a little bit more about the evangelical councils we know the thou shalt nots of the commandments and the thou shalts of the beatitudes and similarly we all know the shalt nots of the evangelical councils but it is also very important to look at what are the shalts so for example we know that Chastity means, without any doubt, to refrain from all sexual relations, but the vow really means to love chastely. And to love chastely means to love disinterestedly, not that you love but you don't give a darn, but that you love without throwing out hooks to try to get something back out of it.

[01:06]

The Jewish people express that kind of love in its highest form as burial of the dead. I can raise an orphan kid and he can become the mayor or porter prince in 20 years and then I just have an open door In Port-au-Prince, I have a reward for the good that I did. But the burial of the dead can bring you no reward, at least not in this life. And so the Jews consider that the highest charity. But I use it as an example of what disinterested love means. It means there are no hooks in it for you. You're really doing it as the best as you are freely able for the benefit of the other person. And for sure to love chastely is not a retreat from intimacy. That would be fully a wrong understanding of chastity. And it's not a retreat from wider human relations.

[02:09]

Here are a few examples of them. John Paul II said many times that for religious people, who have relinquished their generativity through their vow of chastity, should not for one second make them think that they have relinquished their responsibility to be mother or father to somebody who is in need of a mother or father or mother or father in the community. It's fully, intensely relational and responsibility for others in the relationships. So here are the difficult shells with it that my heart has to be more than just for my friends. It has to be more than just for people who do good to me.

[03:14]

Our Lord compared us to puppies when we just do good to people who do good for us because even dogs do that. Our love has to go beyond that to those who are unknown to us. And unfortunately, it has to go beyond that to those who have done us terrible harm. Now, if you've ever had terrible harm done to you, you know that this part would want to make you vomit. And yet, our vow of chastity binds us to this in an unbelievable way. When I was telling about these young people who we raised, saved their lives when they were little babies, who came in and did this assault with another gang and killed Major, a friend of 25 years, an employee of 25 years.

[04:19]

This is ferociously difficult for me to deal with, more than any earthquake, more than any flood, more than any... This is ferociously difficult for me to deal with. And like I was saying, the strength of my desire for revenge, and revenge in a wrong way, has made me a lion tamer of myself. And the idea of loving them makes me want to vomit. I'm sorry, it's the way it is. And I think that as we go through life, the evangelical councils aren't a magic wand. It takes a lot of time to persist and keep at it. I keep telling myself over and over like a mantra and I keep telling my team over and over like a mantra and I tell them so they don't go do a wrong thing. I say this over and over like a mantra to them and to myself.

[05:28]

We don't want one more and we don't want one less than those who are involved. And we don't want one day more of prison or one day less of prison. except that's deserved for their part in it. Not a witch hunt, not a witch kill, not running after people for other reasons and now using this as a good excuse and nothing exaggerated in it. It doesn't help that from the prison they're on Facebook hurling anathemas at me and accusing me of everything in the book. including that they haven't been to trial and letting me know that they'll catch up with me sooner or later. That doesn't help me get over this and move forward exactly. And I'm only telling you this because for sure you know people who have been, and this wasn't even me personally, but for sure you know people or have suffered in your own life the kind of assault

[06:33]

that makes this enormously difficult to say, by my vow of chastity, I vow that I will persist in enlarging my heart, that it might encompass the well-being of these people. I don't think love of enemy is the demands of love of enemy are unreasonable. Our Lord isn't asking us to send our enemies birthday cards, and he's not asking us to go out to dinner with them, but he is asking us to hold their benefit in our heart, rather than condemning them and wishing them to hell fires, that in our own heart we carry the wish, even if we have to force ourselves to carry it, that we carry the wish for their conversion and their redemption and their eternal salvation.

[07:35]

This is the part about it that I really love. Because we cannot but live this out in a disjointed way. Mother Teresa said it, it didn't happen overnight. We cannot help but live this out in a disjointed way. Our Lord tells some real wonderful stories. He tells one about this judge and this widow who just couldn't get her case heard. And she pesters him and badgers him and pesters him and badgers him. And finally, just to get her off his back, he hears the case and judges favorably on her behalf. He didn't feel anything like it, but he did it. Our Lord tells us another story of a man snug and tug with his family in bed at night and some traveler is knocking at the door asking for some little piece of bread or something to eat and he's snarling down at them, what do you want? Don't you have a watch?

[08:38]

Don't you know what time it is? Come back tomorrow, I'll give you some bread and they persist and finally he goes down and he opens the door and he gives them what they're looking for. And my favorite one, when the father tells his first son to go work in the garden. And all smiles, he says, sure, dad, I'm going to go right out to the garden. And he goes a completely different way. And then he calls the other son, and he says, you have to go work in the garden. And he says, I've had my fill of gardens. Sorry, Dad. I'm college material. I'm done with gardens. Sorry, find somebody else to be in the garden. I'm done with gardens. But he goes to the garden. And he's held up as the example of the obedient son. The point is the teachings of our Lord's own parables show us clearly it's not obliged

[09:42]

that our minds, our hearts, and our souls all line up like three perfect stars in a line in order for us to do something without hypocrisy. To do something without hypocrisy means I'm doing what the Lord is asking me to do, even if everything within me is fully resisting this, I'm doing what the Lord is asking me to do. Our Lord sees this as heroic. And very often, this is how we have to wade through the most difficult things. We don't have to wade through our whole life this way. But this is how we have to wade through the most difficult things. Sooner or later, we hope it all lines up in its full body, full heart, full mind, full soul, and we're grateful. But even in this haunting movie that Father Gabriel was telling me about, Amish Grace, about this woman whose children were killed by a killer, and part of her own dealing with this is saying over and over again, the hatred, it's not what God wants.

[10:59]

And I have to be something else besides hateful. And even if I have to tell myself that every 15 minutes for the rest of my life, every 15 minutes for the rest of my life, I will tell myself that and beg God's grace that the inside finally lines up with the outside. This is the way that life really goes. And the people who have made our stained glass windows, it wasn't in a flash, but all of a sudden, it's sort of like it is rocket science. It's the people who pardoned their killers at the very last second, were people who spent their whole lives trying to do this right, and found enormous grace at one of the moments of crucible. The dedication to it is everything to God, and the dedication to it pays off.

[12:03]

I honestly thought, from this contradiction, of holding up that host and being filled with murderous rage, and still playing in my head with the idea of just paying that $30, I honestly thought I should take a leave of absence until I've solved this. But that's not the way Christianity is lived out. Christ didn't take a leave of absence until he could finally... understand Peter and forgive his betrayals. We don't retreat from life, we don't take a leave of absence from Christianity until we have it all together. It's the Christianity that puts it all together. That's the transformation which we so determinedly believe in, like I was saying at Mass, thousands of years. And seeing this so many times in the lives of people and in small ways in our own life, it's why we won't let it go. And with good reason, we won't let it go.

[13:06]

We won't let go of the blood of the covenant. It's our only hope at these transformations. So the shells are difficult. They're not a cakewalk. Poverty. It's very attractive. to accumulate things, it's pleasurable. And it's even more pleasurable to accumulate domination over other people, which is power. And church historians have made this comment that there have been so many abuses by people who have accepted chastity fully in order to take their positions of authority in dioceses and monasteries and religious congregations, and have been monsters with their power, that the only conclusion is the domination of a person is more pleasurable than having a sexual relation with the person.

[14:07]

It's not a small thing, the poverty of giving up power. and the poverty of not accumulating things. It's not a small thing. And the biggest challenge to it is this. What the poverty is supposed to reveal to us is the simple richness of what you and I, just as you and I, have to offer to other people. Not embellished by any thing, and not embellished by any ability or power, just the richness of what you and I have to offer as you and I. The problem is, most people see themselves as crap. This is pretty universal. And when you really don't think you have any riches at all to offer, then you start accumulating, and then you start dominating, because it's a little bit easier to deal with than the anxiety of thinking you have no richness at all to offer.

[15:15]

The shells have their built-in challenges. The extent to which our love has to reach even to the enemy is definitely a pushback. The insecurity we have about our own worth and our own value when our poverty should make us want to offer only ourselves is definitely a pushback. Obedience, you know the very word, comes from the word to bow. When you bow, you recognize your dependence. Dependence means it's not all about me. There are things that I have to obey in order to be healthy, the physiology of excellence. There are things that I have to obey in order to be Christian.

[16:18]

the obligations of the gospel. There are rules I have to obey in society. There are rules I have to obey in a religious congregation. I have to be obedient to my conscience. I have to be obedient to God. I have to be obedient to the signs of the times. the signs of the times that we're in, and the signs of the times that I'm in, in my particular stage of life, in my development of life. We can't go through life as zombies, just doing whatever we're told, and that's it. Life has to be an interplay of the Spirit speaking within us, and our conscience speaking to us. and reading the signs of the times together and deciding together many things and deciding individually many things.

[17:23]

But these are the shalls. We shall be obedient to what makes us healthy in our bodies, to what makes us sound in our minds, to what makes us advance in our spirit, to our obligations, to our conscience and to God. So it's, they're beautiful ideals, remarkably beautiful ideals, but they are loaded with challenges. And thank God, thank God we, it's part of our tradition to live them out in a disjointed way, where you do it often by your sheer will, aiming your will at a unity that you hope you'll be graced with one day. Now, like I said, the sins complicate our ability to live the evangelical councils.

[18:28]

When we're not living them well, they're a jeopardy to our vision. When our vision goes wrong, so does everything else, our speaking and our acting. But aside from the sins, the pleasure of doing the opposite of what we're supposed to do, and the pain of doing the right thing, aside from that, we have other things that make the evangelical councils very difficult for us, and these are really what any psychiatrist or psychologist or philosopher would call our existential condition, which is pretty nasty. Just to diverge for a second on that, I want to talk about this concept of bad being stronger than good, because it really applies here more than anywhere else.

[19:29]

The idea, this concept started, like I said, because of people killing themselves about what's written on Facebook of them, especially young people in schools. And because of so many people whose lives are public, not knowing how to deal with 30% hate mail, which is instantaneous and right to your phone. It's not even screened by a secretary who can do you the favor of deleting them. And the study really comes from that. Why is what's supposed to be a social gathering place and a place of social unity reaping such havoc on people's equilibrium and their psyche? Why is it? Part of it is because, anonymously, without having to stand in front of you, People don't feel the repercussions for what they're going to say.

[20:33]

They feel very safe to say whatever they want because they're hiding behind an anonymous name and they're somewhere else and you'll never see them and it gives this false courage. It's representative of something else. The illusion that a social network is created, a network is created, but the illusion that it's a social network is really phenomenal. Go anywhere in public today and you'll see two or three or five people together. One is doing this, one is doing that, one is doing the other thing. They barely notice that that one is there. They're relating to people virtually and completely ignoring the person who's right in front of them. And they'll be saying all kinds of things they would never say to their face, good or bad declarations of love or hatred, because they're free of all the blushing, they're free of all the defense that they have to have when then the truth comes towards you too.

[21:38]

They're free of all of that. And I assure you, if that person was physically with any of the ones they're writing to, that person would be there and they would be doing this to a ton of others. And what's happening in front of our very eyes is the deterioration of the ability to relate with another person. It's phenomenal, but this is what's happening right in front of our very eyes. People don't know how to relate. If I'm going to be honest with you, in a way that's an intimate expression, it's a big gamble for me. If I'm going to be honest with you in a way that's a confrontation to try to solve something that's between us, I have to be ready for what's going to come back at me, because it takes two to tango. This is the kind of relating that builds character. This is the kind of relating that makes a person mature emotionally and advance.

[22:45]

These are the kind of dialogues that help people see clearly It's not this. This is fully fraudulent. It's without any heart or body or anything. It's fully fraudulent. And so people feel at liberty, especially, like I said, for some reason, and this is part of the study, people feel intelligent to point out the negative thing. It's bizarre, but that's it. And it usually covers for that they have nothing else to add. They have no value to add. but it causes a lot of damage so having studied the alarming suicide rates by people who are defamed on Facebook especially young people and what it does to movie stars and politicians and popes even to have all of this vile stuff coming at them that's where this idea came from and it really makes a lot of sense let me give you the example from the eye

[23:47]

It's not your eye that sees. It's here in the back of your brain that sees. Have a stroke here, and your eyes can work perfectly well, and you can't see a thing. It's not your eye that sees. Your eye takes all the signals. As a matter of fact, the retina is... Bruno would be upside down on my retina, if he looked at my retina. It's not the eye that sees. transfers everything that is taken in by sight, and it's put together at a much higher level, and that is the level of sight. But the wonder of the eye is, for the millions of rods and cones that we have, and our ability to see the colors in all kinds of variations, and if you're in the dark long enough, not only spiritually, but physically, how you learn how to see in the dark both ways, spiritually and physically, when you're in the dark for long.

[24:51]

I know this from our missionaries who are in China. and solitary confinement for years when the communists took over China and the stories that they told when they came out, unbelievable stories when they came out. But the eye is a marvel, but I'll tell you the biggest power of the eye, it's to catch this, the simple quick thing, the fast movement anywhere in your periphery, it's the first thing your eye catches. Why? That's danger. You're sitting stable, talking to people, and there's a fast motion. It could be a lion, it could be a tiger, it could be an assassin. It represents danger. You're on it. You're on it. Why could the devil always discern this is the Christ? Because Christ is a danger to the devil. Why is it harder for people to say, this is the Christ? Because the Christ is frosting on human life.

[25:53]

For the devil it's a mortal battle, really tuned in. This quick movement, we're wired for it. So what happens is, we're genetically wired to really get bad. An attack against us, a harm to us, threatens our life, threatens our being. There is no compliment that we could get from anybody that's going to put you in any kind of danger. It's the threats. And you know it from your own life, that people make fun of you. You internalize it. You ruminate over and over again. Why are they doing this? What is it about me that's causing this? You internalize it. You accept that as the judgment. You internalize it. You toss and turn at night over it. It takes over. It doesn't happen when somebody says, great job.

[26:58]

It doesn't happen when somebody says, I'm so glad you're in my life. It doesn't happen. Bad really goes in. And it goes in because you have to really get it in order to survive. Emotionally, psychologically, physically, you have to really get it. So it does a lot more damage. Any harm done to us physically or mentally or psychologically or any kind of abuse, any kind of embarrassment, it really goes in. And it's a lot. It's a lot to get over it. Just think for a second of the worst thing that's ever happened to you that you would hate to tell anybody about if you know what I'm talking about. Just think for a second the worst thing that you've ever done and you wouldn't want anybody to know about it and you know what I'm talking about. These things stay in deep. So the point of the story It's not that bad wins.

[28:04]

It's bad is stronger. And what it really means is, let's just pick a number, that it takes a hundred gracious acts towards you to offset this terrible thing that has happened to you. And this is important in terms of how to seek healing. and how to offer healing to other people. I'm going to give you an example, and I honestly don't remember if this story was in the reflections that you have or not, but it's really a good example of it. One day going down to help Mother Teresa's sisters, there was a body on fire in the middle of the street. I had a bunch of foreign doctors with me and I wanted to stop and put out that fire and pick up that body, but I wasn't going to do it with these foreign doctors with me because I didn't know what would come at me for doing that.

[29:13]

And I would accept that something comes at me, but I'm not going to put them in danger. It was only five more minutes to get to the sisters. The streets were empty, of course, in front of such a thing. When I got to the sisters, I unloaded all the foreigners, and I said to Sister Patsy, who was the superior, I said, please, I need five five-gallon buckets of water, and I need them right away. And the sisters run off and fill five five-gallon buckets of water, and I put them in the truck. She says, where are you going? I said, there's a man up the street who's on fire, and I'm going to go and put him out. And she said, I'll go with you. I said, I wouldn't do that if I were you. She said, no, we'll all go with you. All the sisters will go with you. I said, sister, you don't know what you're getting into. It's not a good idea. They stood in front of the truck and would not let me out of the gate if they couldn't come onto the truck. So these five sisters come onto the truck.

[30:17]

And the foreigners run for cover to see where they can hide safely until we get back. So we go up back to that intersection. I take a bucket of water and I pour it on the fire of this man and I can still hear the sizzling and I can still smell that smell as I tell you the story. Five buckets of water to put him out. So now he's a warm dead man on the street. Not warm from just dying, but warm from the fire. And we always use white body bags so that they also represent a burial shroud. And the important point then of the body bag is that they be clean. So very often we need a number of them for those kind of situations. We had one right next to him, which was a big mix of blood and ash and water and body fluids.

[31:22]

Once we put him in that, we had another one about 10 feet away, just because we couldn't even lift him. You know, he was so big. So we needed it close. And then four times we did it until we had a body bag far enough away that he was clean. And then we put the body in the back of the truck like we always do and the gang that burned him was all standing right there watching every move that we would make. And as I usually do, I call everybody over and I say, we're going to have a prayer for this man. I would like to invite you to come to a prayer for this man. They come over, more out of curiosity than anything else. And I try to say the most correct prayer that I can so that my head isn't blown off. Lord, we pray for this man whose life ended in horror, that he might be consoled by the angels and led into the glory of heaven. And we pray for those who did this, that they might fully understand that this violence only generates more violence.

[32:31]

and we pray for peace in this country and we pray for peace in the world. Now, let me tell you what happened after that because it's amazing. So we brought his body down to the sisters and later the sisters buried his body. I bury my own that are in my place, they bury theirs. So later, later in the afternoon, Sister Patsy called me and she said, you'll never guess what happened. And I said, what? And she said, this woman came sneaking along the alleyways, looking for our convent and looking for me. And when she found me, she got down on her knees and she thanked me and she kissed my hands. And she said, it was the mother of that boy who was killed. I said, boy, he was huge. She said, yes, he was 18, but he was really a strong kid. And she said, word had reached her in her little hovel that these guys had jumped her son and stabbed him and set him on fire.

[33:42]

And, of course, with all the panic of a mother, the nightmare of any mother, She starts running towards him as fast as she can and as slow as she can, wanting to get there and not wanting to get there. And she came along, they call them corridor down there, all these little alleyways that are like labyrinth through the slum areas. And when she got near, but was not too near and saw her son on the ground on fire, she froze. And she felt herself just backing up, backing up, backing up in her own mind, as if she was going to fall off a cliff. And this is the story that she told to the sister. I was standing there in horror. I wanted to run to my son and put out that fire, but my feet wouldn't move. I couldn't even think. And this truck came by.

[34:46]

And the truck slowed down. And the truck looked. And the truck left. And I stood there in my horror. And then that truck came back. And all these nuns got out. And these other people got out. And they did what I couldn't do. They put out the body of my son from this fire. And they lifted my son five times until he was clean. Five times until he was clean. It was unbelievable. And she was there to thank Sister Patsy. And I remember saying to Sister Patsy, of all the feelings that that woman has the right to, gratitude would be nowhere near on the list. Gratitude. But I think the importance of the story to me was the idea of countersign.

[35:49]

One good thing, one, if it's a strong one, can completely offset. It can't heal. What did it do though? It brought the woman back from an abyss. It made the world look again not like just a place full of chaos and madness, but there are compassionate people in this world who understand my suffering and we stand together. This is what it did. And I said to Sister Patsy, look at this scene. We didn't save her son. We didn't catch the criminals and put him in jail. We didn't raise him from the dead. We just did the ordinary thing. We cannot tolerate that a fellow human being is disgraced on the street like that. We did a normal human thing in the name of God. That's all we did. And yet the power of it was incredible for that woman. And it was a real grace to know that. And when you're doing these things, and like I say, this doesn't happen every day, believe me.

[36:55]

Come visit us. You'll like Haiti. But these things happen, and they happen all around the world. And the important thing is, if like the judge, you also don't want to get involved, And if, like the man upstairs, you'd rather just stay in your room and stay in your bed, and if, like the second son, you'd rather be elsewhere, just do it. God works strong through the good deed. Whether it's all lining up inside or not, God works strong through the good deed. So the good news about bad being stronger than good is that good as an antidote wins over bad, when it's carried out the right way, at the right time, and in the right measure. And this is what we should really become experts at, those of us who carry the light of the Gospel. So, when we meet again later at 4.30, I want to go through the existential fears that we all have to live with, and they're terrible.

[38:05]

And they're related to the reality that bad things happen to us and to people that we love, that we get sick, that we get old, that we die. And the insecurities that these things bring to any human beings and the ramparts that we put up against these things and how these very ramparts interfere with our freedom. And how choosing to be weak in front of these things which are very real, God makes us very strong and very powerful. This is the message of the gospel. So when we meet tonight, it will be really to look more in detail about those things in particular. Yes, brother? I know you said that the bad is the stronger, and I'm just listening to your story, and it's similar to me. It's never the good things that we do as much as being stronger in that way.

[39:07]

It's the bad things that stick out. I don't know if that makes sense. How much do we really give to the good of things? and how much good he offers, and how much wrong it is, how much we're all crying for it. And it stings out, and it soars up, and it really grows and manifests. Like you're saying, there's all this negativity that's being presented to us in the media, amongst ourselves, and we're constantly getting hit by that. It seems to me that it really doesn't matter, it's just, it's that instant. Yes, it's true, except of course the mother has to live the rest of her life with this memory and without her son. It's just that this is a completely different kind of context for her, rather than being stuck seeing the world just as a savage place, that the kindness and compassion and sympathy showed up.

[40:10]

that we don't really see, that really can be a stronger point, I think this is what it would seem to, that God in Christ is always trying to say, we're all on the wrong spectrum. It would seem to me that way. But probably because of the fallenness, the bad has... it's poison and yet we like it, for some reason. And, you know, there's something in psychology called the repression of the sublime. that we deliberately work against ourselves because the more the more we are who we are the more we stand out and we rather be like sheep than stand out and you get mocked and you get pulled down if you stand out and similarly we don't like somebody else to get too high either you know we delight in the fall of other people and we all participate that unfortunately because it's pleasurable to us so it's by our fallen nature we see we prefer that also we let it in so easy which is part of the reason that it has so much power.

[41:26]

And our only purpose is to understand the dynamics so we know how to control our own inner world. These are the timeless secrets that are handed on from generation to generation by deeply spiritual people. And all we're trying to do is remind ourselves of them. What are the dynamics? How do we keep our balance in the dynamics? How do we minimize the bad around us? How do we maximize the good around us? So that it's all light and aiming upwards for the best that we can make it aim upwards. Whether we feel like it or not is really the point of it. Okay, anyway, thank you. See you all later. Obedience is from a word for bow. And then it made me remember something. It was a book on Christian yoga that I have by a Frenchman named Deschanet.

[42:31]

And there's a very profound bow they called obeisance, which means obedience. And I confuse that image with the root word because obedience comes from ab-audire, which means to be moved by what you hear. And so it means to pay attention to what you hear. But I think the image of the bow is still a beautiful one because It's the opposite of the pseudo-autonomia which the scriptures warn us against as an enemy to the spiritual life within us. To bow in reverence and to listen to the Word like the Blessed Mother in the Magnificat, to bow and listen and to obey is really a beautiful counter-image of the virtue of pride, I mean the sin of pride, which is counteracted by obedience.

[43:38]

Having said that, and having given that terrible example of countersign, I would like to give a really moving image of countersign from the missionary that I mentioned before of ours that was in China. His name was Justin Garvey, and he and a friend from grammar school, Marcellus White, they were Bostonians, they both joined the Passionists and became priests, and in the 1940s they both volunteered for the mission in China. So it was really a nice scene because from boyhood they were together and now as courageous young men off they went to China. I knew Justin when I was studying medicine in New York and he was back at our monastery a very old man and full of stories and he told me this story himself and it's amazing.

[44:47]

When the communists came in Many of the religious were expelled, but a lot were put into prisons. And he was put into prison in solitary confinement in some underground dungeons. And he didn't know it at the time, but Marcellus was like 50 feet away in another cell, but there was no way to know that. So this is what he said his experience of it was like. Because it was so dark, you never knew if it was night or day. You never knew if a day passed. You never knew if a week passed. You never knew if a year passed. You were just in this silence and in this dark. And the Chinese guards would bring them some bread and water, and aside from the bread and water, they slept in their own crap and with cockroaches and rats and everything else in their own cell.

[45:56]

Justin told me that in order to keep his sanity, he would say over and over again every prayer that he had ever learned from his mother's knee all the way through his monastic formation. And he would bring himself to exhaustion, and then he would fall asleep. And when he woke up again, he would start all over again saying every prayer that he ever knew until he would fall asleep again. Interestingly enough, if you've ever read the Confessions of St. Patrick, that's exactly what he did when he was kidnapped into the mountains and held in captivity by these wild Celtic people. To keep his sanity, he said every prayer he ever knew over and over and over again to keep his balance. That seems to have worked at least twice.

[47:00]

I keep that in mind as a good tactic just in case, and maybe you would want to keep that in mind too as a good tactic just in case, but it seems to have worked at least twice. In any case, Justin told me, told us, that this constant anxiety and longing for his family, for his friends, for Marcellus, for not knowing anything at all about his family, his friends, what was going on in the world, really wore him down. And finally, he just didn't want to live anymore. He had no desire to live. And it's not that he was going to take his life, but he had no desire even to participate in what would keep him alive. He didn't want the bread. He didn't want the water. And he was done saying those prayers.

[48:02]

Something really phenomenal happened. The guards who were guarding him had really grown to like him. And in particular, they admired his chants. And the guards really felt bad that he was despondent and giving up. It was bizarre, but they really felt bad about it. And they would offer him extra bread. He was gone. He didn't want extra bread. They would put jelly on it. He didn't want it. They would put meat on it. He didn't want it. They would take him out for little breaks of sunlight, you know, sneak him outside and bring him out to see outside. It was too late. He was gone. Those things meant nothing to him. A little more meat, a little more jelly to look at the sun. He was so cut off from everything that gives him meaning. What really worked for him, and it's really amazing, because in his litany of everything that he would do, he would sing the Magnificat, the tone that we know, and the Passionists, maybe you also know it.

[49:22]

Magnificat anima mea dominum, et exultabit spiritus meus. But he would sing that as like the last prayer before he collapsed into sleep. And all of a sudden when the guards couldn't get any life into him, they tried their best to sing for him the Magnificat. These are people that aren't Christian, that sure as heck don't know Latin, that don't know any of the meaning of what it was, but the solidarity, the solidarity and the care for him, because this is what happens to us finally. When our world of meaning goes, we live with depression. When a coherent bond of friendship and love is gone, we know anxiety.

[50:30]

And depression and anxiety together weigh you down. And here now, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, through a chance, was coming this strong feeling of cohesion and bonding, which was aimed towards God. It was unbelievable to him. So yes, he did want that bread with jelly on it. And yes, he did want a piece of meat to go with it. And yes, he did want to go out and look at the sun. It completely turned him around. But it shows you, it shows you, for example, where the surprising grace comes from, where the countersign comes from. These were just people doing their job. just like so many people in the Nazi world were just doing their job. They don't necessarily agree with what's going on. At the big level, they don't know. At the small level, they're capable of connecting. And this connection meant everything to him.

[51:33]

But it was really phenomenal. This is what saved him. And when he and Marcellus were freed by the Red Cross, and returned to our mother house in Union City, New Jersey in the mid or late 1950s looking like they came out of Auschwitz. There are pictures of them. When they gained their strength back and got their equilibrium again and started to be strong again, both of them volunteered for the new mission in the Philippines And they both went to the Philippines and spent another 20 years in the Philippines. This is what we're made out of when we carry the light of Christ. And this is the kind of grace that surrounds us even from the most surprising places to keep enlivening us. The other day,

[52:37]

Brother Bruno was telling me about how one of the visiting abbots was commenting on how much bees work in community together. And this has been noticed for a long time, how cohesive they are. It's extraordinary. And more still, they seem to be able to communicate with each other by a dance. In other words, when they find the best flowers, you know, you can look this up on YouTube and see them doing it and everything else, but the ones who find the best flowers are able by some circular dance and spinning around to let all the others know where the best flowers are. But there's a cohesion that's really, it's beautiful, and yet it's really hard to understand it. Working with the fish, and so many of them, they're all going all over the place in every direction and hunting around, but if you raise your arm all of a sudden, they act like one body, all turning instantaneous the same way and going in the same direction.

[53:53]

Suddenly they're one thing. You've seen that with birds, the way they are in the sky. We're capable of being very individualistic, and we're capable of being one thing. And the one thing is natural. It's not by lessons. The bees never learned that. The birds never learned that. And we also have deep instinct to be one. It's a very deep instinct that we have. I like to use examples of science because St. Thomas Aquinas used to say, we're not required to believe anything that doesn't make sense. And the separation between science and religion is completely artificial. because the world of nature speaks volumes to us of the world of God. But in the world of science, Nobel Prizes were given within the last two years for what is called the Higgs field.

[55:05]

The Higgs field is like this web of energy that can be measured that connects absolutely everything that exists. Imagine it's the Higgs field that one little movement of one fish turns all the fish at the same time. Or one little movement of one bird turns all the birds at the same time when they have put themselves into the energy of this field. The field means you cut down a tree in the Amazon and something goes terribly wrong in China. It also means Brother Jerome touches that field by prayer, the way that angels do, and somebody across the world on a battlefield in Vietnam is consoled. It's fascinating because it's an image of a blanket of love.

[56:14]

It's an image of the mantle of providence. It's an image of the body of Christ. And it's the reason why we all just don't break down in front of all the difficulties and sorrows of life and give up. Because we are constantly nourished recreated, refreshed, inspired, not by the Higgs field, by the God who created it, and by the way that image shows us what the mystical body of Christ is, enveloping all of us with tenderness. If you ever gash yourself working out in the yard and watch how phenomenal it is how you heal, and when you realize that you're contributing absolutely nothing to that, you couldn't by your will make that happen.

[57:26]

You can help advance it a little bit by keeping it clean and putting a little antibiotic ointment on it. You can mess it up by keeping it filthy. But by your will, you cannot influence it. It's part of the wonder of the world of God, where God is always building up and healing and restoring. Even though what we see around us and by the stories that I have told you, the world is in such chaos. Our hope is the reality of this mantle of providence. Our hope is the reality of this body of Christ that's around us and holding us up. The second law of thermodynamics is that everything is tending towards chaos and disintegration.

[58:32]

I think that's pretty evident. It means today is burnt up yesterday. We get to today by burning up yesterday. So today and by the accumulation of so many tomorrows, what does it mean? 70% of the Amazon is gone. I saw in the paper the other day that 60% of all the elephants in Tanzania have been killed by poachers. There's less fossil fuels today. There's less propane today. It's all spent, and the spending pushes us to today, and it's called entropy. And the rule of thermodynamics is this just keeps happening until the end. You visit the house that you grew up, it's in shambles.

[59:36]

You look at all the people that were your neighbors then and they're in shambles. You look in the mirror and you're in shambles. It's the march of chaos and entropy. And yet, there's too much happening that's not entropy, which is the constant recreation of people. I remember when we studied in science, in pre-med, all of the divisions of chromosomes that have to happen to make a cell. And if you just think of the springtime when the trees go from empty to full, If you could ever even try to calculate how many divisions of chromosomes that took to make all of those leaves, you would be stupefied. There's no way to do it. This is not entropy.

[60:40]

This is tremendous force of regeneration, of recreating, of planting a flag in the ground. It's not over. It's renewed. It's reinvigorated. Science calls this other energy, Syntropy. And very interestingly enough, science sees Entropy as yesterday pushing us to today, but science sees Syntropy as the future pulling us to today. Two big tugs. It's really fascinating. The future pulling us to today. Your destiny pulling you to today. Heaven pulling us to today. The powers of angels pulling us through all the tragic things that we see. And rejoicing with us in all the wonderful things that we see. Pulling us to today. It's really phenomenal. Choirs of angels.

[61:43]

It's not a figure of speech. Powers, dominions, cherubim, seraphim, all creatures of the invisible world. We sing about them. They're all from the scriptures, Corinthians and Tobit and Daniel and Matthew. It's real. It's why we're not broken down. It's why we can keep spending ourselves and not be spent. Why we're like the burning bush in front of Moses. We can keep doing it and doing it and doing it and carrying the light. And even when it's over, it's not over, it's just the beginning. It's why. This beautiful, this beautiful energy of building up, of healing, of restoring, which is the finger of God. It's in that hopeful context. which we all know and feel. It's clear in John's Gospel.

[62:45]

In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him and there's not one thing that has been made that wasn't made through Him. In Him was life. And the life is light for all peoples and it shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot put it out for as much as it tries. There was a man whose name was John who was a witness, a witness to this light. John was not the light. I'm not the light. You're not the light. Pope Francis is not the light. John was a witness to the light, the true light that enlightens everyone who is born into this world, the world that was made through him and that knew him not.

[63:47]

Coming unto his own, his own, receive him not. But to as many as receive him he gives the power of becoming children of God who are born in His name, not born of blood or lust or will, but born of the power of God." And then it says, and we have seen His glory, we know it, and we have felt His grace, grace upon grace. It's what keeps our church so vibrant. It's what gives us so many great people in cloisters and out in the world. It's a miracle, and it's beautiful, and it's what sustains us. But knowing that that sustains us, we still have to understand the demonic side and the difficult side. And the real big difficulty for us are what are called our existential realities.

[64:56]

No matter what happens, we get hurt. There's no exception. No matter what happens, we get sick. No matter what, we get old. And no matter what, we die. And when those things happen to us, which are visible manifestations of decay and fading, if we lose our sense of meaning and if we lose the coherence of love in our lives, we're goners. These things chew us up and spit us out and we're done. dying on a dung heap in desolation. We can suffer anything when the suffering is meaningful, and we go out of our minds for suffering that has no meaning.

[66:06]

A mother who thinks she'll find the treatment for her child's cancer at St. Damien's Hospital in Port-au-Prince will walk all across Haiti with her child to get there and think nothing of it. But a woman who is assigned to walk back and forth in the tropics, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth by some slaveholder, just to carry this and put it there and carry that and put it there and carry that and put it there and carry that and put it there will go right out of her mind because it's suffering that has no meaning. So what we have to guard against are our tendencies to depression and despair. And what we have to guard against are our tendencies to anxiety.

[67:13]

We see what happens to... people get very, very sick when they don't have meaning. They get very, very sick when they don't have love. We see it everywhere. Like I said, the so-called social network is making people so isolated from each other, it's really unbelievable. Anybody who sits still long enough, monks, people on retreat, people who are sick and can't get up, anybody who sits still long enough starts to have to face these realities. Things are falling apart. I'm getting old. Everything is falling apart. I don't know what's going to happen to me tomorrow, where I'm going to live. Who's going to decide what for me as I get older? And it's why people don't like sitting alone and sitting in quiet. And it's why monks force themselves to do it.

[68:18]

Because in the face of these discomforts, and they're real, and they're not unique to me, and they're not unique to you, the whole human race has them. When we're made uncomfortable by them, we run for something else. Just look across the country. We run to drugs. We run to other kinds of addictions. These start to destroy. ourselves, the networks of our families. Some people double, triple, quadruple their activity. I learned the term highly functional neurotic when a friend of mine from very high level in the business world had a full breakdown and wound up in the psychiatric ward of Columbian Presbyterian Hospital in New York. where a lot of his ability to function so phenomenally was really a running away from existential problems and questions in his life.

[69:30]

Those tasks are useful to him, but they'll be much more useful to him when they're based on serenity and peace and not on running for your life, which fortunately is what has happened to him in his therapy, in his prayer, and in his own transformation. But we need help with these questions. Another way of phrasing them are the anxieties about what's going to happen to me? I can be maimed, I can be killed, I can be in the hands of people I don't even know, I can be kidnapped. What's going to happen to me? What is my purpose? Does all of this serve any purpose at all? What is my purpose? And what is my value? Am I important to anyone at all?

[70:31]

When the answer to those is no, we're in a lot of trouble. The scriptures, the teachings of Christ are constantly addressing these questions about the human being. We're worth more than the birds and not a single bird falls from a tree without our Lord knowing it. We're worth more than Solomon and all of his glorious robes and all the orchids of the field. We're destined for eternal life with God. We're all part of the building up of God's city. That's our purpose. We're all part of the building up of God's kingdom, of God's city. So our faith is trying, is trying to reinforce all the time the answers to these disturbing questions. And rather than be able to sit comfortably

[71:37]

and even look at these, we live in a world of ever-growing deficit of attention, absolute scrambling, and massive amounts of people needing to be medicated in order to even help them start to concentrate. It's not their fault at all. It's the fault of a culture that doesn't address the basic needs of a human being for relating. that doesn't value wisdom and learning about the inner life, that doesn't value community, cohesion and love over profit and exploitation. So it's a big part of our job to look these things squarely in the face as our Lord did. His temptations in the desert were these, exactly these. It's a big part of our job as contemplative people, as religious people, as the bearers of the light of the Gospel, for us to know and understand and be at ease with these things and find out the very surprising thing

[72:56]

that when we're not terrified by these things, which are pretty scary, we find that our strength is our weakness. We find that our strength is our dependence on God and dependence on each other. And we find out this, how lucky we are to have our friends How lucky we are to have our communities. How lucky we are to have the scriptures. How lucky we are to have our songs. How lucky we are to have our psalms. How lucky we are to know the prophets inside and out. How lucky we are to know the history of our holy people who have been through this and done wonders with it. How lucky we are to know the sayings of the Desert Fathers and the Desert Mothers. How lucky we are to have the sacrament of reconciliation as often as we want it.

[74:00]

How lucky we are to have the Eucharist. How lucky we are to have all the sacraments. How lucky we are that this is the way the world is. And when that really sinks in, Then we understand the scriptures very clearly when they say, and Pope Francis is saying it a lot, Christianity is not for the dour. Christianity is for the joyful and the hopeful. But we really understand when we really get this and submit to it, we really understand what it is to live in hope, And we really understand what it means to have a peace that surpasses any peace that the world can possibly give. So as contemplatives, as monks, and as religious, we ask God to help us with his task. Tomorrow, for the last day, I'm going to talk about some more invisible things, invisible things.

[75:03]

And then on Saturday, I hope really just to summarize, put in a coherent form, what I was trying to say, and then we'll be done. So I think it's three more, three more conferences. So thank you. Are there any questions? feel free at any time and you can always save them up for Saturday too.

[75:33]

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