In the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit, let us just think of the love of the Father through his creation, the redemption of the Son who came down to earth that we might be saved, and who taught us how to live our lives in imitation of him, and the love of the Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts. that we might respond to that love. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Well, I take for a heading for this particular talk those words from Galatians, second verse of chapter six, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

[01:36]

Just before Ash Wednesday, this year, I think it's a Monday, the Feast of Saint Scholastica, Father Joseph said to me in our coffee room, I've been professed 38 years today. And when I got back to my room, I got out the catalogus and looked up the community to see who'd been professed the longest, thinking very likely it might be Father Columbo, who's 82 now, I think, or Father Urban. But in actual fact, it turned out to be Abbott Auburn, who this coming September will have been professed 56 years. And I linked this aspect to the observance of Lent. I have to say, I myself sort of had to work it out.

[02:41]

I've been professed 32 years now, well 31 years, 32 monastic Lents I've kept. I don't know how you fare here. I expect Father Placid has observed the most monastic Lents. And I don't know if Brother Nathan's observed the least or has anyone been here a little less than you. But we're now in our third week of this particular Lent. We're also in retreat. And we might well just ask ourselves, well, how's it going in 1986? I'd like to begin by perhaps looking at those past monastic lengths. I'm afraid when we do that, we have to most likely come to the conclusion that we have more regrets about our non-observance than we have joy about them being really fruitful.

[04:00]

Well, I certainly do. I think most of us come to the same conclusion. But what ever happened in the past, this Lent, let's take courage and recall again those brief and yet very poignant words that are read in the liturgy of Ash Wednesday. Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation. Let's be convinced about that. And if we thought about it on Ash Wednesday and it slipped a little bit now into the past, let's renew it again here today. I'm sure, like any monastic house, you're reminded here at the beginning of Lent of what Saint Benedict tells us in chapter 49.

[05:04]

And we have there, don't we, the community aspect of it. All of us are encouraged to take on some extra private prayer and all have to abstain from some food and drink. I remember, stupidly, my first Lent at St Anselm's, that on Ash Wednesday I thought, like at Dowie, we'd have our main meal in the evening. So I went without anything till the main meal, only to discover that they just had soup. And by the evening of Ash Wednesday I was ravenous. But there is I think within any community, the communal aspect of it. But Saint Benedict doesn't leave it at that.

[06:08]

He also introduces the personal observance. Let him stint himself of food, drink, sleep, talk, and jesting. I always like the little bit about jesting because people sometimes feel that Saint Benedict doesn't like any hilarity in the community. Because obviously, from this little bit in Lent, we've got to stint ourselves from it. He obviously does put up with a certain amount of hilarity and fun. But added to this chapter, we also find in chapter 48, in these days of Lent, let them each receive a book from the library which they shall read through consecutively. We're certainly encouraged by this aspect of Saint Benedict's teaching that Lent should be a time when we do that extra Lectio.

[07:13]

But in order that perhaps individuals don't go overboard about all this, they don't go mad, or in case they're moved deprived, we have to ask the superior's permission for our own individual Lenten requests. Because again, as Benedict says, because what is done without the permission of the spiritual father shall be ascribed to presumption and vainglory. Now that's the scene that should be ours at this time of year. But in actual fact, this particular year, I think it was the Thursday or Friday of Ash Wednesday week, I received the diocesan circular letter, the Bishop's Lenten letter to the diocese.

[08:18]

Archbishop Hickey, and I was rather touched by his address when he said, from the Church's earliest days, this season has been the final and intensive period of preparation for baptism. And he asked us there to remember especially all those who were preparing for baptism. Now we, like you, we have not got pastoral work outside. A couple of our monks, in fact, do work occasionally on the parishes on Sunday, but we were not pastorally orientated. But it is important, I think, that as monks, that we are aware of the wider church.

[09:24]

And because of our special dedication to prayer, I think it is useful to remind ourselves, because personally this letter has come out, that there are thousands of people in the world who are most likely preparing to be received into the Church this Easter. The emphasis now in the Church is to make that reception as far as possible at Easter time. And let us make sure we bring those people into our prayer life. They might be having doubts, they might be struggling, they might be having difficulties. But for us at St Anselm's, in fact, there was also a very personal link Just prior to Ash Wednesday we had a young man who'd been four years as a Lutheran minister in Philadelphia and at the moment he is under instruction and going to be received this Easter on Easter Sunday.

[10:31]

He's resigning from his ministry, I think, towards the end or middle of March. Middle of March, it must be. He's still carrying on sort of the Newman streak there. He didn't quite know when to announce it. But he is very interested at the moment in the monastic life. I don't know if he'll visit you here. He's got a number of monasteries to visit. But I was very impressed by him. And there was certainly a sort of aspect in my attitude where here was someone who was not only being received but also thinking of the monastic life and certainly does need our prayers. But then on top of this, there's our own personal aspect about and link with baptism. Cardinal Newman in one of his sermons reminds us all through our life Christ is calling us.

[11:40]

He called us first in baptism and afterwards also. Whether we obey his voice or not, he graciously calls us still. He calls us again and again. in order to justify us again and again. And again and again and more and more to sanctify and glorify us. Now there certainly is a really impressive link to me, incentive to recall our own personal baptism. And certainly It's not just a catechumenate aspect of Lent. It is something that the Church brings into the whole of her liturgy. We're caught up in this, especially in the joy of Easter, the renewal of our baptismal vows at the Holy Saturday Vigil.

[12:52]

The trouble is, again as Cardinal Newman reminds us, we are slow to master the great truth that Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by his hand, by his eye or voice, bidding us to follow him. Yes, you know, if we're honest, We're dilatory and slow. We let so many spiritual opportunities slip past us. And there's that whole aspect of life, of time. Once it's gone, we can never get it back. We've lost it. Some years ago, when just after Consider Your Call was brought out by the English congregation.

[13:57]

Abbot Victor Farwell got very excited at the chapter, the general chapter, that we as an English Benedictine congregation should be making some response to a document that the hierarchy brought out in England called the Church 2000. It's one of these sort of projected looks of what was happening or going to be happening in the church. And he felt that we as a congregation ought to respond to this and sort of give the Benedictine or the English Benedictine touch to it. And then it was pointed out that perhaps the hierarchy might not be too keen for the Benedictines to be telling them what exactly was going to happen, in the church in the year 2000. But what did come out was that although, apart from Ambrose Wattam, the Consider Your Call got many very good reviews, a lot of lay people bought it thinking that they were going to find all the answers

[15:11]

And the title of the book and the contents of it looked as if it was going to be a book that you couldn't put down. Whereas one lawyer who I knew who had received it as a birthday present from his wife said, father, the problem is I find difficulty in picking it up. And as a result of this, the commission was set up. as you know, which brought out that book, A Touch of God, six monks and two nuns. I got pulled into it just because I happened to be a delegate in chapter and got sucked into this commission and found it very difficult to cope with it. In fact, when we started, we found it very difficult to cope at all.

[16:13]

We didn't really know what we'd been commissioned to do. And one of the things that we did was to write various papers which Maria Boulding set us on various titles. And one of these was written by Alan Rees, a monk of Belmont Abbey. now the novice master there. And I want this morning to just touch on the opening part of this particular paper that he wrote, because he talks about the community as a place of healing. I think very often when we think about community, we do emphasize the growth side. I ought to be growing. I ought to be changing. But very often it's not so much of what we ought to be doing rather than what we're doing to each other.

[17:21]

And if we start what I'd call meditating on our own navel too much, I think our monastic life can go wrong. Let me just read this to you. It is very easy to live in the monastic family and remain isolated. This can happen because of lack of acceptance on the part of the community, there's the community side to it, but more usually it happens because of the isolation of the individual. Now isolation does not necessarily mean that one is in any sense cut off from the life of the community, but it can mean that an individual refuses to share his deeper needs with his brethren so that they only know him on the surface and so fail, not through their own fault, to respond to his deeper needs.

[18:41]

Community life, very often, in our older established orders, and certainly up until recently, has tended to be politely superficial. I'm sure you're all aware of that aspect of it. Burdens have admittedly been carried and weaknesses acknowledged and accepted. Toleration has often been excellent. But has it gone any further than toleration? It is easy to tolerate provided one doesn't have to get too involved, provided one doesn't have to go too far in loving the person in difficulties. And if our communities are going to become places of deep healing,

[19:46]

More than toleration is required, real compassion, loving concern and support are needed. And the ability to bring the healing Christ into the hurtful situation through prayer. I remember at Dowie that perhaps just after the Vatican Council had come to a conclusion and the charismatic movement was growing, that it was felt that it would be opportune for some of the community, if they so wish, to gather together once a week, literally to share prayerfully together and to respond to certain questions that were put up as a result of the prayer. And I remember one monk who'd been in the community, what, 20-odd years then, a person who'd come in just after me, who was brilliantly clever, a very, very astute mind, almost like a computer, but said very little.

[21:07]

You never felt you got to know him. And after this first group discussion where we went round the room one by one, each person responding to what he thought the scripture has said to him in this passage or to whatever question had been raised, and the whole motive was just to listen to what this person is saying, this particular monk said at the end of the meeting, most movingly and an aspect aside to him I'd never never seen before. I've been in this monastery 20 odd years and this is the first time I've ever been able to share with anyone. But it's what I've always wanted. and straight away I saw that man, that monk, in a new light. He was a different person to me and has been ever since.

[22:08]

I haven't got that much closer because there is that reserve still there, but I am a lot closer and I have an insight into him which I've never seen before. I think this is what Alan Rees is touching on. And he goes on here by saying, by our monastic training, we have learnt so often to become impersonal, to sacrifice to a large extent our feelings, to be concerned but not too involved. And on the other side of the coin, we don't wish to be a burden to others. And worse, we cannot show anyone, at least not outside the confessional, exactly how weak we are. And then he says, here I must talk personally.

[23:13]

And isn't it strange how these personal expositions that people have begun to make seem to be something that the church does seem to listen to? odysseys of people's lives, their conversions, whether they will last. But it's the personal touch, I think, that these people so often bring in, which we can relate to because we see it in our own lives. But Alan Rees admitted that I had a wrong idea of community, precisely the one I've been talking about. It was easy enough to share with one's confessor one's personal difficulties in the life of following Christ, but even here the lids were not completely off. There were so many signs of oneself, burdensome if not exactly sinful, that one shirked sharing while the darkness gathered.

[24:24]

and the darkness, of course, is that of pride. One particular thing which caused me anxiety snowballed into acute anxiety, doubtless because of a bereavement experienced then a dear one of mine dying, and this causing such a mental state that I had only one way out, to acknowledge what was wrong face it squarely with my abbot and some brethren and seek the remedy. This was a great blow to my pride and a major lesson in humility and realising the place of the community who accepted me in love and helped me to see the reality of the situation that I had blown out of all proportion. but which nonetheless was causing me great suffering.

[25:31]

Now isn't that so true in our monastic life? So often something which starts off small, it niggles at us, it gets at us, could be an individual, it could be something that's going on in the community, and we blow it out of all proportion. And then sometimes we snap, we blow off ourselves, or sometimes we're big enough to be able to share it and bring it out and have it released. But in the sharing of the burden, did I come to healing? I did. And it was only through the sharing could I come to the realisation of Christ's love, which could only be released through the brethren. It's very fine to talk and theorise on community and what an experience it is to find Christ using the community to heal each individual in it as the barriers are thrown down and the heart becomes open.

[26:39]

Looking at it from the other point of view, all our communities have awkward individuals who cry out for attention and in so doing creates situations which cause unrest and bad feeling. Now, I've never really come across a community or spoken to a community quite as small as yours, but I'm not accusing you of having people who are awkward individuals. But, as Alan Rees says here, Repeated acts, on their part, can bring the community, very often, to a point of casting aside the person in its collective consciousness. The sort of feeling, we have tried, what more can we do with him? Our Lord said, as we were reminded this morning, seventy times seven.

[27:49]

And it's no less for us as a group as as individuals. We may be constantly hurt as a group and as individuals by the awkward and the contumacious, but they must be healed in the community. And this is only achieved by acceptance. And accepting such individuals means a constant dying to oneself so that the other may live. We have only one example of this, and again very much linked to the whole theme of today's Mass. We have only one example to follow in this, that of the Lord Jesus himself. And however bad and critical and uncharitable we might feel towards the contumacious, when it comes to the crunch, we have to put on the apron of humility and service and kneel down and wash their feet in the same spirit as the Lord.

[29:08]

I think I'll just say there, perhaps this coming Maundy Thursday, There is an aspect in your lives as a community you can think of as the washing of the feet takes place. It takes two to make a quarrel and one finds that neither side is wholly in the right or wholly in the wrong. Reproachment means breaking down the barriers on both sides. Now here I feel Alan Rees has touched on an aspect of monastic life that is sensitive at times because it's hurtful, but it's an area which every community and every individual in the community needs to face up to if we are going to understand what we should be about.

[30:10]

As Corinthians tells us, It is as though God were appealing through us and the appeal that we make in Christ's name is be reconciled to God. Today we were very, very strongly reminded in our liturgy together that reconciliation comes about through our forgiveness of each other. That's it. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.

[31:15]

Amen. I'm excited about it. I've got a big statement that our lives should have about them at all times, and led to them. And I would... How would you interpret that? Welcome. ideal, I realise, but we know we don't do it.

[32:20]

So, during Lent, we're putting the ideal before you again. It's something, a challenge for you. Have a go at it, for 40 days at least. But also, there's just that little touch, isn't there, in the chapter. In fact, I think it's the only mention of joy in the rule of Saint Benedict, in chapter 49, the joy of Easter, where he holds out for us again what the monastic life is really about, where we're going with it. This triumph over sin and death, the resurrection, that's what we should be aiming for, the joyous occasion. And I think we've With the reassessment of the sacramental life of the church that's gone on with the Vatican II, this is one aspect that has been really strongly emphasised. You think back to the old days of what we did for Lent.

[33:24]

We took on something and we couldn't wait till Holy Saturday midday for it to stop again. I know my father always used to give up alcohol for Lent. And he literally stood by the sideboard in the dining room on Easter Saturday, Holy Saturday morning, waiting for it to reach 12 o'clock because Lent was over. We'd have a drink. He always said it was the best drink of the year. But, you know, that was rather the attitude. And what the Church has really been trying to re-emphasise in its approach to Lent and observance now, is let's do something positive. And don't let it finish at Easter, continue it. Keep it going. Now, we know that so often we intend to do that, but we don't. But the emphasis is rather on the positive side rather than the negative side.

[34:28]

Now, I think they've really picked out something that was there in the rule. That's what Saint Benedict was really saying to us. that you won't be able to live up to the ideals I've spelt out so far in the rule for you, but during Lent have a special go at it. And the Lectio and the prayer and the going without for fasting's sake in order to tone up the body and the mind was all part of it. Getting fit again. Taking off the flab. I'd say this is really this, the Latin character really is this task of orientation, isn't it? Yes. Yes. We always ought to be oriented towards resurrection. Yeah. All the time. Yes. We get reflected, vowed. So these are the helps to keep us focused.

[35:33]

You're mentioning of the When I started off last night, I talked about this whole aspect of monastic life in that sort of definition I put out, of a certain maturity that must be present for those that come in. Now, we all know when we've met what we would consider the really mature monk. Or it needn't be a monk, it could be a priest or even a person outside. It is someone that we feel at ease with.

[36:37]

And we don't sort of start analysing him and saying, oh, he is a mature person. We often don't relate to that. But there is some presence there which attracts us to be at ease. Now, I think in community life, If there are areas where there is tension, we can't feel relaxed, then we are having problems. One sort of example, not touching on any sort of uncharitable aspect, but it was pretty horrendous, I think, that In most monastic communities in the 60s, if you'd asked a monk to go out and give a talk outside on prayer, he'd say, oh, Father, I couldn't do that. I couldn't talk about prayer. And these were people who'd maybe been in the community 30, 40 years.

[37:45]

There was a feeling that here were men who were meant to be men of prayer, And yet there was something lacking that they couldn't share that with someone outside at all, even in discussing. I'm not saying all monks are like that, but I remember Abbot Mooney saying this. This was something that we just thought, oh no, I couldn't talk about prayer. Now, maybe we talk too much about it nowadays, but there has come into monastic life a realisation that prayer is something that needs to be shared. Others are dying to learn to pray. They want to pray. And you think of the greatness of the impact of the Merton books have had on the world. because he started to unfold and share with outsiders in a very down-to-earth way.

[38:52]

I'm not saying there had never been books written about prayer at all. Francis de Sales, very, very human insights. But generally speaking, it wasn't something people talked about. And what has been the result? We find now that many, many lay people are people of deep prayer lives. You find that here with the people that come to you to share in your prayer life here. Now, that I think has come about by communities growing in maturity in that aspect of their lives. Now, there are others. I think each community knows the areas where it has to grow. That is something you share or should be able to share in your community chapters, your community meetings amongst yourselves. With charity, with the encouragement that's given to you, and it happens.

[39:55]

Would that be so? Would you as a Well, I think it's one of the most difficult things, I would say, because I've, you know, talked to our own chapel, that I feel that our ability to support one another is really very seriously deficient. And again, it'll be just us. It seems to be a male problem in some way. And none of us want flattery, and none of us want, you know, the one extreme, but our simple capacity, again, as you were saying, there was somebody who was having difficulty without even kind of kicking him when he's down, without realizing it, you think, well, you know, but somehow we find it difficult to be that kind of supportive thing that doesn't either, you know, Yes, that's the danger. It's the feeling of denying or excusing or being weak, tolerant.

[40:59]

You know, we've let too many things creep into the monastery. We've become lax. We need a good reform. It's getting that balance right. But, in fact, the great reformers in the church were very often very human people. And it comes back to today's gospel, doesn't it? I mean, the parable speaks so loudly to us. You know, we just have to think, look at yourself, your own relationship with God, and the thousands of times he's forgiven you. Put that into practice in your forgiveness of others. And we find a positive response. I mean, Alan Rees, I reckon, in many monasteries, would have left. He would have gone. He'd come to breaking point. And with the loss of his mother, I think it was, Ivory's mother, as far as they died fairly shortly after each other, so one of a broken heart almost. But whichever one it was in this particular thing, that was the excuse which he was giving to himself, which he shared with us as a group, to leave in order to go and take care of the remaining parent as the only child.

[42:12]

He was kidding himself, but he hadn't been able to share any of the sort of, you know, the fact that he'd drifted away from meditation, he'd stopped doing spiritual reading, he'd got caught up in the school and was more keen on getting on and doing that and been losing his prayer life in the monastery by being sucked into the school without sort of saying, what is happening to me? But it really took the opportunity of being brave enough of saying, I'm going to go and talk to the abbot. and the abbot at the time being a person who had that compassion and insight and said, okay, don't just talk to me, come on, tell some of the community about this, let them see. Most likely knowing that many of the community had most likely been into him and saying, you know, that chap Rhys can't go on like this or that chap Alan can't go on like this, he'll leave.

[43:15]

But not knowing how to deal with it. Now that's what I think is very often necessary. And I think Father Martin's quite right. We've been brought up on this stiff upper lip and, you know, grin and bear it and this is part of it. But in fact we're not. so tough very often. And the very fact that we come together in community is admittance that we do need each other. If not, just why not go out and live our lives by ourselves as sort of hermits, if you really want to be monastic, or as individuals. Why come together to do it? And we need to emphasize this togetherness, but respecting the individuality that each of us have got. Because it's the individuality, I think, that gives strength to the community. It's getting that balance right, and that's what I see as maturity.

[44:19]

It is strange, in a way, that somehow a woman has a capacity to see someone with their faults and still love them. Whereas we as men want them to get rid of their faults in order that, you know, then we can be somehow it's not genuine, our part, unless we let them know of all their faults and all their things. Sure, they've got a program to get over them. But it is true that a woman can love you and it, I mean, there's all sorts of wrong things. You know, she's looking for something, etc., etc. But it's a capacity they seem to have to recognize genuine fault and deficiency and still love, in that sense, through it. And in spite of it, without pushing it aside somehow, there's an acceptance there, I guess. But they seem to have a capacity for this. that as men, we just, it's there, but it really is, it's not a kind of co-natural thing with us.

[45:22]

It's the, we have more the shape up or shape out notion, where if you really wanted to, you could, or, you know, yeah, I love you, but keep in mind always that these things are there, and somehow, you know, I've known women who can, There's no question that the husband or the boyfriend or the child or whoever friend has got some real serious faults, but that doesn't make a difference to them, as it seems to with us. There'll be all kinds of sidekicks from this. They say, of course women are like that, because Men have forced them into it for so long to be submissive and to show, you know. It's an amazing thing. We're experiencing it in the same way. And as I say, there's all sorts of wrong things, but they begin to have a genuine capacity to honestly accept someone with their fault in a way that his mental ego seemed to be able to do it.

[46:25]

Now, probably the father with the son, you know, at a certain age or something, but then somehow that It's an amazing thing. Is that true with members of the same sex? No, I'm not... I know they have different... I've experienced that from women in a way I've never experienced it from men. And it's not the fact that they were, you know, trying to knock other's socks by me. It's just something which they have a capacity to do. It's amazing. And in some sense, what little I've got of it, I've learned it from people who could do it in a genuine way, without, as I say, without denial, without All those things that we do or I do to enable you to accept somebody with their faults, they seem to have the capacity to do it. Yes, I agree with that. I think there was a certain sadness I felt down in Washington where you get involved in the seminary scene quite a lot. A lot of the spiritual directors and seminaries have been nuns or people trained, women trained theologically now and seem to have been doing great work and there's been a reversal now in this seminary inquiry or something come out that they mustn't hold these posts.

[47:41]

And this has caused quite a lot of consternation because there seemed to be such a lot of good possibly because students could turn to the woman spiritual director very often and be far more open and honest and also get the feedback in a sympathetic yet firm way. And a number of seminary priests involved in teaching have said, you know, We're going to regret this. It's a pity it's been, I mean some of them are getting around it by just saying they're not spiritual directors now, but keeping them there. But it's a pity that that had to be come about when there seemed to be growth. I reflected on that a little more than my kind of conclusion today. With men, they're more on the, you know, the logical mind and all, and And like peace, one definition of peace is to be the rightful order.

[48:48]

If somebody is disordered within a personality, then you want to put order back into it, and then you have peace. While with the women, You know, they just don't think about it. It's just, you know, love. Why does he love somebody? He's a jerk and all that. And it's just being in love. You can't be that. I remember when my sister-in-law fell in love. And the guy, you know, nobody in the family liked this guy. But she was in love, you know, and you just couldn't, couldn't say any words. It depends on the person. Or, you know, you couldn't say anything. And, you know, it's good, you know, life is not just reason. It's always healing. But I think that aspect is very strong in us because, you know, we know what a certain order, how it works, and somebody knows how, you know, to prepare you for certain things, and therefore we understand that we are not the right being.

[50:02]

And it seems that the personality is also Would you feel that we are intolerant of women as well who are not conforming? Or less so? Because I wondered if... They say this is a kind of peculiar thing, and of course I'm talking from my own experience, and I'm sure I had it from my parents in a way, but by the time you get old enough to know what it was like as a kid, you've forgotten all of it. They show you a child's photograph, and you tell the parents where you lived and so on and so forth. But once I get to be an adult, and of course this is again one's self, my self, that we don't forgive ourselves, and we hold things against ourselves well, And you have to somehow see somebody who really is able to accept you in a way with things that are genuine and false.

[51:04]

And it isn't the intensity of love, I mean love is a bit of insanity in this, but I don't mean that. There's a genuine cherry over where someone can really thoroughly accept, which doesn't excuse your wanting to get better and so on, but somehow can still say yes to you in this moment. you know, and yes, you've also got defaults and so on and so forth, but that's not, you know, that doesn't, you know, it's not a love you if type of thing, which it seems to be, well, that's men are love you if, you know, if you promise you're going to change your behavior. Yes, but I wondered if, I was going to say, if the answer to that was that we as men are more tolerant of the weaknesses in the feminine sex in women, is it because we're less tolerant of each other as men because this whole aspect that you are the breadwinners, and if you're not going to play your part for providing as a man, then we reject you. And even when we're men living together, that still overflows if a person doesn't seem to be tolerant.

[52:10]

and living up to the, shall I say, the norms of the group, then he's pushed out. As often, you know, animals do it. You get, I mean, with pigs, the little one was never allowed to get near the mother for feeding. And then when it came to trough feeding, it was always pushed aside. So eventually the grunt got smaller and smaller, left miles behind. Then it was the same with sheep. There seems to be something built in here with a certain nature. And it may be even for the Sebastian's that they're more tolerant of us and less tolerant of one another, and we're more tolerant of them. I don't know what the thing is, but the experience is there's a certain... Somehow I always felt if either I had faults or somebody else did, and you didn't let them know it, you somehow are being honest. And there is a way of somehow, you know, of accepting someone without having to raise that flag, you know, even in terms of yourself, which is not denial, and it's not avoidance, and it's not all these other kinds of things that are ways that we handle the problem, you know.

[53:21]

Somehow they can set expectations of what somebody's able to do at the moment, and that might be part of it too. It's a kind of a wonderful thing, and then you realize that God can also look at me with my sins and actually love me, and it's not a, you know, it's not a... deficiency on the part of God, or not a crazy notion I have of God, that someone actually can love me, even though I am far from perfect, or you know, so on and so forth. And something, I'd say, for me that's always been a good experience, that someone could, because it does put that possibility in your human order, that it also could be true then, that God does actually love us. It forgives us even though we're not worthy of forgiveness. But it's the good in the other person that you recognize. Any forgiveness always comes out of the goodness of the person forgiving it. And it doesn't have to have anything to do with the person. Anyway, I think we may try to get some kind of a balance.

[54:26]

I think Nathan, one of the great ways, from a Benedictine point of view, is take the chapter, The Tools of Good Works, and you just go through them. Now, I know in Benedict's time, murder and, you know, the monks took their knives off in case they got upset in the night and things, and, you know, it was more common. But even so, thou shalt not kill is there. You know, and I have to admit, I've never killed anyone. But someone like Idi Amin, I wished him dead, which even as a monk and as a priest is as good as saying, I was quite happy to have him murdered. I had not accepted him. I know it was what he'd done, but I still in my heart would have been delighted if someone had killed him, which was wrong. I'm in the wrong now. by even thinking that.

[55:27]

And there are many times in life, you know, where we don't actually do the murdering ourselves, but it's in our hearts. We haven't got that forgiveness. I think if you take the tools of good works and just say, where do I stand in a measuring against what Saint Benedict is calling out here, and we find we've still got a long way to go for full maturity. But we can certainly be encouraged by it as well. I have discovered, somewhat to my surprise, a bit to my distress, that the longer I've been here, the less comfortable I've felt with language about love and compassion. And I wonder why. And I think part of it is to refer to the reason that, to some extent, even before I joined, and since I've come, some of the people who've been in and out of here, who were most adept at manipulating and using language about love and sharing and compassion, were some of the most immature people, who were using it, were really out to satisfy their needs in rather immature ways.

[56:40]

And I've seen that in a number of people in a number of quarters, even before coming to the monastery as well. The result is, it's made me much more cautious about using it. But then, at the same time, it's an inner conviction that once you get down to what it really means, it's exactly on the mark. That's what we're supposed to be about. We have to look at it in the scriptural, theological terminology, really. I mean, and scripture is full of it. But we have, the world has brought in a rather slushy aspect of it. Self-satisfying, which is not what love is. Love is sacrifice, love is giving. as Christ gave his own life. That's the real definition. As soon as we start reflecting, it's what I want.

[57:44]

If you all treat me like I want you to treat me, then I'll love you all. That's not what love's about. And you notice in marital love, the real love is shown very often in the suffering. When parents are let down by their children, when a husband is out of a job, when a wife isn't physically fit, then the real love is shown through the suffering. It's not all getting, not all receiving, it's in giving. And certainly in my years as pastor today, you know, I saw this and I had people referring to it in hospitals so often. Nurses would say, you know, how can this person accept this cancer and this suffering in such a wonderful way. And what it teased was they had discovered the love of God in their lives and they'd accepted God's suffering, Christ's suffering and death, and related to that.

[58:48]

Now a person who has no faith, to them it's just pure and simple physical suffering and why in the hell should they have to put up with it? So they start off resenting it with nothing to give. Whereas I think that the person with a real faith and a loving faith can give and therefore the suffering itself is alleviated. I also had a matron in a hospital say to me once, the worst people I've ever seen in hospitals for dying are priests. And she said, they'd all been terrified. I thought, oh gosh, where's she leading me? But I thought, you know, perhaps this is an aspect, you know, that we've got mixed up. As priests, and not as monks, as priests talking about it. It is being an aspect, being for another Christian, but then we want to talk about

[59:51]

for him in the way that I think is good for him. And the people, I think, are different. I am glad that you are. That's the first thing. I will that you are. That is a kind of, say, love. And what comes, comes from that. But it's before someone else, in a way. that I'm not seeing as reflecting on me or my credit and so on and so forth. Where I think there is a danger in the whole of this area, in all community life, is that you move into the aspect that you're all in each other's pockets all the time, you're sharing everything. And what it comes down to very often, nothing gets done. Everyone's so busy sharing that the individual doesn't have time to get on and do anything. Now, you know, that's the swing of the pendulum the other way. And I think there should be and must be the right balance.

[60:56]

The individual must be able to get on with his own monastic spiritual life. But he needs the community and the community needs all the individuals. It's finding that aspect. You know, we need to be alone with God. But we can often lose the community or the needs of other individuals by taking refuge in our silence, which we say is us being alone with God, but in fact it's us just being alone with ourselves as we see it. And it's sorting all that out that I think we have to work at in monastic life. The ultimate behavior of perfection. And that seems to be the dirty word now. That's what I think.

[61:58]

Because if somebody is righteous or follows, you know, the regularities of the life of the, you know, rules and customs and all that, then it's almost too much, you know, doing too much, it seems. And this brought us here. And well, you know, sometimes when a remark is made, it's out of this, you know, it's to encourage the man to keep going towards perfection. And, of course, it comes across as correcting or kind of putting the knife into his life or something. And this is, I think, something that should be done in that extent. really be willing to excuse them.

[63:02]

I tried, you know, I had headaches for almost a year. I thought it was a brain tumor. I was so concerned about certain people, you know, I could see that going on their way out, and I was trying to help them. It was just not helping at all. And when I stopped worrying, then it was a big improvement for my own health and spiritual and physical health. But at the same time, you see that it just didn't work. And that's where the other aspect of compassion comes in. But I think that the other aspect also that we need, you know, to learn always, to improve. It has to be there also, otherwise it's life alone. It doesn't make much sense. Well, the way of perfection is something that we strive after, but our Lord, who was perfect, was also derided, you know, and we sometimes, in our search for perfection, we have to walk in his footsteps.

[64:16]

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