Before we enter into the sanctuary of the quadratism, the three sun rays, as we know very well, seem to form a certain order among themselves. They are a composition which follows a pattern. The first Sunday in which we celebrate in the Church of St. Lawrence, together with this great Roman martyr and deacon, dedicated to and introduced us to the first and most elegant aspect of the Lenten season, And as we live in a sacred effort, we have to come to grips with our human formation.

[01:17]

And that is done through the instrumentality of our body. The flesh is the concrete reality of fallen man, with which we have to deal first. It falls. Therefore, this first Sunday, celebrated under the auspices of the Master, upwards this is falling. This first Sunday shows us the necessity, the need for concrete modification. And also the limitation, because every effort, a sacred effort, always involves the nature that it becomes problem.

[02:24]

of what we achieved, for that we appeared before God demanding of the reward. We have done this. I am not satisfied with it. You should be. So the first Saturday shows us the true Christian spirit of the Lenten season as a time of asking, of prodigation. The second Saturday, 6th of April, we celebrate today, is celebrated in the house of St. Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles. And it shows us the other, the second, constituted elements of the next season, and that is the visit to and receiving and debate of the Word of God.

[03:37]

that is shown in the Epistle, where St. Paul reveals, in a certain measure, his inner life, the visiones et revelationes done, that source out of which his preaching came. which enabled him to sow the seed all over the world, seed of the Word of God. And the Gospel shows us how we receive this seed. By listening, by taking it into our heart, and by practicing it, bringing fruit.

[04:40]

And then on the third Sunday, it is to all those who may be leap or shy away from these twofold talents, while as they forget it, and of our receiving, learning, keeping and practicing the Word of God. In the lives of Saint Peter, Saint Peter the one who in the love of God became the shepherd and the mission therefore to believe the sheep are the good pastures and feed them. This Sunday Quibbati's month gives us that consoling answer which enables us to look forward to the Lenten season with great confidence and great joy.

[05:52]

I mean the answer that it is the Lord himself who dispels all our thoughts, our blindness, he gives us the light to understand good works, and he also feeds us, so that in the power of his body and of his blood, taken into the Agamemnon, he may be able to find the good fight during the late night. In other words, it is not only our work of multiplication, it is not only our listening, but it is the love of God giving us opening our eyes and strengthening our spiritual muscles, as it were, through the fruit that he gives to us, who accomplishes in and through us the work of the late season, honoring our time and our rising in and with Christ.

[07:11]

Now, this Sunday, today, said the Chastity Master, Here is, I think, a good opportunity for us to give a bit of time, as we come up again and again in the course of this week, to give us a good opportunity to think a little about that important aspect of the Lenten season, which is our conversation as well with the Word of God. the Word of God. That certainly is the very heart, so of our monastic life. The monk comes in order to listen, aus kulte utti, pacheta magis. Today one speaks very often in this connection about the necessity of meditation.

[08:17]

In the past, we ourselves, we have spoken about it too. And this is the Sunday, so to speak, of the meditation. And we also see in today's Gospel the whole fullness of this heart. And we understand it right. Meditation, meditation comprises as so many of the Christian world. Various contributions, a contribution which is made to this concept by the genius of the Hebrew language, the Old Testament, Kabbalah, which means that worldly, so now in the spring, Submissive worship of the Word of God. It becomes, certainly first of all, the Word of God is a Word.

[09:26]

And that means not so only something to be read quietly, but something to be heard. It is a sight. It is an external element. which in a concrete way has to do with our ears. That is the first element. Typically not that it is founded in the language, the original language of the Old Testament. It's, let us say, the external element. It had to do, it had to deal here with sound. There is something which I think is of great importance. We want to understand the fullness of meditation. It means that meditation is not only the taking into the heart, but meditation is also the taking into the ear.

[10:35]

And that means, of course, that in our monastic life, the very performance of the opus deo, in other words, the singing of the songs, the listening to the reading, is part of the meditation. We are accustomed, maybe nowadays, which is always inclined to strip traditional concepts of their original fullness and to make them more abstract and to limit them to something absolutely interior or psychological. To think that our silly concepts cannot only be the same evaluators as all the so much less perfect than living. But the singing of the Psalms, the pronouncing of the words, is an integral part of the very act of meditation.

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It also means that if we listen and hear the word, it means that we are not only careful in pronouncing, but that we are faithful in giving our whole attention to the objective world as it is and as it comes to us, as it is offered by God. The sound is not only something external, but it is also, or they say, something internal. The sound of the hungry word guarantees the objectivity, the divine act, the revealed act of what we receive. And therefore, our joy to be able with our lips and our body to pronounce the word as they come as it were from the lips of God.

[12:55]

So this sound element is an important element in our obedience, that listening, the obedience to the Word of God, the carefulness with which we receive what God has said. But then, naturally, comes the other element, and that is that what we receive through our ears, and what we pronounce with our mouth. There is, for example, I would say here in this connection, too, that a very essential element of meditation is the burning of our heart, and through meditation, of the very sound of the word, the material word. Then comes the second element, and that is naturally comes from the green guitar.

[14:04]

That is, one can say, some way a contribution to the history of this whole world. A concept from the green part that gives the thought which is valid or incumbent in the Son of Man, should be received. The organ for this reception is not in ear, but it is there in the heart. There the inner man gives longing, his love, his humility, his devotion, And then the third element is also a part of the meditation itself. That is the bringing forth of the fruit.

[15:05]

That is the practice of the word that we learn that we have understood, received, in depth of our heart, that now we practice. So we can see that in this way many touch you, and that last element of practicing, of expatriate, is the element which the genius of the former class as added to the fullness of the concept of meditation. Because meditation, in Roman language, means the exercise, the training effort, getting into by learning, by doing, is it? Learning by doing. And that is, of course, St.

[16:07]

Benedict Maxine, they may also act as autonomists, that they may eat, that they may practice or learn these practices. word by deciding it, practicing the sound, then also learning the steps of how to receive what sound, and finally also to practice it in the various works of the monastic life. So that meditation, as you see, really is a verb which is completely comprehensive, takes in the whole goodness of our monastic life. And we see that to speak of meditation and to meditate, comprehensive all these three activities. The Oral Prayer in Choir is really and truly part of our meditation.

[17:13]

The Lectio Divina, where we take this word into our heart, is part of meditation. And finally, the Grading Root in the works of the Chapel Charity Being here is also part of the meaning of meditation. So all of this we together, we will make the fullness of meditation. So that we can understand, that they ought to be expressed as a wish for all of us, that beautiful invocation which once stood in the litany and the contemplation of the mouth. Take thee for Christ, he the mouth, open, a folded, make it text. He may meditate you with his mouth, his heart, and with his throat.

[18:21]

I see Julia Wright of Columbus here with us in the chapel. I'm honored to address a few words of greeting or explanation to you all. Very beautiful that you can celebrate with us this Sunday of Green Budget, which is the last Sunday preceding the first Sunday of Lent. At Wednesday is this week, and we get ready to celebrate the Lenten Sea. It is the meaning of the Lenten Sea, which is explained to us today in this map that we are celebrating together, especially in the Gospel, which you have just heard. There we are talking about Our God communicated with disciples his decision that he wanted to go up to Jerusalem, knowing fully well that there he would be received by the hatred of his enemies, and that they would take him, that they would spit on him and finally kill him.

[20:29]

And therefore this decision of our Lord provoked great resistance, criticism on the part of the apostles, the disciples. Because they wanted it to be their glorious day. And now he was going to hand himself over into the hands of his enemies. And that would be for his death. And therefore the disciples thought it would mean for them the giving up of all their hopes. So their eyes were blind. They did not understand the mystery of our Lord's passion. Why did he go out to Jerusalem? He wanted to give himself as the sacrifice of gratitude, of redemption. Who were men who had fallen into sin?

[21:35]

Mankind, who we see sitting in this gospel, in the second part of this gospel, sitting by the wayside, blind. Blind because Man, after a distinct, is not able to lift up his eyes any more to see the beauty, the doubt, the fantasy of God as his Father. Sting blinds us. The stinger has turned away from God. is required for the religious to see God's face, to rejoice in the rays of God's glory, to be warmed by the warmth of God's love. And therefore we all see ourselves in this blind manner, sitting by a wayside, For today he hears and the others can hear him.

[22:41]

The great Jesus passes by. This famous holy man of God who has told in the past that he is the specially favored of God of his heavenly Father and who has done so many miracles and he has healed so many people who were have been given he would let us think and hopeless even those who were dead he raised them to life so then this blind man and i say again in him we see our series sitting by the way started and just hearing that jesus approaches he raises his voice Lord, please, son of David, have mercy. Son of David, have mercy.

[23:42]

And our Lord, hearing the cry of this endless, poor, blind man, he stops. Mercy, love, makes him stop. He turns around to him and he asks him, what do you want? And he says, O Lord, most that I may see. We should stop here for a while and we should really put ourselves into the situation of a blind man. Let us imagine we lost the light of our eyes. We lost the power of sight. Let us imagine the doctor would come and tell us My dear friend, you will never see again what tremendous moments there could be in our life. We would feel like the captives of darkness.

[24:46]

And that darkness would extend into the future like a tunnel, but there is no light coming from the other side. an endless struggle that we have to walk through constantly in darkness, not see the light. What really happens to us there? We sink down into a tremendous loneliness. We feel abandoned. We have lost contact with the things that surround us. For what is really, what is the terrible, depressing, the desolation of blindness? What is it if we think about it? Is it only that we don't see things anymore?

[25:49]

Maybe if we think about it we could resign ourselves not to see things ever. But it's not only things that we won't see. They are the faces, the ears, the human eye, the eye of our father, our mother, of our friends, those who are close to us. You will not see them ever. And all that is a deep sorrow. We feel the loss. What is it? We feel the loss of love which is given to us. The sunshine, when we rejoice in it, and when in the sunshine things take on their color, And everything around us is beautiful, white as snow, or in the summer, green as the trees.

[26:57]

Why do we rejoice? Because all this that we see is not a piece of love in which we can participate through our lives, through the sense of stuff. Beauty, what is beauty? It is the symbol of love. And so still more we think of faces, of human faces, of human eyes. What is it that makes human eyes so attractive to us? Why are there moments when we can really feel, as it were, only human face? on the eyes, the glance that is directed to us from these eyes. Because they are mystical and they are a relation of love.

[28:00]

And then again, to see a human face that loves us, that is a reverse love affair. It's a feast. It's a feast of love. It nourishes. We grow with it. A human being is able to grow only in the warm of Him. And when we are blind, it seems that we are exiled. Exiled into a cold and hopeless world. Exiled into a place where God has done So I would say that to see things and to see in person, why do we depend so much on it? Because by that we are taking law on which we live. And therefore when we are dying, this blindness of the senses

[29:09]

It is the symbol that should be the symbol and should give us the experience of the other blindness, which is the essential blindness, the blindness of seeing. That blindness that I have mentioned before, in which we are unable to see the face of all places, the light of all life, are in God's glory. I believe the Father's faith turned towards us, if not because we are his children. That is what reveals us with hope, with deep hope, if we think of the possibility that we could lose the sense, the power of sight. and that so we would be condemned to that infallible act of darkness.

[30:13]

But of course, my dear friends, that had happened to us, and in fact it happened to us, that it was the side of which our eyes are just visible. that we lost the sight of God's goodness, of God's love, of God's glory, because we did not want to be like Saul. We did not want to follow him. We wanted to be on our own. We wanted to be relying only on our own, in our own way, on our intent, We wanted to be perfect, healthy, self-made man, not depending on anyone. And that is darkness. That is really the curse of darkness.

[31:15]

Later we are stuck into a prison and no light of certain, no light of certain can penetrate in. And that is what it is all about at this beginning of Lent. It's all about this, that we wake up our mind, to wake up, to open our eyes, to see the Lord, the Lord Jesus, who comes to us as our friend, who looks at us with the eyes of love, who wants to give his entire life That weak man is here, and that means that weak man is stealing the top. And that is the essence of the deities. And all those who come here at this moment can bring their hopes and put their hopes on the pattern. They should express in their hopes their determination.

[32:19]

This deities is a weak one. as those who see, I mean, who see the mystery of the cross, the mystery of Christ's love for us, Christ's love for me, and who are willing and understand, following up to Jerusalem, making the stations of the cross with Him. And in that way, we are Easter, daily in light. There the light of the Christmas Savior will break into the darkness of the tomb. As there you rise with me, and you stay in the fullness of wisdom, of light, and of love. Oh, my Lord, yes, I am still with you. We range together through suffering and death.

[33:24]

And here we are united forever. And that you must think that that is the goal of your life. The possibility is there that when we die, and let us put it this way, we wake up again. And then after death, We really see ourselves in God. If we didn't make see ourselves in the truth and close and locked for a day, that is impossible. Just as it is possible for every human being here on earth To give up, as a prayer, the power of sight, of spiritual sight, by turning against God, by not obeying his commandments, by not following on the way of life, so it is certainly also the possibility that at the moment of our death we may find ourselves blind for eternity.

[34:42]

Lying with him, he expects, avoids that possibility to make other decisions, quiet for every father. Lord, have mercy, lead me on the way of light, that I may see. Not only things in sunshine, not only human faces, but your face, the face of God. Oh, let me see your face. The third cradle, number three, does not fit together. You have to move. Our faithful look together together in order to follow our Lord into the desert.

[36:05]

It's there to fight the battle against Satan. In preparation for that great victory that's then on Easter Sunday will be manifest to us, to us and in us. On this Mass that we celebrate today, one thing is so clear, and that is that we do not enter into this period of fasting on our own account, but we enter into it as ministers, as those who want to serve. That is evident in the Epistle, and that is evident also in the Gospel. In both opinions, therefore, one thing is found from fasting in the state spirit of the Church.

[37:13]

I mean arrogance, self-assurance, weakness, How we enter into this capacity in the spirit of humility, as those who go in obedience to God's invitation, we go as his servants. Another thing is evident, and that, again and again, is talked of with the senior schools in South 90, this beautiful song of faith. There we are taught that God will cover us with his wings and that under his wings we may get out confidence. Trust, therefore, that is the other decisive note of this period of Lent.

[38:20]

Trust Obedience first, trust then second. We will see at the beginning of this period that solemn assurance from the power of God, the promise which is so beautifully expressed in today's enjoyment. He will call upon me And then I said it here, that calling from God, that is prayer, that is the word of faith, he will call it. And I said it here, I will snatch him out of all dangers and I will glorify him and heal him with the name of death. It is as if in this majestic and beautiful intro that the whole history, the whole plan, the whole design of the Lent period is indicated to us.

[39:35]

It is a time in which the servants of God, believing in God's Christ, lift up their voices and does not forget that fasting, that reducing, or as it is according to the Hebrew, this deliberate and voluntary impoverishment of our soul, our heart, this reducing of our own human person, is done that our voice may be heard in the eyes of God, In the years to come, because God listens to those who live up to him, the boys are the poor. So trust, trust of the poor of God, as the other dominant laws which rules the spirit of the Dead Sea.

[40:43]

But there is a third one, and that is definitely the most important one, and that is chapter. Certainly it is faith which conquers the world, as it is said by Saint John. That is the victory which conquers the world out of faith. And we can see You can see it in the sovereignty, in the gospel, and also in the epistle. It is faith which conquers the world. But still in goodness of days, that perfection that is given to us in charity. Charity is those things that comes. Our Lord proceeds us on this march into the lengthy season, into the desert.

[41:50]

Our Lord, our Lord Jesus, solemnly and expressly stated in today's Gospel, he was duktus as being. He was guided by the Spirit into the desert. That is really important for us. We enter into this struggle in the spirit of obedience, not in the spirit of self-assurance, not in the spirit of being accurate, with trust in his own power. We enter into it in a complete faith in God who is with us and who will help us, the Savior, but we enter into it also in the spirit, in the spirit. This spirit is manifest to us by the very fact that we offer up this next season in humility.

[43:05]

Let's see the past interior, and that is so beautiful, may we always keep it. This past interior is not the individual attempt of the single, but it is a co-operative undertaking. We all go together into the desert. Why do we do that? Why does the Church all as it were at this moment seek? It is because by being together, fighting together, we enter into the realm of the Holy Spirit, into the realm of charity, which makes us one. And to whom it is the promise of the resurrection direct, to look but to the one who takes refuge in the Holster of the Almighty.

[44:16]

And who is, which is that Holster of the Almighty? If not, the Church. So in the Church, in the Holy Spirit, In the spirit of charity, we enter into this battle, and there is the last power, the reason for our victory. In this fact, this past period is offered to God by the Church as the whole, and we do it as men. We do it in the spirit of brotherhood, and therefore so important that all of our mortifications abound in works of charity during this day and season. So let us enter into this spirit of fasting exactly in the spirit which the psalm 90 indicates to us.

[45:21]

As servants of God, in us we trust in the one who heals us, and covered by the wings of God's charity. And certainly, faith is the victory that conquers the world, and in the spirit of charity, we cannot be separated from them. Because, as St. Paul so suddenly says, nothing, no hunger, no nakedness, no power, no violence, nothing can separate us from the charity of Christ. And so blamelessly imperious can be a time in which, as we were told on Friday, our justice That means that the grace which is given to us may receive us and may then the glory of God gather us up as it.

[46:34]

In the spirit of faith, enter into death and the fullness of charity, the Lord Jesus, your hero, will gather us up as it.

[46:48]

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