Our help is in the name of the Lord. Praised be Jesus Christ. Well, when I kind of reflect on the first conference up to this one, I kind of come to the conclusion that, in fact, what we've been talking about is the Paschal Mystery. And everything is the Paschal Mystery. Everything in our life is the Paschal Mystery. Our monastic life is the Paschal Mystery. And the Paschal Mystery isn't just one thing. It's a whole combination of things, from birth to death, to resurrection, to the glory. But there's a very real meaning in all of that, to say that it's the paschal mystery. What does it mean? And I think it goes back to that question of being made in the image and likeness of God, of sinning against that, of losing the unity

[01:11]

And there's a drive within us, we sometimes call it the religious sense or the religious spirit in humanity, that somehow or other is seeking that coming back together to be wholly who we are. And to be wholly who we are means to come back into that unity. Now, there's a consistency between what we're reading in the Old Testament and what we're reading in the New Testament. It's consistent because what Jesus is doing is a new creation. It's referred to as a new creation. We are a new creation. But that new creation is the coming back together of the union of humanity but also the union of humanity with God and only a union in humanity because we're in union with God and we're the reflection of God. You look at Pauline writings, for instance, when he talks about Jesus as being the exact image of the invisible God.

[02:17]

But then, in a sense, we are supposed to be the exact image of the invisible Christ at this point. We make Christ visible, Christ who makes God visible in some way. I want to continue a little bit on in John's gospel because what Jesus is driving at and what John is telling us about in the gospel has very much to do with this whole idea of coming back together in unity once again. That there's a oneness here that kind of escapes us perhaps, but it is the oneness in Christ that is going to make the difference. If any of you ever taught school and you get to the end of a semester course and you want to sum everything up and make certain that exactly what this course was about is exactly what you want people to remember, in a way this is what the last discourse of Jesus is.

[03:24]

What Jesus is doing there is kind of going back over everything that he has done. There's a memory in this. They remember the things that he has done. But they're bringing these things, he is bringing these things now to the conclusion. What is it that he wants to accomplish by being totally obedient to his father? What is he asking? He addresses the apostles, the people at table with him. He addresses them and he talks about all sorts of things, about love and the rest of it. But finally, he turns to the Father and he prays. He says, I pray not only for these, but also for those who through their teaching will come to believe in me. Now, he wants people to believe in him. Their faith is to be in him. Their faith is to be in everything that he did, but not in the event of what he did, but in the one who is the event.

[04:34]

He wants them to believe in him. So this is his prayer. May they all be one. That's it. That's it. May they all be one. Just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me." This is again that point at which we are the image of the now invisible Christ. We make Christ visible in this world today, in all of his mystery, all of what he has done. I have given them the glory you gave to me, that they may be one as we are one. With me in them and you in me, may they be so perfect, be so perfected in unity, that the world will recognize that it was you who sent me, and that you have loved them as you have loved me."

[05:39]

You know, that's the essence of the message. That is the essence of the message. That's where the whole thing is at. Whether we very fully understand this or not, I don't know. I mean, I don't think we do. But I think it's a growing kind of a thing, and I think it's a growing thing in the church today, in the churches today even, that there's a drive towards a unity that is coming from the inside of human beings. We want to be at one. We want peace. We want justice. We want all of the things. We want love throughout the world. Even a tough love. We want that. There is something there. I don't know what readings you have at Christmas time, but Saint Leo the Great, I think when I first entered the monastery,

[06:43]

In 1954, at Christmas time, we had the vigil. And it was really a very wonderful thing. Here we were, I think we were 20 years old at the time. Most of the class, 20 year olds. First time really away from home at Christmas time. Kind of sad, in a sense, because this was a brand new experience. And of course, in the monastery they did all sorts of things to make it kind of a pleasant situation. But we were preparing, you know, for Midnight Mass, but we had all of these, you know, it seemed like 18 nocturnes before we came to the Midnight Mass. But one of these glorious, wonderful readings was from St. Leo, St.

[07:45]

Leo the Great. And the part of it that I want to quote here is simply this. Recognize your dignity, O Christian, and once made a sharer in the divine nature. Can you imagine, you know, what that means? We have become sharers in the divine nature. And once made a sharer in the divine nature, do not, by your evil conduct, return to the base servitude of the past. Keep in mind of whose head and body you are member. Never forget that you have been plucked from the power of darkness and taken up into the light and kingdom of God. By the sacrament of baptism, you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not, through your depravity, drive away so great a guest and put yourself once more in bondage to the devil, for the blood of Christ was the price of your redemption.

[08:51]

What a fantastically beautiful reading to give to us. It was all in Latin, but thank God we had ponies. We could understand it. Recognize your dignity. This morning I mentioned something about bread that can become Eucharist says also that all bread is capable of becoming Eucharist and therefore all bread is holy. Water that can be used for baptism says all water is holy. You know, you go on with all of these signs of the sacraments, all these things are holy because God wouldn't use something that isn't holy to convey God's own presence and self and healing, et cetera, to us. But the very fact that we perhaps are a minority in this world of baptized persons, But we're baptized only because humanity and each person has dignity. Recognize that dignity or you will never recognize the dignity of being a member of Christ.

[09:58]

But then recognize the dignity of all human beings, that they too are capable of becoming the body of Christ. And we're never going to be able to judge who is and who isn't, let's face it. This is our dignity. But the dignity that God has given to us, Jesus is quoted in John's Gospel saying, I have given to them the glory you gave to me. And that's where we're at. We are the body of Christ. We are where things really take place. Now, what does it mean? You know, I shouldn't. talk about a trip to Salt Lake City and to the little museum they have, or big museum they have in the Mormon place across from the big temple. But they had a film that I watched, and I have no idea whether they still do this or not, but they have this film of how heaven is going to be and this, you know, everybody looking like 1940s Ozzie and Harriet and people like this, you know, with their children.

[11:15]

You know, and I looked at that stuff and I said, God, I hope heaven isn't like that. You know? I mean, that isn't what I want. I mean, it isn't what my inner spirit is calling for. And I think that when we look at what the scriptures are saying, there's something extremely important about what does it mean to be in Christ. What does it mean to be in Christ? Teilhard de Chardin had a wonderful, wonderful insight into this in something that he wrote. He wrote this in an essay on the interior life, the divine menu. He said, across the immensity of time and the disconcerting multiplicity of individuals, one single operation is taking place. The annexation to Christ of his chosen. One single thing is being made.

[12:19]

the mystical body of Christ, starting from all the sketchy powers scattered throughout the world. Our salvation is not pursued or achieved except in solidarity with the justification of the whole body of the elect. In a real sense, only one man will be saved. Christ, the head and living summary of humanity. Each one of the elect is called to see God face to face. In heaven, we ourselves shall contemplate God, but, as it were, through the eyes of Christ. He says, if this is so, then our individual mystical effort awaits an essential completion in its union with the mystical effort of all other men.

[13:24]

The divine milieu, which will ultimately be one in the pleroma, which means fullness, must begin to become one during the earthly phase of our existence. It starts now. so that it can find its completion then. That's really quite powerful. But you know, it brings us back to, let's say, the integrity of the doctrine of the New Testament. Paul, in the Letter to the Ephesians, He says, blessed be God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ. Thus he chose us in Christ before the world was made to be holy and faultless before him in love, marking us out for himself beforehand to be adopted sons through Jesus Christ.

[14:36]

Such was his purpose and good pleasure to the praise of the glory of his grace His free gift to us in the Beloved, in whom, through His blood, we gain our freedom, the forgiveness of our sins. Such is the richness of the grace which He has showered on us in all wisdom and insight. He has let us know the mystery of His purpose according to His good pleasure which He determined beforehand in Christ for Him to act upon when the times had run their course. And this is it, that He would bring everything together under Christ as head. Everything in the heavens and everything on earth. And it is in Him that we have received our heritage. But that's the mystery, to bring everything together in Christ. It's the same thing. He says, he is the image of the unseen God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, everything visible and everything invisible, thrones, ruling forces, sovereignties, powers, all things were created through him and for him, rather consistent with prologue John's gospel.

[16:04]

He exists before all things and in him all things hold together and he is the head of the body, that is the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He should be supreme in every way, because God wanted all fullness, that's that pleroma that Tayari talks about, because God wanted all fullness to be found in Him, and through Him, to reconcile all things to Him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, by making peace through His death on the cross. So this unity, this oneness, is extremely important for us to grasp. One of the very pleasant tasks that we had in New York in the parish was to not only take care of the Bronx House of Detention, but also Corpus Christi Monastery, Dominican Nuns of Perpetual Adoration, we were their chaplains also, so we would take a week at a time, four of us again, taking our turns.

[17:15]

That was an oasis in the South Bronx, to be able to go there and be with the sisters and have Mass with them and so on. Some years later, after I left New York in 72, and it had to be sometime in the 80s, maybe the mid-80s sometime, they invited me to come back and give a retreat to the community. There was one very old sister there, and I had gotten to know her very well in the years I was in New York. And at this stage in her life, she wasn't able to come to all of the conferences or whatever, but she came to some of them. But they asked me if I would go to her cell and have a talk with her there, so I did. And it was wonderful. History Manual. She was a wonderful woman. And we were talking about this sort of thing, about this unity in Christ, about the oneness of all things and all the rest, you know.

[18:18]

And she sat there, you know, she was 90 some years old at this time, and she looked, she just sat there, she looked at me, and she just kind of smiled, and she said, everything's one. And I said, I can talk about it, you know it. And she did, she knew it. And it was just an amazing kind of an insight to have, for me, to have the experience of someone that I know darn well had the, had this insight, this enlightenment And I think enlightenment is the right word for it. It was a year ago, whatever it was, October I guess, well a year ago last October, I was in China. And while I was there, I would check my email from time to time, and a very good friend of mine is the editor of a publication in Washington, D.C. called The Hill. And The Hill is one of these Capitol Hill publications.

[19:23]

There's a couple of them there, and they're always in competition with each other, whatever. But in this email, Al asked me, or he said, I wrote in my column something you might be interested in. Look it up on the internet. So I did. I looked it up and I read his column and it was kind of a rah-rah column, you know, for aren't we the good guys and aren't those people who did the 9-11 stuff the bad guys. And he wanted to know what I thought about it, and I told him. I said, I mean, it's good and patriotic and all that, but it doesn't sound like you in your way of analyzing things sometimes. I said, you know, it seems to me that in my studies and in my experience, I think, with the Tibetan Buddhists and with a number of other Eastern religions, that when people talk about enlightenment, Enlightenment, in almost every way that I've been able to figure out, means recognizing the unity of all things.

[20:29]

That that is it. It's that tremendous insight in that all of a sudden it's nothing you come to by reason, it's a deep intuition, everything is one. And it's not pantheism. But everything is one. There is this unity in all things, and this is what God is calling us to. My response to him was that, you know, when I look at what happened on September 11th, You know, to interpret that as coming out of a religious spirit just doesn't, it doesn't settle with me. It doesn't sit right with me. Because I said, every mystical tradition has come to the idea of the unity of all things. And finally, that has to come to meaning peace. Non-violence. Not destroying life for the sake of somebody else's life. It's just, it doesn't wash. He turned the thing into a letter and printed it in the Hill, which I never got any response on it.

[21:37]

You know, politicians ignore that kind of thing, I think. But, you know, it did strike me that way. It brought me to kind of an understanding. I was reading a novel by Frank Conroy, and I found a parallel to this kind of insight into the oneness of things. The story, the name of the book is Body and Soul. And the main character is an individual that you're following from a very, very young age, maybe five years of age, all the way up to adulthood. And he is a musician. And he finds an individual who runs a music store and he has a piano in the basement and he teaches this kid how to play the piano. And then he has contacts with really good teachers and he sends them on to one teacher after the other to perfect his skills and his art of playing the piano, playing music.

[22:44]

And the man, for some reason or other, gets into whatever the situation was, you can read the book yourself, but somebody did him a nice favor of breaking his fingers one time. Or his hand, anyway, maybe not his fingers, but at least his hand. And he wasn't able to play the piano for a period of months. And then he goes back, after all this time, and this is where the story begins and where it ends. In the basement, he sat on the bench and stared down at the keys. In the past 20 years, he had never gone more than three or four days without playing, and then only because of illness, travel, or some circumstance beyond his control. Now, it had been many months, and he had no idea of what to expect. He was not afraid, but slightly bemused by the novelty of the situation. It felt at once familiar and exceedingly strange to face the keyboard, to reflexively adjust his posture, and to raise his hands.

[23:57]

His hands wanted to play Bach, Little Fugue in G minor. The first three notes, root, the fifth, and the minor third, seemed entirely magic. In their simplicity, he heard the implication of the whole piece itself. And from that, from his awareness of the fugue, came an awareness of all of music, as if all of music were the overtones of any small part of music, as if all notes were contained in any single note. The perception was evanescent, but so powerful as to wipe away thoughts of himself. Music is here. Music has been here forever and always will be here. It was so much larger than life, so ineluctably strong, so potent an indicator of a kind of heaven on earth, that all else was swept before it.

[25:04]

He saw this in a flash. in a nanosecond. That's a parallel of enlightenment. It just parallels it. Finally, when you read the dialogues of St. Gregory the Great talking about Benedict, one of the most outstanding events that just has to pop out at us every time is in his last days. when he beholds all of creation summed up in one ray of light. That's enlightenment. That's that coming to that unity, that oneness of all things. And this is what we will look forward to. We have absolutely no idea of what eternity is going to be like. You know, people will say, you've got to be good all the time, I don't want to go there, that's not going to be fun. But the eternity is to be recognized as Christ.

[26:07]

We are Christ. That's not a myth, that's not an exaggeration. We are Christ. We are the body of Christ. The body and the head go together, we are Christ. And Christ is within the Trinity. We are within the Trinity. We're already there, we just don't see it very well yet. But that's where this, this is where all of this is leading. That is the paschal mystery. That's what the paschal mystery is all about. And that's what we seek to live in community in the monastery. And part of living that community in the monastery is learning how to forgive, learning how to ask forgiveness, learning how to be selfless, learning how to receive service, learning how to be the body of Christ is basically what we are. And that's the grace of God working in us, that we might be, in fact, what we are. Recognize your dignity, O Christian. This is what you are now.

[27:09]

Comments? And it's so important. By the way, don't we still have those? St. Neil, that very, that sticks in my mind all the time. We do, we still have it. Do you still have it for Christmas? That's neat. Without going there, I didn't have to share this, because I always thought he was an ideal creature, because the hours he was going to church, Well, I don't know any other Greek theologian can express it like Leo, because it seems to me that he must have wondered. No wonder only the bishop preached it, instead of having nobody else to dare, you know. But the reason I bring this up is not that, but there's such, I don't know, prevalence of low self-esteem in the world, and all these quarrels come from that, don't they?

[28:20]

And one could hardly let our own and others dignity. There's such a lack of self-respect. I said that once on a university campus to the President of the University of Wisconsin. He looked back and I said, I don't think it will remain a lack here. He was just taken aback, but I still think that once a lack of respect, that's why he's gone. Anyway, just thinking. Thank you. That notion of a new creation, I don't think that's buried in the field. You know, Paul has it, but it's not something that people... I got to have a kick with some... listen to some of Raymond Brown's other genealogy of our Lord, you know, in Matthew's gospel. But that's really what he's talking about. It's a new creation, you know, with that genealogy. But anyway, you come across it in a few places, a couple of places, Paul...

[29:23]

But even the notion of the mystical vibe, which was really strong in the 40s and 50s, kind of fades into the people of God. I mean, all those things have their limitations and questions, but that is one, for me, Like an alcoholic, I mean, I can remember, of all things, reading Pius XII's encyclical or something. I should have learned anything, you know, a paper encyclical. But this really hit me one night when Bunch was studying St. Louis, and he said that, you know, we have an organic union with the risen Lord. I mean, I don't think it's true, but that's very powerful. But we've got no analog for creation. There's nothing we're familiar with that was a total creation.

[30:25]

It's really hard to find it. Insightful way or intuitive way. But it is so consistent, you know, in the original creation, all of it coming forth from God. God says, God says, God said. The Word that comes out. And then in John's Gospel, the Word, who of them all was created and now was made flesh. And then all of it, you know, the same Creator, the same Word, but all being now brought back into the recapitulation. Pius X, The motto, Insta Rauri Omnia in Christo. The restoration or the recapitulation of all things in Christ. All things are being brought back together in Christ. That was the whole thing about Teilhard.

[31:25]

On the Omega point. All of it's working up to that. And maybe, you know, we look in our own day, we see wars every place. Maybe we need this experience of this horrendous experience of disunity in order to give us an appreciation and a hunger for real unity. And maybe someday people will open up their eyes and say, this is wrong. This is simply wrong. This is not who we are. We're destroying each other because we don't We don't respect even ourselves, let alone each other. Now, maybe this is the beginning of a growth that... It's like the exile of the Jews to Babylon. Maybe they didn't appreciate what they had until they didn't have it. And then they come back and they appreciate it more. I mean, we run into that all the time.

[32:31]

We're without electricity here for a while and it gets cold. You kind of think, gee, it's kind of nice to have it warm again. Well, it scares me to think that things like 9-11 traumas are what sometimes shift people into being suddenly kind to one another. Having lived in New York City and experienced it firsthand, I mean, New Yorkers generally are really fast paced, when they're walking, and the blinders on, and go first into doors, or subway cars, etc. And starting that evening, people started coming back up to have to do what they had to do on 9-11. The next two weeks, people were so kind to one another. pausing and letting people go ahead of them. I couldn't believe that that's what it took for the physical to do that. And then slowly it came right back to where it was before, you know, the typical new progress of work.

[33:36]

And it did take something to the magnitude of 9-11 to make people suddenly realize their mortality, so to speak, in that way. What do they want? Do they want more of that? To keep it sustained or something like that? It's terrifying to think that that might be what they, what might have to happen, so to speak. I mean, not have to happen, but what might happen. But like you said, out of that, it almost looks really good. It's more desired. It's good. Thank you. I mean, it's always the idea of the dignity, maybe the thing that might change Israeli and Palestinian. Some of the young Jews refuse to go in certain territory because they feel that they cannot stand to, you know, abuse the Palestinian or show, you know,

[34:40]

They have to show me that they are the boss and that respect, because they see that they are worthy of respect and that they don't want to join the policy. But we don't hear much about that here, but with foreign radio, you'll hear it. BBC will sometimes get what we don't get. Yeah, yeah. Tense. Don't want to serve. Well, the government has always been accused of letting certain information out and keeping other information in. I remember the time that John F. Kennedy was addressing a group of newspaper people.

[35:47]

And he started out his presentation by saying, good afternoon, my fellow managing editors. But instead of taking off a little bit of what I was saying, it brings out the goodness in people tragically, doesn't it? I mean, all the times that my guys and the neighbors come running into the food and things. or something happens, accidents, you know, like, I don't know why I'm thinking of this, a car, I always tell people, one time I was driving home, this is back in the early 50s, and this one car we had, and it wasn't very good, and there were three of us coming back from town in the afternoon, trying to make it for supper, and anyway, someone said, aren't you turning here?

[36:50]

I was driving, I said, I hate to tell you, but the brakes have gone. And it's all the way downhill, five miles. I think it's five miles to Hayden. So I drove it into the ditch. There was a nice big fat, it wasn't there anymore. It's down where the Bowzer's house was. Irrigation ditch or whatever. And the reason I bring this up is that two young guys, young dudes stopped, and they would never stop otherwise. And they were so submissive. They'd say, can we help you? And they thought I was crazy because I said, No, I don't think so. But I mean, little things like that, or any, isn't it? Or when you're in need. So, I think there's much more, maybe where the tide doesn't have to I'm so impressed in a sense that I don't know if it's going to take, this is not the director, it just ends. You know, because everyday little things, little tragedies do bring out the goodness in people.

[37:54]

And it's more latent in New York because, he's in New York, I remember being there. I was always surprised how kind people were to me when I asked questions or something. When you think of it. I mean, they don't sing, they're all busy and everything, but different things they put on. I just feel that this is awful, but maybe it's like the crucifixion of passion that brought out God's love for them. How good he is, how kind, how self-giving. That's how St. Augustine could pray or have him fall. How can we sustain that goodness? How do you sustain good health? You eat healthy, you exercise healthy, you do all of the things that are going to mean good health. And I think it's exactly the same thing with spiritual things, you know, we can't live on a high.

[39:10]

You know, the enlightenment that comes to people is that nanosecond thing, it's something that happens, but you won't forget it either. But it's the day after day discipline of it then, and the day after day forgiveness of each other, and of serving and being served by each other, that's what sustains it. And basically it's called conversion. And that's something we either enter into or we don't. It's our choice. So, Kali is sustained. He's kind of taken up to a cross every day because there's always a resurrection in front of him. He's fixing to stay with it. Do your Lectio. Well, it seems to me there's more and more people who would like to see peace. I have some friends of mine, they really surprised me with the, I don't know, I can't remember what it is, they said we're just sick of the whole thing, and enough is enough.

[40:20]

And no more war. They surprised me, so I can say that. But I think a lot of people feel that way. Well, maybe not a lot of people, but some people feel that way. I've noticed that since the Vietnam War. But I think that people want peace, but there's going to be no peace without justice. And I think that was the one thing that probably hit a lot of people on 9-11, was to say, why are we so hated? And it's growing. There's a growing hatred for the United States in this world. Growing hatred. You know, we're backing out of all sorts of accords, and telling the whole world that we are the most powerful nation in the world, there's nobody in the whole world that can match us, and we're going to have our way on these things.

[41:34]

And you look at people in other cultures, other languages, and so on, who maybe don't hold the values that we hold at all. And yet, so frequently we find ourselves in a situation where, you know, we're 6% of the world population consuming 70% of the world's goods. That's injustice. That's just simply injustice. It can't continue that way and we're going to have to learn to live a little bit more simply. And that is what we don't want to do. We want peace so that we can live the way we want to live. And that's not going to be the way we're going to get to peace. Which is depending on our current way of life. that we can have all this greed, and break the whole world, and be given a battery, and a laser, and wealth, you know. And this is what people, if you start a war over them, this is what people in other countries are protesting about, killing us for, because they don't want this stuff.

[42:36]

They have a global economy, a world economy, and it's run by us. And the Mcdonalds are being bombed out. Do they represent us? There are ethnicities being threatened, and there's a nationality in which they're not ending the beautiful thing, but not when it comes to the world economy. We have a lot of very good things, too. I mean, it isn't all bad. But I think we have a real blind spot, because we've gotten used to seeing poverty, we've gotten used to seeing death, we've gotten used to seeing starvation. And, you know, it's like the kids watching, you know, the live television when the second plane went into the World Trade Center. And I was living in, you know, at Loyola, Illinois at the time.

[43:42]

I got caught out in Pennsylvania. I was at St. Vincent's that day on 9-11. But I read in the papers afterwards some kids saying, oh cool, you know, that's cool, you know, a plane full of people crashing into the... Well, it was just like any other movie they've seen on television. It just doesn't wash over them. I've heard that there were people in Kuwait celebrating. Let's go back to the enlightenment stuff and end on that note.

[44:14]

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