I've been talking about some very basic things, about what I consider to be the very foundation of any real progress in spirituality, and that is to be in touch with one's own reality. I really think that's the primary fruit of spiritual direction, is to find out who you are, and to be able to relate your being, your reality, your gifts to God, to the reality of God. So the decisive events of my personal life will be recognized and illumined only when they're seen in relation to this golden thread of salvation history, I think that's why it's so important to be constantly getting into the rhythm of the liturgy.

[01:03]

If we enter into the spirit of the liturgy properly, the psalms, the prayers of the liturgy, we will gradually, senzim sine senzu, as he used to say, imperceptibly, we begin to feel with the Holy Spirit, to feel with the direction that the Spirit is guiding the Church. You know, in that regard, I think the Psalms are so important because you recite them constantly and they don't seem to be doing anything. But if they're recited prayerfully, they gradually change attitudes. And I sometimes refer to that as the monastic way of conversion. It's not the Jesuit way.

[02:07]

The Jesuit way is the pressure cooker. Now, you put people in a 30-day retreat and just grind them until they're changed, you see. I think the monastic, the Benedictine way is more gradual. You know, Benedict doesn't talk about 30-day retreats, he talks about the Latin observance, but it's always a kind of undramatic, regular, daily, you know, changing in small ways. You know, the crockpot, it tenderizes meat, it takes longer, but it does just as good a job, and it doesn't hiss. and fume and make noise. You hardly know what's happening. And Cardinal Newman noticed that about the Benedictines. He says, you know, they come in and just quietly you see men working in the forest and then there's a little hut and a chapel and then there's a school and first thing there's a village and gradually, slowly, almost by osmosis, they are converting the countryside.

[03:18]

Nobody ever referred to the Benedictines as the shock troopers of the Church, you know. And so, I think, you know, this is completely in harmony with our own sentiment, our own tradition. And so, you know, we try to deepen our understanding of who we are and what we can do and what we can't do. And not to fret about what we can't do, but to exploit the gifts we have. and to cherish and honor those gifts that we don't have in others, so that all together we can, the community can have the benefit of all the gifts and eliminate that destructive competition. Now that I can be grateful for other people's gifts, no jealousy, no envy, because I have confidence in my own gifts and the community also helps me to recognize them, I recall reading Brueggemann's book, In Man We Trust, in the wisdom literature, and he talks about David there.

[04:29]

And he said, David, he claimed he was the first wise man, I'm sure others may disagree, but he says, David knew what God could do and what he could do, and he knew the difference. He didn't try to do what God's supposed to do. And he didn't want God to do what he was supposed to do. He calls him the trusted creature, the one who knew that God trusted him and gave him responsibility. But responsibility within the limits of his gifts, not responsibility for everything. We can discover that wisdom of knowing what we can do and knowing how important it can be. and then letting the rest to God. The most significant events in our lives will turn out to be, I think, not those things which the world calls significant events, usually successes, but rather those experiences that challenge us to acknowledge our contingency, to acknowledge our creaturehood,

[05:48]

and thereby to lead us to discover our Creator, our true strength. Now, blessed are the poor, not because they're poor. There's nothing blessed about destitution. Blessed are the poor because they have no reason not to turn to God. Self-sufficiency is so impossible for them that they don't even pay attention to it. Self-sufficiency is a temptation only for the rich and the strong. The others know it's impossible. Like the child in the gospel, Jesus took a child and put it in front of him. Unless you become like this child, unless you turn around, be converted and become like this child, you cannot enter the kingdom.

[06:55]

Same meaning as blessed are the poor. A child knows it doesn't control anything, really. And so it can turn to its parents and trust their goodness. and it can play and relax. Those who understand that their real strength comes from God can afford to relax and to play, to rejoice. Now, they have their responsibilities, but only their responsibilities. We tend to want to control a lot more than we need to control. The most important opportunities of my life may therefore be not successes, but setbacks, defeats, painful separations, because they lead me to the truth of God's love and power, as well as

[08:09]

to the truth of my weakness. And if I discover God's strength in my weakness, I am no longer weak. So these can be blessed saving events. And so I try daily to learn what the opportunity of my life is, what I am called to do and what I am not called to do. And I learned to be happy and satisfied with the opportunity that God has given me. So, in my life there will be a constant movement, the classic movement from bondage to liberation. No question about it, from the biblical perspective, salvation is always liberation. Never anything but liberation. Anything that claims to be salvation that does not mean liberation is fraudulent.

[09:18]

Sometimes we can think salvation is civilization, for example, to be civilized, to know how to behave. to go to a finishing school, to be saved, to look like a good Christian. Well, civilization is a good thing, but it's not salvation. It's just another form of bondage. As Cardinal Newman says, you know, the gentleman sinner is still a sinner. He just uses a scalpel instead of an axe. He's more civilized in his sinfulness. And so, we move from bondage to liberation, and we are constantly finding new elements of bondage, new corners that have not been liberated.

[10:28]

And as we discover these new forms of bondage, new fears, new anxieties, God is merciful in revealing our bondage gradually in most cases. As we find these, we put them in front of God, we ask God's grace to turn them into liberation, to free us from that fear, that guilt, It's always amazed me that one of the classic forms of bondage is guilt. And guilt almost invariably comes from religion. This shows how dangerous it is to think that religion, having religion alone is enough. It's got to be right religion. It's got to be a religion that liberates. And as we are liberated, we form covenant, we take responsibility for our freedom, which means we try to liberate others.

[11:40]

There's a magnificent passage in Deuteronomy about how Israel shall live in that land of milk and honey that God will give her. Of course, it's all written in hindsight, put in words as if it were a prophecy, has the benefit of experience. When you enter that land, you shall be sure to take care of the widow and the orphan and the wayfarer. Take care of these vulnerable people. You shall not take advantage of those who are weak, of those who are less secure than you are. You shall not take advantage of them. Why not? The pagans all do it. because I found you in bondage, I found you in the same kind of vulnerable condition and I did not ridicule you and make fun of you for my position of strength and freedom.

[12:49]

No one is more strong or free than God and yet he did not laugh at the Israelites, the strong free men often do. but he took pity on them and gave them freedom. And as they discovered freedom from the love of God, from the care of God, they discovered also the purpose of freedom. No other purpose for freedom except to love others that they may be free. I consider that the moral imperative of the entire Old Testament, and in fact the New Testament. If therefore God has so loved us, should we not also love one another? So, as I said, we open ourselves to goodness, allow ourselves to be liberated by it, and then we turn that freedom into goodness to others, which will always mean some form of liberation for them.

[14:01]

So much so that I think in the day of judgment, long before they get around to asking us about going to mass on Sunday or things like that, the question will be, did you let my people go? Did you let my people go? Did you make the people whom you knew, whom you influenced, more sure of themselves, more able to deal with their weakness, more forgiven, stronger because of you? Or did you act like a pharaoh and use your strength and your power to keep them in their place, to keep them in their bondage? I don't know of any need to ask any other questions. Sometimes it's good, I think, to review our lives, to ask ourselves whether we have a liberating influence on others.

[15:08]

All of this is connected with that most important of all Christian experiences, the experience of faith. Everything depends on faith. Faith makes the difference between the child of God and an unredeemed human being. The Bible never defines faith, not even in Hebrews. Faith is a substance of things hoped for, not a definition. It's a description at best. The Bible does describe faith, but even more important, the Bible describes people who believe. It shows us believers. And from seeing how they dealt with life, we learn the dynamics of faith.

[16:22]

We learn what faith means. The classic text on faith is Romans chapter 3. I'm going to be teaching St. Paul this next semester, next Monday, as a matter of fact, because I taught it before for many years, but I got a colleague in New Testament. We have an embarrassment of riches, three people in Scripture. Not like the days when I taught the whole thing. And so I turned St. Paul over to him, but he's going on sabbatical now. back to Paul again, but it gave me a chance to kind of review and think through some of these things again. That wonderful text in Paul, you know, he spends those first two and a half chapters in Romans talking about the need of salvation, making sure we understand that there's nobody, not the Jews, not the Gentiles, nobody who does not need to be saved.

[17:26]

And then he deals with the critical question, how can we be put in touch with salvation? How can we tap into that power that Jesus has made available to us? And his answer is faith. What is faith? We know, of course, big, big controversy of Protestant Catholics about faith, justification through faith. Catholics and Protestants have come a lot closer in recent years as we move away from a polemic understanding of this. But I think the critical text is Romans 3.24. They are justified freely by his favor through the gift of faith. Justify the two adverbs there, freely and by his favor. It's redundant. Suggests that faith is not illumination.

[18:36]

I think the image of illumination for faith, lumen fidei, is only partially accurate. A far better image for faith is the discovery of something, an awakening to something. An awakening to what? Discovery of the radical gift quality of life. We are saved freely by His grace. by his gift, by his favor. Faith is prepared by the experience of being loved and cherished on a human level. At first, this is the discovery only that there is some goodness in life, goodness perhaps in my family,

[19:48]

but the world is still a dangerous place. This is at most an invitation to faith. Faith, I think, becomes truly operative and the gift of faith is discovered when I am able to leap beyond the awareness of limited and occasional goodness to the conviction of the radical and basic goodness which underlies all of life and which transfuses the future. It's interesting to ask ourselves about our image of the world. Is it an evil place? Not created evil, but contaminated by sin? into which we try to inject some goodness with our little hypodermic needle, all the while considering it almost futile.

[20:58]

Well, keep trying. Well, I'm not sure it's going to do any good. Pastors are constantly tempted to a sense of futility in pastoral work. work and preach and work and preach and who knows what good it does. Or is the image perhaps that the evil is only on the surface and underneath is a great reservoir of goodness? And my task is not to inject or force some little measure of goodness into that evil mass My task, my challenge is to tap that reservoir, that endless reservoir which underlies all of reality. Wouldn't it be a shame if we ended our lives saying, well, I tried to inject a few drops of goodness.

[22:12]

I'm not sure how much good it did. and we find we could have done, simply tapped what was there. I think we don't let goodness happen, that that's our biggest problem. We don't let it happen, or we want to control how it happens. And if it isn't done my way, then I'm not interested. the Holy Spirit, the presence of God in the Church, more than adequate to deal with all the possible evils and difficulties. I get very disturbed when I hear leaders of the Church giving homilies that are defensive, negative, pointing out all the dangers and watch out for this and look out for that and be careful.

[23:15]

when they're supposed to be witnessing to the resurrection. There are dangers and there are difficulties and we should talk about them. But that second, first to talk about the resurrection and this power of the resurrection, to what shall we bring it to bear? Well, here are some things that we might try to apply the resurrection to. Faith addresses the imagination. It helps us to imagine the victory of goodness, the victory of justice, the possibility of non-violence. And by imagining it and helping others to imagine it, it becomes almost inevitable. I think Eastern Europe today the example of the power of imagination.

[24:20]

It's more than that, of course, but that's a big part of it. That's why tyrants always fear poets, symbol makers, because they can get to the imagination of people. The tyrant wants people to think that this is fated, that this is the way, the only way it could be, that there is no other possibility. that we were never meant to have hope. Nobody ever really thought there could be justice or peace. War is fated. The prophet, the believer says, no, there is nothing fatalistic about this. It's not predestined. That is To stand in the presence of that kind of massive denial into a firm life, into a firm hope, is as courageous as martyrdom.

[25:30]

The radical goodness of life, which then means that you start looking for manifestations of goodness. We don't see things unless we are looking for them. If I am looking for signs of evil, I will find them. If I am looking for signs of goodness, I find them. St. Teresa, a little flower, her last illness, suffering terribly in her early twenties, treated for hemorrhage of the throat or something. She had, you know, advanced stages of tuberculosis, misdiagnosed and untreated. And yet, she said in one of her interviews, when I look at my life, I can only conclude that everything is gift.

[26:40]

Que tut e gras. Everything is gift. That's faith. She was not lying. She was not saying this for her biography. She wasn't saying this so that hagiographers could put something nice down. No, she was telling the truth. Humanly speaking, she had nothing to be grateful for hardly, humanly speaking. She had discovered that radical goodness in life in spite of these surface difficulties. All of this is through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, Paul tells us. All the gifts we find in life can be related to the central and wonderful gift of Jesus.

[27:43]

the guarantee of the Father's constant love and fidelity. And John says in prologue, we have seen His glory, the glory as of an only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, full of hesed and emeth. I think he is saying we have seen, you know, the substance of the goodness, of the gift that God has given to us in Jesus. In him we have seen what the goodness of God can do in a human being, our brother, what the goodness of God can do in the world through him. Every gift and blessing acknowledged and received with gratitude helps us to appreciate a little more the wonder of that gift which is Jesus. And so we should constantly praise and thank the Father for all his gifts in conjunction with the ultimate gift of Jesus.

[29:00]

To grow in faith, to let faith become more and more victorious, and of course this is a lifelong project. We are constantly trying to increase our faith, We haven't finished believing yet. To let faith become victorious in life means to open myself to all the signs of goodness in life, to name them, to be grateful for them, to hold them in grateful memory. It's not sufficient just to say they're there. One has to look at them, and give them a name and say thank you. And that takes time. And as we do that, we begin to see more gifts, more blessings, and that takes more time. And the next thing we know, there's hardly any time left for complaining, not to mention cursing.

[30:11]

or being angry or frustrated. We choose then to let the evil go, to forgive. We choose instead to look for goodness. And we find it in ever more hidden places. At first we see it only where it is obvious. that as we become accustomed to looking for it, our eyes are opened and we begin to see goodness in subtle things, in small things. We become accustomed to finding goodness. We find it in mysterious places. We find it in the surprises of life. We find it in the uncontrollable and unplanned events of life.

[31:15]

In other words, we find it in mystery. Mystery. Mystery is a very important theological word, but it can be easily misunderstood. Mystery suggests mystery novels, or it's all a mystery to me. In other words, in its most obvious sense, it means something not understood. But mystery in a religious sense is something quite different. It means something that is not comprehensible, but which is nonetheless very meaningful. Something that is simply not understood is not meaningful either. A religious mystery is something that's not comprehensible in the sense of being controllable by reason and logic, but it is wonderfully meaningful.

[32:23]

Love is a pretty good example of mystery. You can read five volumes on love and not know as much about love as five minutes of loving will tell you. That's mysterious that that should be the case. All the really important things in life are mysterious. They are to be appreciated and enjoyed, not analyzed. or if they're analyzed, that's secondary. Life itself, love, happiness. And so, as faith becomes more dominant in our lives, we become more truly believers, as it begins to change our attitude toward life, enables us to see things we hadn't seen before.

[33:31]

As that happens, we become friends of mystery, We don't say, I don't understand it, therefore it must not be good. Instead we say, I don't understand it. Maybe it's better than the things I understand. I think we don't have to live very long to realize that the best things in life are not the things that we control or understand. The best and most necessary things in life are beyond our control and to a large extent incomprehensible. To become a friend of mystery, and I think there is no Christian who dedicates himself more to being a friend of mystery than a monk.

[34:32]

This is, I think, the very heart of the monastic inquisition. To rejoice in mystery, to rejoice in the life that God gives precisely when it cannot be understood. To thank God for life, especially when life doesn't make sense. And so, as faith grows stronger, we find more and more things to be grateful for. We are more able to pray. Prayer grows apace with faith. Faith discovers goodness and prayer thanks God for it. And I'm convinced that if we have problems with prayer, the difficulty is probably with our faith.

[35:34]

If we discover goodness as God wants us to, we will pray. We will have no choice but to be grateful, to thank God, to find occasions and opportunities for praising God. And so, we begin by thanking God for the obviously good things. sunshine on my picnic, vacation for students, good health after illness. You don't have to be a Christian to know those are good. But then we begin in faith to thank God for the ambiguous part of life, the part that could be good or bad. At first, you can hardly tell. And I think the ambiguous part of life may be as much as 80% of it.

[36:40]

But if I approach the unknown part of life expecting the worst, I will almost inevitably find the worst. But if I approach it in faith, looking for goodness in it, I will be filled with wonder at how much goodness I find there. How many things which at first sight appear to be bad, unwanted, are discovered to be a blessing if we give it a chance to be a blessing? So we give the benefit of the doubt to goodness and blessing in life. There are also about 10% of life which seems beyond redemption. 10% of life, you know, terminal illness.

[37:47]

What can you do with that? We all hope that we will have faith and resignation when that comes. But we don't really know for sure if we will. And so we always are concerned about that darkness. They tell a story about Pope John XXIII, which I think is very appropriate here. He had been diagnosed with terminal and inoperable stomach cancer. So he knew he was dying. And he went one day to talk to some seminarians. And in the course of his little conference to them, he said, every day is a good day. A good day for living and a good day for dying. I don't think John XXIII discovered that just that day.

[38:52]

I think what happened was that all his life, his long life, he had become accustomed to say, as each day dawned, echo, another good day, looking for goodness in it, greeting it as a gift. Thank you, Lord, for another day. What happy surprise do you have for me today? Now, it usually pays not to look out the window or at your desk until you've said that. Because you look out the window, see the weather, look at your desk and see all that stuff, you may not want to. And even looking in the mirror doesn't help either sometimes. I think John XXIII had made that daily Act of faith. Thank you, Lord, for another good day. And now when that dark period began, when it didn't seem possible, he found that he had become a victim of that habit.

[40:15]

I don't think you can learn at the last minute to say that. You have to be saying that all along. Then you become a victim of that habit of blessing every day. And when this happens to be the day when you're told that medicine won't help anymore, then I think you'll be able to say, that's still a good day. Faith will conquer even that day, because faith has been, has taken over my life. And so I become a grateful person, a grateful person. It's a blessing on all people to find someone who is not complaining and griping, grousing and blaming others.

[41:21]

Oh yeah, well, there's some bad things happen, but overall, I've been blessed. And that's going to be the attitude that I will present to the world. Someone that's been blessed and given more than I deserve in terms of goodness. Very often when we look at life and see things that we've been accustomed to consider negative, we look at them and name them in a new way. you know, name them as possible source of goodness, they change. And I had an experience as a little boy that illustrated that. My mother took me with her one time to visit some cousin, and I was bored to death

[42:24]

They were talking, you know, women talk. Relatives, whose cousin is this, and what's this, and what's that. And finally this cousin said to my mother, let's go outside, I want to show you my garden. And so I was a boy raised in a farm, and so I knew the difference between a flower and a weed. Devil's paintbrush was a weed, even though it doesn't look that bad in itself. And one of the worst weeds in the fields and in the garden was wild carrot. Can't pull it out. Root breaks off and then it comes up. Three shoots come out of that. Well, she took my mother out and showed her her flower garden. And she said, as she pointed to a big, healthy, wild carrot plant in her flower garden, She said to my mother, and I want you to notice in particular this wonderful example of Queen Anne's Lace.

[43:26]

Queen Anne's Lace. Wild carrot. I learned the importance of names. A great deal of what we call weeds in life could become flowers if we would learn to be grateful for them, to look at them as if they were flowers, to give them a chance to be that. In this way we can make our journey through the desert, through the mid-bar, through the mystery. Desert is the wilderness, land of mystery. Make our journey through the desert and it becomes a... place of flowers, make the desert blue. I named my book Flowers in the Desert because I wanted, above all, to talk about how one can find meaning in a life that seems many times not to have meaning.

[44:46]

And when one finds meaning, in life, it becomes like the experience of finding a flower in the desert. And I've never been to the southwest, but they say it's almost a miracle when a little bit of rain comes, the desert just jumps into bloom. And most exquisite flowers. I think I'll tell the abbot that I'd like to make a trip to the southwest, check out to see if that's true. What a wonderful thing it would be if we could make our world bloom so that other people could have hope. And I couldn't help thinking of that this morning when we read from Mark's Gospel and we noticed that Mark rarely shows Jesus speaking. He has no sermons of Jesus at all.

[45:49]

And so the earliest gospel form was that of 1 Corinthians, a very, very simple narrative. And then a slightly more enlarged version in chapter 2 of Acts, just an embryonic public ministry that Jesus was singled out by mighty signs and portents and wonders, and then was abandoned by God a very, very simple hint of the public ministry and then of course raised up and made both Lord and Messiah. And Mark's gospel, presumably the first, the earliest gospel in spite of C.S. Mann and others, Bernard Orchard, Riesbach, I still think is clearly the earliest gospel, all narrative. And very interesting narrative, Jesus is casting out demons constantly, healing, casting out demons, new creation.

[46:58]

The demons, very difficult to know exactly what all these demon possessions were. Some of them may very well have been epilepsy and things like that. But the point is, it's not a clinical definition of devil possession that the Bible is interested in. All of them represent chaos. The devils, demons and the gospel are agents of chaos. It is that ancient heaving of the deep, the tohuwa bohu, the empty and the void of Genesis before creation, which of course reflects the condition of the slaves in Egypt before God entered their bondage or entered to deliver them. God never quite conquered the original chaos in creation. Just as in Revelation we see he never quite eliminated the devil.

[48:00]

He bound him and limited him, but he didn't eliminate him. That's for the end of time, when the final binding of the devil will take place. And so, the Hebrews pictured chaos trying to take back the order of creation, the goodness of creation. And these demons are manifestations. And in our own lives we don't see them in things like Rosemary's Baby and things like that or these melodramatic stories about exorcisms. No, no. Any time that we sacrifice unity and harmony to chaos, anytime chaos and dissension and disorder enter our being or our community, there's a demonic presence. And Jesus has come to cast out the demons, to restore order, to make harmony, to cause harmony to exist.

[49:01]

And then of course in Matthew and Luke and others you have big sermons of Jesus, but the sermons of Jesus are all in service of his actions. It's clear. That's the proper order. Understand his actions and then look to the sermons as a kind of commentary on what he is doing. So it's not a Gnostic revelation to the mind. It's a Hebrew revelation in history, in reality, in action. And so, what we do, what our attitudes are, are the critically important thing, not what we say. And what we hear in the non-verbal part of life, what we hear in creation, what we hear in the events of our lives, what we hear in our experience, that is also a major source of revelation. I mentioned that the Bible gives us the best idea of faith by showing us believers.

[50:06]

And one of the classic ones is Abraham. And he is particularly important because he tells us that faith really manifests itself inevitably in hospitality. He was the great host, the entertainer, entertaining. the alien, entertaining the strangers, entertaining the mystery in life, entertaining that which is uncontrollable and unexpected, potentially dangerous. Abraham made a famous journey from Mesopotamia to Hebron, to Mamre, Ur of the Chaldees, famous journey into the unknown.

[51:09]

Go to the place that I will show you. Don't ask for names, don't ask for distance, simply go. He did it because God asked him to do it. His only concern whether was whether this request came from God. He did it at age 75. Well, who knows how old he really was, but symbolically 75 means he did it at a time when, humanly speaking, you don't start long journeys. God teased him in this journey with glowing promises about the distant future, but provided no comprehensible means of attaining those promises. So there's this interplay with God, Lord, Lord, you know, when how shall I become the father of many nations?

[52:12]

I have no child. And God would say, look at the stars, count the stars if you can. Abraham, in effect, reminded God, don't you know that a million starts with one? One, two, three. Sarah is childless. And finally, when Sarah is 90 years old and Abraham is 99, well beyond the time of childbearing. Again, perhaps exaggerated numbers to make the point that, humanly speaking, there was no hope. But Abraham believed He hoped against hope, as Paul says. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead, because he was about a hundred years old. When you get close to a hundred, take a look at your body. Was as good as dead.

[53:17]

And when he considered the barren condition of Sarah's womb, literally the dead condition of her womb, He did not weaken in faith. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God. Now that's the foolishness of faith. And finally, at Mamre, God came to him in the guise of three strangers and he provided for them extravagant hospitality. Père Devaux in Jerusalem, a great Père Devaux, wonderful teacher. And when he got excited, he would tug at his beard and even turn it around and stick the end of his beard in his mouth and chew on his tongue. And there was an American there from Cleveland, you know, who was French-Canadian by origin. He spoke French quite well. And he says, he stuck his dirty beard in his mouth. And on this occasion, he stuck his beard in his mouth.

[54:19]

He says, what a banquet! What a banquet! Enough for a battalion he provided for these three men. If you look at the majors in Hebrew, extravagant banquet. He waited on them in person. And they said to him, next year in the springtime, Sarah shall have a son. Next year in the springtime. Abraham entertained strangers in his old age. I suspect that his human inclination would have been to tell Sarah, let's keep quiet, pull down the blinds, hope they go by. Like, who needs strangers coming in in our condition? No, no, I'm settled in my ways. I don't want any surprises anymore. Just let me in my little familiar path."

[55:22]

No, no. Faith prevented him from doing that. He ran out, intercepted them lest they go by. Invited them in. And they brought the word that he needed to hear at long last. Yes, God has remembered and that child will be born. promises will begin to be fulfilled. Abraham is entertaining mystery, entertaining the unknown, faith overcoming fear, overcoming suspicion, overcoming distrust. The other end of the Bible, at Emmaus, We have a similar example of faith. The disciples are full of gloom.

[56:25]

Jesus joined them as they were on the way, but he made himself a stranger to them. We don't know whether he changed his appearance or whether they were so convinced that he had died that even if he came looking the same, I mean, you know, if your Aunt Sophie dies and you bury her and next Friday you see her in the marketplace, you say, it's not her. You know it's not her. Anyway, he made himself a stranger to them, almost as if God is saying, you want to know whether you have faith? How do you handle strangers? How do you handle that which is new, unexpected, unplanned? that which I do not own and do not control, how do you handle that in your life? The surprise. This will tell you far more about your faith than whether you say the creed or not.

[57:30]

And on the way, they told him why they were discouraged, that Jesus of Nazareth had looked so promising But he died. It's all over. It's worse than before. And he began to speak to them about the Scriptures. Oh, they thought they knew the Scriptures. They thought the Scriptures were like an old senile man who had told all his stories, perhaps several times. And Jesus says, no, let's look at the Scriptures again. Let's look at them with faith. With my guidance, did you not know that the Messiah must suffer and thus enter into his glory? Why did you read the scriptures so selectively? We are always editing the scriptures, looking for favorite passages.

[58:35]

Very dangerous thing to do. No, let the scriptures speak to us. Even the cursing psalms should be read. Even if we don't understand completely. I think they're therapeutic. We all have that spirit of cursing in us. Let's get it out in front of God. May your wife become a widow. Get the anger out where it can be healed, can be seen. So, he taught them. He opened the mystery to them. And then he let on he was going farther, but they said no. you can't, it's too dangerous, come in, join us. They showed him hospitality. And in the breaking of the bread, they recognized him. Because they made room for mystery, for new understanding in their lives, it became the most important day of their lives.

[59:37]

And then there's a famous passage from Hebrews chapter 13 verse 2. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for in this way some have entertained angels unawares. Entertained angels. That's a good biblical example of what angels are. Angels are, as Peter Burgery It's indicated in that wonderful book he wrote, A Rumor of Angels. Angels are signals of the transcendent. The transcendent is breaking in all over, but never in loud or noisy ways. Little hints, little whispers of the transcendent everywhere. For those who are attuned to receive those signs, they're angels. That tells me more about angels than all the medieval speculation. Our Abbot just turned 64.

[60:43]

He will offer his resignation next November. Things are still calm, but soon there will be a little more nervosity in the community. And I've always noticed, before Abbot's elections, everybody starts treating everybody much more nicely. You start showing hospitality to angels. You don't know which one We should have an election every year, make people a little nicer to others. Entertain angels in life. Not to be so quick to condemn and to curse. Damn, another rotten day. Another sore throat. Another twinge of arthritis. No, let's not be too quick. to call those strangers, those uninvited guests, to call them evil, aliens.

[61:51]

Let's invite them in, see what they have to tell us. Be hospitable to strangers, show faith. I think this is at the heart of monastic instinct. We claim to be specialists in hospitality. I've always been a little skeptical about that. Are we really more hospitable than the Franciscans or the Dominicans? Do we have an ownership of hospitality? Everybody is supposed to be hospitable. Everybody should be careful how they receive guests. And in particular, I think, in monasteries, my experience has been how you bring them from the airport and take them back. Father Priory did a fine job, I'm not talking about that.

[62:54]

But I tell you, I've had some hair-raising experiences coming to and from the airport. Hospitality begins at the airport. You scare the devil out of somebody at 65, 80, 75 miles an hour. I won't tell you what monasteries. One guy almost ran out of gas. We were actually arriving on fumes. No, no, you shouldn't. You shouldn't be treated like that. No, hospitality goes much deeper. It's very, very Benedictine, very monastic. And I think that if you want to know what monasticism is all about, you don't begin with the vows. The vows came later. Monasticism happened and then they said, well, tell us what's going on and let us get some order into this and some regulation into it, make it more regular. So we said, well, let's see. Yes, we obey and we practice celibacy. All right, let's make that a vow then. The vows came only after the instinct.

[63:56]

It was a phenomenon that was then regularized in some way through vows and other things. And what was the instinct? was the entertainment of God's mystery, first and foremost in prayer. There's no vow to pray, unless you lump it under obedience, which covers everything, but that is certainly the center of monastic life, to pray, as Benedict says, to entertain God's mysterious presence, to sing the Alleluia, in season and out of season, whether you feel like it or not. Praise God. Some days it's easy. Some days you hardly need faith. Other days you can only do it because you believe. But to do it wholeheartedly, whether life is manifesting that to you or not,

[65:03]

trusting, believing, hoping against hope, in public, unhurried prayer, and in personal, calm, quiet, intense prayer, and mostly listening to the Lord, listening to the Lord. That's got to be the center. And then, and then one entertains the mystery of other human beings. God puts his mystery in all creation, but most of all in his human creatures. And so we entertain the mystery in other human beings, primarily in the community. And you entertain that mystery by being respectful, by not thinking you have everybody figured out. Oh, we know a lot about each other.

[66:04]

The hardest place to practice charity and show respect is in a family or community where everybody knows each other so much they think they know everything. As a matter of fact, we tend to stereotype people. And we lock them into that. We don't allow them to be anything but that. And then we wonder why they seem boring. No, we entertain, we draw out of them surprises, happy surprises. Beyond the community, we reach out in many different ways to entertain and respect the mystery in creation, in other human beings, in apostolate, in service. You don't have to go out of the monastery to do it, writing a letter of sympathy many, many, many ways of reaching out and showing respect, giving encouragement to others.

[67:08]

And then I think, too, finally, entertaining the mystery of God in the world of nature. We're very much concerned about ecology now, about the environment. The Benedictines were concerned with the environment long before it became fashionable. The gentle touch, the gentle handling of pagan classics, wherever beauty is found. The Benedictines didn't burn books. They didn't mean that they followed their philosophy, but they recognized beauty in the classics and they saved them. Not fanatics, not fundamentalists, not sectarians. open to the presence of beauty everywhere in creation, affirming it, drawing it out. No violence. My father was a non-violent farmer.

[68:12]

I didn't know it. I thought all farmers were like that. But he would turn the soil over and you could see him smelling it and rejoicing it and thanking God for it. He would never invest in a tractor. Makes all that noise and stinks. Well, horses don't always smell that good either. But I've seen farmers, you know, driving their tractors with their front wheels off the ground, tearing up the earth. Well, obviously tractors are good, but there is a way of handling, handling a typewriter. I've seen people attacking typewriters, attacking computers. gentle, calm, patient, respectful attitude toward all of life. Nonviolence. A nonviolent attitude towards one's body. I was scandalized when Congress voted to cast a medal to honor, not the person, but the myth of John Wayne.

[69:23]

The myth of John Wayne. hard-smoking, hard-drinking, violent, pistol-packing John Wayne. Scandal. Died of lung cancer. Destroyed his own body in a certain sense. I'm not blaming him as an individual, but he's a symbolic figure. And to hold that up as a model, that macho thing, No, no, the monk rejects that. Gentle care of the environment, gratitude for all that is, looking for good everywhere, seeing statues in stones, seeing music in sounds. Another great figure that represents faith, one of my favorites, is King David.

[70:26]

King David is bigger than life, symbolic figure. The Bible delights in giving us historical figures who have symbolic meaning. And no doubt in the stories about these historical figures, they embellish them to bring out the symbolism. David in the Bible is probably better than he was in real life. And Saul is probably not as bad as he was in real life. But they play roles based on their historical reality, but we want to make sure we don't miss the symbolic meaning in them. And David is a profound, attractive example of believing. And Saul is a terrible, tragic example of lack of faith, loss of faith. David is also the one to whom the Psalms are attributed.

[71:28]

How much prayer depends on faith. David is associated with prayer in the Old Testament because he was a man of faith. He didn't write all the Psalms. He probably didn't write more than ten of them. People who like him give him fifteen. Phil not very much. But they all knew, Israel knew instinctively that whoever wrote the Psalms was a David figure, was a David type, was one like David, had the David attitude toward life, was a believer. It's interesting to note that David in the Middle Ages is presented more often in art and stuff with a harp than he is with a sword, even though in the Scriptures he's always wielding the sword, or almost always. David can only be fully appreciated when he is contrasted with Saul.

[72:33]

When Walter Brueggemann put out his book, which I see you have in the bookstore here, his book, David, the truth of... David in Truth, or something like that, anyway. I was a little worried because I had been working and worrying and fussing with this David thing. All of it struck me as strange. Father Justin Krellner, who taught me scripture, so enthusiastic, a wonderful teacher, and he said, oh, that poor man Saul. And I used to say, well, you know, poor, yeah, poor old Saul, but what's the reason? Saul didn't even begin to commit the sins that David did. He was a very careful sinner. Cautious. He committed peccadilloes. David committed textbook sins. And yet, David comes out smelling like roses. And Saul, doomed.

[73:35]

Tragic figure. I worked and worried about that. What's going on here? It can't be luck. It can't be... God does not... God is not a father who spins the wheel for his children. It's not luck. It's not the throw of the dice. That's pagan. Finally it dawned on me, yes, yes, David had faith and Saul didn't. And that's what the Bible is trying to show us. That faith will do, will make a person like David And lack of faith will make a person like Saul. When Brueggemann wrote this book, David's Truth, I was a little concerned because I hadn't written my book yet and I was afraid I waited too long. And he did say some very fine things and very true things about David, very good things. He said, like to write stories about David.

[74:37]

And probably some of the stories are embellished, maybe even made up. But that doesn't matter. David was the kind of person that generated stories. But I don't think he saw the importance of the Saul contrast. And I think the Saul contrast is evident in the scriptures. Their careers overlap and they are contrasted in a very clear way. Anyway, David. As I say, he had the golden touch, the Midas touch. Even when he made mistakes, he knew how to get out of it and be better off for the experience. He committed terrible sins. He repented. He was able to repent and he ended up being a better man than he was before he had sinned. Ophelius Copa, Saul, Saul committed peccadillas, frightened little sins, and he was unable to repent of them.

[75:44]

Instead, he drew out of them all the poison that was in them, magnified them, allowed them to destroy him. And so he was down at Jericho, and he gathered the soldiers to fight the Philistines, and he waited for Samuel to come to offer sacrifice. And he waited, and he waited, and for seven days Samuel did not come. And finally, in desperation, he sees his men are leaving him. His army is dissolving. In desperation, he says, bring the animal here, and he sacrifices it. No more than he did so, Samuel appears and says, who do you think you are? That's the priest's job. You have usurped the priest's function. God is displeased. I think Samuel was in the bushes all those seven days waiting to see how Saul would handle this. So I'm sorry, I made a mistake, I know.

[76:47]

Saul looks like a wimp. Israel didn't like wimps, didn't like Ahab dominated by Jezebel. What would David have done? That's an interesting question. What would David have done if he was about to offer, wanted to offer sacrifice before the battle and the prophet didn't show up? I think I know what he would have done. About the second day, he would have sacrificed like he did with the showbread. And when Samuel appeared and said, you're not supposed to do that, he would have drawn himself up full height, probably put his crown on, and said, priest, you were late and you do that one more time and you aren't the chaplain anymore. Now, let's get on with it. And Sama would have said, oh, thank God. We have a king in Israel. Thank God. We have someone who will accept responsibility.

[77:55]

I really think he was testing Saul and Saul failed. He didn't... Why did he fail? He didn't believe... Well, he believed in the goodness of God. That's easy. He didn't believe in the goodness of God's world. And he didn't believe, most of all, in the goodness of Saul. He didn't think Saul was any good. He didn't think Saul's opinion mattered. He didn't think Saul could make a good decision. He didn't think he could follow his instincts. And so he didn't. And when he tried to, he didn't do it rightly. To be in touch with God's goodness is to know when timing is so important. If you have to pass everything through 14 filters, it'll be too late then to do it. David, by contrast, was instinctive. He shouldn't have danced before the Ark.

[79:00]

not the way he did. It was, you know, kings are supposed to be a little more pontifical than that, or perhaps I should say regal. But he danced before the Ark as they brought it up to Jerusalem, and Michael, Saul's daughter, infected by the same disease, saw him dancing and chided him afterwards, shame on you. exposing yourself thus before the maidens of Israel. I don't know what David did, but he must have shown more than an ankle as he leapt and danced before the Ark. And what did he say to Michael? Oh, I'm sorry, I made a mistake. He says, get lost. I don't want to see you anymore. What else could I do except dance? I was happy. He knew and trusted his instincts.

[80:06]

He was a trusted creature. Jesus was son of David. I don't think Jesus is son of David simply because of that genealogy. If anybody can follow that genealogy, in either Matthew or Luke, Congratulations. I tell you, it weaves and turns and... No, no, it's not a biological thing primarily. Oh, I think he was of the tribe of David. That's no problem. He was son of David because he was the ultimate David. The ultimate one who believed in the goodness of God and the goodness of life and his own goodness. The ultimate is one who trusted his own instincts and dare to be himself, and dare to offer himself to God. The Pharisees are Saul people.

[81:12]

Judas is the Saul of the New Testament, suicidal like Saul, suspicious, angry, felt betrayed by Jesus, could not let Jesus be Jesus, so he missed him altogether. David's fate also made him creative and imaginative. He stirred up his imagination. You know, we have this stereotype of holy people as being rather dull. That is a terrible caricature. Truly holy people are interesting. They have not destroyed their imagination, their creativity. That is illustrated by the magnificent story of David and Goliath.

[82:17]

David is sent by his father to the battlefield to see how his older brothers are doing and to take some cheesecakes for them because you know how bad the food is in the army. And his father also told him, bring a token back from them so that I know that you delivered the cheesecakes. It was a mischief as a little boy. So he came to the battlefield. He threw the cheesecakes down when he saw the armor and the swords and stuff and he forgot all about it. And he ran into the camp and he said, What's going on? And who is that man walking up and down in the valley, hurling insults at Israel and his older brother? He said, what are you doing here? Who's taking care of the sheep? Get back there and mind your own business, typical little brother. And as for that man down in the valley, well, he's challenging us to a battle, but, well, I would fight him, but I have a sore throat today. They are embarrassed.

[83:19]

And then he said, talk about chutzpah, cheek and nerve. He said, I will fight him. Oh, for God's sake. And someone overheard it and ran to Saul and said, I think we found someone. And Saul said, oh, for God's sakes, bring him here to deliver us from our shame. He doesn't have a chance. Saul knew that nobody has a chance. But send him down, you know, somebody. And he brought him just a lad, a stripling. And Saul noticed he had no armor. Said, you got to put armor on. Oh, how revealing that is. Poor old Saul could only think of one way to fight the giant, the old way, the giant's way, the way that was doomed. He couldn't imagine any other way. He had lost his creativity.

[84:22]

He had lost his imagination. He didn't trust the goodness of God enough to know that God has given us wits to use. David put the armor on and he couldn't take a step hardly. He said, take this off. And he reached into his pocket and pulled out one of those stones. And all those days watching the sheep were boring. There aren't many lions around, really. So he would practice. I used to watch the cows for my dad, and I took Grimm's fairy tales with me. He didn't have it, though. So he would practice with his sling. He could hit a leaf at 10 paces, then 15. Then he could hit a fly on the leaf. And as soon as he thought of the sling, the giant was dead. No longer a question of whether he would hit his forehead. The question was, which wrinkle would he hit in his forehead?

[85:22]

And so he went down, and the giant is hurling insults at him, so sure of himself. Peer Devot said, Le politesse! Invitations, you know, bring you, well, feed you to the birds, other things like that. Anyway, he went down and at just the right distance, he took his sling out, brought the giant down. Seems like, you know, the Bible says God was with him and God did it. No, no. No, no. David did it. With the wits that God had given him, David did it. David knew that God has put all the goodness in life that we need and invites us to draw it out. But we'll never get it out, we'll never find it unless we look for it, unless we're ready for it. Someone has said, Saul and his men said, look how big Goliath is, how can we fight him?

[86:36]

And David said, look how big he is, how can I miss him? Have you ever noticed how simple inventions are after they've been made? And wonder why you never thought of that? Because we have succeeded, sometimes through formal education, to virtually destroy our imaginations. It's interesting, people like Thomas Edison had very little formal education. Too often, teachers don't want imagination. I always tell my students, if you want to add something of your own in the test, be my guest. Just make sure you put in what I said, too. Let your imagination run, but make sure that my imagination has a chance, too. Anyway, like Sir Alexander Fleming, Père Devot's life was saved by penicillin. I would never have known him if it hadn't been for penicillin. found by Sir Alexander Fleming.

[87:39]

And what was he looking for? He wasn't looking for penicillin at all when he found it. He was trying to raise a culture of bacteria. And his culture was destroyed by this mold. And anyone without an imagination would have said, oh, another failed experiment. Sterilize it and start over. And he said, what is this mold that's killing all those bugs? And he started, well, talk about a stranger. coming into his experiment, an unwanted contamination. But he turned it into friend, and he was knighted for it, and saved thousands and thousands of lives in the Second World War. No, no, we need people with faith and imagination and creativity that don't say, oh, there it is, I knew it wasn't going to work out, say hello and everything. against me. I can't. Why do you can't do that? Sometimes monastic chapters are like the Greek choruses.

[88:45]

Somebody brings up something, you know, let's do this, let's do that, and you have this Greek chorus on the side. It won't work. We've tried it before. Oh, too dangerous. So then you wrote it down, you know. The most beautiful things in life are always risky. Giving cut flowers is risky. And if you receive cut flowers, you know what they mean. If anybody puts plastic flowers in my grave, I'm coming back to haunt them. Guarantee it. Look at our cemetery. Blooming all winter in the snow. Those awful plastic flowers, they don't even fade anymore. Well, Jesus is the ultimate David who fought the Goliath of sin and death. Sin and death seems unconquerable.

[89:49]

All the best you can do is postpone it. The ravages of death. Jesus conquered the giant. And we no longer need to be afraid of that giant. He gave us the new and invincible weapon, the sling of love and sacrifice. The new weapon. He put away the weapon of violence. He put away the weapon of miracles and took up the weapon of love and sacrifice. The invincible weapon. And if we rely on love and care and sacrifice, we won't ever have to be afraid of death. Quiet concern, respect, service to others. The fruit of authentic faith.

[90:54]

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