Well, I want to repeat the same thing that Father Martin just did. I'm going to actually be seated, and although it occurs to me that maybe it would be better, can you hear me more easily if I'm standing? I might just decide to stand and hold my lecture notes, if you don't mind that, because I would like for everybody to be able to hear without having to strain or without having to ... On the other hand, of course, sleep is also welcome on a hot summer afternoon. I always tell people whenever I talk, you know, the nice thing about me is that I'm not Abbott for me, you know, you know, like you don't have to get a prescription or anything like that. And so if you need a little extra rest, well, feel free, please. I have. I hope, however, that you'll be engaged in the. afternoon's discussion as I was in preparing it. The first thing I want to do is thank Father Martin and also the whole community for inviting me to Mount Savior. This is a legendary place for me.

[01:05]

I've heard of it since I was a young man. Now I am not so young. I never had an opportunity to come here. I never had an opportunity to meet Father Martin or the monastic community at Mount Savior. But I have done both now and I want to thank them for their graciousness and their hospitality and their welcome. It's been really a wonderful weekend for me and a weekend of renewal. I think it will be for you too. I should maybe explain that Benedictinism is buried very deeply in my blood and breath and bones. As a young man, I was educated in philosophy and theology and classics at St. Meinrad Archabbey by the monks there. And I even spent the years from 1964 to 1984 as a member of the community of St. Meinrad. So today is a kind of homecoming for me. It's a return to my roots. It's a pilgrimage to my past. And not only to my past, because I hope that what I learned as a Benedictine continues to shape my present and will also continue to shape my future for many more years to come, naturally.

[02:15]

That's my hope, and I hope it is yours too. Like Benedict in his rule and like Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales, I think it's best to begin with a prologue. When I began to do research for this lecture, it occurred to me that the archives at Lyderding's Hesburgh Library might be a good place to begin. That's where I work, so the library is just a stone's throw from my office. And I decided to begin my search there. And I had a hunch that Father Damascus's scholarship in the fields of scripture and liturgy might have drawn him to the graduate program in liturgical studies of Holy Cross Father Michael Mathis. created shortly after the end of the Second World War at the University of Notre Dame. So I put on my Hercule Poirot disguise and I started snooping around in Matta's collection of documents in the Notre Dame archives and I was not disappointed. In fact, I found a great deal more there than I expected to or that I was arguing for.

[03:16]

The archives contain a substantial number of files chock-full of correspondence exchanged between Fr. Dennis and Fr. Mathis over a roughly 15-year period from about 1946 to 1960 when Fr. Mathis died. Also in the archives are printed materials such as a copy of the first Mt. Savior letter from February of 1952 and typescripts of lectures with corrections in his own hand that Father Danisys gave on the Bible and liturgy during July of 1947 the year that Notre Dame's program of liturgical studies began. So I found a great deal of material in the archives. And while I never had the privilege of actually meeting Father Danisys face to face, I felt like I got to know him through his work and through his letters. I've had the privilege now of holding in my hands a whole treasure trove of his handwritten letters,

[04:18]

note cards, annotated manuscripts, even a small illustration that he did, a linoleum block print probably, for a Christmas card that was sent out by the community in the early time of its history. And as I sifted through that material, portions of which I will describe in greater detail later in the lecture, I felt an instant connection with those Benedictine pioneers who courageously pursued the renewal of Roman Catholic worship in Europe and in the United States long before the Second Vatican Council. And long before it became fashionable to speak, as Phallidemesis does in his 1957 Christmas letter, about the way great art, such as Giotto's taking of the nativity, illumines our experience as Christians better than any sermon or syllabus does. It was not fashionable to say things like that in 1957, but Phallidemesis was saying them. So as I sat sifting papers in that stuffy, windowless, archived reading room, images began to crowd my mind and my heart.

[05:29]

I recalled the arresting color photo of Father Damdasus that Father Primartin had been kind enough to send to me last year. It shows Mount Savior's founder, some of you may be familiar with this photo, it shows him smiling, seated on a smooth gray stone in a garden that could have surrounded an ancient temple in Kyoto. From a single pipe, a stream of water feeds a zen-like spring, and Father Damases' smile shows the warmth and serenity of a Buddha. Still another image stolen to my consciousness, the image of a young Danisys Winson on a November evening in 1920. when Prior Albert Hohenstädter of the Abbey of Maria Lach gave a lecture on the Advent liturgy to students at Göttingen, where Demesis was in school. To the end of his days, as Mataleva Rorke tells us, Fr.

[06:33]

Demesis declared that his true life began that evening when he heard Prior Albert speak about the liturgy. Two decades later, these two great monks were publishing thoughtful essays on liturgical life and renewal in journals like the Yard Book for the Wissenschaft, which I'm sure you all get, and Oradei Progress, which is now known as Worship. In fact, in an essay entitled, Assisting at Mass Liturgically, and published in Erotic Proverbs in July of 1947, the same month that Father D'Amnesis began to lecture in the summer program at Notre Dame, Father Albert warned against becoming supernatural. I've become too pedantic about applying the principles of reform. He writes, it was a sign of Roman virtue to know how to mix times with other times, or perhaps better to read the sign of the times.

[07:35]

It was a sign of Roman virtue, he wrote, And speaking as a Benedictine, he added, I might say mainstream freedom of spirit has also been a characteristic feature of the Benedictine tradition throughout the ages. Such freedom of spirit prevents discouragement and will more readily gain hearts for the liturgical cause than will the fire or will the burning seal of an extreme reformer. Flexibility. freedom of spirit. Surely those virtues shape the rule of Benedict's justly famous advice in chapter 18. All of you probably know this. After outlining the entire pattern of daily prayer over a week, Benedict says, above all else we urge that if anyone finds this distribution of the Psalms unsatisfactory, he should arrange what he judges better. When it comes to liturgy, Benedict says, the first step is flexibility.

[08:39]

But then he adds, provided that the full complement of 150 psalms is carefully maintained every week and that the series begins anew each Sunday at vigils. So if step one is flexibility, step two consists of respect for framework, for the monastic tradition. Benedict intuitively understood the critical relationship between flexibility and framework, and thus he knew that liturgical autonomy does not have to mean anarchy. He realized that at the end of the day, all liturgies, even those that aspire to grandeur and universalism, are local. It's like all politics. It's local, too. They involve specific communities celebrating specific events at specific times and places. As we discovered this past April, even the funeral of a Pope is a local liturgy.

[09:40]

The Atziglis celebrated in Rome for the Bishop of Rome. So a Benedictine approach to prayer realizes that in human communities, liturgies are inevitably brokered between those principles of framework and flexibility. And the respect for local autonomy in decision-making is the best way, not the worst way, to avoid anarchy. Father Albert Hummenstedt, the man whose words helped change the course of Gerhard Otto Winsen's life on that November evening in 1920 at Göttingen, Father Albert understood those principles perfectly. We must be allowed, he wrote, this was in 1947, almost two decades before the Second Vatican Council, we must be allowed to act liturgically in a manner that readily corresponds to our age, our character, our location, our state of grace, and our present conditions.

[10:47]

Pleasure in the beauty of worship does not, he added, mean superficiality, nor is the wish to do justice to one's individuality the same thing as individualism. The principle is always, he wrote, unistic alias veristic. Live and let live. Flexibility doesn't threaten frameworks, nor does autonomy betoken anarchy. Worship symbols are thick. They are dense, multiple, multidimensional. They can never be reduced to one single meaning. In fact, pointing to John of Patmos' vision of the heavenly liturgy in the Book of Revelation, which we hear a great deal about during the Paschal season, Father Albert urges us to remember that liturgy does not merely comfort or console or confirm. It also, to use his words, stirs us up. And it even distresses. It disturbs.

[11:50]

It shows Christ on the cross as the center of history. Liturgy is never all light and poetry and joy. It also embraces cries of lamentation and distress. It protests injustice and repression. It rages against the dying of the light. It pleads passionately for the Lord to come, to come and rescue, to come and free from pain. to come and release us from bondage, to wipe every tear away. Wise words indeed, welcome words, especially in this increasingly intolerant age of culture and liturgy wars. Flexibility, freedom of spirit, autonomy, making room for all that is human in our worship. For all the concerns, as Father Albert put it, are good farmers, and craftsmen, and shopkeepers, and artisans, and railway employees, you might say airline employees today, and paper boys, and shoeshine boys.

[13:00]

Making room for the vast liturgy of the world, smelling of death and sacrifice that ordinary Christians are already celebrating before they ever hit the doors of our churches. Making room for people, making room for what the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda once called the confused impurity of the human condition. our footprints, our fingerprints, our wrinkles, individuals, and dreams, our denials and doubts, affirmations and taxes, the holy canons of madrigal, the mandates of touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing, the passion for justice, the transports of love, making room. Making room for all these experiences, making room for all these human, earthly facts and feelings. That, Albert Hammonschede suggested already in 1947, is the unfinished and perhaps unfinishable work of liturgical renewal in our time.

[14:10]

Making room for people. for their bodies with their flesh and fluids, for their hearts with their hopes and histories, for their faces with their fears and failures. People, after all, are the point. People are the point of God's work for the world in the Paschal Mystery, and hence they are the point of God's work for us in the liturgy. In Benedict's rule, therefore, Opus Dei is not the work of experts or professionals or, thank God, university professors. It is humble work. It is domestic work. It is work that can be done wherever you are, in the oratory, in the field, in the garden, in the infirmary, on a journey, even alone. As biochemist Rene Dubois once put, Benedictines were the first saints and scholars in the history of the Western world to get real dirt under their fingernails.

[15:15]

We cannot forget that when, near the end of his life, Benedict had his great vision of the whole world in a ray of light, he did not himself cease to be in the world. Benedict is graced with his vision, writes Jean-Yves Lacoste, not in some seventh heaven, but somewhere in Italy. Not in some seventh heaven, somewhere in Italy. Benedict's vision left his feet firmly planted in the soil precisely because Benedict's God is a weaver. One, we meet working at the loom of the world. The late poet Denise Levertov makes this case in her astonishing poem entitled The Task. Permit me to quote just a bit of that poem for you. God's in the wilderness next door, that huge tundra room.

[16:20]

No walls and the sky roof. Busy, busy at the loop. Among the berry bushes, rain or shine, the loud clacking and whirring, irregular but continuous, God is absorbed in work, and hears the spacious hum of bees, not the din, and hears far off our screams. Perhaps he listens for prayers in that wild solitude, and hurries on with the weaving, until it's done, the great garment woven. Our voices, clear of the familiar blocked-out clamor of the task, can't stop their terrible beseeching. God imagines it, sitting through and through it with the light, to music in the astounded quietness, the loom idle, the lunar addressed.

[17:24]

Gala to the wilderness, busy at the loom. That is why the Christians are the world's servants and not its masters. And it's why the Second Vatican Council's preferred images for church were those of mystery and torn people of God. And many of us are in this room, or at least I certainly know I am, are old enough to remember that when the Second Vatican Council ended in 1965, its final gesture was not to issue a set of directives but to send messages of peace and goodwill to all of humankind. It sent messages to seekers after truth, to explorers of the human and the universe of history, to pilgrims on their way to the light, to the tired and disappointed, to artists, painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, men and women working in film and theater, To women themselves, half of the immense human family, girls, wives, mothers, widows, single women living alone.

[18:35]

To the poor, the sick, and the suffering, with their pleading eyes, burning with fever and followed with fatigue, questioning eyes. To workers, and to the questions they pose about economic and social conditions, about war and peace, about migration and displacement. They sent a message to those young people, those men and women who will receive the torch from the hands of their elders, heirs of a world convulsed by hope and despair, living through the period of the most gigantic transformation ever realized in human history. 1,500 years before Vatican II used light as an image for the church, Benedict, as I said a moment ago, had already seen the world in a ray of light. His vision was a kind of shorthand. It tells us what he hoped for humanity, what he loved.

[19:39]

It tells us that he recognized but one vocation for the whole human family, and that, too, was a theme at the Second Vatican Council. In its final document, Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, the Council recalled that when Christ assumed human nature, he did not annul it, but raised it up to divine dignity. In Christ, our humanity belongs forever to the definition of godliness, of divinity. For by taking flesh, God's Word united itself in some fashion to every human being, working with human hands, thinking with the human mind, acting on human choices, loving the human heart, as Gaudium et Spes, paragraph 22, tells us. So Christians are indeed of themselves linked to the pastoral mystery and pattern of the dying Christ, precisely through our baptismal initiation, and we've

[20:44]

hastened forward to the resurrection, but in a breathtakingly bold passage, the Council insisted that is not only true for Christians. It is true for all persons of goodwill, in whose hearts grace works in an unseen way. For the Council insisted that because Christ died for all men and women, and since the ultimate human vocation is in fact one and divine, we ought to believe of the Holy Spirit in a way known to God alone. offers every person the possibility of being a partner in the Paschal Mystery. Such, the Council told us, is the mystery of humankind itself. And it is a great one. No wonder the British novelist D.H. Lawrence could write a letter to an Anglican priest who tried to get him to convert to the Church of England. We're truly converted only when we begin to hear the vast, low murmur of humanity.

[21:48]

Only when we recognize God at work in the wilderness next door, God busy at the loom. For Benedict, liturgy was not a monument to Christian success or savvy or grandeur or good taste. It was humble testimony to all humanity's birthed-down powerlessness. We do the liturgy because we need to. That is why the liturgical code in the Rule of Benedict, chapters 8 to 20, directs that the hours of the office should begin not with the famous prayer, I thank you God that I am not like the rest of these, but rather with the prayer, deus in agitatoria, meum in tende, God come to our assistance. We need help. flexibility, freedom of spirit, and acknowledgment that autonomy does not betoken anarchy, a conviction that liturgy is something human between us and God, a firm belief in the God who is at work in the wilderness, at the womb, that at God's table the least and the littlest, the weakest and the most vulnerable, the haves and the have-nots, all belong there, precisely because God is there.

[23:10]

creating before our eyes the great garment woven, a new human race washed in the blood of the lamb and fed with its own body and blood. These were not only conciliar themes in the last century, they're Benedictine themes. And as I'm going to show over the next few minutes, they were very much themes in the life and work of Father Damascus Windsor. As you know, Damasus was deeply in touch with his own humanity, with his vulnerability. We catch sight of this in a letter of his written from the monastery of Regina Laudis on December 8, 1947 to Father Mathis another day, in which Damasus mentions both his delight in the liturgy and also his concerns about the future. I'm going to quote from this letter. It's in the archives at Notre Dame and I was able to make a copy of it. Now I start all over again, he wrote. First, to tell you how delighted I was to hear your voice over the phone, which breathed all your goodness and kindness right into my heart.

[24:17]

Thank you especially for your blessing, which I need so much. Although I must say that the state of Europe, Virginia allowed us, is like a monastic spring. with the daily sudden mass, the conical, he means canonical, hours, etc. The nuns are very zealous in that respect and full of enthusiasm. As the letter unfolds, it becomes clear that Damascus was replying to an earlier letter that Michael Mathis himself had written on November 14th of that year. And Mathis wrote to Damascus to tell him that he had heard from Father Basilius, who was the abbot of Maria Lot. That would have been the monastery that Damascus belonged to. And Mathis had written to Vesalius asking for permission to bring both Fr. Damasis and also Fr. Thomas Michaels to the Notre Dame faculty to teach on a more or less permanent basis. and to have it as kind of the core faculty for an increasingly successful program in graduate low-surgical studies.

[25:20]

And the Basilius had replied about the math of somewhat evasively, saying, I quote the end of here, you can easily understand that in our present conditions, it is impossible for me to anticipate in any way the eventual possibilities in the years to come, which is like saying, you know, like, huh? What does that mean? So, having quoted the abbot's words, Fr. Mathis asked Demesis, I don't appreciate your telling me what the abbot means. Or rather, do you recognize anything favorable in his reply for our portraying yourself, Fr. Thomas, and perhaps some other persons from Maria Lott, for our liturgy program at Notre Dame in the immediate or distant future? Demesis's reply, especially his assessment of the post-war situation in Germany, is very revealing. And this is what he writes. He says, since I have seen Germany, I understand much better that they are really unable to make any decisions about the future. The abbot cannot possibly commit himself to anything regarding the future.

[26:25]

With the food situation as it is, with starvation threatening, they told me that they have potatoes only up until Christmas, without knowing what may come after that. One must add, however, that our dear friend Father Albert has also influenced the general attitude. He is Albert Havenstead, the great scholar who had written the article I referred to earlier. But Father Albert has influenced the attitude of Maria Locke, very much against any act of cooperation in the things of this country. The thesis which he defends is that there is in this country Mount Angel and that there is St. Myron and that they are completely capable and better equipped to work for the liturgy than anybody from the burial loft would be. I've heard again that same thing in a letter which I received yesterday. The best thing in my judgment is not to waste any time with the letters but to go to them in person and convinced them on the spot. The abbot gave us permission for me to stay here for one or two more years. He added, moreover, that he gave them permission only for me to act as chaplain to the nuns and for no other purpose.

[27:31]

These words caused much admiration with the bishop here and gave me a black mark, I'm afraid. I tell you this only for your own private information. Now, of course, I've divulged it to you in the archives, that you may see how things stand. There are so many conflicting emotions in that paragraph. I mean, you can hear the ache in his voice for his conference of Maria Locke and their food situation. You can also hear the sadness in his reference to Father Albert, his great hero, his great mentor, his great teacher, who seems to be uninterested in doing anything with respect to the American multiracial movement. You can hear his respect for Abbot Basilius, a respect, however, that did not immunize him against steaming. Get yourself over there, he tells Father Mathis, and convince them on the spot. Don't waste time with the letters. You can also hear his generosity and candor as he recommends that Father Mathis recruit several other European scholars for the Better Day program, people like Pius Parsh, Yves Condard, and Romano Gordini, who eventually, in fact, did come over and teach in that program.

[28:40]

So in spite of his disappointment about the abbot's attitude, Damascus could write Father Mathis a very warm book from Regina Laus, only a few months later, saying, this is on March 8, 1948, I am flooded with work and still there is no Felicia Festiva Scalia, yours in Paris. So, I mean, he was never downcast. It seems for a long or did he allow the adverts opposition to divert him from this phone interest in liturgy and its renewal. This is clear from a. A question that Fr. Mathenus asked him in April of 1948. He had written to Fr. Nemesis and said, is there anything to the rumor I hear that Pius XII's encyclical letter on the liturgy Mediator Deiti was actually directed against the monks of Boiron and Maria Loft? And it was precisely at this time, of course, that Father Damasus' great-grandfather, Don Quixote de Casel, had died, in fact, rather unexpectedly, in the spring, I think, in the Easter vigil of 1948.

[29:44]

And they believe that Mediato Dei, in fact, was directed against Causal's theology of mysteries, the so-called Mysterion Theologiae, and that that was what was being criticized by the document. But in any case, none of these things deflected. from his total of interest in the liturgical movement, both in Europe and in the United States. None of it deflected him from continuing to write book for Iraqi fractures and for more technical journals like the Yad Vashem. In fact, he was so dedicated to that work that he actually gave an entire set of the Yad Vashem, as I say, this is not exactly something you probably have in your household, of the Arbitrary Literary Music Shop, which, when I was a doctoral student in the early 1970s, I myself made use of. Those were a gift of Damasis to the library. So if his letters and lectures are any indication, Father Damasis must have embodied in himself both the humanitas and the gravitas that Benedict's rule recommends.

[30:50]

And in his young monastic life, those qualities were surely enhanced. and enriched by his contact with the likes of Muriel Cason and Albertus von Schinitt. It's also clear, and from the material that I discovered in the Notre Dame archives, that Damascus was a fiercely independent, creative thinker in his own right. and that he was never content merely to repeat for Thera what his teachers had told him. There is no greater evidence of this, I think, than in this wonderful little pamphlet, some of you may know this work, entitled The Great Sabbath Rest. It's a stunning meditation on the meaning of Holy Saturday that was published just a year before he suffered a serious heart attack in, I think, May of 1958. And it puts one in mind of hearing an ancient patristic homily. Permit me to share just a bit of the issue, though some of you may already be familiar with its contents.

[31:52]

Genesis wrote, the silence of Holy Saturday is not only the empty silence of not talking or of stopping all the noise. It is an imitation of our Lord's silence, of the silence of selfless love, which instead of accusing and defending covers all sins and carries them into the depths of forgiveness. Therefore, the silence of Holy Saturday should be an inner silence of the heart. And then Denis goes on to affirm in language that sounds quite contemporary even though it was written half a century ago. He writes, Holy Saturday is the day of the It is of deepest significance that Holy Saturday is, in a very special way, the day of women. They are the heroes of Holy Saturday.

[32:54]

The men around Jesus had lost heart when they saw their master stripped of his external power and helpless victim in the hands of the hangman. They bled. Man is easily carried away by abstract ideas. While women are deeply rooted in the concrete, in flesh and blood, on Holy Saturday the men saw their ideals shattered. The women did not give up. Their compassionate hearts were with the Lord in the tomb. Jewish tradition had always given a special role to the mother of the house in the preparation and celebration of the Sabbath. It was she who kindled and blessed the lamp on the eve of the Sabbath. The burial service with which the Eastern Church celebrates Holy Saturday culminates in a dialogue between mother and son.

[33:58]

Nehemiah quotes that dialogue. It's a famous hymn. It goes, the mother's feet first. Oh my clear springtime, my sweet child, where has your humbleness disappeared? Behold your mother and the disciple whom you love, grant me a song, oh sweet one. And the son replies, mourn not my mother, because I suffer to deliver Adam and Eve. The silence of Holy Saturday, Genesis concludes, ends therefore not with lamentation, not with sorrow, but with freedom and forgiveness and release. I quote again, free among the dead. should be the watchword of all those who gather a spirit around the tomb of the Lord on Holy Saturday. Let us prepare our hearts for the celebration of the Paschal night by entering into the same motherly peace that reigns in the tomb of Jesus.

[35:04]

The spirit of contention cannot raise its claims where divine love has come to utter poverty to make us rich. Free among the dead, we forgive those who trespass against us. Free among the dead, we go to all those who are in need on the wings of prayer. This is the day of intercession. The mother may pray for her prodigal son. The heart of the Christian may go out to those who suffer for Christ's sake as well as those who have lost all faith. It's an amazing statement written 15 years ago. That meditation on the great Sabbath rest invites us I think then to return to that theme of freedom which I suggested earlier is so central to Benedict's vision of the liturgy and of life.

[36:09]

Worship is not a fetish in the rule of Benedict. And Benedictines were never meant to be an elitist class of liturgical experts or professionals. Elegius Dekkers pointed out many years ago, in fact nearly 50 years ago, in a classic essay, that monks were never at the beginning primarily or even particularly liturgical. Prayer is daily in the rule of Benedict for the very same reasons that food and drink and work and sleep and rest are daily. They're simply part of the ordinary life of Christians. Benedictine freedom is a freedom of naturalness, of flexible formality, of autonomy without anarchy, and of community without compulsion or coercion. It's the freedom of one who is, as Gregory the Great describes him, sapienter inductus, wisely untaught.

[37:11]

It's the freedom of one who is scienter nescius, expertly unlearned. Benedictine freedom is a freedom of learned ignorance. It's the freedom of the haiku written by the great Japanese poet and traveler Basho. It's the utter naturalness of letting and letting be. It's the direct awareness that has no need of decipherment or commentary. How admirable it is, writes Basho, who does not think life is ephemeral when he sees a flash of light beam. How admirable, too, is what American poet Wallace Stevens writes in his poem, The Snowman. Stevens said, one must have the mind of winter to behold the juniper shagged in ice, the spruces rough in the distant glitter of the January sun, and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind.

[38:24]

about this mind of winter, about this kind of freedom, about this way of reading the world without imposing definitions or significances. Roland Barthes, a contemporary French philosopher who died some years ago now, writes that the work of reading is precisely to suspend language, not to provoke it. And in a similar vein, a contemporary French theologian, Fr. Louis-Marie Chauvet, writes that Christian sacraments and worship, when you get down to the bottom of it, are simply God's word at the mercy of the body. God's word at the mercy of the body. That, I would argue, is precisely the spirit of freedom that characterizes Benedictine liturgy and the Benedictine approach to liturgy. It's a reading of the world that lets and lets be. Benedict understood that no one leaves the world for good.

[39:32]

You leave the world only to reconnect to it. Benedictines understand that in their bones. They've long known how to meet the numinous, the natural, and the holy, and the human, and the divine, and the daily. They have an instinctive feel for what the Irish poet Thomas Heaney calls the kingdom of gravel. Here is a little beginning of a poem by Heaney. Hoard and praise the verity of gravel. Gems for the undiluted. Milt of earth, its plain, champing song against the shuttle. Sound tests and sandblasts, words like honest worth. Beautiful inner out of the river, the kingdom of gravel was inside you too. Deep down, far back, clear water running over pebbles of caramel, hailstones,

[40:36]

natural blue, beautiful in or out the river. The kingdom of gravel is within you. Benedictines have long loved that kingdom. They have long loved the human and the humble and the homely. They are, as I mentioned earlier, the first scholars to get dirt under their fingernails. The Rule of Benedict understands that it was never humanity's task to justify the ways of God to men. After all, God is not subjected to ethnic cleansing. People are. God isn't threatened with extinction. Our planet is. God isn't searching for meaning and definition. We are. God doesn't have an ego, you and I do. God presumably doesn't need spin doctors, nor did Jesus. The rule encourages us to let God be God, and to let us be us.

[41:39]

poured and praised the verity, the truth of gravel, shameless heath advises, gems from the undiluted milt of earth, miltest seminal secretions, procreative fluids, a homely word, a earthly word, a word just right for people whose lord was, and still is, a radiant scandal and a failure and an embarrassment. Jesus milked his family tree fairly bloomed with gold diggers, cynics, sinners, the sexually irregular. Read the genealogy in Matthew's Gospel if you don't believe me. Among the first followers that he had were thugs. jerks, shysters, assorted peddlers of flim flam. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, said St.

[42:42]

Paul in a candid assessment of the human condition found in Romans 3.23. And I suspect he meant it. Benedictines believe that it isn't God who needs defenders, but humankind. Because what is ultimately at stake in a world of missing presences isn't God's being, but our own. our own blood, and breath, and bone, and body. I'm sure that's why the rule clings to the scandalous belief that human beings and their lives, that human work and its tools are to be cherished as though they were the sacred vessels of the altar. Oxygous is a chronicle of tyrants, it says, in the rule of Benedict, chapter 27, verses 2 and 3. We meet in that rule a world and a word found nowhere else also in Christian literature.

[43:45]

We meet in that rule the word Syntekta, a term probably derived from the Greek Sympathikēs, companion. The abbot, RV 27, tells us is to use every skill of a wise physician and send in Syntekte. wise counselors, mature persons, who under the cloak of secrecy can support the wavering member. Like an abbot looking after his monks, God companions our fragile troubled species. It's we who need the support and the comfort and the company. As Wallace Stevens said, it's the human that is the alien the human that has no cousin in the moon. Beneficents are people then that acknowledge God's passionate attachment for the human world and its history, and to acknowledge that every time our planet tries to be heaven, it becomes a living hell.

[44:54]

The rule's solution to this dilemma is proposed in chapter 7 of the rule, the steps of humility, arguably the world's very first 12-step program. It is. Its strategies are solvific but stringent. They include unconditional surrender, the deflation of ego, the admission of powerlessness, and a love so perfect can finally cast out fear. It is a daunting program. A Benedict in his climb the 12 steps of humility knows that each of us must seek salvation in fear and trembling, in anguish and doubt, knowing only what Jesus promises at the end of Matthew's Gospel. I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink.

[45:59]

I was a stranger and you gave me welcome. I was naked and you gave me clothing. Ill and in prison and you cared for me. What you did for one of these least ones, you do for me. Who is this hungry, thirsty, naked, in prison stranger? We don't know. We don't know. And that is precisely the point. The only solution is an unconditional saying yes to the obese, to the littlest, to the vulnerable, to the marginalized, to the unlikely, to the sore, the sick, the scabby, the smelly, in short, to the world in all of its terrifying complexity and sorrow. Maybe the late poet Octavio Paz put it best in a brief poem of his that paraphrases Psalm 8, and I'll conclude with that.

[47:04]

I am the man, Paz wrote, little do I last, and the night is enormous. But I look up, stars rot, Unknowing, I understand. I, too, am written. And at this very moment, someone spells me out. Thank you. So, thank you, Arlie, your compass is the book we just had. Are there any questions of people that I could bring up? Not to me, but to someone who just spoke recently. Well, is there any possibility of getting a transcript of this lecture or a tape?

[48:15]

Oh, sure. Yeah, I think the tape is there, but I can also get the text of other Martin I know it's especially on a hot, humid afternoon. It's very hard to try to focus, especially with a lot of illusions and stuff. So yes, I'd be happy to. Thank you. Can you talk a little about your students? their involvement in the literature? Yes. As many of you know, I teach at Notre Dame, and I teach only masters and doctoral students. I don't teach any undergraduates, so I don't know too much about the undergraduate students. But I do know the graduate students fairly well, the ones at least in the liturgy program. I am very encouraged by what I see in students who come to us today. I mean, I know that in some ways, the events of the last, oh, I don't know how many years, have led some people to feel kind of like, well, you know, the post-conciliar renewal was very promising, and it's kind of underway, and it's kind of lost steam, and it's kind of lost its way, and all that kind of thing.

[49:31]

I really don't feel that way. I mean, when I look to the future, I'm very, very optimistic. And I'm optimistic mainly because I'm not really the future. You know, people of my generation came to this work, we came with a lot of baggage. And, you know, we are persons of our time and place also. You know, we were the generation of young people who came of age in the early 1960s. I mean, I graduated from high school in 1961. I, you know, graduated from college in the middle 1960s. You know, it was a time of great social experiment of people. And it's my way of thinking a very interesting and wonderful time to be alive the war protests and it was a huge kind of experimental moment in the life of at least of the people of the United States and in many other parts of the world as well. But all of that also colored my vision of things in a very particular way. The people that I teach today, of course, are much younger.

[50:33]

Many of them have no memory whatsoever of the Council. No living memory. I mean, they're just simply too young. So, when I looked at these people, many of these people are talented, energetic, Catholic and non-Catholic lay women and men. They have enormous ability. I think they will make wonderful contributions to the ongoing life of the liturgy, not only in the Catholic community, but also ecumenically. I'm very, very encouraged by what I see. I mean, they're extremely talented. They are people, I mean, I've said this about Nemesis Winston, you know, he was obviously at first influenced by his mentors, but he also had a very stubborn and insistent mind of his own, and an independent mind of his own, and was not about to simply tear up what he heard from his teachers. And these young people that I teach are not that, you know, they're not going to tear up what I say either, thank God.

[51:35]

And they shouldn't. I mean, they should develop their own points of view. I mean, you know, the people in my generation are, you know, we're kind of coming to the end of whatever contribution, if indeed it was one, that we made to this work. And that's great. I mean, that's our time of life. That's what we've done. Those are the things that we've tried to do, some successfully, some unsuccessfully. We've had great successes, I think, and also great failures. You know, this is, you know, it's our time to kind of hand this torch on. to a new generation of thinkers and scholars. And I feel very encouraged. And they're really talented. If any of them stood here and talked to you, I think you would react in much the same way that I do. You'd be really interested. I'm visiting 30 years as a priest. I grew up in that time of finding out how things are going. And then we get hit with G.I.R.M. and then Colonel Lorenzi. Where are we going?

[52:39]

It seemed that there was a liturgical movement. It seemed it was responsive and people were And all of a sudden, I'm interpreting, I may be misinterpreting, but not so much Jerome, but Cardinal Lorenzi's instruction is like a brick wall. Sacramento Redemptionis. You know, it's interesting. I was in Rome at the very time last year when Sacramento Redemptionis was coming out. And in fact, I bought the copy that I have of it at the book store in the colony of St. Anthony. Well, in this very bloody pandemic future. Anyway. I mean, I had also been through the Vatican Museum, and I had gone through an area where there are these wonderful collections of tapestries that the Vatican owes, you know, priceless works of art. You know, there were many Last Supper scenes, and as I was looking at them, there were all these Last Supper scenes of Jesus and the disciples with flagons all over the altar and all this other stuff.

[53:44]

I'm thinking, do these people who write these documents in Rome ever look at their art? I mean, it was a little jarring because I thought to myself, anybody who wrote this document can't have looked at the whole history of the way in which this event was imagined artistically by these great people who, as they say, you know, it's like Damocles and his comments about Joto. You know, probably you'd get as much education about what the Tristan mystery is, especially the mystery of the Incarnation, if you got acquainted with Giotto's work, because Giotto was in fact one of the first painters in the West to finally start giving human bodies a life. That was the amazing thing about his work. You know, the kind of almost cubist idiosyncrasy of the style of thinking that had preceded Giotto was transformed. It was transformed by his use of color, among other things, and light and dynamism.

[54:45]

It was an incredible moment. Getting back to your point, though, I mean, when I think of the Well, I think of the fate of the original movement. Again, maybe I'm just being naive or in full-scale denial. But I don't really think the movement is jeopardized by somewhat more repressive or restrictive legislation. I mean, the fact of the matter is, very shortly after the council, and this was really the request from Bishop's Worldwide, and Paul VI said that. I mean, he said that out loud. I mean, the whole vernacularization, for example, of the liturgy, which was not intended to happen nearly as rapidly as it did, it happened because of requests from bishops all over the world. I mean, I don't think that toothpaste is going to go back into the tube. You know, and I say that not because I have any animus against Latin.

[55:47]

I love Latin. I read Latin every day. I mean, I love that kind of thing. I have a quarrel with that. I don't have a quarrel even with the use. I mean, there are communities. I was at Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire for a dance one day a few years ago, and it was a wonderful liturgy, mostly in French, but all the singing was done in Latin, because that's the repertoire. That's the repertoire that they know. You know, and the people who were present for the liturgy, it was a weekday liturgy, they were all singing too, so it wasn't a big deal. I mean, you know, again, I think Albert Hemmingshed done very well. He said, you know, don't deal with liturgical terrorism as an attack body was saying, you know, don't insist on such a rigid one-size-fits-all solution to all liturgical issues that you fail to allow for that wonderful Benedictine flexibility.

[56:51]

That's what the rule does. The rule is not saying, and you pay no attention to the monastic tradition, saying, pay attention to the monastic tradition, yes, but if this arrangement doesn't suit you, do something else. And I mean, now, that's not really exactly what we're hearing from the congregation for. But there again, I mean, I would say I would make a couple of remarks. One is we Americans have never been in the United States, have never learned how to read or hear Roman documents. I mean, we don't understand them. I mean, it's really true that in Rome, you issue a document saying, you know, well, it's time for us to say something nice about the liturgy. It's time for us to say something nice about Latin. So we issue a document saying, you know, if anyone should dare use Latin in our economy,

[57:55]

They're not under the illusion that anybody except the Americans will pay attention to that. I mean, they're not under the illusion that everybody's going to run out and be missed. So part of it is that we have, and in that I guess I would probably fault our leadership to some degree at the Church in the United States. I mean, people, our leaders often seem to feel so constrained to prove their loyalty, that they forget that their real purpose is to serve the people. I mean, you know, people think that, you know, that a petro-cross is given to the bishop because it's jewelry. But in fact, it's not jewelry, it's a noose. I mean, it's supposed to be a noose. I mean, this is a person who's, by Episcopal ordination, you're basically saying, lead me to the gallows. as the Lord was slain to the gallows. I mean, that's the role of the bishop. That's why in the Didauskalia, an ancient Christian document from Syria in the early part of the third century, the image for the bishop is always Moses.

[59:08]

Remember, as long as Moses' hands are uplifted in prayer, and you try that for a while, try that for 24-7, and see how exhausting that becomes. That's the bishop's role. And also, by the way, if any poor person comes into the assembly late, if it's a rich person who comes in, the bishop doesn't give his place, but if it's a poor person who comes in, the bishop leaves his seat and gives it to the poor person. That's the right, to my way of thinking, the right way to understand the relationship between those of me and those who are led. Could I put a footnote? What do you see as a Benedict XVI liturgy? He's had a couple of interesting liturgies in public, and he's done a few interesting things. Can you pull from anything?

[60:09]

Well, my crystal ball is unfortunately broken. And this idea of what it was not, it wasn't working very well. So I can't say, I mean, I wouldn't want to try to say it's mine. I mean, I am not kidding when I say I really like this choice of name. I really do. I mean, and I like it for a lot of reasons, also because the last person who had that name, Giacomo della Chiesa, was a person who was a peacemaker of the Church, actually. That was his great contribution. I mean, it was acting in the postmodernist atmosphere, Della Chiesa, who, it was Della Chiesa, you know, he was, he was very, talk about an unlikely candidate. I mean, for one thing, he had, he had a birth defect. And so, one side of his body was higher than the other side. I mean, so it always looked like that you were looking at a painting by Picasso when you look at it. But he is said to have said, in the Sistine Chapel of the day that he was elected, when someone came up to him who was not friendly to him, he said to the Cardinal, the stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

[61:24]

Of course, the Cardinal said, it has been done by the Lord, and it was a marvel on our side. So, I mean, it's sort of dangerous to quote scripture. But I think, I mean, it's very interesting. I said this to the community last night. You know, one thing that two months have gone by and we haven't had, there hasn't been a deluge of pronouncements and decrees. That's good, I think. I think it would be wonderful if there was a kind of self-imposed moratorium on decree-making for a while. And also, remember that his job as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was to be an enforcer. I mean, his job was to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, the terminator. That's not his job now. He was elected as a pastor. And you know, maybe he's saying to himself, at last, my entire priestly life, at the age of 78, I've finally got to get to be a pastor.

[62:35]

Imagine that. That would be wonderful. We could use a little compass. We could use a little capital here. I mean, we often forget that. And here again, the rule of Benedict, and I realize my prejudices and all that, but the rule of Benedict is so good. It understands that liturgy is an act of pastoral care. Celebrating the liturgy is pastoral care. It's the primary form of pastoral care that we experience on a regular basis in the church. And maybe he's ready for that himself. And you're right. The liturgy, in fact, somebody in the community mentioned to me last night, the liturgy that he celebrated was on Corpus Christi, I think. which was at St. John Lottery. Perfect. That's his cathedral. You know, that's the mother church. St. Peter's is a shrine church.

[63:35]

It's a basilical church. It's not the mother church in the city of Rome or in the Diocese of Rome. That's good. He restored the old form of Italian, which is a very interesting gesture to the East, because that's really the patriarchal form. I mean, you know, he's not a fool. He's a very, very smart guy. I mean, he knows what he's doing. I mean, he knows what all these gestures will be perceived as. And I think there are some positive signs there. As I say, the other thing is I think we just need to be a little more savvy as Americans about how we interpret Roman documents. Yes. Many of us, at least I've met you through your book, Your Presence. and also some of the writings in Russia. I have to go over these three or four times. But I have one comment on the encyclical by Ernst Boll on the Eucharist.

[64:39]

In my reading I said No, not what I said. I couldn't see the connection. I didn't know what he was talking about. Well, it's in my eyes, it's in my, where liturgy is local, they started doing adoration of that as a sacrament. That was a definition for many of Eucharists, and so was the bishops and some of the others. and it didn't mention too much about liturgy at all. I was wondering if you would comment on the encyclical, presence, and you know. I can make some comments. You know, I think the reason why the encyclical was written probably does have something to do with a perception in Rome, and where this perception comes from is hard to say, but I think there is such perception, and it's been fed to them probably by persons who are perhaps disgruntled in this country and elsewhere in the West. But there is a perception that somehow people are massively, Roman Catholics are massively defecting

[65:45]

from our tradition of belief in the real presence of the Lord's body and blood in the Eucharist. And you know, for the life of me, I can't understand where this perception comes from. I don't know of anybody. I mean, have you ever... I don't know anybody that denies the real presence of Christ's body and blood, or denies it even in the Tridentine formula, you know, whole and entire, soul and divinity, body and blood, I mean, in both species. Nobody's denying that. I mean, I don't know any liberal theologians who are denying that. I don't know any conservative theologians who are denying that. I don't know any middle of the road theologians who are denying that. Maybe there are some, but they are not known to me. I mean, I don't run across them every day, that's for sure. And it's true that if you just did a kind of poll, which would be ridiculous, because you can't really ask that kind of question accurately in a polling mechanism.

[66:48]

I mean, it's just a fallacy, even in terms of sociological research. But it's probably true that if you ask somebody to explain exactly what they understand or mean by that, they would stumble around. But we've always stumbled around. I mean, at the end of the day, The mystery of the Eucharist fractures language. Language is defeated in the presence of that mystery, and indeed in the presence of all the mysteries of our faith. The mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of the Incarnation, all of the core beliefs we have as Roman Catholics of language suffers defeat. Because on the one hand, we experience the mystery of God as a nameless and incomprehensible mystery, yet we also experience this mystery of God as incomprehensibly near to us, as more intimate, as Augustine said, more intimate to me than I am to myself.

[67:54]

So this nameless, incomprehensible, irreducible, radiant mystery which is God is also at the same time incomprehensibly here. So even though God remains at the end of the day not only nameless but unnameable, We are convinced, and this is because of Matthew's Gospel that I quoted at the end of the lecture, that this same unnameable God is infallibly seen in the poor, in the sick, in the hungry, in the naked, in the imprisoned, and heard in their cries, infallibly. I mean, one place for sure you can be certain you have heard God's Word is in the cry of Latour. And the reason for that is because nobody gets into heaven without a letter of recommendation. It just won't happen.

[68:56]

So, I mean, I say all this because I think that there is somewhat of a misperception, and I think that kind of drove the urgency of getting this encyclical written, that somehow people are denying this mystery. I don't think that we are. Secondly, now, there has been, in the last, I would say, 20 to 25 years, a kind of resurgence of interest and also devotional and adorational practice vis-a-vis the Eucharist and the mystery of the Eucharist. You know, that was envisioned even in post-conciliar documents, and we have the document. and the Holy Eucharist and communion outside of the Liturgy, and the Holy Eucharist and the worship of the Eucharist outside of Mass. We have documentation of that. At least it's been part of the Western tradition from, I would say, at least the beginning of the second millennium, not so much evidence in the first millennium, but any second millennium.

[70:00]

It's not part of the Eastern tradition. So if you look at the broad katholikon, the broad church, there is both that devotion in the West and there are churches and members of the East where that devotion has not come. I think what the council helped people do was to understand that the purpose of the devotion is always to rise from the liturgy and to lead back to the liturgy. And as long as that happens, you know, again, I don't think anybody has a problem with that. I mean, I don't see people, you know, standing with whips outside, you know, go to chapel and say, don't go in there! Don't go in there! I mean, nobody's doing that. You know, who would do that? Who would do such a thing? Of course, you know, devotion and adoration are part of our tradition. Of course, we recognize that. Of course, we recognize that the primary purpose for reservation remains giving the communion to those who cannot be present for the Liturgy on Sunday or for the Stick and the Dine.

[71:08]

I mean, those remain, and that's in our documentation. So, again, I mean, I was a little puzzled, too, not so much at the document itself, although some things about it puzzled me. I mean, it seems to be a much more devotional document than an actual document about the theology of the Eucharist, as I would ordinarily think about it or talk about it. But then I'm not the Pope, so, you know, I may be missing things. I would say that it's not, I mean, when you look at other encyclicals, especially from Pope John Paul II, things like Nisio Redemptoros, The documents on the Holy Spirit, Dominum et Biblii content, those documents, I think, are extraordinarily important because they really advance the theology, number one, of the inter-religious dialogue, which is what M. Brigham Torres does, and they advance the theology of the Holy Spirit.

[72:23]

which I think is what happens in Domino Medici Tantum. I mean, those are actually very important contributions, I think, to the ongoing evolution of theology in the Roman church. But it's like everybody. I mean, some days you have a good day, and you write well. And some days you have a bad day, and you write horribly. That may even happen to folks who do not forfeit their humanity as a result of their election. Anyway, so part of it, I think, is that it's just not the strongest document from that pope or from that legacy. And as I say, for myself, I think it may be based on a somewhat misunderstanding of what attitudes are like in this country. I think maybe in that context that the new pope Maybe he wanted to clarify the situation of his family at Constantinople, he said that the two points never forget that Christ is to be experienced and to be adored.

[73:38]

That was his point of Constantinople. That's not the big difference. Well, right. Yeah. And I mean, you know, but you know that what I think that says in effect is that you can't really understand one except in terms of the other. I mean, it's it's. You know, at the end of the day, the Eucharist is not several mysteries, it's one mystery, but it's a mystery which, because of its multidimensionality, and this is true of all sacramental symbols, because of that, it cannot be assigned a single meaning. When you say, well, the Eucharist means this and only this, you're almost certainly going to be heterodox because, of course, somebody else is going to come along and say, oh, that's not what it means. It also means this. I mean, I'm a great believer in the phrase, it also means that, that, that. Because I think the richness of the Catholic tradition is precisely its wide embrace, its inclusivity.

[74:49]

That's what makes Catholicism, in its best moments in history, very supple, very flexible, very strong, and very tensile. In its best expressions, it's that way. It gets in danger when it becomes brittle and narrow, and when it focuses so exclusively on one thought that it forgets all the rest. And again, I think that's The rule of Benedict doesn't make that mistake. Here's this document written by an anonymous, well we know his name, somebody else told us what it was, his name was Gregory, written by an obscure monastic in early 6th century Italy. When you give that document to students, they're always mystified, because they expect to write all these great chapters on mystical prayer, you know, very deep, very mysterious.

[75:56]

The bulk of the rules on things like, what do you wear when you go to sleep at night? I'll just get you where you get your knife on. Be sure to keep away from the story, you know, after long. Make sure there's enough time for people to go out. I'm not just the top. There's no Tory. You know, we all know what that means. We've all been in church where we wish they would break so that we could go out. I mean, it's so practical. I mean, it's full of stuff. What kind of food you're going to have, how the day is organized. It's full of the verity of gravel, the kingdom of gravel. It's not full of mystical speculation. The mysticism is all internal. It's like Mozart's music. You know, the marvelous thing about Mozart's music is there's no Mozart in it.

[77:01]

After all, it survived. Mozart died when he was my age. He hadn't been dead for 30-odd years. I think the music survives his temporalities. All great music does. And the wonderful thing about it, you know, is that all the complexity is internal. You know, sometimes there is a lot of... bravado on the surface. For example, in the Queen of the Nights aria in the Magic Flute, you know, the famous thing where she goes... I have a lot to sing on the Queen of the Nights aria for you. But the real emotional complexity is inside. Not really, I'm certain it's just simply a typical classical form. I mean, he was, you know, he was writing in the classical period. I mean, how else do you think it's going to sound? It's going to sound like, you know, a classical composer, just as

[78:05]

just as Bach is going to sound like a German Baroque composer. But of course, again, the complexity is internal. It's inside of that, and that's what, you know, is that explosion that happens to you when you're listening, and the music grabs you unaware and takes you away, which is exactly the idea. I was heartened to hear your reminders about the flexibility of Benedictine rule. Could we then expect leadership in flexible interpretations of these documents, the latest documents coming out of the world, for an interpretable practice from, for example, Benedictine federations like the American Fascists or something? Should we expect them to be overly zealous about you know, knocking targets off the altar, and, you know, reading a piece, things like that.

[79:12]

I think that Benedictines are, you know, I mean, in some ways Benedictines are like, they're like the way people in the church, I mean, I know this in my own life, from having been on both sides of the clerical fence, Why don't you become a layperson again? You're left alone. Because you don't count in that system. It's great. I mean, it is. I mean, because it gives you lots of freedom. You know, it really does. And in some ways, I think, you know, it was Leo XI who said, in a bit of Pete, The Benedict of Bordeaux has Bordeaux sine ordine. It's an order without an equal. And he was writing because they didn't have a superior general.

[80:16]

Well, of course, we still don't have a superior general. And in fact, we haven't had a primate, you know. I was thinking about having a primate. You have absolutely no power. None. I mean, the person I'm referring to is a great guy. He's actually, he's a classic with Trayvontas, I believe, and he also plays in a rock band. He uses all those eye hammers. It's amazing. I mean, he's a monk of San Antonio. Anyways. I think that Dr. Roman is just kind of interested. Well, they're the Benedictines. They just kind of go their own way. And I think that's good. I mean, maybe I'm wrong about this. I mean, maybe you have a lot more infringement from local episcopal authority or from the higher-ups than I think. But I think in communities of Benedictine women and in communities of Benedictine men, there is a very healthy sense of,

[81:21]

you know, of listening, you know, documents come out, we listen, we read them, we take a look at those, and we make decisions about them. But the decisions are mainly local and often, as I said, autonomous. And, you know, there's nothing anarchic. It's nasty. Hope is anarchic about that. I mean, I've found this true of all those of you that I've been privileged to be a part of. Well, I've been in Mount Savior. I mean, It's prayerful, it's simple, it's beautiful. People want to participate. What's not to like? You know, I mean, what's to object to? I mean, this is kind of the point, isn't it? I mean, you know, people come and they have an experience of prayer, and a wonderful rhythm of both speech and silence, a sense of encountering the mystery of God in the home windows of human acts, Really, in a sense, that's all the liturgy is. The liturgy is the placing of what we cherish most deeply into the hands of human practices.

[82:28]

It's what it is. And we're the ones that make it up. I mean, in spite of those documents of the early church that imagined Jesus in a post-resurrectional moment being very liturgical, and giving directions about how the liturgy is to be celebrated, I mean, oh, we know this is not really true. I mean, Jesus didn't have an interest in that, apparently. I mean, his interest was in giving himself. So, I mean, that's the core of the art of the Eucharist. It's the gift of self. Because that's really what the mystery of the Trinity is passed to. The mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of personhood that exists only by giving itself away. I mean, it's a perfect example of communion without hierarchy. There is no hierarchy in the Trinity.

[83:31]

There can't be. Otherwise, one of the persons will be superior to the others. That can't be true. Communion without hierarchy, personhood constituted by giving itself away, by surrendering itself, by pouring itself out. The mystery of the treacherous connoissance, that's why you have the great hymn in Philippians chapter 2, you know, that even though he was one with God, he did not imagine divinity as something to be clung to, but emptied himself. You're taking the form, in more faith, to do in the form of the children. So, I mean, those are the things that we celebrate. Those are the things that give us life. And, you know, I think Benedictines are pretty good about being discreet. But also being sensible. You know, so I don't see that there's going to be a huge move. I mean, I didn't know this. I think that we need to play more. We need to be done.

[84:33]

I mean, it's a canter. It's very good. There's one challenge to solve. Right, exactly. And also, remember, the bread is broken. I mean, it's not at all accurate to just hold up an integral. I mean, the breaking of the bread is important in the right, because that is what tells us that this is one who gives himself to us as our food and drink precisely by giving himself away. So the lamb's body is broken. wrote and given. That's why the four of them, you know, he took, he blessed, he wrote, and he gave. By the way, the same set of verbs that are used to describe the action of the woman who invites us to speak in the House of Signs in Luxembourg. She took the jar of argument, she blessed, and by breaking the lid open and pouring it from the speak, and gave it.

[85:36]

They were celebrating a lucrus. Okay, well, I think it's pretty warm. Yes, sure. You've lost your crystal ball, but if we could engage in a little wishful imagining, and we were to come back in 54 years, by the nemesis of 51 years from now, how would you see the lineage of ordinary people, not the one that's very much changing, how would you see it? Would it be more Sending an eventual community that way, somehow, more attentive to the countries in which it existed, more like participation, or what? Well, I don't think for sure. I can express to you my hopes for the future. Maybe that would be the best way for me to respond.

[86:39]

I hope that what we're doing will constantly happen in cyberspace. I mean, Dennis told me that in cyberspace. I would hope that there is a real gathering of people, you know, because on the one hand, the Internet and modern technology, and I don't want to banish technology. I mean, look at what the rule says. I mean, what are tools? They're extensions of the human body and the sensorium. And Benedict says, you treat technology, you treat tools, oxy-vasa-sacrata-altares. And so they were the sacred vessels of the elders. So there's no anti-technological, there's no Luddite motif. in the lower abundance as far as I can see. So I'm not against cyberspace. I mean, I have been initiated somewhat into the mysteries of Googling by my students, of course, because I didn't know what it was about. So I thought, if you tell me, I used to go to make searches. So now I do. But I would hope that we don't have virtual community, because I think face-to-face encounters are important in the Christian tradition.

[87:49]

I mean, the liturgy happens face-to-face. And the best example, and that was true even, by the way, a lot of people missed this, in the pre-conciliar liturgy, at least the act of communion was face-to-face. Even if the rest of the liturgy was celebrated so that you had the priest backing you, when communion was given, he didn't give it to you this way. He gave it to you face to face. Somewhere along the line, there has to be a real, live, human encounter. In the liturgy, remember, we're taking what we cherish most and placing it in the care of human practices, human rituals practices. So that would be my first note, that it won't simply be satisfaction. Secondly, about essential communities. I mean, most of the, I mean, not the terms that I use, not technically the one that I geographically live in, no. I live in Moll Plower Parish, but the parish that I go to is St.

[88:53]

Joe's, which is actually I used to live in within the territorial boundaries of St. Joe's, but virtually all the parishes in South Tent, and I would say there are between 20 and 25 of them, they're all pretty much intentional communities at this point. I don't think there's any big fuss made about it. Pastors, of course, want people to register with the parishes and stuff, but they're not really based on geographical location too much. So, I think that in some ways there is probably going to be And this is a little speculative. In the future, there might be an enhancement or an increase of the kind of local diversity that you see in liturgical practice. Because that's true in South Bend. I mean, the parishes on the west side, for example, where the old Polish and Hungarian ethnic communities established themselves at the beginning of the 20th century,

[89:56]

Those parishes have a different way of celebrating the Eucharist. I mean, because the people who live in those parishes are still very much, many of them, the children and grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of the people who have gone to the parishes. On the other hand, the fastest growing community in South Bend is the Latino community, and many of the parishes, like St. Hedwig's, Our Lady is Hungry, and so on, The majority of the parishioners are Spanish-speaking. So, in spite of the fact that they were established as Polish immigrants, they are Polish any longer. So, I mean, and there's a different style of celebration. St. Augustine, which is a primarily African-American group, that, I mean, the style of celebration, there's a good bit of variability, but see, I would argue that that should not neglect or worry us. I mean, You know, you still, you go to those parishes, it's still the Roman line. I mean, come on, people say, you can't have this diversity because it will endanger the Roman life.

[91:04]

Of course, Guerin J was saying this too in the middle of the 19th century, and I always think to myself, right, I mean, he's saying that. But, you know, did he change the Benedictine office to the Roman office? I should say not. I mean, so, you know, Come on, I mean, I don't think that anybody is going to be confused about when this is the Roman ride. It doesn't look like the Byzantine ride. It doesn't look like the Malabar ride. It doesn't look like the Syrian Orthodox ride. It doesn't look like the Greek Orthodox community, which actually the church that I live in the very nearest to is a Greek Orthodox church. It was a Serbian Orthodox church. So, it doesn't look like that liturgy. I mean, it's still, you know, so I mean, I think the diversity that we see and that we have experienced as a council is liable to grow rather than decline over time. But I don't think that that will, you know, that that will in any way threaten, I don't think it needs to threaten, either the unity of Roman life or the unity of Roman Catholic Christians.

[92:12]

Finally, I guess I would just simply say that I, You know, when it comes to things like, you know, music, repertoire, art environment, all those kinds of issues, I mean, I don't go to the parish that I am a regular part of because of those things. Actually, I hate the music, for the most part. At my parish. The art environment is okay, but I mean, But I don't go for those reasons. When I'm at Mass, I'm not there as a liturgical person. I'm not there as a lunatic. I'm simply there to celebrate with the community. I try to remind myself as I walk through the church, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That would be a wonderful motto for the halls of Congress. If there was some recognition that all are sinners and all have fallen short of the glory of God, wouldn't that be refreshing?

[93:22]

If somebody says, I didn't really hear God talking to me last night. You know, you would think that God has a whole cosmos to run. Surely God is busy enough. There are other things to do, but what do I know? A very long list of questions. Yes. I've heard that, regarding this diversity, that in the Middle Ages, there was a good deal of diversity from place to place. And then it was only in the later centuries that there were pressures towards uniformity. That's right. And, you know, what's ironic is that even though the rhetoric in the period, this comes out in this book, in fact, we'll be reading a new chapter by German McAuliffe on the Reformation, it's a new study. One of the points that he makes is that actually late medieval Catholicism was very strong and very healthy and it was very diverse.

[94:26]

And it was. It became the rhetorical commonplace in the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, for political reasons that had nothing to do with late medieval Catholicism as such, to say that, in fact, it was corrupt and miserable and it was out of touch with people's lives and stuff like that. Because really, for the most part, it probably wasn't. I mean, you know, the one thing that people rioted over when the Book of Common Prayer was imposed in 1549,

[94:59]

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