This morning, you know, we talked about, what could we call it, sort of a locating of Lectio Divina within Saint Benedict's larger project. His larger project, we said, is that the monastic day is arranged by him in such a way that we can live the whole thing saturating ourselves with the Word of God. all the monastic practices can be understood under that rubric. But among those, Lectio Divina plays a critical role because Lectio Divina brings the text to me personally. And it's my refinement of my own practice of Lectio Divina, my deepening myself in it, we said, is my continually being really open to being personally confronted by the Word today. Every day this will happen for me as a monk. Suggested further that it's the kind of understanding of the text that comes from love, and we use the image of the Song of Songs as the model for that, that really did drive the monastic tradition of Lectio Divina.

[01:17]

And from the Song of Songs we see that, in a sense, the word that will wed himself to me in this encounter with Anlexio both recedes and appears. But if he recedes or withdraws from me, its purpose is to heighten my desire. This image I think is very useful for us as monks because it continues to remind us that Lectio Divina and confronting the scriptural text, it's not a question of mastering a content. It's a question of coming into relationship with Christ. And so the tradition of Lectio structures a dialogue between me and Christ. is a dialogue for which I need the help of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, we said a little something here about the days that we're living here liturgically between Ascension and Pentecost, that the mystery of the Ascension is a dimension and in a certain sense a coming to fruition of the mystery of the Lord's resurrection.

[02:31]

that it includes Him and during the 40 days He makes sure that we understand that it truly is He who is alive. But that lesson learned, He wants to withdraw from our sight, which is not a withdrawal of His presence at all. He wishes to withdraw from our sight. so that we understand that he is present everywhere, in every time and in every place. And we can call this same presence his being present to us in the spirit. We saw that the spirit gives us concrete means of encountering Jesus crucified and risen. And they are fundamentally the scripture and the sacraments. Well, we finished this morning by just briefly looking at the four steps of Lectio that the monastic tradition defines. And these four steps, I like to call them dimensions of a single experience.

[03:37]

And it's worth, I call them dimensions so we don't apply it as a method rigidly. But the dimensions of the single experience, by identifying four different dimensions, we kind of become aware of what can happen in this hour of Lectio. The dimensions are, first we read, then we ponder. In our pondering and in the insight that comes we are moved to prayer. I call this a shaped by the spirit kind of prayer. We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the spirit himself teaches us to pray. And he does that by putting my nose concretely in a text that he has designed for me and in which today he wants me to gain something from that text. And so I'm praying moved by the text. And sometimes I'm taken beyond the concreteness of the text into contemplative communion in the Holy Trinity. I said that I would like to sort of develop especially that second step this evening, pondering in relationship to the mystery of the Trinity and the Incarnation and our divinization, but before I do that, I think it will work better if I could establish a framework

[05:01]

that I find useful for coming into the scriptures, and it's a framework that emerges from a practical question, namely, why live a life saturated by the Word? It's one thing to notice that Saint Benedict arranges life so that we can live it saturated by the Word of God, but I think we need to ask a more basic question, why do that? Which is the same question as why be a monk? And every now and then it's good for us just to ask that question again because I mean alright fine we've made the commitment and we're still here and that's good but you can be here and forget why. So why be a monk? And I would like to suggest that the answer to that question lies is a very existential answer. Being a monk is about living a life saturated by the word is about the meaning of existence. A monk confronts directly the meaning of existence.

[06:08]

And a Christian monk knows that there is only one answer to that question. Christ is the meaning of existence. And a monk wants to show that in his life, to live that in his life, that the meaning of existence is in Christ. What framework does this offer us? What it tells us is that in the scriptures I am looking for the meaning of existence. And my hope is, and the faith of the whole church, I'm not alone in this, the faith of the whole church is that there I will find the meaning of existence. We can be more concrete still. The Old Testament text moves in several fundamental categories that we are meant to learn to move in ourselves and those fundamental categories are history and creation.

[07:13]

Surely it's characteristic of Old Testament faith that God reveals himself primarily in history and not in history generally But in the particular history of Israel, in this measly nation, God is revealing himself. And God is revealing his purposes for the whole of history through this particular history in Israel. And so that's the fundamental category of the Old Testament. from within that category, the religion of Israel was eventually able to fan outward into a cosmic vision that what God is doing for Israel is about the whole cosmos. And thus we have a second category of thought in the Old Testament, namely creation. But

[08:15]

It's useful for us to realize that that's in a sense the Old Testament's way of summarizing life's questions. Life's questions are history and what it means, where is it going, if anywhere, and creation. What is it? What's it for? What's it mean? And Israel said, Israel believed that the answer to that question lay astoundingly in what God was doing in the history of Israel. All of that is played in an entirely new key in the coming of Christ. Christ is the fulfillment of the categories of the Old Testament in a way that could have never been suspected. It was fulfillment in surprising ways. But basically, what the Paschal Mystery, the death and resurrection of Jesus, which eventually produces a New Testament text, that New Testament text comes right out of his Paschal Mystery.

[09:30]

What the New Testament text is, is a way of reading the Old Testament text in the light of Christ. so that the whole meaning of Israel is opened up by means of Christ. This is what we're looking for then in the text. Let's just do a little lexio together to make this point, to look at a text that I'm sure you're familiar with, the Lord's appearance on the road to Emmaus to the two disciples there. Okay, they're walking along and they are discussing their disappointment. The disappointment in the cross. And, well, it's not too hard for me to step into that scene. I am disappointed in the cross.

[10:32]

This is a way of describing life, okay? Disappointed. that it's turning out this way. Disappointed with failure. Disappointed with the way in which I was hoping this and instead this. This is what they're discussing along the road. And the Risen Lord appears to them without their recognizing Him. And I think this is significant from my own practice of Lectio. He's there long before I know He's there. Long before I know he's there. He's not more there when I recognize him. He's entirely there even though I don't recognize him. And then he, he begins to explain to them the passages of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms which referred to him. First of all, that's a lesson for me.

[11:34]

Okay, I'm going to read Moses and the prophets and the Psalms, and I will look for the passages that refer to him, but he will do it for me. I spoke this morning about a real presence of Christ as I'm doing Lectio. This is that real presence. Christ risen is present to me. when I read Moses and the prophets and the Psalms and he will open my mind to the understanding of the scripture and again I know the answer in advance. He summarizes his lesson. He summarizes his lesson. The lesson is that the Messiah had to suffer so to enter into glory. Everything in the scriptures points to that. This then becomes a key. for organizing all the texts of the scripture. And that's what I will look for then. And that's what I trust that He will help me find in Lectio. This is why I read the Old Testament as a Christian, looking everywhere for this mystery, that the Messiah has to suffer so to enter into glory.

[12:35]

And also a description of Lectio, our hearts burn within us as this happens. This prepares us We're recognizing a different kind of presence of the Lord, His presence in the breaking of the bread. A presence which, because we have understood what it means that the Messiah has to suffer so to enter into glory, when we recognize His presence in the breaking of the bread, what is that? That's the sign. that he gave on the night before he died, a sign that he knew that if they kept doing this, he told them, do it again and again, if they kept doing this, they would understand his death. They would understand the significance of his death. And only by means of this sign would they understand it. And then, when that happens, you don't need to cling to him, as we talked about this morning. In fact, you don't want to. I always like that, you know, that story, as it's told by Luke in chapter 24, it's so dramatic that it just builds and builds the joy and wonder of it.

[13:43]

And then they recognize him and they're baking the bread. Thereupon he vanishes, at which point you should think big hole in the balloon and it pops. Thereupon he vanishes. No, not at all. They are thrilled at this moment. They're not bummed out that he's vanished. And if he went anywhere, where did he go? Right inside them. as Risen Lord. That's what they grasped. And that's why they were able to go out and announce this. Let that story function as summary of what basically the whole New Testament is about, namely that Moses and the prophets and the Psalms are all testifying to this mystery that the Messiah had to suffer so to enter into glory. Well, if it's

[14:44]

If it's possible for us to understand that Jesus in his Paschal Mystery summarizes and in a sense takes into himself all of history which precedes him and indeed all of creation which precedes him, if we grasp that, and I hope you do with this sort of reminder and explanation, we've done just half of the task. Because Jesus in that particular point in history in which he was crucified, and in that particular tomb from which he rises to fill the universe, he not only recapitulates in himself all that had happened theretofore, but he also recapitulates in himself all that will happen thereafter. All the future is likewise contained in that moment of His rising, in the same way that all the past is contained there. And if that's so, and it is, this is our faith, if that's so, then it means that I must look for the meaning of this time in which I'm alive.

[15:59]

I must look for the meaning of this particular life that I'm leading. I must look to Christ for its meaning. And I must look specifically to the center, to his death and resurrection for its meaning. And what I will find there, what I will find there are what I will also find in my own life here. So that if Moses and the prophets and the Psalms all are saying one thing, the Messiah has to suffer so to enter into glory, so also does the rest of history after Christ say that. That's the key to it all. Why live a life saturated by the Word? Because only in that way, and here's a Christian, and it ought to be especially amongst service to society, why live a life saturated by the Word? Because only here do I find the meaning of history. Only here do I find the purpose and scope of creation.

[17:04]

I would say that's specifically what I'm looking for in my whole Christian existence, but in the practice of Lectio, I'm looking for that in a very personal way. How is my actual life that I'm leading, how is it enlightened, how is it understood by the message of Christ? In the same way that We can learn from the New Testament how to read the Old Testament. There's some sort of patterns that take place there in the way the Old Testament is read by the New. Basically, what we see is that there are great patterns and echoes in Israel's life that are brought to fulfillment in the life of Jesus. most obvious example, Exodus. Exodus just totally stamps the consciousness of Israel such that that unexpected and most mighty being led out of Egypt and ultimately after 40 years of teaching in the desert being led into the Promised Land, this pattern

[18:30]

continues to stamp everything and to reveal the meaning in everything in Israel's history. Such that we need these categories already to understand Jesus's, what we call it, his exodus from this world to the Father. That's what Moses and Elijah were talking with him about on the mountain, was his exodus Well, that's like the big pattern, but there's all sorts of lesser patterns that are subsumed into that. And this is a key for Lectio. If there's a pattern there, that's the pattern to look for in your life as well. And that pattern, in fact, will emerge in your life. If Exodus is the pattern for Israel and for Jesus, that's also the pattern for you. And that's what you're looking for in the text. And the text itself will open the details of that. I think it's within that framework that we could come back to the idea that I finished with this morning.

[19:37]

Namely, that in my pondering of a particular text, I'm not left to my own ingenuity though that doesn't hurt, but it's not a question of my own ingenuity at this point. It's a question of being led by what the Fathers called the Church's rule of faith. And the rule of faith is summarized around three basic mysteries in which all the other mysteries of what we believe are contained. The mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of the Incarnation, and the mystery of our divinization. Let's just reflect briefly on how this rule of faith functioned in the early centuries of the church's life and relationship to scripture and how it eventually came to be articulated above all in the creeds and the teachings of the Great Council.

[20:41]

In the early centuries of the church we can see a very symbiotic relationship between scripture and what we call tradition, such that it's really impossible to determine which comes first. And it's precisely that symbiotic relationship that I think that we want to recover in our own practice of Lectio Divina so that the Word can speak to me in its fullest and most living manner. For example, think about this, which I don't think we think about very often. You know, having the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament, having that in that shape, that was only determined around the year 180. Well, what does that... I mean, think of some implications there. How were Christians Christians then before that?

[21:44]

How were Christians Christians for 150 years without a New Testament text? The texts were there and known in the churches, but they weren't called scripture and they didn't function in the way the scriptures function. What was happening? What was keeping the church on course during those years? It was this living presence of Christ in the church. It was Christ present in the church through the spirit. And it was teaching that came from the apostles. Teaching that began to take a shape. through the experience of the Church, a shape that happened and became more and more focused, especially as the community of believers were faithful to the Lord's command, go and baptize all nations into the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is a command, Trinitarian in its shape,

[22:51]

And also as the church continued to do this meal in memory of him that he gave the night before he died, also a Trinitarian shape begins to emerge from that as well. Such that the church understood that in this meal Christ is met again. But in the action of eating one understands that we are being incorporated into Christ. And that we are, in fact, making His same offering to the one to whom He made it, which is one other than Him. And that all this is possible in the Spirit. Again, Trinitarian shape. That Christ is giving something to the Father, I'm doing that with Him, and the Spirit makes that happen. So, the Church, we can say, is living a Trinitarian mystery. And in the process of living this Trinitarian mystery is able to read the texts that were always considered the sacred texts of the Jewish religion, is able to read the Old Testament texts and slowly is developing a way of doing that that in fact opens the Trinitarian dimensions of those Old Testament texts as well.

[24:11]

And the New Testament is eventually identified because of sort of pressures that were emerging within the life of the Church, above all from Gnostic direction, eventually saying, you know, we've got to determine a way of reading the Old Testament that we can identify in communities across. We've got to determine a way of reading the Old Testament and we've got to determine what are our texts, what are our Gospels, And what are not our Gospels? And what are the letters from the Apostles? And what are not letters from the Apostles? We've got to determine this. Well, I'm just telling a very long and complex story quickly here to let you realize that the Bible as we have it, that doesn't drop from the sky. And in the way in which it's finally accepted in the life of the Church, what is accepted there is a way of reading it. So you can't accept the Bible as a text without accepting also the way in which it was read.

[25:20]

And the way in which it was read, you can read it other ways. It's important to realize that this is a lot at stake here. You can read the Bible in all kinds of ways. What we're seeing is we're talking about the church's articulation of the importance of reading it with the rule of faith. that comes to us from the apostles. That way we are sure that we're not reading it mistakenly, but put in a more positive light. That way we are sure we are reading it in its fullness. Okay? Because a text, a Bible, a sacred book, cannot in itself contain the mystery. It can only point to the mystery and it will continually overflow itself. The text itself tells us this.

[26:22]

If we were to write everything about Jesus, why all the books in the world could not contain it? This much has been written so that you may believe that He is the Son of the Father. But this isn't all. It's continually overflowing itself. Well, right in the midst of this struggle, one of the big players, key players in this whole process of a Bible finally being, a Christian scripture finally being identified and a key for how it is to be read finally being established, one of the big players in that was Irenaeus. And he had a lucky phrase that I think in a sense very neatly summarizes the whole issue here. It's an image. He says that the Bible, the whole Bible, are the myriad pieces of a mosaic.

[27:25]

And the rule of faith is the master plan for their assembly. The Bible are the myriad pieces of a mosaic. The rule of faith is the master plan for their assembly. I find this extremely helpful because what it shows me is, in a very kind of quick way, what the fathers were realizing when eventually this rule of faith, which first functioned really as kind of a brief, verbal, fluid summary of the Trinitarian faith that comes to us from the apostles. It's brief, it's fluid, it comes out in all kinds of different ways. Eventually, each church develops a sort of baptismal creed, which is also very interesting. You can just do a historical study on this. All of the baptismal creeds of all the churches across the ancient world are Trinitarian again in their shape. You're professing faith in Father, Son, and Spirit.

[28:30]

All of the ancient liturgies are Trinitarian in their shape, that is to say they are addressed to the Father through the Son in the Spirit. But eventually when these, I think we have our quickest experience of what we mean by rule of faith by finding that moment in the 4th century when the rule of faith becomes a written document as in the Nicene Creed or in the Creed from Constantinople. There the rule of faith you can see is, what was at issue in Nicaea? Was it, okay, we've got a Bible here, fine, thank you very much, we're glad to have it. What's it mean? Like, for example, I've got a very important question about what it means. Is Jesus God or isn't he? The text points you both ways. You could argue on the basis of the text, either way. So what's the rule of faith for reading this? The rule of faith answers the question. and then shows me that that's the reading that I must deepen myself in.

[29:37]

And so on with the whole Trinitarian doctrine and then the other doctrines that I've identified, namely the incarnation, which is a way of defining, okay, if he's God, thank you very much, then he must not be a human being, because you can't be both at once. And the rule of faith says, no, excuse me, we've got to read this at its depth, we've got to find a way of saying it. Inculturated way of saying it, all that, this is Greco-Roman categories of thought. But basically, what the rule of faith, finally we could say it does, is it summarizes the scripture. and focuses the scripture in a way that the church across geographical boundaries and across time identifies with. According to the tradition, there is no other way to read the scriptural text, and indeed,

[30:47]

Why would you want to? This is unending mystery. So, what I look for, I'm hoping to kind of build up the framework in which this is not, I don't want to be presenting you with what comes off as abstract ideas. When I do Lectio Divina, And when I'm insisting that my Lectio Divina is an encounter with the scriptural text of the Church's rule of faith, I mean, I'm going to try to put it here in a very concrete and personal way. What I'm looking for in the text, whatever text is under my nose, what I'm pondering my way toward, is an understanding how this today in which I'm praying, this today in which I'm reading the text now, I'm searching to understand how who I am on that day and who the world and the piece of history that I'm living in that day, I'm searching to understand how that is only understood by means

[32:12]

of the Messiah must suffer so to enter into glory. Which is to say God, God became a human being. This was not just a good man. God became a human being and gave his life for me on the cross. This is the meaning of my today. And why did He do that? Why did He give His life for me on the cross? Because He wanted to make me a co-heir with Him. He wanted that I be adopted into Him. He wanted that I has, as He Himself says in the text and as the rule of faith teaches me to read it at its depth, He wanted to give me His glory that He had with the Father before the world began. He wants all that to be mine. He wants me to know the Father's name. He has given me that name so that I may call the Father.

[33:17]

This is the meaning of my existence today. It is no less than this. The rule of faith teaches me that it is no less than this. He wants to make me divine. He wants to make me... I was at Marmion a few days ago, and maybe you have the same lectionary, we read a passage from Basil the Great on the Holy Spirit, who was just, did you have that reading here this week? Basil the Great on the Holy Spirit, whose last line was, the Holy Spirit will make me God. Okay, there's a way of misunderstanding that and a way of understanding it, all right? But the rule of faith, the rule of faith, you know, without the rule of faith, we wouldn't dare go that far. But it's no less than that. That I am made to share the divine nature. Not with any rights at all. This is sheer grace. But God has held nothing back.

[34:24]

You know, it would have been fine. We could say, you know, God's very nice and he did a lot of nice things for us. He didn't do all he could have done, but he did a lot and we just got to be grateful with that. There's nothing more that God could have given. This is what the scripture tells and the rule of faith makes sure I read it on that level. There's no more that God could have given. He gave his only son. He gave everything. He emptied himself of his divinity so that I could have his divinity. He went all the way to hell to start ascending from there. So that nothing would lie outside of the place from which he ascends. So that he takes everything captive and everything with him. What I'm trying to sketch here are big frameworks, huh?

[35:26]

Big frameworks within which any piece of the scripture can be like, oh, that piece of the mosaic, okay? We see the master plan of the mosaic. And the master plan of the mosaic is that you and I, by means of the full human nature of Jesus, who is divine also in his nature, but whose instrument of His being the Son, the way in which He is the Son, He was the Son from all eternity in His divine nature, but the way in which He is the Son now, the way in which He is henceforth always the Son, is in a human nature. And that human nature, that's what you and I have. That's how I participate in the creation. That's how I'm in history. And with that human nature, He's being the sun.

[36:31]

That's the place then where I link up with Him. And when I link up with Him there, I remain a human being. The vessel has not been broken. But in my being a human being, I am divinized. And I, not on my own strength, but in the Spirit, I say Abba to the Source and I am giving perfect glory and honor to Him. That beautiful whole picture is what is filled in in detail, day after day, with each verse of the scripture, Old Testament and New. That's perhaps enough for tonight. I'd like to maybe hear your responses or entertain questions or whatever, clear up anything that doesn't make sense.

[37:41]

So save a little time for that. But we could do a couple things tomorrow. I proposed this morning, you know, three chunks. This Lectio Divina chunk, a Desert Father chunk and a Vagraus chunk. I took a walk in the woods today and sort of am conceiving of chunking it up differently. We can do that, but maybe that's biting off too much. It might be good tomorrow morning to try to Just take some passages and let me demonstrate this finding echoes, finding patterns, seeing the Trinitarian shape in a text that you might not be inclined to see it in at first glance. Just to sort of practice some of that with you. And in doing that I would be, without citing the actual thing, I would be using the patristic style of exegesis.

[38:46]

I don't think it's necessary really to cite that as much as to just kind of learn to practice that. So that and then I think to turn it a particular focus on Evagrius. which would be the question of divinization and participation in life of the Holy Trinity as that occurs in Evagrius. Does that sound like sort of a good plan? But for the rest of this evening we have till 8, do we fathers? Or do you want to quit a little early? Yeah, so maybe you can push these ideas around a little, or what are some of your responses to what I'm suggesting? You know, it's easy for me to understand that Christ had to suffer because it's written that he would. But why was it written? I mean, in other words, still.

[39:47]

And I can see that if God became one of us, and tried to live a life that He thinks, there's no question He'd crucify me. I've been crucified almost three times as long as He has, only that they won't. So I mean, I can see it in the person. But it's just a simple programming problem. of evil, I mean evil in the, say, tidal waves, answers. In some way, I told God I couldn't make a better creation as I would have done in the first place, you know, going, and I thought, well, you know, I've been throttled to be so far with it. And they say that the idea of a person, right, who has integrity, The whole thing of why it was necessary for him to suffer, certainly, to straighten us out.

[40:58]

It was like two men over a couple of feet. We got to get up straight, or else we could walk. And so some humanity had to be It just seemed like there was another way. And of course this allows us to participate in darkness. I mean, in the rejection that God gets from people, and everything else that we give to God, and our lack of love, and rejection that we give God, is still the same, so it's another way of doing it. Again, even though I probably know that if somebody gets hit by a car, okay, but the Well, I mean, obviously, I don't have a satisfactory answer for that, but I tell you, that's one of life's questions, huh?

[42:16]

Why live a life saturated by the Word? Because I'm looking for the answer to that kind of question and we have to keep facing it. That's our vocation as monks, is to keep facing that question and grappling with it. Some of the help that I've had or some of the insight that I've had into that once came doing Lectio in the book of Job, in which it occurred to me that in some sense maybe Job, in his extremely eloquent expressions of those kinds of questions, you know, Maybe Job, in a sense, provoked God into the incarnation when he said something like, you know, just sort of translating it loosely, where he says, you don't know what it's like.

[43:18]

And he said, and especially you don't know what death is. You don't know what that's like. So don't give me your, you know, the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, all that sort of stuff. Because it's easy for you to say you don't know what it's like. At the death of Jesus, this can't be said anymore. It doesn't solve all the problems, but it does put an incredible silence, as Job already foreshadowed that silence as he puts his hands over his mouth at the end of the book and says, I don't understand, but I'm done talking now. And there's a certain way in which before God crucified We can say, I don't understand, but I'm going to be quiet now. That still doesn't answer the question, though, of why all this suffering, you know, like what we can just call unfair suffering, tidal waves or wars.

[44:32]

It seems to me all the people that die in war or other stupid ways, for the most part, that's explainable by evil. I mean, this evil makes that happen. And if there's one There's one thing the history of evil in the world shows us that's good is that, boy, we really are free. God has made us so free that, you know, God doesn't stop us from doing evil for probably just one good reason, to honor our freedom. You know, he's had second thoughts about it and everything, as the Bible kind of says that. You know, like, I repent that I made creatures like this. But basically, he's glad he's made creatures like this because... But he wants us to use our freedom for good. And one of the things he teaches us, we see this in the Bible, especially in the Davidic stories of the whole Davidic dynasty, evil has its consequences that will play themselves out in history.

[45:45]

The Lord himself will be merciful and will always find a way, astounding ways, to get things back on course if we want. In a certain sense, we have to realize that we bear responsibility for a great deal of the evil. Maybe not personally, but why is it there? human beings. You could say, like, I mean, one day I was sitting out, we have a beautiful sort of place where our monastery is situated, like yours, you've got a beautiful place here, sometimes you sit and you look out, I'm sure you must do, and you think, God, this is beautiful, and I was thinking, God, the world's beautiful, and it occurred to me, you know, everything we need to get along is already on the planet, Like it was kind of like I was sort of half, I hadn't ever been explicit in this thought, but I was kind of like thinking, you know, the reason that everything is here is because, well, enough hasn't come down from heaven yet or something.

[46:54]

But no, hey, it's all here. Christ is risen. The victory over sin and death is accomplished. It needs to be received and it isn't being received. But it's all here. So, in a sense, the solution to evil is among us. The victory over evil has already been accomplished. You are free. We, let's speak as a whole race here, the whole solidarity of the human race, we are free to accept it or not. But it occurred to me, what if we accepted it? What if we accepted this victory over evil? We have what is needed, but still though, there's the tidal wave, the earthquake, the totally unfair, all that kind of death. I don't understand that. But I did, somehow connected to that is Christ's

[48:02]

own death. Now, not so much in the perspective of evil, but, you know, you ask, okay, it was written that he had to suffer so to enter into his glory, but why was that written? That's a good way of phrasing the question. Why was that written? Why did he have to suffer? I think that some of the answer lies not in evil, but in the very nature of God. This from chapter two of the letter to the Philippians, though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather, he emptied himself. Why? If God acts like that, if God can act like that,

[49:05]

In his work of revealing, he's revealing to us who he is. Everything of the incarnation is God revealing to us in human nature who he is. So God's got a project. I'm going to reveal myself to them. And I'm going to do it in history. And I'm going to do it in history as it is. Which means history enmeshed in sin. God's coming here and He says, well, okay, I'm going to reveal what I am to them and I'm going to have, it's going to be a hard project because not only am I doing it in finite, limited flesh in history, but I'm doing it in what's become sinful flesh. But I'll do it, because I can do anything. I'll make that the language in which I completely and adequately express myself in my divine being. I will do it. So what I'm saying is that what we see revealed on the cross is who God is.

[50:20]

And what is God? I think He is the one who, though He is in the form of God, empties Himself of His divinity. And there is a way, I think, in which that is a definition of God before the Incarnation. Is that not a way of understanding what the eternal generation of the Son is? Is God not, above all, a Father? who entirely gives what he is away to another, to a son, who has everything that the father has, except his being the father, and that is God not the one who, in giving himself entirely away, loses nothing of what he is, because that's what he is, is the one who gives himself away?

[51:25]

Is that not what, and does, and in generating one who is entirely like him, who has everything that he is, is not the sign that he truly has everything that he is, that he turns it all back and says, thank you, anything you want, sheer obedience, sheer adoration of you. And is that not, is that love not fruitful of the Spirit breathing out from that? All of that by way of saying, God is love, meaning not, that's not some gooey phrase that means God's real nice, doesn't matter what you do, He'll keep on being nice to you. It kind of means that, but I mean that's really not what it means in the scripture. God is love means in the one God there is more than one.

[52:31]

God is love means that at the ground of all existence is communion. That the most basic irreducible reality is three and one, not just one. Which is to say that the most basic irreducible reality that God is that being who empties himself for love and thereby is God. Well, with or without sin, It seems to me, now I'm sort of acting like a scholastic theologian here, but this is a good move that they used to try to make. With or without sin, would there have been a need for the incarnation? With or without sin, I would go so far as to say there would have been a need for death to express love.

[53:37]

Then death in a sense, when we say God did not create death, maybe what we mean by that is that God did not create the sting of death, the horror of death, the shrinking from death. But that God did create us in His image, which is to say He created us with a capacity to empty ourselves utterly, to give ourselves entirely away. freely, to do that as a free act, and a free act of entrusting myself to the source from whence I come. And so maybe, you know, now we've created a world, imagine it, because the scriptures teach us to imagine it. Imagine being in this world without sin. Maybe this world without death, I mean, I can't imagine it just on a biological level.

[54:44]

If you don't, you know, if there isn't something like death, well, it just gets too crowded and the whole balance is thrown off. So maybe there's always been death. But death as this, as this beautiful, death as this moment in which I could be most like God, That is to say, I empty myself utterly knowing that thereby I am who I am. Thereby I am loving. And we, the sinful, put that in a sinful, mucked up world, mucked up history shape, it still works in the son who says, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. And maybe that way of dying is how we're all meant to die, so that if, okay, here comes a tidal wave and I'm about to die, but it's not a sinful world, so I go, oh, good, tidal wave, into your hands, I commend my spirit. I mean, something like that, it seems to me, is this continual entrusting of myself utterly to another.

[55:52]

This is the definition of a person. You know, when we say God is three persons, we're not speaking as an analogy there, kind of like saying, figure out what a human person is and the Holy Trinity is kind of like that, this is a good... No, it's just the opposite. God is what we can call person. We can call it something else to get the idea. God is source that gives it all away and another who receives and gives it back and breathing out entirely. And the name for that is person and that's what God is. And we are in that image and that's why we call ourselves persons. But it's possible to be a human being without being a person. It's possible to be an individual.

[56:54]

It's possible to take this divinity that I have, this divine image that I have, and go over here and act like I'm God, I'm in charge, I can do whatever I damn well please. And the fact is you can. You don't blow up, you don't explode, but eventually you're no longer a person. That is to say, you're not in relationship with anyone. That's what makes you who you are. To be in relationship ultimately with the Divine Father and the Divine Son and the Divine Spirit, but our relationship with each other is in the image of that. If we are a community, it's we are a community. Dave Erbom cites, not Dave Erbom, Lumen Gentium, Vatican II beautifully, cites Saint Cyprian here. They're saying the Church, but let's just apply it to ourselves as a community, the Church is that unity from out of the unity of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

[57:59]

That's who you and I are in relationship to each other. I make you a person because you make me a person because we give ourselves to each other. That's being a person. And to give oneself utterly in that way. Good God. That was your question. I don't know how... Sorry. But if I could just summarize it so that you could see that all that was meant to be related to your question. Two strokes in the direction, not of a definitive answer, but one is that God silences our complaints by Himself coming among us, but also that even without sin, God is revealing who He is. God is the one who empties Himself utterly. I think that's the deepest meaning for why the Messiah had to suffer. The Messiah, we could say the Divine Son, had to show himself as the one who empties himself utterly for love.

[59:00]

It's not very brave in the whole sense, it's just a fact. He's speaking out, he is suffering, what it's like, you know, it's suffering of Christ. To me, that always strikes me with something. Whatever suffering a human being incurs, for experiences, no one can compensate for the divine nature of Christ. Yeah, I have thought about that very verse a lot because that's one of those stumbling blocks, you know, but actually You know, the fathers tell us that those kinds of outrageous lines are put in the scripture by the Holy Spirit precisely to break us open into new dimensions of the divine mystery. And I think this is some of what's going on there.

[60:08]

I have been summarizing the Church's rule of faith around three mysteries, Trinity, Incarnation, and Divinization. Divinization is a sort of general and shocking term also for summarizing our participation in this whole story. So that, you know, again and again the scriptures and the church's rule of faith teach us, hey, this is not idle curiosity about God. The Christian life is not, you know, information about God. Like, you know, who doesn't want to know who God is? And here's the answer. This is not what Christian faith is. There's no way of knowing who God is, Christian faith tells us, without ourselves being incorporated entirely into Christ. Without ourselves becoming one body, one spirit in Christ.

[61:15]

Paul is really, in the scriptures, he functions in this way. Paul is really the prototype of that fact. Here, I think, would be the key to reading everything in Paul, and I'll say it generally and then I'll apply it to that text. What Paul discovered was that the Jesus who was spoken of so concretely in the four Gospels, that same Jesus is the hidden secret force at work in Paul's life. That's what Paul discovered on the road to Damascus. And what happened to him on the road to Damascus, the rest of that unfolded during the rest of his life. He's on the road to Damascus and a glorious, blinding light stops him. It's the risen Lord. He doesn't know it, but this is Christ risen, appearing to him, stopping. And he says, who are you, Lord?

[62:19]

And now, you know the answer, but let me make the theological point. Glorious risen Lord identifies himself as Jesus, whom you are persecuting. This is huge. How is Jesus glorious Lord in his suffering members? In His suffering members He is glorious Lord. He is not glorious Lord because they're not suffering anymore. He is glorious Lord in their suffering. Why?

[62:56]

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