So many remarks that Alice is still just about seven years old. That's true. Now, as I said yesterday, the first gift that the Father of Life had given her then was the sensitivity, which is so important for us, that we have to be able to respond to reality and to be really sensitive to everything. And then the second, I'm just going to gloss over very quickly, the second gift is was the facile intellect. And not many of us have received an intellect that can be called facile, but we have received an intellect. And the important thing is that we just make good use of what we have, even if we're not great brains. And it's not so important to think profound thoughts or deep thoughts or original thoughts. It's important to think true thoughts.

[01:05]

So we just have to make the best we can with the grace of God, with the intellect that God gives us, and use it in the service of truth, in the service of Christ. And that's real important. Now, the third thing I want to talk more about, and the third thing is that God has given her a tenacious memory of Memory had an enormous role to play in our monastic tradition. Times change, and we live in a different cultural ambient. But in the 12th century, 13th century, reading was still a skill that even monks didn't have to any appreciable degree. And they depended very much on their memory for interiorizing the word of God. So they had to make an effort to really hear and take that word of God into themselves and then begin letting it work on them.

[02:11]

I was just reading with the juniors and the novices, that wonderful monument of monastic literature, St. Athanasius's Life of Anthony. And it's just a wonderful spiritual directory that's still relevant nowadays, especially nowadays. And in it, St. Athanasius tells about Anthony as a young man. He didn't have much of a literary background, but he had this ability to hear and to interiorize. And he uses the expression, he says, he did not let a word of scripture fall to the ground. That's a funny expression. But it goes back to what Origen says about the Word of God. He said it's like the Blessed Eucharist. You just don't let the host fall to the ground. Because this host is the living presence of the Word. It's the incarnate Word who's there. So you have to treat the host with an enormous reverence and love.

[03:13]

And the same way, they had this attitude towards the Word of God. that you just don't let it go in one ear and out the other, that every word of God is filled with something of God's presence and action. And you treat the word of God exactly the same way you treat the blessed sacrament. Now, they have a wonderful biblical concept, I think, of the word of God that's meaningful for us nowadays. Now, I love words. And I love to use wonderful instruments in the library, like Kittel's Dictionary of Biblical Terminology, the Wortebuch, of which you have copies both in English and in German here. And so the article on just the word, davar in Hebrew, logos in Greek, is probably one of the biggest, most extensive articles in this whole Wortebuch. And...

[04:14]

It's a real interesting word in Hebrew. In Hebrew, their words are constructed of so many consonants, and you change the vowels that go with these consonants, and then that changes the meaning of the word. You have a noun, and you change the vowels that go with it, but keep the same consonants, and you have a verb, you change them again, you have a preposition, and all of these terms are related to each other. So at any rate, the word, Hebrew word, devar, means not only word as we understand it, but it means event, a happening. And so when you read, for example, in St. Luke's Gospel, the Nativity narrative, and the shepherds say, let us go over to Bethlehem to see this word which has come to pass, you can tell that St. Luke is working probably with an Aramaic or a Hebrew, Because it's the word incarnate, but it's also a happening, God's intervention in history.

[05:20]

So there's this wonderful richness and ambiguity about the concept of the word. Wherever God's word is, there's an action going on. And God is present through his word and in his word. And you know the word isn't a very comfortable thing to have to live with. The prophets weren't all that happy all the time, you know, when God's word just simply erupted on them, and it just changed the whole nature of their lives. You know, you read the vocation of Ezekiel, you read the vocation of Isaiah, and it's all the same thing, this kind of horror, when God's word comes, and it just changes everything from within and outside. So, at any rate, you had this wonderful... other related words to this concept of the word devar, like the words for desert. Well, first of all, I should say, I don't think the scholars really know what in Hebrew the etymology of devar is.

[06:23]

But some scholars, because it fits in very well with what I would like to think, that it comes from the Hebrew preposition that means devar. behind, or some kind of preposition like behind, and the idea is that behind the word stands the presence of God that's waiting to just erupt forth, to manifest itself. Very much like in the temple vision of Isaiah, which is one of the great patristic points of reference for the exegesis when Isaiah is standing at the entrance to the inner court called Hegel. And he sees at somewhat of a distance across this court where only the male Jews are allowed to be present. He sees the Holy of Holies, which is covered with a veil, and the poles of the Ark of the Covenant sticking out.

[07:25]

And then over the Ark of the Covenant, the strange creatures, the seraphim, that are there in wood form. And then the symbolism of the Hekel, this inner court, this temple, was it represented the whole of creation. And then all of a sudden, as Isaiah is standing there looking, perhaps, on one of the great, great feasts, all of a sudden God reveals himself. And he's throning on the Ark of the Covenant. And then the seraphim... become animated, they become alive, and they sing the holy, holy. And then we read that the skirt of the Lord covers the whole of the area, which is a sign that God's presence and God's glory are just filling the whole cosmos, the whole universe. And then the temple doors and everything begins shaking, and if this whole cosmos isn't big enough to hold the presence and action of God. So,

[08:26]

What's the holy of holy called? The devir, which is another word that comes from this preposition because God is behind the veil. And you just have to wait until God removes the veil and his presence and action become absolutely palpable. And so Isaiah is this great seer, this great visionary. He sees the reality behind everything. And so when our fathers and our people and our monastic tradition, you know, approached the Word of God, it was something that was instinct with a living dynamic presence that if you gave yourself to it, you know, could really work and open itself to you. And so they took their Lectio Divina and their spiritual reading extremely seriously. It was, for me, I think the concept of the word is one of the great unifying realities in our monastic tradition.

[09:30]

That when we celebrate the liturgy and receive the sacraments, this is one form of the word of God that's present and acting in our midst in the sacramental form. When we do our real spiritual reading, that takes us deep and into the word of God and scripture that's related to that. It's the same word that's active and present. And when we're working, And, of course, we do mostly different kinds of work now. But ideally, when we're working, we should be able to be meditating and mulling over the Word of God and keeping it as if we were tabernacles of the Blessed Sacrament, always present to us. But at any rate, we really have to have this awareness of the reality that monks do get when we... share somewhat in the vocation of Isaiah when we see the reality that lies behind the veils of the letter and the sacraments.

[10:31]

I think a lot of you probably know the wonderful play by Thornton Wilder, Our Town. Not all of you. Maybe a little bit later other than that, but there's wonderful... scene towards the end, Emily has died. There's this great love story behind these two young kids, and they've gotten married, and Emily dies in childbirth. And then she wants to come back, and she's heard that there's some possibility of people returning, at least for some time. And so she finally comes back on a day in the past history when she was celebrating her birthday, and And the day she first knew that she had fallen in love with the man who was going to be her husband, this young George Gibbs. And so at any rate, she comes down from her bedroom, and her mother is getting breakfast dreaded.

[11:33]

And this is just a typical day in their life, and the father, I guess, is, I forget what he's doing. But the conversation is just going back and forth in a very ordinary way. maybe not trivial way, but just an ordinary way. And Mother Gibbs is busy with the breakfast and getting the bacon ready. And they're just exchanging commonplaces. And Emily begins getting somewhat frantic. She says, I can't bear it. They're so young and beautiful, her appearance. Why did they ever have to get old? Mama, I'm here. I'm grown up. I love you all. Everything. I can't look... at everything hard enough. And then Mrs. Gibbs, you know, she responds on such an ordinary level. Dear, just wait and be patient. And Emily, I know, look, they're finished, they're going, and just the conversation goes on. And Emily gets more and more frantic because she wants to make this kind of contact.

[12:39]

And the parents just don't see what's there. And Emily says, Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, 14 years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama. I'm married to George Gibbs, Mama. Wally's dead, too. That's her brother. Mama, his appendix burst on a camping trip in North Conway. We felt just terrible about it. Don't you remember? But just for a moment now, we're all together. Mama, just for a moment, we're happy. Let's look. at one another and then the conversation goes on in exactly the same way and they can't see the reality that's really there and so Emily finally says to the stage manager sort of like the chorus the go-between between the action and the audience she says I can't I can't go on it goes so fast we don't have time to look at one another

[13:44]

so she breaks down sobbing. The lights dim on the left half of the stage, and Mrs. Webb disappears. I didn't realize, so all that was going on, and we never noticed. Take me back up the hill to my grave. But first, wait, one more look, and then this beautiful scene. Goodbye, goodbye world, goodbye Grover's Corners, Mom and Papa. Goodbye to clocks ticking and mama's sunflowers and food and coffee and new ironed dresses and hot baths and sleeping and waking up. Oh, Earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. You know, that's one of Newman's great themes, to realize the Christian mysteries, to really have them become real. Oh, Earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

[14:47]

She looks toward the stage manager and asks abruptly through her tears, Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? Every minute? And the stage manager says, No. And there's a pause. And then he says, The saints and poets, maybe. They do some. So remember, all of us monks have to be saints and poets and be aware of what's really going on, at least in some in a deep, instinctive way, even if we're not called by our vocation to have to express all of this in clear, conceptual terms. But just in our monastery, we should be developing this kind of awareness of what's really going on. That's what it means to be a mystic, what it means to have this prophetic vocation to see the reality and to be able in some way to respond to it and proclaim it.

[15:56]

So, at any rate, when we read Scripture and we're in contact with the Word of God, that gives us an insight. to God's action and presence in our community and our own hearts and in the world at large. For the medieval people, then, to have a good memory means to be able to take the Word of God inside ourselves and it has its own efficacy and it's always working and acting on us even if we're not all that aware of it. So as I said before, it's like being sort of tabernacles of the Blessed Sacrament. The Word of God is there. And we probably have all known loads of people who have had this wonderful God-given capacity to memorize things. I'm just thinking of my sister. When she goes about the house doing housework and the radio is on, she'll hear a popular song maybe twice, and she just has it memorized.

[16:58]

And people who come from a non-literary culture are very often just tremendous, you know, at being able to interiorize text. I've read, for example, in Egypt still, when you get out in the boondocks, and it's mostly the peasants, you know, who go to these long liturgies that last for four hours. If they don't go to church for four hours, you know, if they haven't gone to church, it's just enormously lengthy. And, you know, I read about Deacon made a mistake in chanting the Passion, and all the peasants start beating on the floor because they recognize, you know, that a mistake has been made. And so that's absolutely wonderful. Now, I don't think that we sophisticated intellectuals nowadays with... Our university degree was so privileged when it comes to memory. So we have to make up for it, maybe by other ways, just to ensure we have a constant contact with the Word of God.

[17:58]

But I'm thinking of Don Damasus, Vincent. I don't know whether you've told them or they've heard it from Don Damasus himself, how when he entered Maria Locke, he'd been studying philosophy and comparative religion. And when he studied comparative religion, this enables one... not to practice any particular religion. But anyway, he had a wonderful conversion experience in the Department of Comparative Religion. Was that Bonn where he studied? I forget where. Godigan. Godigan was it. Well, they had visiting speakers, and for some reason they asked the prior of Maria Lach to come. And he talked to them, of all things, about the glory of Christ and the transfiguration. And he just made an overwhelming impression on Don Damasus. And so he ends up in Murielach. And his great abbot, Don Idolfon Sjöderwegen, wanted to do something to help clear up a bit of the Nordic fog in Don Damasus' thinking.

[19:02]

So he sends him to St. Anselmo in Rome to follow a course of philosophy, of all things. And the great teacher of philosophy at Assata Anselmo in those days was a guy by the name of Grett, Don Grett, a great Benedictine scholar who wrote these two enormous tomes on neo-to-mystic philosophy, just dreadful stuff. And so, Don Damus said, the only way you could get through the course was by memorizing these two tomes of neo-to-mystic philosophy. So he developed, you know, this incredible... Memory. And those of you who knew Dom Demesis, I think he must have known the whole of the New Testament in Greek and Latin by memory. It was just incredible. Whole swatches of the Old Testament. So he always had these texts present to his mind where as soon as he wanted to consciously, he had all of this interiorized. Well, we certainly can't do that, but we can do the best we can.

[20:05]

Now I want to say something about a different aspect of Now, I think that the author just means that Alice had a good memory in the ordinary sense of the word. She had a retentive memory. But I want to speak about a different aspect of memory that's more mindfulness than actually remembering something specific. Because for us monastics, this mindfulness of God is really, really important. I think in a lot of 17th century, 18th century classical literature, they would refer to it as practicing the presence of God, which can be sometimes a little bit on the artificial side. But I'd prefer to use the word just as mindfulness of God. And My points of reference for mindfulness of God are not any spiritual tactics or books on spirituality, but a couple of people that I've known.

[21:10]

And I remember, oh, it must have been about 15, 20 years ago, I was staying in Paris at a Catholic hospice run by the Buddhist fathers. And so every day on my way back from the library to this hospice, I would get my grocery provisions from a little family grocery store run by an Indian family. So I would have bought my bucket, my loaf of bread, and then I would stop off at the store and get my Camembert cheese and my bottle of wine. And the young fellow... who owned the store, as we said, was Indian. And he was a very wonderful fellow. And every time I would walk in, he would have this enormous smile on his face. And he was just filled with something that was just palpable. And then I soon realized his wife was pregnant with their first child.

[22:15]

And it was clear that this guy couldn't get over this wonderful thing. that was happening. So, you know, I would get my wine and my cheese, and he would tally up the bill, and we'd exchange a few words. And, you know, it was extremely ordinary for the exchange and a chit-chat. And through it all, you could tell, you know, the thing that he was most aware of was this marvelous thing, this gift of life. He was about to become a father, his wife, a mother, and this wonderful expectation. And I think that everything he was doing Behind it all, there was this awareness of this great thing that was happening in his life. And that's just like the mindfulness of God, I think, for us. That no matter what we're doing, there is, deep down, a kind of implicit awareness of this reality of the mystery of Christ in which we're plunged, which is just the heart of a monastic experience.

[23:18]

So we're walking in dishes or we're carrying on a conversation that's just fine or maybe even trivial, but deep down waiting to surface. You know, it's just this real deep experience that's always there. And that's something like what Thornton Wilder was talking about in this business about Emily and do people, does anyone ever realize everything, you know, every moment? Okay, saints and mystics and poets. Well, that's just one example I must say. I don't go back to the store when I'm in Paris all that often now because things are much cheaper at the local supermarket. Monoprix is called, and there's another one called Uniprix. But I have gotten into the shop occasionally, and he doesn't look so happy now. I think, you know, he has three children and he's probably worried about drugs and getting the kids to the university and keeping them out of the games and so forth.

[24:19]

I never will forget, you know, what an overwhelming experience that was. And then the other thing also happened in Paris. It was on... one of the subways, and the Paris subways can get as crowded, if not more crowded, than the subways in Rome or in New York City. And so I was just pushed right next to this young couple, and they were obviously just gaga for each other, and it was just absolutely beautiful, just to be aware of this overwhelming love that they had for each other. And I couldn't help overhearing what they were saying, but I So they were just carrying on a very ordinary kind of conversation. And the young woman said, well, my Aunt Caroline is sick at short. And so over the weekend, I have to go and spend a day or two with Aunt Caroline. And the boy was preparing for law examination early the next week.

[25:22]

And so at any rate, while she was talking about Aunt Caroline, just had her hand already on his arm, and she just pressed his arm and did this kind of token sign of presence and awareness and love. And then he's saying, well, I'm worried about this law professor, and he leans her when he kisses her gently on the forehead without being the slightest bit aware of what he was doing. And it sounded maybe mushy, but it was the most beautiful thing in the world. And you could just tell, you know, that no matter what these kids were doing, you know, there was this kind of awareness of the marvelous thing that had come into their lives, an awareness of each other that was there. I don't know what happened. They were probably fighting like cats and dogs were separated. But I think to me, you know, the contemplative experience has got to be a little bit... like this, that we're carrying with us this great, great love, this great awareness of something that's so beautiful and so deep.

[26:24]

And sometimes, you know, very, very painful, too, because that's part of the contemplative experience also. So, at any rate, this is something that I think should be very commonplace in our monastic communities, this kind of implicit awareness that we carry around with us that can be described as an awareness of the presence of God. In the old days, in some religious order, there used to be some questionable practices. They would be having their recreation. Someone would ring a bell at set intervals and say, presence of God, and everyone would stop. Well, I think that's good, maybe. That's good in a certain context. No, you found it. This is what you did. But for us monastics, there should be enough in a monastic environment for us to be mindful of the presence of God in maybe a less dramatic way.

[27:27]

But now, what this mindfulness is not... It's awfully important, too. It's not concentration or anything artificial like that. There's a great Benedictine I love so much, Don Hesbier. He wasn't a great theologian or really that much of a liturgist when it comes to the theology or spirituality of the liturgy, but he had a computer like mine before there were computers. And he did all kinds of wonderful statistical analyses and ways of tracking down archetypes of manuscripts and so forth. Just a marvelous man, built like a football player and a kind of dynamic person. But I remember his telling me about, or writing something about a retired, an army, a member of the army, an officer who had left the army

[28:27]

and went to Salem as a novice. And he'd read something about the presence of God, so he wanted to practice the presence of God. And he impressed the novice master very, very much. And all of his willpower and all of his ability to concentrate. And this is a guy who was always used to doing everything that he wanted to do, if he could just apply his mind to it enough. So he started practicing the presence of God. And every few days he would go to his novice master and he said, well, I lost it for three minutes the other day. And then the fellow begins developing headaches. And then they get rather serious headaches and migraine headaches. And the novice master is just too dumb to know what's going on. I kept it, but there was a gap of about a minute and a half during dessert yesterday at the noon meal. And thank God, thank God, the Lord intervened.

[29:31]

The Second World War broke out. And Salem was under enemy occupation. And this monk had to go back into the army. So his mental balance was saved. But this is not what prayer is about or what the presence of God is about. So I think if we just give ourselves in our monastic life, like little Alice is obviously going to do, to just what the things that we do in the monastic life, that this is a kind of an awareness that will just kind of emerge of itself with the grace of God from the general nature of the kind of life that we lead. And so we have to have great confidence in this sort of experience. Well, now... There are a couple of other things that she's very good about, but I'm not going to dwell on those. She has this tenacious memory. I've been talking about that. Grace and her way of life, her conversation.

[30:34]

Efficacy in her work. In other words, when she does something, she does something, and it gets finished. We're not all that good when it comes to things like that in my own monastery. I can think of any number of projects begun that haven't come to any successful conclusion. But it's very important to take things seriously and see things through to the end and not to undertake things that aren't worth seeing through to the end. And then so she makes progress in her various pursuits. And so it says that, with the help of these natural gifts now, and so I think a novice pastor and the Father Abbott and everyone who has anything to do with deferring vocations, they really have to know us and be able to help us appreciate what it is that God has given us so that these talents feeble, though they may be, can be in the service of Christ, in the service of truth.

[31:40]

And because these become the basis of our spiritual life, all of these have to be just filled with the grace of Christ so that they can grow and bring us deeper and deeper, transform us more and more in this mystery of Christ. So I think that's awfully important. I think we've all known in our communities, you know, monks who in the ordinary way of things are particularly spectacular for their gifts of nature, but what they have, they use... and the profound, profound spirituality and wisdom and depth of experience that they enter into. You never knew, I guess, Dom Gerard, the founding abbot of our Lady of the Genesheet? Yes. Well, you know, Gethsemane, he, under old Dom Frederick, who died before I entered Gethsemane, He was infirmarian, I think, for some time.

[32:42]

He was, oh, I think he gave a few retreats, but mostly infirmarian. And with us, in those days, being infirmarian meant nothing. You had doctors come from outside, and they would prescribe the pills, and the infirmarian just simply gave the aspirin at the right time. And so Dom Frederick, I think, thought that Fr. Girard wasn't all that practical, and he could keep out of arms weight as a barbarian as well as anything else. And so Dom Girard, for a number of years then, had very close contacts with these wonderful old laybrothers in their old age and when they were getting more and more abundant. And just by contact with these lay brothers, he imbibed an enormous amount of real spiritual wisdom. And when finally he became abbot and was taken off the shelf, you know, then he really came into his own. And the wisdom, you know, just used to pour forth, and it was all stuff that he got from these lay brothers.

[33:46]

who had no background in scripture to speak of, no technical formation. I think most of our lay brothers are brighter than what our choir monks used to be. But anyway, this was an older generation of lay brothers. But they had acquired this fantastic wisdom and this fantastic experience. That was just overwhelming. And when I think of men of prayer, I think a lot of those... Now, I really have to be very honest. Our monks at Gethsemane, what we used to call the choir monks, very much the same way. I just never saw any great distinction so far as really deep piety and holiness between, say, lay brothers and choir monks. There was this same kind of spirit. of prayer and simplicity that was just absolutely wonderful. And so there was a marvelous community experience, but we really felt we were all sharing in the same kind of thing.

[34:51]

And you had this great encouragement, because you could look at these old geezers, and you'd see that God had really touched them, and that all of the stuff which we were learning and just sometimes seemed to be kind of theoretical, so far as we were concerned, it really worked, and it was for real. And you just could see it in the members of our community. And I think you could look around here. It's embarrassing. You don't want to talk about it. But you can see God working the same way in this particular community. Okay, so she's growing more and more. And now she comes to the age of 15 or so. And there's a summary statement. There's two things... that she realizes just on the verge of making her what we would call solemn profession, at this ripe old age, 15 or 16, she's learned that you have to have what she calls the discipline of the body. And the other thing is a strict custody of the heart.

[35:56]

Discipline of the body, strict custody of the heart. And the author says... You can't have one without the other. And with this, he says, she attained to its more mature years. So now she's a mature woman, ready to make this ultimate decision and give herself wholly to Christ in the monastic life. Now, to ask a little bit about the discipline of the body. This is awfully... important, I think, for us. And sometimes people outside the monastic and even Christian tradition seem to understand this a lot more than we do when they go in for nature foods or Zen or yoga or all kinds of bodily techniques and organizing their whole life in such a way that their potential can be developed and so forth.

[36:59]

Well, we have our own monastic tradition for these things, and maybe it's a more subtle thing. But we do have a program of monastic asceticism, which has to be taken very seriously. And we have our lifestyle in general, which we should love and really live and appreciate. And we have our monastic rituals, even. Sometimes I think there's not that much left of it. But a kind of a style of life, which some people might find a little bit artificial. Well, I'm not going to talk very much about that. But just a general traditional monastic lifestyle has something to do with forming us in this very deep and very beautiful discipline. of the body which we should come to appreciate and which our whole being is in the service of the spirit. And if we neglect this great tradition, then almost all of that really has some attenuation of our spirit of prayer or our spiritual life.

[38:07]

So we shouldn't make a fetish about it, but we should just have this deep faith in the monastic way of doing things and really love it and appreciate it. And if we change something in our lifestyle, do so with a real amount of awareness. I don't want to sound negative, but I do get the impression that in the past couple of decades, a lot of people or a lot of different kinds of religious groups of people have been doing an enormous amount of changing without knowing exactly where they're going or what they're doing. And change is absolutely moralist, and change is imperative as part of life, if it really springs from a certain continuity with the real thing. If it's an expression of real life, of the concrete situation, then you have to make adaptations. But for the kind of change that comes about because you're just floundering around, you don't know where you're going, that's a bad kind of change.

[39:14]

So that's not the kind of change that we have in our monasteries. It's Vatican II. What we have is this change that means an evolution becoming more and more who we really are in our monastic tradition. Something that's in continuity with our tradition and strings forth in a real life-giving vital manner. Like Don Demesis. He was long before Vatican II. But when he came to the States with the founding of Mount Saviour, that wonderful article that you wrote... about Dom Damasus and the relationship between Maria Locke and Mount Xavier. I mean, that shows how he wanted to receive everything that was most vital and most beautiful about the Maria Locke tradition and then transpose it here, sometimes in a new setting, but with certain changes that corresponded to its real nature. And he certainly succeeded magnificently well. So I think that's about enough of this morning. I'm going to say some more about the custody of the heart of his evenings.

[40:18]

So, okay, she's about 15 years old now. She's 15? Yeah, 15 or 16. She's a mature woman. She's only a few years away from death now, isn't she? That's right. For her, that was a pretty... Well, you know, in the life of Anthony, he was about 18 or 19 when he comes to these mature years of discretion where he can make an ultimate commitment. I was chatting about this with the novices and juniors, so I made the unfortunate remark that maybe... the mature year for us is now closer to 45 or 15 than to 18 or 19. But we all have to age when we can do really, but the grace of God makes us total, total commitment. Do you want to have anything to object to? What would be a commentary on Anthony? Some of our people, when they were in St. Anselmo, got some very good courses. I remember that Francis has some notes and things, but is there anything? And Thomas Keating, the

[41:20]

gave us a thing, and it's mostly an embellish of Anthony. Oh, that's great. And I have his notes on it, but is there anything in English? Not in English, but if you could get someone to translate the work, it would be a great boon for all of us monastics, and that's for the Bourguet study. Louis Bourguet. And he wrote it at the time he wrote it. A rather controversial book, which I think is just a great book, The Meaning of the Monastic Life, which we do have in English. And I remember, I was a student at Monticello in Rome at that time, and there was a big fight going on, especially among you Benedictines, you black Benedictines. And I remember picking it up at Solène. So here's Louis Bourguet, this man who's not a monastic himself, who takes it upon himself to discourse on the meaning of the monastic life.

[42:21]

And he is there in Paris in his apartment with his own cook. Rather, a Christian life, but not quite a monastic style of life. And he's telling us what real monks are, and what does he do? But he goes to the desert fathers, you know, as the point of reference for monasticism and all the other kinds of monasticism, namely solemn monasticism, kind of Boiron-style monasticism, and I suppose Maria Locke monasticism. He didn't name names, but all that is kind of a deviant form of the real McCoy, which you find in the East. with the Desert Fathers. And, of course, all my Benedictine friends, practically, are sort of outraged by this and pointed out that we in the West do have our own tradition that's as perfectly valid and as deep and as authentic as anything that you find in the Eastern forces.

[43:25]

And I was too dumb, you know, I was very gullible. I just appreciated almost anything that I read. And I love Salem, I still do passionately. And Dan Proulx used to always address me as, and I really felt that that's true. And that's a tradition I love so much. But at any rate, Father Bourguet, I think, has marvelous things to say. about monastic life seen against the background of what happened in Palestine and Egypt. So at any rate, I think, is one of the offshoots of this book on the meaning of the monastic life. He studied carefully this life of Anthony. And so you have to have a life of Anthony. He doesn't reproduce the text. But you read his book parallel with that, and I think it has some wonderful, wonderful things in it. No, you mean reading The Massive Life? No, his book on St.

[44:27]

Anthony itself. So I think the book on St. Anthony is the fruit of his earlier survey of Eastern monasticism. But you see, there's such a wonderful thing about the monastic. I never have felt attracted to the idea of writing a book, because I'm just not an author. But if I were, there are two books I would like to write. And one would be the diversity of the monastic experience. Because, for example, just take the rule of St. Benedict. It's given rise to so many wonderful forms of monastic life and experience. And the other book that I would like to write would be The Unity of the Monastic Experience. You know, the fact that I can go to Mr. Schwarzpark, you know, a missionary congregation in Germany, or a minor for St. John's, or about Savior, and there's just something there that's uniquely... I think Jerome was talking about that in his circular letter.

[45:31]

He finds all of the monasteries have their roots in the rule of St. Benedict, And yet there's such a diversity when it comes to forms of expression. And we superstitions, and we have our own little order, and our own peculiar, crazy tradition, and it's not the best in the church or the most important, but it is ours, and we just have to live our location. And you people are exactly not just the same way. And there's a unity, and at the same time, this great variety that we should appreciate. And so I think we can learn a great deal from someone like Fr. Bourguien. He's getting more and more disgruntled. Do pray for him, because that man is such a great scholar. He's always kind of bitter. I never could quite understand that. I remember he went to Spencer to do some conferences, and one of the young monks had devised, I don't know, some scheme for the distribution of songs, and he'd worked so hard on it.

[46:34]

And, you know, he thought through everything and just got him closer to the Psalms. And so he takes to Father Bouillet and Father Bouillet just thought, you have no right doing anything like that. Who do you think you are? Is this wrong? Is that wrong? And that's wrong. And the guy just tore it up and never looked at the Psalm again for the rest of his life. But yet the man is great. He suffers so much, I think. And he's gotten awfully reactionary. And people over in France now just stopped reading his stuff, in spite of the fact he's written some great stuff. And I was talking with a book about him. And he was speaking about how disgruntled he was, how reactionary about everything, and just so negative about Vatican II now. I said, yeah, but he's written some really great books, like his book on the Eucharist, the meaning of the monastic life. He goes, every year he comes up with a new book. And he says, yes, it's true, but he says, every other book is one of the very disgruntled, negative kind of books. And so he says, you can read Fr.

[47:36]

Louis Bourdieu, but you just have to begin reading at the right year and read every other book. I think it's a great place for the church. And he knew wonderful monks like, you don't know about Lambert Boudouin? the founder of Chevtonio, and they were close friends when Louis Bouillet was still a Calvinist, a Huguenot. And the first time Dom Lambert Boudouin had any contact with him, I think it was in an ecumenical context. And so Louis Bouillet was staying at the Protestant Theologate, which is just a block or two from where I stay when I'm in Paris, and... So Dom Lambert waltzes in, and he introduces himself, and it's obvious he doesn't know how to address a Protestant pastor. So he begins by saying, your reverence, pastor, and he gets more and more confused. And finally he just blurts out, Louie!

[48:40]

And that was the beginning of a great, great, good, great friendship. And so Father Bouillet knows a lot of monks, you know, personally and intimately. And I think he can understand that after system, too, against the background of these wonderful personal relationships. Okay. Oh, what time is this evening? 715 again? Oh, excuse me. Do I have a conference this evening or not? Or what? Would you be ready or not? Oh, I'm sure, sure. But since it's the Lord's Day, I don't want to reflect anything. I don't know what you're usually doing. We usually have kind of an informal kitchen supper. It's a buffet type of thing on Sundays. Oh, that's wonderful. But we don't have, I mean, we cut down the guests because of the retreat. So I should think we'd be able to do it by 7.15. Or I'll be here 7.15. And if no one shows up, I like it.

[49:43]

Or should we say 7 or [...] 7 There was a disciple, Ramakrishna, who was just a horrible lecturer, and he had to teach philosophy in one of the universities. And so the students just stayed away and drove. The guy was so simple and so holy that one day when no one showed up, he delivered the lecture as usual. I'll do the same thing. I help him in the name of the Lord.

[50:29]

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