Your compassion embraces all people, and your law is wisdom, freedom, and hope for the poor. May you fulfill in our lives your promise of favor. We may embrace your gospel of salvation with faith, anointed by your Holy Spirit. May we proclaim it both in words and by the way that we live. Make this prayer as always to Christ our Lord that is the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen. Last year someone asked me, Is the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist really real? Well, I'd like to try to answer that question by reflecting this morning on four topics.

[01:11]

First of all, the nature of symbol. Since the Lord's presence, in fact, is given to us under the form of symbols. Secondly, I'd like to reflect on the meaning of presence and the different kinds of presence since the Eucharist is meant to manifest the Lord's very special presence to us. And thirdly, I'd like to reflect on the different modes of the Lord's presence in the Eucharist, all of which are really real, but different from one another. And then finally, I want to reflect on contemporary Eucharistic devotions, including adoration of the exposed sacraments.

[02:15]

I'd like to start with two little stories. A number of years ago, Cardinal Basil Hume, former Benedictine abbot of Ampleforth, and then became the Archbishop of Westminster in England, recounted a moving experience that he had. He recounted it in the tablet And the story, I think, illuminates the essential characteristics of the Eucharist. God's love for us and our love for one another. The experience happened in Ethiopia. He had been asked to visit a settlement where starving people were waiting for food that was quite unlikely to come. And a Russian helicopter had been put at his disposal And as he got out of the helicopter, a small boy came up to him and put his hand.

[03:22]

The little child had nothing on but a loincloth around his waist. He was about 10 years old. And the whole time that the Cardinal spent there, that child would not let go of his hand. And he had two gestures. With his free hand, He pointed to his mouth to indicate he was hungry and needed food. And the other gesture was a very strange one. He took the card in his hand and kept rubbing it on his cheek. Well, the partner realized that the child was lost and absolutely on his own, totally alone and starving. And so he later wrote, I have never forgotten that incident and to this day wonder whether that child is still alive.

[04:25]

I remember when I boarded the helicopter, he stood and looked at me reproachfully, an abandoned, starving 10-year-old child. I realized in quite a new way those two profound and fundamental human needs for food and for love. With one gesture, he showed his need for food, and with the other, he showed his need for love. It was much later that day, the Cardinal says, that I realized in a new way the secret of the Eucharist. For the Eucharist is food and love. And through that incident, taught by that small boy, I saw in a new light what is at the heart of the Eucharist.

[05:30]

The Lord's love given to us in this most remarkable sacrament, his body and his blood. For indeed, he says, there is no life without food and no life that is worth living without love. They are two fundamental requisites for life, food and love. And when Jesus said he wanted us to have life and have it more fully, then he must give us his love And the love He gives us is preeminently through the supreme expression of His love, which is the Eucharist. The Eucharist is indeed the gift of God's food, God's love for us, but it's given to us so we in turn might be love and food.

[06:38]

for one another. One story. The second comes from Victor Hugo and the incident occurred after the French Revolution. A mother and her two children were exiled and so they fled to the forest. where they scavenged for food for three days until they found berries and so forth. And at the end of the third day, they heard people coming down the pathway and so they fled deeper into the forest. There were two soldiers, a captain and a sergeant. and the captain realized that there was somebody in the bushes so he sent the sergeant after them and the sergeant brought the mother and her two little children out onto the path and as soon as the captain looked at the mother and the two children he realized that they were starving and so he pulled out of his pack a load of French bread

[07:56]

And the mother grasped it immediately, you know, like a starving animal. And she broke it in two pieces. Gave one piece to the one child and another piece to the other child. And so the sergeant said to the captain, is it because the mother is not hungry? And the captain said, no sergeant, it's simply because she is a mother. A mother not only shares her womb with her children, a mother also shares, especially in the gestation period, she shares her very body and blood. like Jesus in the universe.

[08:58]

It's precisely for that reason that any number of medieval theologians talked about Mother Jesus. Very strong in the mystical tradition, the medieval tradition. Mother Jesus, because Jesus shares food with us, but the very food that he shares with us is in fact his body and his love, just like a mother. So our appreciation of the Eucharist and any understanding of that great mystery we might achieve must be rooted in our embrace of God's great love for us manifested above all in the gift of His Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all of us.

[10:01]

The Eucharist provides a context, a framework, in which we celebrants, that is all of us, can discover or rediscover who we are in the world and what the nature of the world really is. And if the Eucharist is celebrated as it should be celebrated, we celebrants then are invited to experience ourselves as human persons related to God, to one another in the community, and to the world as a whole. In other words, in this celebration, social consciousness inevitably impinges upon us. We're invited, in the course of this celebration, to see ourselves not simply as individuals who journey to God alone, individuals who are preoccupied with saving their souls.

[11:11]

We are invited to see ourselves as members of the body of Christ, as persons belonging to the holy people of God, who have already been saved by the paschal mystery of Christ and who are invited then to appropriate God's gift of salvation offered to us through the gifts of Eucharistic food and love. The Christian Eucharist is always the liturgy of an assembly. It is a coming together in which all who are gathered by the word of God seek to respond to God's initiating presence mediated into our lives through word and through sacrament through both verbal and non-verbal symbols but above all through human persons who are meant to be the primary symbols in all of our liturgical celebrations.

[12:20]

The sacraments are for us to transform us into the body and blood of Christ. I think as we reflect on our own lives, we see that one of the tragedies of human life is often that our worlds tend to become very small. Our vision becomes quite myopic. And as a result, as we know as monks, we're in constant need of conversion in the sense that we need to open our eyes to the power and the presence of God, who is great mystery, but who is never distant from us, who rather abides in the depths of our hearts and whose spirit is in fact woven to the fabric of all creation. And certainly, living in any depth involves exploration.

[13:28]

Exploration of experience. Exploration of the mysteries, the secrets, which life holds for us. And we know that the world we live in confronts us with many problems, which can in fact be solved. Or at least we can imagine a solution, even if we can't achieve them. The world also confronts us with mysteries. The everyday mystery of birth and death. The mysteries of energy within the atom. The endless expanse of space. The mystery of beauty and freedom. The mystery of good and evil. And those mysteries can't be solved. They can only be lived with, contemplated. So it is with the Eucharist and the other very deep mysteries of our faith.

[14:37]

We do indeed struggle to believe the words of the Lord Jesus. Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am. in their midst. We believe that assertion, but then we also seek to have some understanding of what the Lord Jesus has told us. However, I think it's important we need to remember that we will never never exhaust the meaning of that great mystery and we can never pin down the meaning in neat verbal formulas. And so it is with the Eucharist. When Henri Nouwen was the pastor of the large community at Dayspring near Toronto, he used to tell the handicapped members of the community that in the Eucharist

[15:44]

The Lord Jesus sits down at table with us to share in our meal and to embrace us with love. Perhaps we would do well just to sit with that simple understanding of the Eucharist and not try to capture its meaning in precise formulas as we're often want to do. I think one of the primary requisites for an effective celebration of the Eucharist today is the ability to experience it as a complex of symbols rather than simple signs. You know, before the Second Vatican Council, our Roman Catholic Catechisms and theology manuals used to define the sacraments as outward signs instituted by Christ to give grace.

[16:50]

Well contemporary sacramental theologians are apt to explore the meaning of the sacraments including the Eucharist as symbolic rituals both expressing and mediating participation in the mystery of the Lord Jesus Christ with the power of the Spirit. I think one of the problems that we face in dealing with symbols is a semantic problem. You know, for many people in the past, if something was only a symbol, it wasn't the real thing. Roman Catholics, for example, sometimes try to distinguish their notion of the Eucharist from what they thought most Protestants held by asserting, for us, Christ's presence is real. But for them, it's only symbolic.

[17:55]

Now, in recent years, scholars working in a great variety of disciplines has tried to clarify the meaning of the term symbol by distinguishing carefully between signs and symbols. They note, first of all, that the principal role of a sign is simply to send out information or to expose data. In other words, a sign stands for, or points to, a particular object, or person, or place, or event, or circumstance. Signs, then, are always pragmatic. They're always functional. Drink Coca-Cola. Why don't you drink the sign?

[18:58]

It's inviting me to move toward the chaos. Shop at Macy's. I don't shop at the sign. It invites me to go to the store. Cargo. 210 miles. Gilson Hotel. They're all signs. And since signs are denotative, they need to be very clearly recognized. However, Sign language has to be learned, since signs are meaningful only by convention. I remember years ago, when I was a student in York, my car broke down in Germany. And so I tried to hitchhike with a couple other priests.

[19:59]

Now he's still on the road going this way. And nobody went by. Because we soon learned that they did shite this way. You know, when I would go to St. Peter's and see Pope Pius XII come in, People would cheer and so forth. And he always did this. That's where they're arrogant. He said, we're going to talk. In fact, it is. That's the Italian way of waving. We wave this way. They wave that way. Cultural conditioning here. All right. In order to function effectively, signs should never be ambiguous. And because they are so obvious, they require, on our part, very little intellectual investment.

[21:03]

And they elicit little or no emotional response. They allow people to remain uninvolved. Every time I see a sign being Coca-Cola, I know get all churned up. I can remain detached, indifferent. So signs rely on a brief but total message that provides all the necessary information without demanding any direct action or response. Now some signs can become signals and they will hopefully demand some action or response, like a traffic signal. or a siren. They are signs but they invite a clear response on the part of pedestrians or on the part of drivers. Any questions about your understanding of sign?

[22:08]

I think it's quite simple. Well unlike a sign which points away from itself A symbol is the sensible expression of a present reality. In a sense, a symbol stands for another reality, but it reveals that reality in its own structure. Of its nature, this is important, The symbol is limited, but it reveals a reality that goes beyond the limits of the symbol itself. Tracy, what's your problem? Can I help you? Oh, I just, I didn't quite get the first part that you said about a signal. Oh, that's not following.

[23:15]

A signal is a sign which in fact demands an appropriate response. If the red light is there, I should stop. If I hear the siren, I should move over to the side. All right. Ah, that's nature then. A symbol is limited, but it reveals a reality that goes beyond the limits of the symbol itself. The task of a symbol is to make the transcendent or some aspect of the transcendent available. and to mediate participation in that which is revealed. I'll give you a couple of examples.

[24:16]

My human body is the primary symbol of my human person, but there's more to my human person than my body. My speech is a symbol of my human inner experience, but there's more that goes on up there, or in my body person, than is revealed by my speech. In other words, a symbol cannot be simply equated with what it symbolizes. It is the sensible experience of the transcendent, and as such, it is the place of revelation. the place of participation in that which is revealed. In other words, symbols invite us to come to terms with their meaning.

[25:24]

They challenge us to inhabit their world. Consequently, and this takes us back to Paul Revere, the first day, they must always be interpreted. Of course, the interpretation will depend on the experience and the understanding, the worldview, that we bring to the task. Because they supply little explicit information, symbols always require that we fill in the blanks. Consequently, exposure to symbols is apt to result in diverse interpretations and experiences on the part of various participants. 25 of us probably in here, we come from different worlds.

[26:35]

Hopefully we have some common meaning, but there'll obviously be diverse meanings among the 25 of us. Since they demand participation, rather than inspire our admiration as detached observers, Symbols are always power leading. They're power leading. So in a sense, symbols are open-ended. They're open-ended. For example, years ago I took a course on TS Eliot's poetry. and very attracted into Ash Wednesday. So I usually read Ash Wednesday, every Ash Wednesday. But depending on how many Ashes were in my life in the previous year, my interpretation of that poem is apt to vary considerably from year to year because my worldview has changed.

[27:52]

So by engaging in symbols, by being willing to inhabit their world, we discover new meanings, new values, new motivations, new horizons for our lives. And because they are open-ended, symbols can in fact grow, expand, deepen, or perhaps degenerate. Something can start out, for example, as a sign, become a signal, and end up as a symbol, and then regress. For example, a mother is in a garden with her little child, and there's a red rose there and the mother's little child is learning to talk and the mother says, rose, rose, rose.

[28:57]

The little child says, woes, woes. All right, the mother's in the kitchen the next day and the little girl's out in the garden, oh woes, and she goes up and it's not rose, what is it? It's ouch, ouch. So it has in fact then become a signal to stay away from the bloody thing. But then she goes to high school and at her senior prom her father brings her a corsage of red roses. Then she marries. She carries red roses. Every year her husband brings her two dozen red roses on their anniversary. It obviously is no longer a signal. It's become a very rich symbol. But then she develops Alzheimer's.

[29:59]

She regresses. I don't know if you've had much experience living with people with Alzheimer's. She regresses. It's no longer a symbol. It's a signal. or a simple sign. To think of symbols then as changeless reminders of bold facts or simple truths is to convert symbols into mere signs. Symbols are always pliant. They're flexible. They're subtle. Their relation to people is reciprocal in the sense that they disclose new potentials for human life but they're also shaped and refined or even distorted by the changing circumstances of one's life. Alright, any questions about symbol?

[31:10]

Clear. Well, the celebration of the Eucharist is meant to be a symbolic experience. However, that experience is often frustrated by one of the problems posed by the spirit of our age, namely what I would call its black-minded literalism. Today, in the lives of many people, the scientific mode of knowledge is often considered the only way to grasp reality. Likewise, the communication process in our culture is often understood simply as a process of conveying information. So that cultural move, then, easily induces what I would call a flat-minded liberalism

[32:18]

which prevents religious symbols from being experienced symbolically and converts them into signs whose meaning can be captured in static statements about an ontological deity. The role of liturgical symbols is not to convey supernatural facts. It's rather to engage us in relationships with God, and not only with God, but with each other. Liturgical symbols are not placed and rituals are not executed somehow to get a job done, to fulfill one's Sunday obligation. They are rather meant to reveal meanings and to express dispositions, meant to involve us in relationships.

[33:20]

The question then is, are we an openness or are we a closeness? The celebration of the Eucharist is meant to be an in-depth experience in which symbols unfold in the course of the celebration and they incite our interpretation and also our participation. Unfortunately, I think many Catholics continue to interpret the Eucharist primarily in terms of an educational enterprise. Homilists, for example, often look upon the Sunday Eucharist simply as the primary occasion when they can communicate a system of doctrine and morals to an assembled congregation. I certainly want to say that the communication of doctrine and moral teaching to the faithful is very important.

[34:22]

It is not, however, the primary goal of liturgical celebration. The real objective of the Eucharist is an encounter with the mystery of God through Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. It's meant not only to generate insight, understanding, It's meant to generate above all commitment. And so the celebration of the Eucharist then presupposes that we participants do in fact have some creative imagination and that we are willing to bridge the distance between ourselves and the celebration. so that the symbols will enable us to experience the realities of life in a new way. What I'm saying here is that we have to be willing to enter into the symbols and expect something to happen.

[35:31]

It is, I think, for that reason, the celebration of the Eucharist must be accompanied by a reflective, by a contemplative disposition and a life of personal prayer on the part of those who participate. And certainly I think we come to understand that the dawning of understanding and the disclosure of new meanings usually come very slowly. and often quite unpredictably to those who become involved in the symbols and who linger over them imaginatively. For example, when we hear a gospel or hear a homily, sometimes there is simply that aha moment. Aha. I never realized that. The power of God's word. For that reason, as I mentioned, that we need to be reflective.

[36:41]

Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. You know, what do we bring to the celebration? And so it's the development of that symbolic disposition which is such an important part of our unfinished liturgical business. Oh, I'm sorry, Michael. I'm just thinking about the relation between fire and somebody. Is it, um, the view of how, uh, like the apocalypse, it's because of fire being... What's the answer? Oh, yeah. You become a sign rather than a symbol. Is it because of trying to create a relation of data and information in a symbol of revealing a reality that that is why when we view, like, for instance, the Eucharist, it better be as a symbol that it's more deeper and it's entering us more deeply?

[37:59]

in all means that I have asked to experience God in a holy way. And hopefully to experience our own selves and also each other. And so, for example, one has to ask then, for example, if you're reading a gospel to some group and then you break that gospel, do you simply engage in exegesis? the meaning behind the text, or does what you say take on symbolic meaning for those people? I mean, that's what you would mean by the poetic quality of liturgical texts. You need to learn a lot about that, the symbolic character of texts. Anything else? You were talking about in the Eucharist, everything being a symbol.

[39:04]

Don't you almost need to have, or maybe it's just because of the way we're different, almost need to have some type of understanding of the sign? And that's the role of the symbol. You mean of the symbol? No, of the sun. Of the sun. You need to have some understanding of what is taking place. Yes. Otherwise, if it's just all symbolic, I mean, people could be all over. Yes. All over the place. And that's the role, the important role of catechesis. You know, you can't put all the burden on the celebration itself. And that's the reason I think there's so much wisdom in the revised rites for Christian initiation of adults. You know, when I was ordained, you had convert instruction. You met somebody in the parlor, and you used Father Smith instructs Jackson. So it was all from here on. Nobody else in the parish had anything to do with you.

[40:07]

Now, you gather people in assemblies, You break the word for them, so it's living word. And again, you're raising the question, when I eat and drink, does it look like bread and is the cup offered to me? There's still lots of places where the cup isn't. I mean, fidelity to the words of Jesus here. To eat and to drink. That's helpful. Yeah, so like you're saying it's like a network acting system. When the celebration of Eucharist, the symbols have more meaning. That's right, that's right. And these insights happen very slowly. Thank you, Dirk. the presentation of sign and symbol, you know, it's hard to go back to my seminary days to hear what you said, and something dawned on me before you started with that, you know, kind of definition of the two in an etymological way, and trying to flesh that out so we could see that relationship of something that was a scriptural thing, and I was wondering if

[41:23]

You know, like, grapple with it like I just have been grappling with it. It's not a big deal, but it's something that might fit, and it might fit very well with what folks have said. It may be outside the ball. Okay, look, it was the quote of scripture, I don't know if it's citation, where Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, and it's because he's been doing signs and wonders. And they say to him, and so then the thing is, he says, why are you people always wanting signs? What did they understand signs and wonders to be? Was it the kind of miracles he was doing? His odd things that didn't fit the norm of normal activity? And so they, you know, what gives you know, why did he kind of stole them? You know, you're always wanting signs. And is that how maybe the definition of an outward sign, something Christ is doing that is different than what everybody else is doing, that should give you a clue?

[42:27]

And if it doesn't, it's instituted by Christ to give grace. I wonder what the Greek word is for that sign. Yeah, I would like to know that too. I've heard it. You see, the words Symbol comes from symbole, to link together. That's what symbols do, link us to something that is other than ourselves. By the way, the understanding of symbol, that's very common in many disciplines right now. Mathematics, psychology, literature, anthropology. I'm noticing that Shakyamuni's creed is actually called a symbol. A symbol, yes. And that's the way it originated. It became the identification of these people. They were brought together by this particular doctor.

[43:28]

In our modern world, are there people that see without symbols? Are there people that see without symbols? Yes, without symbols. Oh, there? Yes. I'm a savage to hesitate to say so. I think in this regard, One would have to distinguish very carefully between what I would call primal cultures, classical cultures, modern cultures, and postmodern cultures. Primal people are extraordinarily sensitive to symbols. Native Americans, for example, Latin Americans generally, very sensitive. Their religion is based primarily in a natural kind of religion. God is very imminent for them. rather than primarily transcendent.

[44:34]

So I would find it, unless I become very much of a scientist and am so steeped, you know, in the communication of information, then somehow I can have to figure it out. And my mind can be simply looking for information. What do you think about that question that you asked? What do you think? I don't know. Maybe the very industrialized societies are kind of what they are doing without interpreting the symbols. Don't you think much interpretation goes on, though, unconsciously? I'm inclined to believe so. You know, when I did Lonergan, I have an experience, and I feel very ambivalent about all that.

[45:36]

Why? I don't know. And I don't know how to take time out to try to figure it out. Something good about that, but also something made me very uncomfortable. Can an event generate, in a group of people, all three different types, the sign, the stigma? Oh, definitely, yes. The guy holds up the 316 sign. It's a sign for some people, a signal of lucky night vision for another, another guy. It's very important. You know, I raised the question, why do I go to church on Sunday? To fulfill a moral obligation. And so I read the Bulletin all during the holidays. All right, here we go on. Anyway, my conclusion here is that the universe should cease being a complex of mere signs pointing to God up in heaven and become a complex of vital symbols revealing God in our midst here and now.

[46:59]

So our Christian faith certainly challenges us not to take life simply at its face value, but rather to probe beneath the surface of those people and events. What do I see when I see? What do I hear when I hear? What do I touch when I touch? So it prompts us You don't know what to do with them. The radio is always on. So is the television. Are we then living under cinematics? It's all right. Circus reality that we are living outside in itself? That's the question. A circus kind of existence.

[48:08]

I'll judge it. Paul Martin touched on something, and you've brought facts to my service, when you said the word obligation. And you see quite a bit of that word used in some of the past to paint the obligation of facts. That word really is a sign. With Paul Martin's preaching and speaking, he's saying we need to use the symbol. and we want to go to Mass, not because it's an obligation, because we want what we receive when we die. So, well-formulated laws, though, I think, you know, do not exercise simply the obligation but the meaningful experience that this has for people. That's the reason I feel convinced, you know, it's the birth of a baby and the baptism of a baby or the marriage of couples or the burial of grandmother.

[49:12]

They can be really profound religious experiences for people. And sadly, what one often hears, I mean, these become traumatic experiences for people. Because the father was so difficult to deal with. He didn't want to baptize my baby. People have a right. It's very clear. People have a basic right to the sacraments. And often then, when somebody does die, People who have been alienated, you know, at a well-celebrated funeral can really have extraordinary transformative power. Oh, if we just look at the little bendix, the wool itself.

[50:19]

It's very symbolic. It's very symbolic. Very symbolic. You know, I think I mentioned the other day, when the hostel into the Namaste comes, you're not simply given the Magna Carta. You're introduced into all sorts of symbolic rituals. I mean, the way people dress, the way people bow to the altar, the way they bow to one another. The way they eat. The way they receive guests, I mean, all those things are profoundly symbolic. They're not simply functional. But it's so easy for people today to simply be reduced to functions. There's jobs that lots of people have. Mere functionary. Anyway, it's our Christian faith then which enables us to open our eyes so that we might see life as it really is and rightly and responsibly live human life that's really a share of God's own life.

[51:40]

Question that I always keep asking. What do we see when we see? What do we hear when we hear? What do we touch when we touch? Yeah, all I'm asking right now is for chanting. That because of the sex abuse scandals, you don't dare touch anybody. Magic! little children, for example, in school. See, they love to be hugged. And we're so suspicious about all that. I have a friend who was the principal of a very large school in Chicago. Marvellous, marvellous man. And she was telling me two stories she gave me. One was very interesting. This little boy in third grade came to her and said, Mr. Barbera, what's a virgin in the third grade?

[52:50]

Well, how do you answer that in the third grade? She's very shrewd. She says, well, I'll tell you. You know, I'm a virgin because unlike your mother, I don't have any children and I don't have a husband. Now, Mrs. So-and-so in second grade, she has a husband, and she has three little kitties who are in the school. So she's not a virgin, but I am. The little fella says to her, Sister, I says wondering, Sister, because Madonna makes fun of virgins. what we hear and what we don't hear. The other story is very interesting. So a kindergarten teacher was, they were making Mother's Day cards.

[53:55]

And of course the teacher told the little kindergarteners, now when you go home, don't tell mother what you're doing today. When the child went home, the mother said, what did you do in kindergarten today? Oh, can't tell. The parents and the lawyer were at the principal's office by 5 o'clock. By 5 o'clock. What in the world? What in the world? Alright, let's move on. Alright, this is general shit. in our understanding of life will also, I think, involve a change in our understanding of Christian mystery.

[55:08]

You know, for many Christians, the mystery or the otherness of God refers to the separateness, the remoteness of the divine from the human. And such an interpretation is often expressed verbally in spatial terms, the divine being high above the earth, often expressed ritually in terms of a strict separation of the sacred from the secular. However, contemporary theologians are pointing out that in the truly Christian tradition, Grounded as it is in the reality of the divine incarnation of God's Son and the outpouring of His Spirit on all of creation, this should be understood as the presence and the power of God permeating all of creation, yet at the same time extending infinitely beyond creation.

[56:15]

In other words, Christian mystery addresses not only the God beyond, but the God who is present in our midst through Christ and in the power of the Spirit. What I'm saying here is that God is other in the sense that the divine fullness always extends beyond our boundaries. We are the bearers of God's life. So we're not God. And no matter how much we grow, how much we are transformed, how much our minds and hearts expand, no matter how much our awareness is deepened and our love expanded, the fullness of life continues to unfold. It means then that we never exhaust the mystery of life. because the mystery within which we live is love.

[57:19]

Never exhaust the revelation of the divine mystery. There'll always be more to be discerned than love. That has profound implications, by the way, for our understanding of eschatology. You know, when I was a little child, I just remember my old grandfather You see, to spend eternity in a rocking chair. And he died very suddenly one afternoon, and I remember my father saying, Grandpa, Grandpa died this afternoon, so he's gone to heaven. Well, in my little mind, I envisioned Grandpa getting a heavenly rocking chair. That's where I'd like to go. But if I understand heaven, In the sense that there will always be more. I will never exhaust the mystery of the book.

[58:22]

There will always be more to be revealed. Now that can turn me on to heaven. You might know the name Godfrey Deepman. He was one of our charismatic monks who died a few years ago. And when he was struggling to die, he was very fond of telling everybody in the community, I don't want eternal rest. I want eternal life. So typical. I mean, he was turned on to everything. Eternal life. All right, I'll let you go. We'll take a break and we'll come back.

[59:02]

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