I just wanted, can you move back just a little bit, Dave? Because I just want to be able to see everybody. Yeah, thank you. Well, good morning to all of you. I'll just give a little word about myself. I'm from Connecticut. I'm from a family that's Polish on my mother's side and French Canadian on my father's side. Both sides very strong in faith. And I grew up near Passionist Monastery and Retreat House. So as I was growing up, I knew the priests and the brothers there very well. And when I felt a calling, I felt very much called to the Passionists. I was ordained in 1979. So I'm 36 years ordained now, the other day. And I only spent the first four years here in the United States. I was in Baltimore.

[01:02]

We were together, in fact, in Baltimore then. And after Baltimore, I went to Mexico for one year, and then I went to Central America. In Honduras, I was there for four years through all the Iran-Contra times, the assassination of Archbishop Romero, the killing of so many sisters. And after four years in Honduras, I volunteered to go to the mission in Haiti, and I've been there ever since. So I'm in my 29th year in Port-au-Prince. I'm also a medical doctor, aside from being a priest, which comes in very handy in that part of the world. I'm talking to you as somebody who's not a scholar, who I'm not used to formalities in any sense at all. I've been living in a real wild

[02:03]

wild world for the last 20-some years, but I am a brother Catholic, I am a brother religious, I am a brother Christian, and I think that if I'm invited here to speak, it's mostly to talk about The testimony that I can give from my own life and experience of how true the scriptures are and how important our calling is as religious people in the world, I think it's just that that I have to offer. I know Gabriel gave my so-called book to you. It really isn't a book. It's just that when you go through very, very difficult things and you try to put them together in order to come to a balance and equilibrium inside of yourself, because I think we all know in life very difficult things knock us over.

[03:08]

And in order to get up again, very often we have to articulate the narrative in a way that is hopeful and redemptive somehow, so that we can keep going. So the fact is, like an alcoholic who stands up and says, I'm an alcoholic, because that's part of how you keep going. These are just essays that came to me, really, as I was wrestling with very difficult things, and then I shared them with some friends and some family. And sooner or later, they fell into the hands of transaction publishers at Rutgers University, who asked to publish them in order to be helpful to university students who might be wrestling with How superficial or essential is the faith?

[04:10]

What is the interrelationship between faith and society, sociology? What is the interrelation of the faith to politics and political order? And if it can help young people, well, why not? But I don't write books, and I didn't write a book. It just wound up in that form. I'm just saying this to underline that I'm not a scholar. I just have to offer my life experience in the faith, and that's what I'm hoping to do. I think at a time of retreat, We're just trying to see once again to the heart of the matter and in the very simplest way what we're doing and why. And it's necessary to go back to the heart of the matter, and it's necessary to see in the simplest way, because incarnation is a mess, and the world is a mess, and the playing out of the truth of the gospel of life in our world, it's a mess.

[05:23]

I'll give you a simple example, just taking off again from the readings of this morning. After Mass, Fr. Don said to me, knowing what goes on in places like Haiti, and you know Haiti is just one of the zillions of places across the planet that are loaded with with contradictions and problems. But he said to me, after hearing your story about so many dead and everything I know about Haiti, I alternate between strong anger and cynicism and pity for the people. That's really helpful that he said that. Because it's exactly to my point as to why we need to see again simply and clearly what we're doing.

[06:28]

Because I surely alternate between lots of anger and cynicism and pity. And if I don't manage my own inner life, as you have professed to manage your own, and as all people are obliged to by their very baptism, if I don't manage my inner life, then I become lots of other things, but effective would not be one of them. Courageous would not be one of them. Sticktuitiveness would not be a mark of a disciple in our age. That's for sure. These are the things that make life difficult for us. What happens to us inside as we're living in a very real and difficult and violent world. And as we're carrying a message, which is way too big for us because we keep cutting it down, truncating it to fit into our very feeble humanity.

[07:36]

And this is a lifelong challenge for us to do it the right way. some examples of simple, and then we can go to how complicated it gets. When I was studying medicine, when we were just graduating, and a very wise physician said to us, you've learned thousands of new words Most of them are at least eight or nine syllables long. They all come from Greek roots. Nobody is ever going to understand whenever you say any one of them. You've learned all of these words. There's just one word that you have to forget, and that word is whoops. If you ever find yourself faltering, show that you're determined.

[08:41]

And then he said, in spite of all those thousands of words, the hundreds of classes of drugs that you've learned, the thousands of medicines that you've learned, remember, the sick person in front of you has only three questions, only three. What's the matter with me? What's going to happen as this keeps developing? and what, if anything, will help me? And the job of a skilled doctor from doceo, from docere, from teach. Doctor means teacher. So, if you are a skilled doctor and you are sitting in front of somebody who is suffering terribly and has just these three questions in mind, Your job is to parse out everything that you know and simplify it to give three responses that are truthful, that are encouraging, and that are helpful.

[09:55]

This is your job. And it's a hard job. As hard as keeping a harp tuned, as hard as keeping a guitar tuned when you're using it all the time, it's a hard job. And similarly in our faith when we talk about theology. And so many branches of theology and so many volumes and volumes, volumes on top of volumes of theology. The fact is there are only three questions in theology. Is there a God or isn't there? If there is a God, what is God like? And if there is a God, what does God expect of me? These are the three basic questions. And when we go back to the basics of our own baptism, our own consecration, our own ordination for those who are ordained, we go back basically to this.

[11:02]

What is God still for me? How do I understand what God is like? What is God asking of me now here in Baltimore, or now here in Honduras in the middle of civil wars, or now here in Haiti, a place of such dramatic and difficult suffering? What is God asking of me? And we draw on all of our traditions, on our community, on our friends, on our prayer, on our inner discernment, in order to keep very clear for ourselves the answer to those three. When I took my retreat for final vows, I took it at Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky, St. Louis, or outside of, where was it again? Louisville, yeah, outside of Louisville, Kentucky.

[12:04]

And I was given a novel to read, in addition to other materials, I assure you. But I was given a novel to read by the retreat master, and it was called The Last Priest in America. And I remember the novel really well. I think the title has become prophetic, as not only priests but religious diminish so drastically in the United States, but not only as priests and religious diminish drastically in the United States, but as our era becomes more and more referred to by scholars as the post-Christian era, and as even the population of the United States less and less identifies themselves as Christian at all, and as we're really seeing the decline of Christianity, the decline of humanity,

[13:28]

and the absolute decline of common sense. So, the title, even though it was a catchy title for a very fascinating book, has in fact been very prophetic. And these are our challenges. These are our challenges. I'm not a Passionist for myself. You're not a Benedictine for yourself. We hope to find our salvation by consenting with all of our hearts to the vocation to which we have been invited and called. But there's a tremendous burden that comes with our vocation, and it's a participation in the Paschal Mystery for the benefit of the human family and to the glory of God. So in this book, I remember clearly a fascinating passage where this father, struggling to raise his family in front of lots of hardships, one of the biggest ones is his own failings in humanity.

[14:49]

Just as a side note, I read in the New York Times online on Mother's Day an article about when do our mothers get to be who they really are instead of us keeping them in the image of what we need them to be. It was really fascinating, but the point of the story is the father is wrestling with who he really is, with his fears and his infidelities and his difficulties at work. and his struggle to provide for his family, and everybody looking up to him as if he's just perfect and ideal. And he goes to confession, and in his confession he confesses to the priest all of this, his struggles, his difficulties, his inadequacies, his full and determined love for his wife, his full and determined love for his children,

[15:53]

his full and determined desire to do everything for them, but his fear and his insecurity and his not being sure that it's all going to work out well for all of them. And he says to the priest at the end of the confession, I envy you. You don't have all this weight on you of a wife and children and work. I envy you. Anyway, sometime later, the priest goes on retreat, and he goes to a Benedictine abbey. And while he's on retreat, he goes to confession. And he confesses basically the same things. His own inadequacies, how far he is from the ideals of what he professes, and from what's required.

[16:56]

How unsure he is of how to deal with the multitudes of problems that come to him, human problems and spiritual problems from the whole parish. How unsure he is. Did I say that the right way? Did I unburden or burden that person more? Did I help them see clearly? Did I muddle it all up? And in his own anger at times, did he ruin things by his anger? Did he set people back further? Did he disrupt the work of the Holy Spirit by being a source of division rather than a source of unity? And after he receives his absolution, he says to the monk, the Father came to me And he said, he envies me because I don't have a wife or children. I have hundreds of people just like him.

[18:00]

I have thousands of families just like his family. I'm the father of a community. On me is the burden of all of this community. He envies me? I envy you, he said to the monk. I envy you. You're far from all of this. You're on your own, in your cloister, in your quiet. I envy you." And the monk said to him, do you know who I envy? I envy the dead. This was really fascinating, but it led to a phenomenal dialogue between the priest as pastor of a community, as father of a community, and the monk as pastor of the world. Because going from the father of the family to the parish priest to the contemplative, you're increasing your responsibility for the world, not decreasing your responsibility for the world.

[19:13]

If you're doing it right, the monk also has to go to confession. Am I fervent? Am I staying high-pitched and high-tuned in my calling? As Pope Francis said to the priests on retreat for the previous Christmas, the priests of Rome, and it's a good question for the father of the family. It's a good question for the parish priest. It's a good question for the monk. Do the problems of the world ever bring you to tears? Do the problems of your people ever torment you and turn you upside down? Do they ever drive you to your knees so that, like Abraham begging to save Sodom and Gomorrah, that you plead in torment for the people of the world and their great sorrow and their great difficulty?

[20:23]

Because it's only if we're sharing in the passion and sharing in the torment, and bringing this to our prayer as people who are always tormented, can the crucified God work through us and bring about marvels? Of course, it doesn't have to be being in direct contact with those problems. When we were novices, And all of monasticism was on its way out of my community, the Passionists, which had prided itself in at least trying to live a combination of monastic and active way of life. But when I joined, the monastic way was on its way out, but I learned enough of it, believe me, that it's very helpful in the mission to keep peace and to keep equilibrium inside of myself and to help do so for other people.

[21:33]

But while it was on its way out and it's completely gone in my congregation, I assure you, one of the brothers who spoke to us in one of our conferences as novices said, and this was current, there is unbelievable connection. And he was talking about himself. There is an unbelievable connection between my sitting in quiet prayer at Matins at two in the morning and a young 22-year-old soldier dying alone on a battlefield in Vietnam. There is a beautiful and unbelievable connection between my quiet prayer and my keeping him in heart and mind, even though I don't even know him.

[22:39]

and consolation and strength that he finds at the moment of his death. And if that's not true, then our entire faith is a fraud. But it is true, and we know that to be true. Gabriel was telling me yesterday as we were driving up about one of the stories of Saint Benedict told by Saint Gregory the Great where when he is sitting quietly at the very edge of the world this morning when I got up I was thinking about it and looking at that nice little porch where I'm staying and how it's really the frontier between the monastery and that guest house and the rest of the world. When he was sitting at such a place, finishing his prayers, a barbarian came by holding in bondage, painful bondage, an indentured poor servant.

[23:57]

And maybe if you tell the rest of the story it'll be better because you'll have it right because it's fascinating and then I'll take it up from there. You will probably remember the story of Saint Benedict sitting absorbed in scripture doing his Lectio and onto this very tranquil, calm, serene scene comes this barbarian on a horse dragging behind him, tied in ropes, this poor peasant. And Benedict, the barbarian says to Benedict that the peasant has said that Benedict has money for him and he wants that money and before he'll let go of this peasant. And Benedict doesn't say anything, he simply lifts his eyes from the scriptures and looks at the peasant.

[25:06]

And the ropes immediately unbind, untie, and the peasant is now free. And of course the barbarian is completely shocked by this and is led to his own conversion because of it. And Benedict then sends for the man's money. And then he instructs the brothers to provide some refreshment for the guests. And he simply says to the barbarian, don't treat people that way. And then he goes back to reading his scriptures. And so it sort of becomes a snapshot for the whole purpose of the monastic life. to raise one's eyes for prayer from being absorbed in the Word of God, to look on the bondage and the misery of the world, which is represented in the time of Puzzit, and through that reading of Scripture and being completely formed and transformed by God's Word, to unbind the sorrows and the sufferings of the world.

[26:22]

to offer hospitality and then go back to being absorbed in God. So when Brother Jerome, who was the brother, instead of snoozing at mountains, imagines the battlefields in Vietnam across the ocean, and puts his heart with the heart of the dying, and prays for them, the ropes of bondage break and there is peace. It's a really beautiful and really, really important story because our whole purpose finally is charity. We have no other purpose. Our whole purpose is finally charity. I think over these days, Instead of thinking about this title, the last priest in America, the last monk in America, the last Christian in America, we should each think, how can I be the best priest in America?

[27:42]

How can I be the best monk in America? How can I be the best Christian in America? Because the world so needs what we have to offer. Who can deny how more and more barbaric it's getting? The Pope challenged us to disturb our Holy Week with the images of those university students massacred in Iraq during their Christian prayers. Let this disturb our holy week, he said. Our eyes have to be on it. Tears have to come from our eyes. Our hearts have to be broken. We have to pray for them and we have to wait the consolation of Israel and strengthen the world with our prayers. So what are all the impediments?

[28:48]

What are all the impediments that can keep you from being the best monk or keep me from being the best priest or keep us from being the best Christians? The impediments are simple. And these are what I want to discuss over these days through lots of examples. The impediments are simple to understand. and the solutions to overcoming them are simple to understand and they are both very, very hard to carry out. If we just think for a second of what is our position as followers of God the Father and followers of Christ in the world of today, let's just take a second in the most thumbnail sketch to put ourselves on the map. God creates everything good for the simple reason to share love, bounty, and goodness, and, unfortunately for us, to share the freedom to accept it or not.

[30:09]

The freedom played against us right away in Adam and Eve. And the scriptures are very clear as to what the world became like immediately after the sin of pride. Satan crouching like a lion to devour anyone who gets too close to God or goodness. And the very next sin following pride, the very next sin in the scriptures following pride is fratricide. A brother killing his brother over jealousy and then covering it up by lies. And God pained, very much pained for this. And finally, organizing a massive flood to destroy all of it in order to start all over again.

[31:17]

And even that didn't uproot it because it'll never be gone as long as the freedom to choose God freely remains. So it didn't work with the flood. After the flood, God had another great idea. And the idea was, in the very barbaric world, to give a blueprint of a law which comes out of his own heart, to give it to a very feeble leader whose name was Moses, and through the trust that Moses and his brother Aaron would have in God, and their working together in unity, that God would take a ragamuffin band of slaves and introduce into the world the city of God, a civilization based on God.

[32:22]

And so we have the greatness of Moses. And so we have all the stories of the rebellion, the rebellion against the law, the rebellion against the proclaimer of the law, which was Moses, and all of the work of the prophets to try to set it right again and put the vision clear again, and on and on and on it goes until God sees no other choice reflected in the morning scripture, gospel, than to send his own son as the Messiah. And so now when the giver of the blueprint of the law comes, it's not just rejection against the law, it's a rejection of the very giver of the law, and a rejection in the harshest of terms, leading to his death. And then we have the phenomenal stories in the Acts of the Apostles, which we enjoyed for six weeks, which absolutely mirror our own place in the history of salvation, absolutely mirror it.

[33:39]

All of their trials and tribulations and the divisions from the stupidest things to the most sublime things that cause division among themselves, the persecution, the difficulties, Here they are, the people who ran for the hills when the Christ who was physically in front of them was tormented. and who after His resurrection and after receiving the Spirit are not hesitant to go in any direction or to any distance in front of any adversity or death. And they knew they would meet their deaths, and most of them did. They ran for cover when the physical Christ was in front of them. And they were so emboldened when it all became inner by the power of the descent of the Holy Spirit after our Lord's ascension.

[34:42]

And we read the remarkable story of the first us, that's what they are, the first us to carry it forward with the Spirit and without the physical Christ with us. And how messy it's been. and how messy it's been in all of these 2,000 years in spite of being blessed and anointed by the Spirit. It can't help to be a mess. We're all people. We're not angels. And the world is a difficult place, but it's not one iota less difficult than it was at the time of the apostles. And it's not an iota less difficult than it was at the time of Moses. And it's not an iota less difficult than it was when Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden. Not at all.

[35:44]

What is the marvel is that God stays with us. People say, eh, I don't believe in God. The bigger question is, does God believe in you? Does God believe in us? Does God believe in the human race? The answer is an overwhelming yes. And in God's belief, we have traced all of this history over these many millennia. A promised savior, an apparent savior appeared with us. a Savior who died for us and then anointed us with his Spirit, and we have 2,000 years of looking at our greats, one of which is your greats. If Moses single-handedly turned a ragamuffin bunch of slaves into the beginning of the city of God, following in the line of the acts of the apostles, Benedict did the same for Western civilization.

[36:52]

And by living out his calling, started not only monasticism, but as you know, all the hospital systems grew out of that. All the university systems grew out of that. All the parochial education systems grew out of that. So many missionary works grew out of that. It wasn't a small nod of the head, yes, and that was it. It's what happens next when we say yes. And this is what we're invited to live out while it's us holding the torch. Most of us are not young anymore. For as long as we're holding the torch, how do we live it out? For as long as we're holding the torch. Yesterday doesn't matter. Sorry. We're holding the torch today. The number of our days is finite. The number of beats of our heart is finite. The number of steps we'll take with our legs is finite.

[37:56]

Does our heart beat for the right thing? Are our feet taking us to the right places? Are we as determined as all of our forebears have been that we will accept this spirit, we will live and breathe this spirit, and we will accept the super burdens that we have agreed to accept, the burden of the world? holding it up by the pillars of the Psalms and the divine office, sweetening the terrible agonies that are screamed out to God every day, softening these with melodious hymns and tones, fighting the disharmony of the world with harmonious song. refusing the debasement going on in the world around us and proclaiming the dignity through song and through prayer and through focused prayer.

[39:00]

There's nothing else but this. This is our goal. And I hope and pray during these days that first of all for myself and also for you that I and we can be regenerated and healed and see clearly and take up again this great task that the Lord has given us to carry out in the company of such great, great people. So the focus again will be, how can I become the best monk in America even if I'm the last? How can I become the best Christian in America even if I'm the last? How can I become the best priest in America even if I'm the last so we'll take it up at seven o'clock tonight I'd be very glad to talk with anybody who would like to chat if you just want to sign up on the paper as Father Gabriel said and feel free in any of these conferences if there's anything that you would like to add any example you think is better or any question that you have feel free to

[40:13]

be in dialogue during these days. So thank you very much. Well, in any case, with kind of a lot of words this morning, the point that I was trying to make was very often leaving a normal life, so to speak, and becoming a priest or leaving a normal life and going even beyond a priest who still has a lot of connectedness and going into a contemplative way of life, while often very superficially it looks like a really good distancing from the world. The truth is the way that the Church has always understood it and the way that it's always played out is in fact it's an acceptance of a lot more responsibility. It's accepting responsibility for the whole world with even a greater love than is required of an ordinary person who has a real locus and focus for their love and for their attention.

[41:24]

It's not an exaggeration to say that by the liturgy of the hours and by the Eucharist, it's like a scaffolding holding the world up and holding the world together. And it's an exact countersign to all the cacophony and the disharmony and the noise and the and the screams and the violence and the pain of the world to be putting up psychic structures and prayerful structures and poetic structures that are sung narratives that are harmonious and beautiful, calling a spade a spade all the time, and yet full of hope and full of prophetic joy. The gifts of contemplative life, as someone who benefits from them thanks to you, are very, very important gifts.

[42:39]

As you know, the quiet and the ability to understand the internal world, which Today's world knows almost nothing, almost nothing of the internal world. Today's world, especially young people, know almost nothing of spiritual power. Spiritual power doesn't mean, you know, like some kind of witch or some kind of warlock that you have these unseen Unseen abilities, but I mean hope is a massive Spiritual power to live with hope to cultivate hope to spread hope it's a massive spiritual power People are taking their lives left right and center in the developed world Because of lack of hope and lack of meaning it's unbelievable In Pediatrics We study, in all medicine we do, but especially in pediatrics, what are the main causes of death, because that's what you want to address with your techniques.

[43:53]

In pediatrics, which goes to 21 years old, the fourth leading cause of death in the United States today is suicide. that it represents a phenomenal amount of despair that young people find death preferable to life. I'm just saying spiritual powers are not BS. Spiritual powers like hope, like vision, like joy, like discernment, like understanding, like counseling, they're massively needed in the world. and people who develop internal lives, which contemplatives are most noted for, and become experts in the internal world, and then share with the universal Church their knowledge. It's an enormous, from within to without, a richness that is so necessary in the world.

[45:04]

Pope John Paul II said often, the Church must be the expert in humanity. How do you deliver and incarnate the magnificent good news and light of the Gospel without fully understanding the human being to whom you are bringing this message? But most of this understanding of the mind, of the psychology, of the psychiatry, of the soul, of the emotion, of the physical body, has all come to us through contemplatives throughout the ages. The studies of the early desert monks especially so well studied by John Eudes Bamberger down the street.

[46:12]

The first psychiatrist, the first spiritual director, the first psychologist, the first one who really got it about the internal life and whose teachings are so massively valuable to ordinary priests and pastors today in dealing with the problems in people. The teachings of Evagrius Ponticus far surpass what any psychiatrist today could possibly have to offer, because it includes the understanding of evil, and it includes not a piecemeal understanding of a human being or a human mind, but an integrated understanding of a human mind, based on the integrity of our creatureliness because of the way that God made us in his own divine and dignified image. And of course, another example of how this innerness is not disconnected from the world, aside from the examples I gave this morning about Brother Jerome and loosing the bonds of people

[47:34]

in terrible situations around the world with his prayer. In the example that we repeated of St. Gregory about St. Benedict freeing this poor indentured peasant man. It goes further than that because if Moses was, and he was, responsible for bringing civilization to the people of Israel The cave of Benedict was the beginning of bringing civilization to the whole Western non-Jewish world. It's what it was. So when we go back to try to look at basic things and very simply, which I said is the purpose of our time together in my, what I have to offer, These points are the very important starting points of how vital the inner world is and the vocation of the contemplative, how outer-directed it is and how wide it is in its heart and in its prayer for the whole wide world, without losing sight that the world

[48:53]

really is the same and is delivering what it has always delivered, falseness, division, violence, turning people into cost centers, destroying the dignity of the ordinary person, full of violence. And we have the torch today. We have it. Something that is as essential as hope in our ability to carry the torch, the flame of the gospel in the right way is vision. If we don't see clearly and we don't know where we're going, it's useless. We have to see clearly and we have to know where we're going. But we live in a world where vision is impaired, very much so by original sin, so much so that St.

[50:04]

Paul says our vision is like a cloudy, foggy, dusty mirror, and we barely, barely, barely see, but we really better understand what we see see through it, see under it, see beyond it, so that we know what we're looking at and we know how to act. So we already have the problem that sight is not easy in a fallen world. But of course it's complicated by the sin that we add by our own choice, which also clouds our vision and clouds our sight. This is one of the huge dangers to our pristine, beautiful, original gift, which is to be bearers of the light and the hope of the gospel of life.

[51:08]

And so it's important for us, especially us, to understand the dangers to our vision and how we restore our vision to 2020 so that we can be helpful to ourselves as we manage our own lives and helpful to the world in our prayer as we see the right way, pray for the right things, keep our eyes sharply focused on what's happening in our world to the souls and bodies and minds and hearts of the people that fill it and of all of creation. It really behooves us to understand vision. I live in our children's hospital and it's quite an experience because I'm kind of bookended by two kinds of screaming.

[52:10]

The one kind of screaming is mothers who just lost a child and that, I'm sorry to say, is not at all infrequent. And the other kind of screaming is in the maternity ward of the women who are in the anguish of delivery. You really can't tell which scream is which. One is rebelling against the departure of life, One is groaning and struggling against the entry of life, but bookended by this pain. Also, living there and witnessing terrible suffering of so many small children. My God! That's the kind of thing that can change somebody's vision, as you know.

[53:15]

People often say, seeing wrongly, how can there possibly be a God if there is this kind of suffering? If there is a God, and if God is good, this could never be. That's really wrong vision. And when people ask me about that, especially when they see these terrible sufferings of children, My response is very different. Almost everything, almost everything that we see in medicine period, almost everything, are the illnesses that we have caused ourselves and the damage that we have done to our own bodies. And especially for those children, the years and years of malnutrition, the bellies filled with intestinal parasites, the malaria that keeps circulating through their system over and over again, the tuberculosis that they can never get away from.

[54:33]

Why? Because of poverty, because of overcrowded conditions, because of no access to clean drinking water. because of not having the 10 cents that you need for the definitive treatment for your malaria. And this is not caused by God. This is absolutely the result of how human beings organize the world. It has nothing to do with God or God's vision of the world. As a matter of fact, the answer I often give, and it's not an exaggeration, I have a lot harder time believing in human beings than I have a hard time believing in God. This is not God's vision at all of the way it is. And as you know, our church got very much on board with this kind of thinking, that our structures are death dealing.

[55:40]

And in the late 70s, as you remember, when the church started understanding and enlarging its idea of sin, to include personal responsibility for corporate sin, in what was called liberation theology at the time, calling out the sinful structures that are dealing out death. We heard Oscar Romero in the story that was read at lunch talking about coffee and how coffee is supposed to be something that is the food of the hands of the Salvadoran people in this case and should be bringing the benefit of prosperity to all the people. But in the hands of the selfish and the oppressors, it becomes a commodity that enriches them more and makes people indentured slaves to the production of coffee. His assassination is directly due to the fact that he doesn't blame God for the human condition, that he blames human beings for the human condition.

[56:54]

And the minute you start trying to correct that, you are in a lot of danger. It's the way it is. So that's a first wrong vision that is so easy for people who see a lot of misery to fall into, and for people who very superficially just reflect rapidly on the desolation and then blame it on God. But in the hospital, there was something really, really nice that happened not long ago. I usually come crawling out of my room about five, and I go limping back to it about 11 o'clock at night. And except for those two times, I'm never in my room. But for both of those, I'm outside because my room opens onto the courtyard and I walk through the courtyard to get to the main reception.

[57:58]

And so it's a nice time to see stars and constellations and Milky Way and things that the psalmist sings about and that refresh us in our own music. And coming back a few nights at 11 o'clock, There was a little boy sitting in a little chair, sitting right outside of his ward, looking into the garden. And as I walked by, he never said anything, and I never said anything either. But after about three nights, it grated me a little bit that this, first of all, why was he still up at 11 o'clock? But secondly, that he didn't even talk. So finally, this third night, I said to him, why don't you ever say hello? And he said, hello. And I said, that's not fair. I'm telling you to say hello.

[59:01]

Why did you never say hello? And he said, well, who are you? And I said, who am I? I come walking by you every single night. I live in this room right next door to you. And he said, Well, I can't see, I'm blind. I didn't know you passed by until you said hello. So I pulled a little chair, which is all there was, and tried to fit myself on a little chair to be right next to him. And I was trying to figure out right away, as a physician, the cause of his blindness to see if there's something that can be done about it, although I was suspecting he was blind from malnutrition, and it was probably too late. So I asked him how old he was. He said he was nine. I asked him how long he's been in the hospital. He said just a few days. I asked him if he can see anything. He said nothing at all. I said, when is the last time you could see?

[60:05]

He said it was about three years ago. Did you lose your vision all at once or was it gradually? And he said to me, Why are you asking me so many questions about my eyes? Everything else about me works." And this was really phenomenal to me because he had discernment in his own life. He had very clear vision, very clear vision. As a young kid, very clear vision, and his seeing clearly made him joyful. And my being a doctor made me focus on what was wrong with him and really feel very heavy about the fact that he was blind. This is vision. This is discernment. He corrected mine. But we shouldn't pass by the discernment that was very much in front of us

[61:11]

in the Scriptures today, and at the reading at the noon day meal, and also on this Feast of Saint Justin, because the discernment of these people was nowhere near as easy. If we start with Tobit, Tobit buried the dead who were being eaten by vultures on the streets just like we bury the dead who are eaten by pigs and dogs on the street. Tobit got in problem for burying the dead because the people who killed the Jews wanted their bodies to stay there to terrorize They didn't want the bodies buried. They wanted the bodies to be an ongoing terror as part of their strength and their power.

[62:15]

So for Tobit to take the dead and to bury them out of obedience to God's will put him in direct conflict And you know the story well. He had to run and hide. He lost everything he had. Everything was confiscated, and he would have been killed if they found him. And finally that king dies and his son is kinder and Tobit is able to come back and eventually recuperate everything that he had lost. And this morning's reading was the feast that he was having to celebrate that he recuperated everything. And the scripture laid out in detail everything that was on the table. It was a wonderful feast. And Tobit says to his son, Tobiah, to go call some poor people in. This can't be a feast just with us. And Tobiah, going to look for poor people, comes back with the sad news that they found another Israelite dead on the street.

[63:29]

Tobit calls off the feast. He goes out and he gets the dead man. He knows well what happened to him before. And all of his clan starts right on him, right away. Are you stupid? Are you going through this all again? You didn't learn your lessons. Have you no fear? What the hell's the matter with you? And he goes out and he brings the dead man back to bury him. And then he invites everyone to eat, but with lamentation. How can you be happy when this is still happening? His discernment was strong. It was from the heart. His vision was clear. He acted the right way in spite of all of this opposition from the powers of his day and from his own family. And you know how the whole story goes, and you know this worked out really great for him.

[64:33]

In the scripture reading, the man who owns the vineyard, who seems to have a lot of trouble discerning, because he sends somebody to get the bounty and they're beaten, and then he sends another and they're killed, and then he keeps doing it over and over again until it's just piling up the corpses. And finally he decides to send his own son, figuring his son would be respected, which of course he isn't. And that story, as you know, doesn't end well. It's a prefigurement of exactly what will happen to the Messiah. And the only way that God can redeem that story is by making the terrible death the doorway to eternity. But in that story and the prefigurement of our Lord, we can understand how difficult it was for him to keep seeing right, always having to go aside to pray, to anguish, to ask, to read the scriptures, to get a clear vision, to go out at it again, all the time, all the time, all the time.

[65:59]

until dying faithfully in such a terrible way. The discernment of Oscar Romero, this was a terrible discernment. I was in Honduras a year after he was killed in El Salvador. I knew a lot of the missionaries and the Jesuits that worked with him. When I visited where he was killed, I heard the stories of the sisters. His was a very difficult discernment, because within the church, the nuncio at that time, who's still alive, he's well into his nineties, I won't mention his name, but his discernment was other, completely otherwise than the discernment of Oscar O'Nero. And I heard him say, I was in his presence with the bishop, and I heard him say in those years that the biggest mistake of his career was appointing Arnulfo Romero as Archbishop of Port-au-Prince.

[67:17]

Even listen to the language of his career. Is he a pastor or is he a career person? the biggest mistake of his career. But in any case, the biggest opposition that Romero had was in the Church. And the second biggest opposition that Romero had after the Church was in the United States government. And in the reading today, we heard at the reading, Ambassador White, who was the ambassador at the time, He was also the ambassadors when the four church women were killed. He also became highly suspect by the American establishment for his introducing the idea that maybe these people weren't guerrillas, maybe these people weren't Marxists, maybe there's something really rotten here, and these are the ones who are speaking up in favor for the poor people.

[68:22]

He was tormented. He was afraid. In the Acts of the Apostles, we see the same thing. Every time the disciples are chained and put into prison, and they say, we forbid you to speak that name again, and you remember from the Acts, that's how they say it. They don't say, don't speak of Jesus, they say that name. We forbid you to speak that name again, and if you do, worse will happen to you. And what is their answer? We're definitely afraid of you, But we're much more afraid not to carry out the will of God. Much more afraid of that. And that's how it is with discernment. Was Romero afraid? Of course he was afraid. Did he feel betrayed by his own church? Of course he felt betrayed by his own church. He would go to the Vatican and not even be allowed in to see the Pope. I know from people who accompanied him.

[69:28]

One time he went to the general audience and just stood where the Pope would see him, and the Pope seeing him sent for him and spoke with him and found out how he had been blocked by the Curia. I'm not saying this, believe me, to trash the Curia. The Curia was going by their vision and their discernment. But it was painful. And finally in discernment, the question really comes down to how free are you to discern? Are you really free to discern when you're tied in with all the power? When you're tied in with all the money? When the Catholics that you're taking care of at your end of the spectrum are the military generals and the six oligarch families that are controlling the economy and keeping everybody else, are you really free to discern?

[70:38]

Or doesn't the freedom to discern come from being separate from all of that? from taking risks, from trying to understand by going into somebody's shoes. The true discernment has to come from freedom. It can't be compromised, the true discernment. And even though it's taken 30 some years, the Church now says very clearly in the face of the one who was the nuncio at the time, who's still alive in his 90s, The church says very clearly, he was a martyr. He stood for the right things. He was our brother in the faith who was murdered for the sake of the gospel. This is huge. But our church kept its disarmament going. And even though it took 30 years, has come to dishonor.

[71:44]

But I also know that Romero tried twice to resign as Archbishop because he was also trying to understand, like the Popes during the Second World War, if I do this, all of this happens that's terrible. If I do that, all of that happens that's terrible. What's the right thing? A journalist asked him one time, how do you feel that your own brother priests are being killed and your own sisters are being killed. How does it make you feel? You preach and you lose more priests. You preach and you lose more sisters. How does that make you feel?" And he said very simply, there would be something really wrong with our church if in the cemetery full of the faithful were also not buried the pastors and the caregivers of the faithful.

[72:58]

But for his own doubts, twice he offered his resignation, once to Paul VI and once to John Paul II. And on both occasions, they said to him, we listen to your sermons. We study your writings. You're preaching the gospel. You're writing gospel. There is no one on earth that can know but you. You are uniquely in those shoes. Even we can't be in your shoes. You have to keep going. You're the only one who can know what's the right thing to do. So you see, huge, huge prices are paid for discernment.

[74:00]

Huge prices are paid for seeing clearly. And the help that we get is help from the Holy Spirit when we're afraid. The Holy Spirit cannot abide. It's very clear in the Acts. The Holy Spirit cannot abide with us if we're divisive. The Holy Spirit cannot come into us if we're two-faced. The Holy Spirit cannot come into us if we're compromised. The Holy Spirit can't come into us if we lack hope. The Holy Spirit can't work within us. If we like, it's not possible. The work of religious discipline and the work of baptismal discipline is to make within ourselves the kind of setting that the Holy Spirit can rush into with all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We've had a lot of bad, bad things over these years, really bad things.

[75:08]

But in the last few months, there have been violence against over 30 Catholic missions in Port-au-Prince over the past five months. I have friends that are victims of that violence. One is a French priest who is in a New York hospital full of buckshot because he was shot four times by shotgun and with his skull cracked open by rocks. But in our own mission, we've had three terrible things happen to our colleagues over the past two years. Two years ago, a long time collaborator of ours and worker of ours and good friend was killed by thieves, not only in our orphanage, but in the home for disabled kids inside of the orphanage. It's like vulnerable inside of vulnerable is where these people came into and killed this guy with hammer blows to the head.

[76:16]

When I hear again how clean was that shot to Oscar Romero's heart, how instantaneous his death was, it makes me see any day of the week how preferable it would be if you're going to die violently, to die precisely and immediately. instead of these hammer blows to the brain that killed Major. A year ago now, in June, another colleague, who was from Holland, was also killed by thieves who robbed him on the street. I was the first one at the scene because a friend called me. He was already dead. I brought the police for all of their parts of it and then I brought him back to our hospital and bathed him, bathed his body and had the funeral rituals for him.

[77:22]

And then last July we had a third who wasn't killed but is paralyzed. He was robbed and shot in the neck. Now, the reason that I'm telling you this for a very practical reason, the reactions inside of me, for these two years now, because all the other stuff, all of the other stuff that has been very difficult for sure, but it's sympathetic pain. You see somebody, bad, bad troubles, and you're trying to help them, and so much poverty, and it's terrible, and you're trying to, but this is violence against us. It's different, completely different. And the strength of the hatred that has welled up in me. And the strength of the desires for revenge that have welled up in me.

[78:25]

And me, think of everybody else. Think of the Trappists that were killed in Iraq. Think of Romero. Think of these poor... I'm not saying it because it's me, it's us. But what I'm trying to say is, these things so distort your vision. The strength of these feelings so distort your vision. And here you are, a father of a community that could easily become a murderer of the murderers, easily. And I could have had any of them killed for 30 U.S. dollars. And don't think I didn't pull that out of my wallet a time or two and have to wrestle with that money on the table and say, I can't do that. I can't do that. This will change everything. I can't do it. But saying I can't do it doesn't change the dynamic of wanting to do it so badly. And to have morning Mass and raise the host and have murder in your heart, murder in your heart, and unforgiveness and all of these other things.

[79:39]

Where does the help come from? And what happens to you if you don't get it? You become one more violent person in the world. You contribute to the chaos. You confuse everybody under you who thought you were good and honorable and noble and now you're an assassin and you're a killer and you're just like everybody else. It's huge. It's huge for all of us. But where does the help come from? It comes from begging from God. peace and strength and light. It comes from reading. You don't think I've read Evagrius Ponticus? I have read Evagrius Ponticus inside out, especially the anti-riticers talking back. Because these are practical things. You have to talk back to those thoughts. You have to put them in their place. You have to read what the great people say about all these feelings.

[80:43]

Like Thomas Aquinas who says, if you can be in front of an injustice and not be enraged, then you're both unjust and immoral. Because the rage is the desire for the right thing to happen, because you so recognize the wrong thing. But it has to be tamed, and it has to come out the right way. These things are so helpful. People who understand and articulate the inner world, these things are so helpful. And I'm saying it once again because my point is how beneficial it is to all of us, even those who are directly engaged in pastoral work, how important to us is the fruit of the inner work of the contemplative, and the sharing with the universal Church, the understanding of how our minds work and how they get perverted, and how all these passions distort us and distort our vision, so that we can apply very steadily

[81:58]

all of these wise teachings and techniques to put ourselves back in balance so that you stay in front of the bad thing and do the right thing in front of the bad thing. Of course the right thing is to catch them. Of course the right thing is to put them into the hands of justice, to contain their evil, and to hope for their reform. Those are the right things, and to pray for their reform. But to think that you can just do that overnight, anybody, and I think this is one of the problems, to be honest with you, in catechesis, by telling the stories and showing the great ones People think it's just so easy, but I can't do it, and it makes it not real. And they don't understand how people evolved and got to their place of equilibrium.

[83:01]

And by doing that over and over again in their life and in face of every kind of thing, they develop a whole character of equilibrium and a destiny of equilibrium. And in time we recognize them as the great people for whom the gospel really worked. We call them friends of God. We call them saints. They weren't born that way. It was a wrestling match, a ferocious wrestling match, and contemplatives are good at that. All of the internal wrestling and understanding from inside and sharing that knowledge with outside, so that the fruit of the practice is for everyone. So the point of this talk tonight is to talk about the importance of vision. And vision leads to discernment. And tomorrow I would like in the morning, I would like to look even a little bit deeper at the gift of discernment, how we keep it alive in ourselves, and how we share that gift with other people.

[84:11]

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