handling sessions to see who believes, who really has faith.

[31:30]

Every now and then they get in newspapers because somebody didn't have enough faith. Rushed them off to the hospital. Boy, I'm sure this doesn't mean that. And that explanation that I've heard occasionally, well, this was only for the early church when there were very few Christians. We don't need these signs now anymore. No, we need them as much as ever. But this is not what they mean. They're not to be taken literally. I have my own theory, my own opinion about what this means. I think that Mark is here giving us two classic examples of the dangers that occur to those who are on journeys. In the ancient world, most people didn't travel very much. Many people never left the valley they were born in, hardly ever left the town in which they lived.

[32:38]

And those who traveled often didn't come home. And so the journey was a dangerous undertaking. And one of the things they noticed was that when you get out in a strange place, all kinds of dangers lurking, and they're symbolized by the serpent at the side of the road. One of the stained glass windows in the Abbey Church at home, it shows Tobias being brought home by the angel Raphael. and Rayfield is tugging him to the side, because there, hidden in the rocks, is a snake coiled, all red, big red snake, coiled, ready to strike, and Rayfield's pulling Tobias away, so that the snake will not be able to strike him. I tell my students, if I talk about this, they go, I gotta look at that thin glass window. The serpent

[33:42]

by the wayside. It could be really a serpent, it could also be robbers who preyed on travelers. And the poisonous drink, also a danger of the journey. I'm sure they noticed, without being able to understand it, that when you drank from a different well, from that at home, you often got sick and died. Typhoid. When I was in Palestine, the first thing they said, get a shot against typhoid and renew it every six months. And you have to get the shot that is effective against the strain of typhoid that is typical in Palestine. And if you go to Egypt, it might not help you. And one of our French students discovered that. He went to Egypt for Christmas vacation and came back fortunately only with paratyphoid.

[34:45]

A very, very sick man for a while. And so they knew that there was something about drinking from strange wells that could be deadly. Now, what does it mean here? Well, what are the great dangers of a person on the journey of faith? Journey of faith is what he's talking about. I would say the two prominent candidates for that danger would be cynicism and despair. Nothing is more damaging to faith and to perseverance than cynicism and despair. The cynicism which says, ah, you're foolish. It's not going to work out. There's nothing at the end of the journey. Give up.

[35:50]

Eat, drink and be merry. Have the pagan solution. That's what Gilgamesh heard in the Epic of Gilgamesh, that ancient Babylonian story. And his friend had died and he went searching for the secret of life and he came to a saloon, a bar. The barmaids, all the bartenders in the ancient world were amateur philosophers, something like barbers in our world. The barmaids say, what are you doing? I'm looking for life. Oh, where God says, Gilgamesh, here, have a drink. There is no life. Don't you know that the gods have reserved that for themselves? They've given us a couple of years Make the most of it. You only go around once. Watch TV, it's full of this. So live with gusto. Get as much as you can. Grab the brass ring. Eat, drink, be merry, she told him.

[36:52]

Tomorrow you die. All kinds of subtle ways in which that philosophy is presented. And by and large, it's expressed in what we call consumerism. Get as much as you can and hang on to it as long as possible, because God knows what there is beyond this cynicism. In monasteries and communities it has a more subtle form, it's called griping. Or Benedict calls it murmuring. Murmuring that eats away at hope and faith. One of the seminarians said to me when I was rector one time, he says, Have you noticed how bad things are recently?" I said, no. Almost in the tip of my tongue, I was about to say, no, but now that you mention it, I guess you're right. And there are people who go around putting little drops of poison in the community drinking supply.

[37:59]

They don't kill them right off, but they make everybody a little sick. Have you noticed how bad things are recently? When's the last time we had anything decent to eat? Notice I cut the meat thinner than... Cynicism, murmuring, griping, grousing eats away at hope and faith. A believer will be impervious to these dangers. He will be immune to them. Have you noticed how bad things are recently? No, as a matter of fact, I haven't. In fact, I think things have been looking up. Take that. The believer can respond to those suggestions. Oh, if things are bad, he doesn't deny it. But I mean, assuming that this is just a negative attitude toward life.

[39:01]

And so they become impervious to those terrible poisonous dangers that can ruin and frustrate the journey of faith. And they will lay their hands on the sick and they will recover. They will have that healing touch. not primarily concerned with physical recovery, although that is always a possibility. It's amazing what can happen sometimes. But they will have a healing presence, a healing touch, more in terms of healing the spirit than the body. And very often the healing of the body is connected directly with the healing of the spirit. They tell a story one time about Willa Cather, the author. When she was a young girl, she was in the care of a nanny.

[40:09]

Her mother had died and her father was a businessman. He was often away from home and he entrusted her to a nanny, a nurse. And one time on one of his trips he received telegram that his little girl was sick. It didn't seem to be anything terribly serious. And so he sent back word that, well, forget a doctor and give her the treatment prescribed for that. And then came another telegram that she's not responding to the treatment. And so he hurried home. He checked things out. check the medicine, talk to the doctor. I don't understand it. No response. Normally it works. And he talked to the nanny, and he fired the nanny and hired a new one. And she got well almost immediately.

[41:12]

The nanny, along with the medicine, was feeding her little doses of poison. Not literally, but negative attitude toward life. I was at a convent giving a weekend retreat in Philadelphia. I won't say which one it was. And very nice people. And those were the days when father was taken down to a special dining room and nun came in and served bacon and eggs and all that stuff, you know. Lace on the tablecloth. And so I was there, and it was a wonderful breakfast, and I was wondering why I didn't seem to be enjoying it. And then it dawned on me. The conversation, the little old sister was feeding me, was saying things like this, where are you staying, Father? I says, up in that room in the corner of the second floor there with the tower, the tower room.

[42:17]

Oh, the tower room, yes, oh my, that's nice. Bishop so-and-so stayed up there, retired bishop, he died in that bed. Have some bacon. I tell you, you know, Be careful how you visit patients in the hospital. If you've ever been a patient, you know the difference. Some people come in and they tell you all about how sick they are and bump your bed and blow smoke on you and tell you all the bad news they can think of. Well, the man of faith A positive attitude toward life will not be a saw figure going around moaning, groaning, cutting things down, pointing out all the dark things that you might not have noticed.

[43:22]

A man of faith will not deny that there are imperfections and evil in the world, will affirm and be convinced that goodness can conquer with the Spirit, not even a real contest. You give goodness a chance. Trust in its power. The conference this morning is a kind of bonus I said, well, I'll call it a bonus, hopefully. Father Pryor had given me the option of leaving, if necessary, on Thursday afternoon. So I thought, well, I don't start class till Monday, so I'll stay over and leave more leisurely on Friday. And so, as it turns out, therefore I'm available for a conference.

[44:23]

And no lack of material. I can assure you there are lots of other things. It grieves me a little bit that I didn't have time or didn't take time to say something about St. John's Gospel. I could give a whole retreat on John's Gospel alone, but it is such a unique gospel that you just can't dip in and take a few samples and then move on. You've got to deal with it in its own right because it requires an introduction. But once one works through that introduction and gets into the world of John's Gospel, the very special kind of world, then those texts, which often seem rather difficult, I find that preaching from John's Gospel is the most challenging of all. It looks simple, but when you get into it, he seems to go around in circles.

[45:23]

that kind of challenges our logical minds. But it's very, very rich, very suggestive ideas and insights in that gospel. I want to say something this morning about the Lord's Prayer. I realize that I have some paragraphs on that in my book. But I'm not going to give it to you the same as it is in the book. You can use that for reference afterwards if you wish. In fact, a lot of the things that I've talked about can be found in the book in one place or another. I don't apologize for that. I feel that every retreat master has the right to quote from his own book, if he wishes, or to paraphrase his own book. and to add different things and illustrations that you don't have time for when you write. I want to talk about the Lord's Prayer because I think that it is an extremely important prayer for Christians and one that is not often understood or appreciated.

[46:37]

The same problem I think that we have with the passion narrative but for a different reason. Passion narrative is not well known because people just don't hear it. The Lord's Prayer is not well known because they hear too much of it. They memorize it in grade school and they think that having memorized it, they therefore know what it means. Memorization can be a kind of anesthetic. that prevents you from being aware of the real meaning of something. Oh, the Our Father, I know that. So there's no need to study that, there's no need to probe into the meaning of those familiar phrases. It's like an experience I had. I was in the seminary building some years ago and

[47:38]

And there was a little boy who was amusing himself by riding the elevator up and down to the sixth floor of the basement, which annoyed me because I was waiting for it. So I got on. I was not in a very promising mood. And he turned out to be a saucy little boy, too, to boot. He says, hi, father. What do you do here? Well, I teach. What do you teach? The Bible. Oh, I had that in eighth grade. I had that in eighth grade. I should have told him I teach hermeneutics. He had the Bible. Or a student came to me from another seminary, transferred to ours, and he says, I'd like to be excused from the course on the prophets.

[48:45]

I had the prophets. So I said, my friend, no one has ever had the prophets. Now let's get that clear. You had a course on the prophets, and apparently it wasn't very good, or you wouldn't make that awful mistake of saying you had the prophets. Can you imagine anyone having the prophets? And so, anyway, I did let him be excused from this course. And so, because we know the Our Father so well, we don't bother to study it. But it is so important. The Saint Teresa of Avila, when she was asked to give the secret of contemplative prayer, she said, on one occasion, why it's rather simple, really. Just say the Our Father, but say it very slowly.

[49:46]

It's the only prayer that Jesus taught. It's in a class by itself. It is the indispensable prayer. We're not free to choose other prayers in place of it. And it needs to be understood better. The Our Father is a very carefully constructed prayer, an introduction, two main sections, prayers to God about God and then prayers to God about us. very proper theological order of things. We are familiar with the version in Matthew's Gospel. Many people are hardly aware that Luke's version differs significantly from Matthew, that he says simply, Father, not our or not in heaven, that he skips the third petition

[51:03]

in the first part of the Our Father completely, and that he skips half of the third petition in the second part of the Our Father. Most scholars assume that Luke's version is the more ancient and the one closest to what Jesus actually said, on the basis of the simple principle of text criticism, that the Lectio Bravior probabilia, shorter reading is considered to be the more probable original one because later commentaries and evangelists and scribes are inclined to add to the text rather than take away from it. The addition to the text of Luke that we find in Matthew would have been probably made by the author of the gospel himself, the same one who added in spirit to the first beatitude. But there's no substantial difference.

[52:05]

The only thing that reminds us of is that in the introduction, the really important and critical word is father. And in the two sets of petitions, it's the first two in each set that are most important, that you had to choose between them. The most important word is the word father. And of course, as you know, for some of our feminine friends, this is a real difficulty, so much so that one of them told me, please don't call it the Our Father, please call it the Lord's Prayer. The word Father is so unnerving. Well, I don't think we should assume the position that they shouldn't be offended and therefore I will not try to accommodate them. You know, if people are offended, they're offended. And I think that there are some reasons to take offense at masculine terms in reference to God.

[53:13]

We know, of course, that theologically God has no sex, that God is neither male nor female, or better still, is both male and female. that the word father is a human word and therefore necessarily imperfect and inadequate when applied to God, that the masculinity of the word father cannot be transferred to God. The problem is to find another word that is as personal as the word father and yet does not have these disadvantages. deity and things like that, lose more in their personal quality than you gain by them becoming neutral. If I become Pope, which is not likely, one of the things that I would probably do is to solve this problem by deciding that God will be called Father

[54:21]

for 25 years, and then mother for 25 years, and then back to father again, so that everybody in a normal lifetime would get a chance of both of them. I would also give the Southern Hemisphere the option of having Easter in their springtime. I think that is Northern imperialism, to require them to have Easter when everything is dying. just because that's when we have spring. Well, a few other things I have in mind, but I will let you wait until I become Pope before I tell you what they are. Anyway, it is a problem, but the thing to remember is, of course, that the word Father, which is a metaphor applied to God, metaphorical reference, as all human words applied to God must be metaphorical in part, It is the two qualities that it wants to convey to us. First, strength. The father is stronger than his child.

[55:26]

Father has strength, power. And that is not hard to see that in God. In fact, in some ways God is cursed by his power. And you find God almost seeming to be a little embarrassed by his power because it is such a threatening thing. And I think one of the reasons for the incarnation is God wanted to show us how little he cares for his power. And so it became one of us in weakness and vulnerability. Power frightens. and slaves. And so the power part, which is the easiest thing to know about God, is the one that is least important to know. The other quality is goodness. Goodness. I was talking here about an ideal father, of course.

[56:28]

An ideal father is strong and is good. So much so that because of his goodness and love, His child becomes as strong as he is because his strength is for the child. And so, goodness combined with strength provides freedom for the children. Lack of care, lack of anxiety, lack of worry. I can always turn to my father and I know that he loves me May for I know that I can call upon his strength. He'll never let me down. Good and loving father or mother produces free and responsible children. There's a very special problem in catechetics.

[57:35]

I don't know how the church handles this. But what do you do with a child who's being taught the goodness of God and knows only a violent and abusive father, natural father, or who has no father at all? And of course there are many, many, many of those now. Single family homes are very common. And when you say single, I mean single parent homes, when you say single parent nine times out of ten it's a mother. What do you do when a child doesn't know a father or worse still knows a father who is not good? I think in that case you have to tell the child, look, we say father, but when you say father you should think of that one person in your life who has made you feel good and strong.

[58:38]

It might be your mother, it might be an aunt, a friend, a teacher. Think of that person who has been most significant in helping you to be free and to be confident. And when you say Father, think of that. This is a springboard from a human experience. In any case, we never end learning about God's power and goodness, and especially about His goodness. We have heard God called Father a million times, but I would wager that none of us here has really come to understand as fully as we could the radical goodness of this Father. If we did, There would be no fear in our lives. And there are very few people who can say that they have no fear in their lives.

[59:41]

And so, in a way, we say, Father, and we say to ourselves, I don't know for sure what all that means, but Lord, help me to know how much goodness there is in your fatherhood. Help me to know that, to experience it. to be liberated by that. Matthew says it's our father and that's very appropriate to qualify it in that way because our means that it is a father whose goodness makes it possible for community to live together. See, the one thing that makes community and family difficult is that there's not enough goodness for everybody. You see families where the parents are very busy and you see children, siblings who are struggling and competing for what little bit of attention is still possible.

[60:47]

I think there are children who actually hurt themselves to get attention, desperately looking for attention, attention that should be there. But the parents are so busy or so preoccupied with their own problems, so unwilling or unable to be available to their children. And so they say these are accident-prone children. Oh no, I don't think so. I think there are children who are desperate for a little bit of air and oxygen is available. But when there is goodness, When there is affirmation, when there is a rich source of oxygen for the family or community, then they can live together without competition, become, be able to say, our Father, who art in heaven, not high above the earth, but from a biblical perspective, the Father who is at the end of time,

[61:59]

who awaits us with open arms, who constitutes the center and essence of heaven as home, the Father who gives us hope, the Father toward whom we learn to run, the Father toward whom Jesus has traced out a path. Some authors have said that We don't follow Jesus only in the sense that we follow his wisdom, but we follow Jesus in the sense that he has gone into the future ahead of us. And as we move toward the future, we are catching up to Jesus. And when we die, we catch up to him finally and join him with the Father. So He is ahead of us on the journey.

[63:05]

The Spirit is with us. And incidentally, it is the Spirit, as Paul says, who enables us to cry out, Abba, Father. It is the Spirit that will help us to learn about the goodness of God, to experience the goodness of the Father. Three petitions address to God, about God, are hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, those two found in the original, and then Matthew adds, thy will be done on earth as in heaven. All three of these petitions are in some ways synonymous. They say the same thing in three different ways. Hallowed be thy name is of course a petition that I suppose hardly anyone understands. First of all, it's an archaic language and a very difficult biblical language where the name stands for the person.

[64:17]

We're not accustomed to say doing that. People might draw out of this something, you know, some motivation for the Holy Name Society or something like that. That's just how wrong-headed it could be. nothing to do with the hallowing of the name as such. No, it says, hallowed be God, who is represented by his name, and hallowed means may God be vindicated, may God's reputation be restored. And the verb hallowed, as well as thy kingdom come, thy will be done, In fact, all of the verbs in Matthew's version of the Our Father are in the aorist imperative, which is why Raymond Brown's article in Theological Studies, which is the article that helped me most to understand the Our Father, it's why that article is entitled the paternoster as an eschatological prayer.

[65:28]

Because, since these verbs are all in the aorist imperative, As you know, arist is a unique tense in the Greek, we don't have it in English. An arist tense really doesn't primarily concern the time of the action. In the indicative it is past tense, but in the other moods it is not past, present or future. It has to do more with the quality of the action. And the quality is once and for all or definitive action. I can remember Père Benoit teaching us the New Testament and he used to say, qu'est-ce que c'est l'ariste? And he clapped his hand. Voilà! L'ariste. The clap of the hands. What the Germans call einmaligkeit, once and for all-ness.

[66:31]

We can't convey that in English, really, and so we don't understand that these petitions are petitions for the definitive vindication of God's name, for the definitive coming of the Kingdom, and therefore they're petitions for the end of the world. Lord, I trust you so much And I know you so well as a good and loving Father that I pray earnestly that you will bring the end of time so that I can enter into that home that you have prepared for me. The end of the world is one of the last things that most people would pray for. We pray that we be spared the end of the world. Well, no one misses the end of the world. to the end of the world, in effect, is my own death. But, you remember the earliest prayer of the Christians is, Maranatha, come Lord Jesus, or come Lord actually, come Lord, praying for the end of the world.

[67:44]

That's how much I trust your goodness and how convinced I am that the best thing that I could ever do is to arrive at my homeland. So, Father, your name and your reputation and your person have been maligned in so many ways by us men and women. We have blamed you for everything. Father, I come to know that you are only goodness and I pray for that day when all the world will know that you are good and just and holy and that these calumnies about you are not true, as I have come to know that they are not true. Thy kingdom come. The kingdom.

[68:45]

What is the kingdom? That word is so important in the New Testament. But the word is very, very hard to translate in English, because all the words in English kingdom, reign, realm. I don't think reign has an advantage over kingdom, some of these new translations. They all primarily have this sense of power. And the kings that we know and the realms that we live under are too often governments' power that is oppressive. And the last thing that the Hebrew and biblical concept of kingdom wants to convey is oppressive power. Because the king in Israel was not just the monarch. The king in Israel was the savior of his people. He was seen far more as their protector and savior than he was as their ruler.

[69:52]

I have my own personal translation for kingdom, for Malkuth. Basalia, Basalia. I call it God's dream for his beloved children. Every good father dreams about the career and the life and the happiness of his children. And God has dreams about us and about how happy we can be. and how much good we can do, and how trusting, believing and persevering we can be. And that's the kingdom that God wants to come, that this dream of His might be fulfilled. And Jesus came and announced the coming of the kingdom. The kingdom is at hand. That is, God is now offering you enough love and goodness that you actually can come to this

[71:00]

May your dream be fulfilled once and for all, definitively, at the end of time. Thy will be done on earth as in heaven. The will of God here is not God's will to be obeyed. It is rather the will in the sense of concilium, which is God's plan, very similar to God's kingdom. May your plan be realized. your boule, your concilium, everywhere, on earth and in heaven. And so they are prayers for the eschaton, for the fulfillment, prayers that come naturally and spontaneously to those who have come to know God as loving, good, gracious Father. Bring us home, the sooner the better.

[72:07]

If you don't want to bring us home, that's all right, too. But I want you to know, every time I say this prayer, that I'm ready, ready to come home. Not a bad prayer for Christians. The second set of petitions, three of them, and especially the first two, are addressed to God about ourselves. And since we have already been talking about God at the end of time, and therefore by implication ourselves as moving toward God and home, the Father, these prayers have to do with the special needs of travelers. I think the key to these prayers is that they assume that we are on a journey. And as you know, the concept of journey is absolutely essential to all of Scripture. That wonderful Jewish musical, Fiddler on the Roof, captures this sense of journey.

[73:18]

There they are. What's that fiddler doing on the roof? Well, he's playing traveling music. That's what he's doing. He lets them settle down every once in a while in Anatavia or some other place. Then all of a sudden they're uprooted and they look and the fiddler's on the roof. Let's go on, let's move, let's continue the journey. Very, very profound and accurate insight into the Hebrew understanding of life under God. Even though this musical has a lot of secularity in it, it still taps into that profound religious tradition. So, what is the first requirement of the traveler? The one thing without which he cannot make the journey. What is the bread that nourishes him? The bread that gives him the energy to continue the journey?

[74:26]

It is hope. Hope. When the pilgrim or the traveler begins to doubt that the goal of the journey is worth the effort, the journey is just about over. In the Middle Ages, if you set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, And you got through France and into the Balkans and so forth and ran into robbers and were beaten up and robbed and so forth. You know, after a certain number of adversities, you might very well say, oh, I don't know if I really want to go to Jerusalem. And as soon as I begin to doubt that it's worthwhile to go to Jerusalem, I'm ready to turn back. I've lost my hope. So, Father, for us who are on the journey, give us this bread of hope, this manna that will take us through the wilderness and bring us to the promised land, this vayaticum.

[75:42]

It is Eucharist in some very real sense, but Eucharist only in the sense of vayaticum, journey bread. used to give viaticum to people who were dying for their journey over the great divide, as they used to say. Oh no, viaticum is for all of us, all the time, on the journey of faith, to give us hope. As you may know, the adjective daily is a dubious translation And if I were Pope, I might also suggest a new translation for the Our Father. I hesitate to do it because it's such a traditional prayer, but people have done it. And it kind of bothers me that, like, our seminarians are always attuned to the new things, and here's a new Our Father. In fact, one time they actually said to me, I was about to have Mass, and they said, oh, well, now the Our Father we're going to use today

[76:45]

Well, what we're going to do is going to play the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the Our Father on a record." I said, no, you are not going to play the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The Our Father is for us to say, even though we may not sing it as well as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It's not something you listen to, it's something you say. But they brought a new translation one time. There was no improvement at all in terms of the original. But if we were to do a new translation, I think we might very well translate here, give us today our bread for tomorrow, making it absolutely clear that this is the bread of hope, because that adjective translated daily, epiusios, as you probably know, is an ambiguous Greek verbal adjective which could derive from either one of two verbs.

[77:47]

It is ambiguous in meaning. It could be a verb which says, the bread for today or the bread for tomorrow, epi-eni or epi-eni. And in making the decision, As Raymond Brown points out, Saint Jerome, in his commentary on Matthew, quite a few years ago, says on this passage, and I remember reading in the Gospel according to the Hebrews, at this point, that the word in Aramaic was mahar, Now, mahar has the advantage of not being ambiguous, and mahar means tomorrow. And if that Aramaic, lost Aramaic version that he was referring to says mahar, there's a good chance that that solves the problem of the ambiguity.

[78:59]

Give us each day our bread for tomorrow, the bread of hope. the bread that keeps tomorrow a bright day that I am eager to meet. Remember the beautiful little song in Annie, Tomorrow? Tomorrow is a very important day. It never comes, but it always influences today. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. This again can so easily be misunderstood. It looks at first simply as a quid pro quo. Lord, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others. I don't think we want to say that. My God, that's too threatening. My God, I don't want God to show me the mercy that I show others, even though God has told us in Matthew very clearly that the measure you give is the measure you will get.

[80:07]

But I don't want to keep reminding God that you should be just as stingy toward me as I am toward others in regard to mercy. And as Raymond Brown points out also, it's not really that kind of quid pro quo thing. But really what it's saying is, Lord, make me know that I am forgiven. Because, you see, the second most important thing after hope for travelers is to be free of excessive baggage. Oh, I'm sure if you have traveled much, you know how difficult it is to carry too much baggage. I made a trip one time, three of us, a Dutchman and a Frenchman and myself, we were students at the École Biblique, and we wanted to visit Asia Minor in Greece together, in Cyprus, and we wanted to travel lightly.

[81:10]

And so I packed for that trip A little leather weekend bag that I had, that our people used to go out on weekends, holds a habit and a pair of underwear and abbreviary. That was my baggage for that trip. And I remember I was so disappointed because the Dutchman, who was going to continue on to Holland, he brought along a, well it wasn't a suitcase, it was a small trunk. It took two of us to carry it. My God, Pervon de Voort, what do you have in that bag? Which means, of course, we had to hire a taxi every time we wanted to go anyplace, which cost money. We didn't have too much of that. Oh, no, to travel lightly. I have not checked a bag in five or six years. And I've been to England and Ireland.

[82:12]

with a carry-on bag. Now it requires a little, take some laundry soap with you, a little bit of planning, but oh, it's so important not to be burdened. In the journey of faith, what is that excess baggage, that trunk that weighs us down? Guilt. Guilt. The guilt we know, and even more important, the guilt we don't know. the guilt that is hidden down and covered with layers and layers of insulation that we haven't even dealt with yet. Lord, make me know that I am forgiven. Convince me that I am a good person who can do good things in spite of my imperfections. Make me know that I am forgiven.

[83:15]

And I promise, Lord, I promise, that if you do that, and to the degree that you do that, I will be forgiving toward others, toward my fellow travelers. It's a kind of promise that comes out of the gift of forgiveness, without which, and without that gift, I can't make the promise. I can't keep it for sure. Lord, I promise to pass on the forgiveness that you show to me so that my fellow travelers can also run on light feet. And how do I do that? By forgiving their offenses against me and against others, against God. By forgiving them also their imperfections. I think sometimes it's the shortcomings that we hold against others and that we know how to remind them of in various subtle ways to keep them in their place.

[84:23]

Oh, how long have you had that wooden leg? Oh, I almost forgot, I was going to dance and he reminded me, I got that wooden leg, I can't dance. We have subtle ways of reminding people of their shortcomings. Too bad you have no hair. Put your hat on. I don't need it. You do. And for false teeth. That's for you. In all kinds of ways. And these shortcomings, these human imperfections, People that can't sing. People that can't speak well. People who, you know, we remind them of that. We have ways of keeping them down. And we think that helps us. Because we know we have shortcomings and that makes us feel we're on the same level then.

[85:28]

No, no. Make us strong and rich in your goodness so that we can afford to affirm others and forgive them and cover up their faults and shortcomings and make allowance for them so that they can run with us on this path on our journey home. And then finally, almost as an afterthought, and as I said, partly omitted by Luke, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. I think this rather mysterious petition simply says, Lord, I know that the end will come and I know that it will be a time of testing. I don't want to be left alone in that testing. And so I want you to know that Jesus has told me to remind you every time I say this prayer that I'm counting on you to be there with me when that time comes.

[86:42]

And I am not going to worry any more about it. But every time I say this I will remember that Jesus told me to tell you that you should be there with me at the end. And then we put that out of our mind and go on to be men filled with hope, singing in the rain, singing a traveling song that Jesus has taught us, an Alleluia song, and forgiving, above all, forgiving those who travel with us. Amen.

[87:34]

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