Before I start the topic for this evening, I'd like to just mention something I forgot to talk about this morning when I was talking about wisdom. I mentioned Hildegard's fiery angel as a symbol of wisdom. And in 1996, I was giving the retreat to the brothers out at Big Sur, and I mentioned Hildegard's a fiery angel as a symbol of wisdom and talked about her anaphan and so forth. And I made a flippery mark in the middle of my talk, maybe we should embroider Hildegard's fiery spinning angel on our scapulars. Nobody laughed, and I thought to myself, That was a stupid remark. So I left there. I went up to my accommodation. I was sitting there thinking, praying, something else. And there's a knock on the door, and a monk was standing outside with an icon of Hildegard with the angel on her scapular. Synchronicity.

[01:03]

One of the monks who had left the community the previous year had painted it and left it for the community. Now, my topic for this evening is learning how to love. The transformation of affectivity, sexuality, intimacy, needs, and so forth. That's going to keep everybody awake, right? Jesus says in the last discourse, I will send you the Holy Spirit who will teach you all things. And I really believe that's true and the work of the Holy Spirit in us. Well, teach us how to love, because in Romans 5.5, one translation says the Holy Spirit, who is love, is poured into our hearts. I think that the vow of celibacy, like all vows, are about being transformed.

[02:06]

There are ways of making more explicit the things I was saying the other day about the Paschal Mystery. You know, that this is phosphorus of suffering and death, resurrection. And so Jungbin, the liturgist at Notre Dame in Old Vaux, says that Eros must travel the way of the cross. Eros must travel the way of the cross. And if the whole purpose of monastic life or religious life is to become a spirit-filled and transfigured person, it's necessary to be a cross-bearer, to enter deeply into that pattern of the Paschal Mystery. And all the vows are about dealing with those parts of ourselves that could easily be disordered. Power, possessions, pleasure, The vows are a kind of container or restraints on that particular energy. Restrictions, freely chosen boundaries.

[03:12]

You know, in the classic medieval monasteries, a monastery was usually built from a quadrangle around an inner garden with a fountain in the center. And it's kind of a containment of psychic energy, you know, concentration. Christian tradition has not dealt very positively with the whole question of love, sexuality, the body, intimacy, needs, passion, and so forth. Although I must say, since Vatican II, there's been a lot more writing that's much more positive. Back in 1983, I got a telephone call from someone I studied with at Fordham. She was teaching religion at Ithaca College. And she said, Sister Donald, I'm forming a panel for the regional meeting of the American Academy of Religion, which we'll meet at Syracuse University. And the topic is sexuality and spirituality. Would you be the Christian person on that panel?

[04:14]

There was also a rabbi, a Sufi, Houston Smith, the great teacher of religion at Syracuse. a Buddhist and me. And I thought it was a great idea. It would be a wonderful conversation. So I said, sure, Alice. All right. So when I get to Syracuse University a couple of months later for the panel, all the rooms were allocated in this building. And I looked and the title of our panel was not sexuality and spirituality, but sexuality versus spirituality. And this is going to be an interesting time. Anyway, I call it the Great Syracuse Massacre of 1983 because I think every disgruntled Catholic in Syracuse came to attack me. There was a room about this size and I think there were 150 people in it. I'm not kidding. Well, I gave my little paper and was in the discussion and, you know, I felt a little bit like St.

[05:18]

Sebastian. He put arrows in it. Show us the kind of grudge people had about the church. Houston Smith came up to me afterwards and he said, you gave a wonderful paper. It's too bad people couldn't hear you. So, I don't know. So that's the kind of picture that people have, especially in secular culture, of the Church's historical attitude about sexuality and so forth. Richard Gore made a comment on one of his tapes, nowadays everyone's sexuality is wounded. Actually, I think that's pretty much an overstatement, but I would say perhaps everybody's affectivity is wounded because the collective shadow of the West, so to speak, we don't deal very well with affectivity. So I would say our affectivity is wounded, certainly. And I think that some of the Indians have particularly written some wonderful insights about this.

[06:24]

Robert Johnson, for example, who was also a Episcopal priest. His book, She and He, and one called The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden. But there's not much in our tradition about the wisdom of dealing with sexuality, intimacy needs, and so forth. And in our secular world, the Christian tradition is seen as anti-body, anti-sexuality, and so forth. And usually, the person, the scapegoat who's blamed for all of this is St. Augustine, which is, I think, not totally fair. I forget the name of the woman scholar who's written a lot on Christian art, and one of her books talks about St. Augustine and his attitudes about the body and sexuality and so forth. She points out that in early Augustine, when he just had converted to Christianity, that may have certainly been true of some of his attitudes, but that in his later essays, he was much more positive.

[07:28]

In fact, one of his last essays was on the goods of creation, and the first one he mentions is sexual intercourse. So he was in no way a Jansenist or denying. St. Paul in Galatians 5 makes a virtual catalog of the disordered self in that area. And I think that affectivity in Western society is stifled and shriveled and twisted, and even if it's underground and repressed, it often becomes obsessive. Leon Bloy, the French writer, made this comment about priests, and I think it could apply to all religious. something to think about. He says, because they love no one, they think they love God. It's a rather condemning statement. Because they love no one, they think they love God. If we are going to live genuine, celibate lives, it's not a question of whether we will be loving or not, but how we will love.

[08:36]

And I think that a faithfully lived religious life and dedication and so forth is a gradual transformation in that area and it will lead to a greater and wider love of humanity and the world and expressing love and concern to others and so forth, identification with the subject of humanity and something we heard about in the news and so forth. I could tell you a brief story. One of the Himalayas monks in California, I won't mention his name, probably wouldn't want me to mention it, but he'd spent 25 years in Italy at Camaldoli, and then he was sent back to the United States for health reasons primarily. And so he and some of the other monks out there formed a tour group, a pilgrimage to go to Camaldoli, and this was in September of 2011. He gave a talk to the group in the morning. And they had dinner and he went to his room to get a siesta.

[09:41]

When he came down, all the Americans who had come with him grabbed him and said, come on to the TV room. Something terrible has happened in New York. It was September 11th. And he was shocked because during the siesta he had a dream of a huge tall building with bodies dropping off. So, you know, spiritually he had had a sense, you know, a clairvoyant dream about what was happening. So I think that kind of connection and depth and compassion happens in people as they grow in monastic and religious life. And that our life as monastics and religious persons certainly involves an education of errors, you know, which sometimes is challenging and difficult and so forth. Personally, I don't think it's going too far to say that holiness is simply ennobled Eros.

[10:52]

Eros is the deepest thirst in us for completion, for wholeness, for integration, for ultimate self-gift. And ultimately we have a restless heart and now that's meant for self-gift and perfect self-gift. Agustins, our hearts are restless and they do not rest until they rest in Deoloy. Eros is the basic energy of the psyche. Ignatius of Antioch, for example, in one of his letters says, I hear within me a voice saying, come to the Father, a rumbling noise that says, come to the Father. So that's written right into our DNA, you know, this thirst for confession in God, return to the Father. Perhaps the most exalted thing in us as human beings is our very incompleteness, our incompleteness, our need for God. Now one of the old definitions of the human in patristic theology was that the human person is capax de, capax means capacity.

[12:05]

Capax de, capacity for God. It's a very, the most noble thing about us. Jessica Powers has in one of her poems this line, my utmost need is Christ. My utmost need is Christ. So Eros is the basic energy of the psyche and it's far more than erotic in the limited sense. The reading this noon talked about the inner cave of the heart and that as you enter the inner cave of the heart, the deeper you go, the more mysterious and dark, you know, and you may encounter, you know, things that you fear in the depths. But it's necessary to bring those things into light, to tame them. Suppose one of the monsters down there is anger. Well, anger must be dealt with. It must not just be repressed.

[13:07]

Otherwise it can pop out in savage ways and just be plopped on a person who is maybe guilty or not. So we have to bring our affectivity, our intimacy, needs, our passion out of darkness into light. And Jung says that we have to dip into that well, that depth, slowly, bit by bit. You know, we have to dehumanize it, tame it, educate it. Affectivity is so central and necessary to our humanity that if it is dormant, anemic, stifled, twisted, we are less than human. I talked earlier this week about the vessel of the heart. and that the vessel of the heart can expand. And as we run the way of God's commandments, our hearts expand the way that Benedict's heart expanded in the cosmic vision, embracing the whole created order.

[14:13]

So that as we grow in that depth of heart, as we integrate deeper parts of ourselves, our love, our affectivity, becomes wider and more inclusive and deeper and at the same time more, you know, just concrete and personal. We become large-hearted. Dorothy Day, for example, was to me a great example of a magnificent wide-hearted person with great compassion, great sensitivity. Gandhi was called the Mahatma, and in Sanskrit that means the Mahatma, the great-hearted one. Mahatma. Dorothy Day was a Mahatma. I'd even go so far as to say that if we are not in love, we're not truly human. You have to understand that correctly, you know. That love in us, that energy of arrows, is meant to go somewhere.

[15:19]

And I'm not talking about a sentimental baptism, you know, a kind of mushy devotionalism. I don't want to put that down necessarily, but it's not Benedictine and not monastic. Could have some argument about that, anyhow. We must be in love with God and madly in love with God, in love with Christ. I want to tell you about someone I knew a little bit in Binghamton. I know his father better because his father was a deacon that I had in class. He had a son, Michael, who was anorexic, alcoholic, homosexual. And I think a saint. And the father's now trying to get his son Michael's diary published. And so it was sent to Paulist, and Paulist has refused it, but I suggested several other publishers it might go to. Michael struggled with all the problems that he had.

[16:23]

And he worked as a social worker. He was extremely devout. He wore a large cross. He walked to Mass every day, which is usually about two miles. He refused to use a car. He had saved during his lifetime, he died in his late 30s, during his lifetime, he had saved and given to Catholic Relief Services one and a half million dollars out of his salary. And you know, a social worker's salary is not that big. So he was astounded, you know, and his dialogues, his prayers with Christ are just absolutely moving, you know. Much more devotional and kind of, I hate to say mushy, but you know, because they weren't, they're strong. But what a powerful example of a person madly in love with Christ and a very deeply wounded person also at the same time. So people who are truly in love with God are legent and have a deep peace.

[17:28]

They have a self-possession and a dignity, a strength and a centeredness. Bernard Herring says that about people who have true humility, they have a certain dignity. It's the kind of natural dignity as they're at home with themselves. And I think that self-possession and that deep peace and radiance is a witness to the sufficiency of God. Bruno Barnhart says that monks have to witness to the sufficiency of God, that God is enough. God is enough. A French poet, Alfred J. Mousset, wrote this. Much more beautiful in French, but I will venture it. Solemn cloisters, O you of the monasteries, it is you, somber caves, it is you who know how to love. And I think that's a challenge for us. Solemn cloisters, O you of the monasteries, it is you, somber caves, it is you who know how to love.

[18:39]

One of the little masterpieces in our tradition, in the monastic tradition, that's not very well known, but it's a wonderful little treatise on love, is by William of St. Thierry, and it's called The Nature and Dignity of Love. You know, the Cistercian fathers were widely interested in love because in the 12th century was the age of the troubadours, you know, who were already also writing poetry to their ladies and, you know, lived a life of dedication to their ladies. And the Cistercians took that whole cultural theme of that day and focused on Our Lady. So the Cistercians have great love of Our Lady. But every major Cistercian writer wrote a treatise about love, usually sermons on the song of songs, very well known. So they were meeting the cultural theme of the day in writing about love, and of course one of the classic

[19:46]

Pagan authors wrote The Art of Love. And William of St. Thierry turned that into The Nature and Dignity of Love and gets it a Christian expression. Now you have to remember it's a 12th century document, but he's got some beautiful passages in it. And he talks about love moving from Amor to D'Alexio to Caritas to Agape. And so he talks about the refinement of love as it moves along. I don't think it moves that systematically, but his insights are extremely rich, and I find it hardly quoted anywhere. I don't know why it hasn't been picked up more. So living our life on celibacy is not a question of rooting out the passions, which is Jansenist language. You find that language in a lot of 1950s spiritual books and so forth.

[20:55]

It's not about stoicism, which is using the domination of the mind over one's supposed lower appetites. So the answer is to be a transfigured person in Christ. and William of St. Thierry says that it is the work of the Holy Spirit in us who gives love, divine love, meaning our love, and transfiguring it. An English poet, Coventry Patmore, made this remark about love, and I shared it with Dorothy Day one time, and Dorothy said, write that down for me right away. And this is it. Love ennobles religion, and religion ennobles love. But love is bound to be less than human if it is not something more. Beautiful. Okay, I'll read it again. Love ennobles religion, and religion ennobles love. But love is bound to be less than human if it is not something more.

[21:57]

So we have, you know, wonderful examples like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and the Saints of Molokai, David, Damien, and Reverie, and Culp, and so forth. These people have generous self-giving, and now who are expressing divine love to humanity. I have to tell you a story about one of the trees of Calcutta. This is going to sound pretty crazy. I still don't know what to think about it. But when I was standing at Fordham, my advisor said we were sponsoring a When Mother Teresa was going to talk at the United Nations, right before we had a conference at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on the New of Religions, and he said, since you're helping me organize this conference, I'll give you a ticket so that you can go to hear Mother Teresa speak to the UN, but you'll be in a side room and you'll get it by closed-circuit television." I said, wonderful, that's fine.

[23:00]

So I went to it, and it was better than being in the front row because I just looked at her face and she gave the talk. And I finished and I got up to go and get to the subway to go back to the Bronx. And I thought to myself, well, it's just too bad that I didn't get to see her face to face and shake her hand and so forth. So I head for the elevator. The elevator doors open up and guess who's there? Mother Teresa. And I was so stunned. I said, hello, Mother, nodded my head and walked into the elevator and turned around and she was walking down the hall and I said, I could have talked to her. I never knew what to think about it, but a couple of years after that I thought to myself, how could she be alone after giving her talk? How could the protocol people at the United Nations just let her get on an elevator all by herself and go to the third floor, which was not a So I'm wondering who I met.

[24:01]

I began to think it was a CIA. Or the New York police department. I'm sure it looked like Mother Teresa. She was dressed like Mother Teresa. So I don't know who I met. Maybe it was the spiritual presence of Mother Teresa. But I blew it completely. So tomorrow I'll talk about hospitality and I'll also talk about prayer meditation conflation. And Friday I want to lead you on a guided meditation using the Trinity icon. A kind of a new way of using it, something that I've kind of discovered by myself. And actually I've found it very successful in using it with groups and so forth. And then the last talk will be sort of a summary.

[24:53]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v004
@Score_JJ