And I'll do my best to stay in place within this sheepfold. I'm told by Brother Gabriel that I can't wander too far with this around my neck, so it gives the vow of stability a new sort of meaning. Can you all hear me all right? Is this okay back there? I'm honored by your words of greeting, Brother John. I have to say that I feel as deeply grateful for my association with Mount Savior over the years. It began with a gratitude just to have an archives, a treasury archives, that was not organized, and had only been partially organized. by others before me only partially sort of delved into a mind. If you know anything about doctoral work, and I learned a whole lot, much more than I ever wanted to know, but needing to find something, quote, original, So when I walked into the archives here and found this treasure trove, as I say that it had only been partially mine, I knew right away that this was going to be a valuable exercise.

[01:14]

Little did I know, little did I know in September of 2001 how long a relationship that this would lead to and just how inspired I would feel myself by my a relationship post-mortem with Father Damasis, but continuing with the monks of Mount Saviour. My first time here, by the way, and this is just by way of story, my first time here to investigate whether or not this might be a subject to take on, I arrived on September 10th, 2001. And my first meeting of Father Martin Bowler was on the morning of September 11th, when he came to my room and said, you might want to join us in our TV room. TV room was sort of a big name for a little closet. TV at the end of it.

[02:16]

And we all sat there as these horrific images were portrayed. I will never forget Father Martin's kindness to me as a stranger here and my need to turn around and return to my community on Cape Cod. And so I returned the following February and still have this memory of the hospitality of the monks and sharing that moment together. We all know where we were and I was here for the first time at Mount Saviour. Another, just one other bit of connection here because it's wonderful, the Benedictine family, we are an ecumenical community but we discover our relationships. Another bit of relationship, the man who pointed me in this direction, actually there were two people, And I'll mention Sister Mary Collins in a moment, too. But the other person was Father Joel Ripeter, who was your speaker last year.

[03:19]

And he was the one who said, you know, you ought to check out Father Damasis Winsden and the Mount Savior community. He said, I think you'll find that there's been some work that needs to be done there, and I think you'll find it will be worth your while. and in fact it has, but Father Joel has been a good friend since. So I say, that's all by way of introduction, but just to sort of say that this is how I fit into the fabric of Mount Savior and I'm eternally grateful for that. So The, let me just read the paragraph, which you've all read probably already, that has to do with the subject of this talk. And I do it just by way of introduction. But perhaps you've read it already on the posters, but let me start with that. At the time of Mount Seger's founding, Father Damascus Winsden received a message from a good friend and official of the Roman Curia, Giovanni Battista Mantini,

[04:29]

who eventually would become Pope Paul VI. He advised Fr. Damasis to open the gates, I'll read the full quote for you in a moment, of the new monastery, open the gates of the new monastery, an exhortation that immediately resonated with the already hospitable and ecumenically sensitive monastic founder. A decade later, in building upon his experiences with the new community, Fr. Danis has presented a lecture at Duquesne University entitled, A Monastic Approach to Dialogue, in which he set forth certain monastic values that can help to inform and to advance the cause of church unity. 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, a fitting opportunity to revisit the contribution that monasticism has played, and perhaps can continue to play, in the ecumenism of the 21st century. That's what I want to talk about. the role of monasticism in ecumenism, and particularly what role monasticism continues to play.

[05:37]

And Mount Savior has been a laboratory for that approach. And so we'll look a bit at what Father Damasis had to say about that, but I'm bringing in some other voices as well. It's the best we can do, if we could get all of these people here, I think they would recognize in Mount Savior this vision that began with Father Damasis and those who were closest to him. It was not purely designed or informed by ecumenism, but that was a big part of the vision. And we sit here today, as recipients of that, inheritors of that. Monsignor Montini wrote to Damasus Winston, and they were good friends, by the way, long before Montini became Pope Paul VI. You perhaps know this already, if you don't, Father Damasus was assigned the job of teaching Monsignor Montini German.

[06:40]

And so that's how they got to know each other. And that relationship continued for many, many years. And Father Damascus wrote, in the Christmas of 1958, he wrote in the monastery newsletter, and he was writing about the founding of Mount Savior. which at that time was, what, only seven years old. And he wrote this, when Mount Savior was founded, a high dignitary, I like the way he puts it here, a high dignitary of the Roman Curia gave this advice. High dignitary at the time, he worked for the Secretariat of State, but was not yet Pope, obviously. But when he knew it, he was just a lowly mud senior. And anyway. when he wrote and he said, open the gates, Don Nemeso. Don't shut them. That was his exhortation to Father Nemesis as he was looking to begin Mount Savior. We've heard a lot in the last year or two about open and shut gates.

[07:45]

I'm not going to be talking about the political ramifications of that, just the ecumenical. We'll do our best to try to keep the conversation safe in that way. But we even know, particularly at this time of the founding of Mount Savior, ecumenism was going through its own sort of evolution. We stand here in 2017, 500 years since the time that Martin Luther nailed his points of argument on a church door, 95 of them, which even before the day of internet got people's attention. and all sorts of things converged at the time to make that event pivotal, revolutionary in the life of the church. And so this year, that event is being I'm going to use the word observed.

[08:49]

By some, it's being celebrated. By many and most, it's being observed and embraced and recognized as an opportunity to talk together about the larger church and about our ecumenical relationships, even though Even though for some, for many who've been at the work of ecumenism for their entire lives, they would probably describe these days, this time in the movement we call the ecumenical movement, not in Well, let me tell you how it's described by some. It's described, by example, by the former director of the Commission on Faith and Order of the National Council of Churches. He describes the state of humanism much like Ohio's weather today, but gloomy weather forecast. Cardinal Walter Casper, who you I know are familiar with, the former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, actually says that ecumenism is in a state of crisis.

[09:58]

At the time of the founding of Mount Savior, just prior to the Second Vatican Council, and in the light of the Second Vatican Council, ecumenism It sort of matched the culture. I'm a product, a child of the 60s. And boy, you know, even though everything was falling apart, there was an optimism that anything could happen. And as a young person, when I started going as an Episcopalian to my friends' Roman Catholic churches, and they to ours, and we were doing youth group things together, it seemed like anything and everything was possible. Like, yes, maybe the broken church really would physically be reunited. And a lot of work has gone in that way. But I think we can all acknowledge that it's sort of ground to somewhat of a halt. It's not that things aren't still happening, but that optimism at the time that, yes, these walls could be broken down and we would find enough commonality that the body of Christ could actually be seen as one body. It's showing its oneness in other forms than perhaps we had hoped for.

[11:05]

And people like Cardinal Casper and others are saying it's not reaching the point that we had hoped that it would. Okay, so here's 2017. We go back now to the founding of Mount Savior Monastery. Keeping in mind the condition of things right now, so to speak, Burkhard Neuhauser, does that name mean anything to any of you? Burkhard Neuhauser was a monk of Maria Lach Abbey in Germany. And in 1921, he and Father Damasis were novices together. And Burkhard Neuhauser went on to be a very, very strong voice in the liturgical movement. In the early 2000s, after I got to know Father Danesis's legacy some, I went to Maria Laack and interviewed Father Neuenhauser, who at the time was 92. And anecdotally, just to say, I think the monks there appreciated my vision because it gave somebody else to listen to his stories.

[12:13]

And it gave him an opportunity to tell his stories in English. And he said about Fr. Damasis that he was one of the greatest ecumenists of our community. He recognized in Father Damasis, along with others in that time, this sort of desire to see the cause of communism go forward. And so, Father Damasis said, in that same newsletter, talking about Mount Savior, long before my coming to this country, I had participated in numerous meetings between Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox scholars, so that I am not unfamiliar with this field, And it may well be that our monastic sharing in Christ's love for all through prayer and work will enable Mount Savior to join in this movement toward reconciliation. Father Dabasus' own vision was imbued with this desire for bridging gaps in the church, for making connections.

[13:17]

And he saw that the monastic value could enable and enhance this vision. He attributed his own vision for ecumenism to his exposure and his learning under another Benedictine monk by the name of Lambert Beaudoin, who taught at San Anselmo in Rome. And I mention this name because Contemporarily, another monk of Glensdale Abbey in Ireland wrote an article about Father Lambert and talked about Father Lambert's ecumenical vision being inspired first by his being a monk. then by his being a liturgist, a Benedictine liturgist, which then prompted him, propelled him, to take on the ecumenical agenda. He said, Father Fenton Lyons, who wrote this article about Father Lambert, gave evidence in Lambert Bogdoin's own writings

[14:19]

that he was inspired by his identity as a Benedictine, to embrace others, to reach out, to listen, to take hold of. And for him, the liturgy was the place where this happened. And Father Fitton writing about him simply says, it seemed like a natural sort of flow, a natural result of embracing Benedictine life and love for the liturgy, naturally led to his also becoming an ecumenist. He was already present in the Benedictine music. And so in the founding of Mount Savior, ecumenism, Father Damascus said, was absolutely in my line. was the right part of me. For years it has been the custom, he said, of my Savior to welcome Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant Christians to break the bread of God's Word with us. He said that the work of the Second Vatican Council has a familiar ring to us here.

[15:25]

at Mount Savior because of its emphasis on openness to all of Christianity. So Mount Savior went on, carried that ecumenical vision in its work with non-Catholic, its welcoming of non-Catholic oblates in 1967, the guests and conferences, the Ecumenical Institute. And in 1959, the Congress of Abbots actually assigned to Mount Savior the responsibility of working with Protestants. I think of myself as one tiny little recipient of that original vision. I'm welcomed here because Mount Savior has welcomed non-Catholics for decades and continues to do so. Well, anyway, so Father Damasis makes a monastery, and Mount Saviour's vision for ecumenism becomes known. So in 1965, he's invited to Duquesne to speak to the Newman Club there, and his address he entitles, A Monastic Approach to Dialogue.

[16:35]

I only found handwritten notes of this talk, but those handwritten notes reveal to us some of Father Damascus's thoughts about what monasticism has to offer to the ecumenical vision. Number one, for example, he says, quoting from the first word in the Rule of Benedict. If listening is the first thing as Benedictines we need to do, then that requires that we listen to others who are different from us, because we're seeking the truth. This should be the endeavor of every Christian. I like the way he puts it. Truth, he says, is an invitation. not a condemnation. Truth is an invitation to come in, to take part, not a condemnation that makes separation. Therefore, he says, we must be in one's depth. I like his use of language. We have to approach ecumenism from one's depth. That means from one's conviction and desire to seek and to find the truth.

[17:39]

We must be authentic to ourselves, and Benedictine life is about growing in our own authenticity with God. A harder item, perhaps, is that if we're going to listen, then we also need to be ready to change. that now it starts to get a little bit harder. We might be able to put up with neighbors that we don't get along with, but every day, living side by side, must we do that? And he's saying yes. Listening means we're open to change our own thoughts and opinions. Here he uses a word that I think is a helpful one in our own day and age, elasticity. We have to stretch ourselves, he says, and monasteries are about the business of doing that. He says also that the monastery represents a return to the first love. And if we're all after the love of Christ, if that's what we're aiming for, then that in itself provides a way, a bridge to cross over chasms that would otherwise divide us.

[18:45]

Because our goal is the same, to return to our first love, which is the love of Christ. Monastic foundations are common to all Christian confessions in that regard because that's what we're after. Finally, he says that monastic life is an expression of spiritual life. It celebrates the common life that is characterized by the first church in Jerusalem described in the Book of Acts, which we are going to be reading from through the season of Easter. An expression of spiritual life. And this really is what leads me to my three-point sermon. I say that because I was formed, I'm an Episcopal priest, but I was a Presbyterian for a while. I was formed in a Reformed seminary, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, in the North Shore of New England. This was my time in the mission field of Presbyterianism, as some of my brethren call it.

[19:46]

But for me, it was a wonderful time. I learned to preach it with three points. So here are my three points. It has to do with this expression of spiritual life. Monasticism is an expression of spiritual life, which means it's something you can see. and hear and taste. That which was from the beginning, wrote John, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, the life was made manifest and we saw it and testified to it and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ.

[20:47]

Fellowship is the result of encounter, of meeting. Without meeting, fellowship, let me put it another way, our ideas are not enough to create fellowship. It happens by real encounter, by real meeting. That's what John is saying. The fellowship he's inviting others to participate in is based upon what they have already seen and heard and touched with their hands. So what does monastic life contribute to this kind of fellowship? Put another way, At Father Damascus's time, there was a strong movement in ecumenism which was called spiritual ecumenism. Okay, if we can only get so far, we can only do so much in our dialogues when we're aiming for actual physical unity in the body of Christ, we can pray. And there is strong movement for prayer.

[21:49]

I suggest to you, and we'll talk some about prayer, that hand in hand with spiritual ecumenism must go incarnational ecumenism. It must take shape in some way. And I think the monastery is one of the places where it takes shape, where we can see and hear and touch Christ in one another. So here's my three points. Number one is just our common life. our common life together. Speaking in 2008, Edmund Power of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, this is the community, the church where John XXIII, Pope John XXIII announced the Second Vatican Council in 1959. Observing the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in 2008, Edmund said this, No union is possible if all who believe in Christ are not profoundly rooted in Christ's life.

[22:53]

This is the essential point of unity. It means to highlight this and advance together to find concrete, pragmatic, daily ways of living together. concrete, pragmatic, daily ways of living together. A community that is formed by the Word of God, that eventually gives shape to the Word of God for others to see. It's not ideas, it's actual community life that becomes a witness to the common life, a witness to others of what our common life is. Father Damascus liked to use the word radiate. He talked about the monastic life radiating, God's life radiating to us, the monastic life radiating to others. It's what they actually see. It's what they actually hear. I have a good friend and neighbor in our community by the name of Dick. Dick was a fundraiser for a long time, was responsible for the development program for our new church, and was always looking for ways to help translate to people what our life was about.

[24:05]

I fell upon a letter from Danesis Winsden to Mrs. Lyman Stubbins, November 9th, 1953. The date stuck in my mind because it was my wife's birthday. I was born two days later. So this comes when I was just a wee thing. This letter from Damasis Winson. Mrs. Stebbins and her husband were both benefactors of the early life of Mount Savior and Father Nemesis is writing this letter in thanks for their gifts. He says this, I always feel very much at a loss when I'm asked to justify our existence. And this was what Dick was up against. He's writing to others, trying to raise funds for our new church, and people are saying, but what do you do? Have you heard that question before? So, Father Demesis says, I always feel very much at a loss when I'm asked to justify our existence. It's so easy to explain why a house has to have a kitchen, and what a kitchen is for, and why it has to have bedrooms, and what their purpose is.

[25:12]

But when it comes to the living room, one has to think. The best explanation probably would be that it serves no special purpose, but is simply there to live in. And then one could explain that to live is not just to eat, and not just to sleep. But now, what is it? I should say that to live is to let one's heart expand in love, and love wants to sing and to play. The living room for Father Damascus was the place where the piano goes, where the family gathers together, and is a family together. That's what the monastery is for. And so it takes a particular shape of people living together. What's it for? It's for showing to others that it's possible for people to live together. I promised one of our listeners that I would be quoting from Archbishop, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

[26:17]

You spoke at a conference in Italy in March of 2012 on monasticism and ecumenism. They were celebrating an anniversary of the Camaldolese, which were founded there, and he says this. about monastic life, the common life. Whenever we are tempted to take refuge in our confessionalism, and it's easy to do that, when we become afraid of what others are bringing to us, then we find a safe place in what we believe. Whenever we are tempted, he says, to take refuge in that, in an over-seriousness about our own particular historical identity over against other Christian communities, He says, whenever that happens, we are going to need communities, whether conventional monastic communities or less conventional communities that have arisen in recent decades, to hold us to the radicality of the gospel's promise to make a holy nation, a new city, and a universal kindred out of strangers.

[27:24]

When we're tempted to fall back to the least common denominator of our own identity, he says we are going to need monastic communities. They're the ones who are going to remind us and tell us that the radicality of God's promises are for all of us. We are going to need people actually living together. This is the purpose of the community of Jesus. I think of ourselves as one of those less conventional communities, perhaps, though deeply rooted in Benedictine life. We say in our own rule of life, in one of our chapters, which we call The Call to Reconciliation and Unity, Quote, because the origins of the monastic charism predate the major separations that have divided the church, it is a particularly eloquent expression of the call to unity in the body of Christ. And the monastery itself is especially suited to promoting peace and understanding among God's people.

[28:27]

I like to think that Father Damasis would say an amen to that. The monastery is a place where this can take place because there are real people leading real lives, breaking down real divisions. That's what our common life is. It's incarnational ecumenism. We at the Community of Jesus have to work out our own divisions daily. A good friend of mine, I'm sorry, Paul, I'm going to use you here for a minute. You're sitting there, Paul. We've known each other for years. Paul yesterday drove all the way from Cape Cod to pick me up at Newark Airport to drive me here to spend the night, only so he could drive me back to Newark later on today and then drive back to the Cape. By the way, I'm really not this much of a world traveler. This just happened to happen this month, and I'm not quite sure what country I'm in. I know I'm here, and I'm glad of it. I'm here because, Paul, generously agreed to do it. And we talked for most of the way. I slept some, but we talked most of the way up here. I can tell you that over the years, Paul and I have done more than talk.

[29:32]

Sometimes our voices have been raised. Sometimes we haven't talked. We're different men, and we have fought. side by side sometimes, and I think it's fair to say sometimes fall face to face. That's the nature of community life. Our differences, do they not begin in personal differences? Our differences of confessionalism and belief start in differences of heart and personality. And the commitment that we have to work that out is watched. People will come to our community, I'm sure they do here as well, and they'll say, oh, how peaceful it is here. And they have no idea what happened just five minutes before that, before they drove into the driveway. Because it's a real family, working out real differences. This is the nature of monastic life. It is incarnational ecumenism at its best and at its rawest sometimes.

[30:38]

In the summer of 2014, as the president of the American Benedictine Academy, which was a first, I was as surprised as anyone else. They took a member of a non-conventional Benedictine community and made me president because we wanted to discuss the relationship between traditional Benedictine monasteries and new monasteries. You can read about it in the 2015 volume of the American Benedictine Academy, but it's happening, and it's happening among Protestants. This is where the new monasticism is growing. Last summer, again, just anecdotally, who would have thought The Montebier Acumenical Center for Art and Spirituality, which is sponsoring these events in May that I'm going back to, and it's a center that we run in a small town outside of Pisa, sponsored a study week on the life of Saint Benedict.

[31:43]

And our two major speakers, one was the Abbott Primate, not Kurt Wolf. The other was a Southern Baptist preacher who came over and who's written a number of things on Benedictine vows. Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove, you may have heard of his name, and has written a book on stability. And the two of them, we were meeting in Subiaco, of all places, and the two of them were teaching us, the rest of us, about Benedictine life. The Abbot Primate and a Southern Baptist preacher. So that's number one. Number two, common life is one of those incarnational elements. A second one, I suggest to you, is our liturgy, is prayer. When he wrote about, about liturgy. One of the things that Father Damasus said, he was referring back to the founding of Solem in France in the mid-19th century, when Benedictine monasticism was re-established in France.

[32:56]

He said that Prosper Guérin-Jay, when he wanted to bring new life and give the liturgy this burst, he founded a monastery. It took shape in a monastery. He said this was the way that he prevented his liturgical ideas from just becoming professorial. He said it actually had to be done, had to be lived. In an article in the summer of 1959, It's actually from a talk. I can only gather that Father Damasis loved talking with students, because there's so many examples of his doing this. And this time he was speaking to students at Columbia University, and he said, that liturgy had kept its promise to him and it formed his own life. Liturgy, he said, is the Word made flesh. Here we are again with the incarnation.

[33:56]

Liturgy is the Word made flesh, whose glory we see, whose life we live in the unity of the Spirit. The liturgy is the most precious gift that Christ has handed over to his church. It is given to all Christians, he said. You do not have to become a Benedictine monk to live by it. You don't even have to go to Maria Lack or Mount Savior to celebrate it. His point is that the liturgy is for all of us, and it is one of those embodied elements of our spiritual life in which we can find union. union in and with Christ, he said, is cultivated much more through worship than through controversy. We find in our common prayer a commonality to our life. And if, as the adage goes, that the law of prayer shapes the law of belief, then we find our common faith in our common prayer. And the history of the liturgical movement in the 20th century will remind us

[35:01]

that this has happened and that it has been embraced. We are praying the same prayers, Catholic and Protestant and Orthodox alike. Many of the earliest prayers that we are praying together are common to us all. Here's where I'd like to quote for you, and I bring in another voice, and that's Sister Mary Collins. You may know of her. She actually directed my dissertation at Catholic University, and she was the first one who mentioned Mount Savior to me because she'd been invited here to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of Mount Savior. And her talk was included in the publication that was edited by Father Martin Vohler and Tony Sinera in celebration of that anniversary, The Contribution of Monastic Life to the Church and the World. Now, Sister Mary is a liturgist, a Benedictine first, and also a liturgist. And I remember her, when she first was talking to me about Mount Savior, that her argument, her argument, Father Joel's argument, which for me was an historical one, Sister Mary Collins' argument was a liturgical one.

[36:11]

She said, you've got to experience the prayer there. Monastic communities, she wrote in this talk that she gave here, monastic communities at prayer have the freedom to be visibly ecumenical. At the prayer of the hours, there's no need to warn Christians of other communions of our separation nor formal boundaries that we must honor. You don't start the liturgy of the hours by saying, you can pray everything here except Psalm 150. It's not what we do with the Liturgy of the Hours. This is a language common to us all. The Hours, Sister Mary says, are voiced not only for, but with whatever part of the disunited and divided praying church wishes to join us. This is a prayer that overcomes and transcends the boundaries and barriers which separate Christians. Why? Because it's rooted in the Word of God. and the Word of God is embraced by Orthodox Catholics and Protestants alike.

[37:14]

So I can quote from John Calvin. I almost said from Saint John Calvin. We can quote from John Calvin. John Calvin described the Psalms as the anatomy of the human soul. that every single part of our lives is revealed. Every single aspect of human life is revealed in the Psalms. And above all, he says, when we sing the Psalms, they teach us all sorts of things. But above all, they are meant to help us. They are principally designed to teach and train us, he says, to bear the cross. Now is bearing the cross an essentially Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox vocation? No. It is one shared by us all. So when it comes to the prayer of the monastery, here is an incarnational element of our life that crosses denominational borders. Here's a place where we're all shaped by the word.

[38:14]

And in the Psalms, we learn the language of the kingdom of God. Rowan Williams calls it the dialect of the incarnation. And you know what it's like. I'm so lousy at learning other languages. Something doesn't happen up here. But what little bit I have done, I know that with the language, don't we learn a culture as well? The more you learn that language, the more you are imbued with that culture. And the language of the scriptures imbues us with the culture of heaven. And a monastery shows by its prayer that the church is unified by the word spoken and heard. Okay, on to the third and final point then. I'm saying, suggesting that our common life together, our incarnational common life, our prayer together which is seen and heard and participated in by others, these all are essential elements in the ecumenical agenda.

[39:15]

And there's one other place that has become more revitalized in recent years, I'd say from the mid-20th century on, but is getting a strong emphasis right now, and that is in the area of the arts, and it happens to be one that I'm just beginning to delve into. but with which Father Damascus was much more involved himself as a lover of art. He talked about the arts being more than just teaching, and others have as well. We all know that the idea of art in the church is being the Bible in visual form, but art does more than that. Over time, art transforms. Father Damasis, who was the recipient of the heritage of Maria Locke and his abbot there, Ildefons Hervegen, wrote about a conference that his abbot had given called the Art Principle of the Liturgy. And in this conference, he says, the abbot explains that the liturgy of the church is a work of art because it performs a work of transfiguration.

[40:26]

It changes us. This is what art does. Father Damascus said, as others have, before and after him, that art is sacramental. Quote, the sacramental world is a continuation of the incarnation. The word becomes flesh, flesh again, in the sacred signs and symbols through which salvation is being applied to the wounds of mankind throughout history. the spiritual wealth of salvation becomes visible in sacred vessels, garments, words, gestures, melodies, and buildings. Art too has a vocabulary that is not only informative, it not only teaches us, but as a bearer of beauty, it draws us, it compels us. Art points us beyond itself. John of Damascus, who definitely predates the divisions of the Church, wrote, The beauty and color of images stimulate prayer.

[41:37]

They are a feat for the eyes, much as the spectacle of nature spurs my heart to give glory to God. It does that for all of us, and art can do that as well. I had the privilege back in 2011, I think it was, in a visit to Florence, to go to San Marco, which was the convent at one time, then the monastery, the home of Dominicans, and where Fra Angelica painted so many of his frescoes, including one of his most famous, the Annunciation. You go into the cells, and every cell, of the house has a different image, frescoed image, by Franz Jomica. a biblical event, an event in the life of Christ. One of my favorites was Jesus going to Hades to preach.

[42:40]

There are images of the crucifixion, of the resurrection, of the transfiguration, and they're all in a cell, a tiny cell that's probably eight by eight, 10 by 10 maybe. And I thought, what must this do? to a brother who goes to his cell day after day after day, and this is the image that he sees. What does that do, not just to teach, but to form one's prayers? Can you imagine, day after day, year after year, living with that artistic image? In this regard, art forms us, and it can become a bridge Back to St. Paul outside the walls, Abbot Edmund, on that event of the Week in Prayer for Christian Unity, was talking about the role of St. Paul's in ecumenism, but he said this, he said, we are an ecumenical community.

[43:43]

It's not that we have monks that are not Catholics, he said, but we have this tomb of St. Paul to welcome whoever comes. His point is, here's this, what I'm calling right now, an artifact for ecumenism. Because St. Paul, now if we want to talk about someone who goes back before the great divisions of the Church, he says, people of all faiths come here to see the tomb of St. Paul. We have artifacts of Christian unity. This is in our incarnational way in which bridges are built in the church. And by saying this, I'm not trying to underplay, we could spend a lot of time talking about the arguments of the Reformation about the place of art, or the non-place of art, could we not? I mean, the history of the church is replete with this argument about what images, what role they should or should not have. Nevertheless, they do have one, and it has been resurrected more and more in our own day and age by Protestants.

[44:47]

Not just art, but music is as well. Speaking of 2017, in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, in 2017 there was a joint choir, and this is somewhat dear to my heart, there was a joint choir of the Westminster Abbey Choir and the Sistine Chapel Choir singing at the Basilica of St. John Lateran. So you've got a bunch of Anglicans singing and a bunch of Catholics, and they're singing together. And they're singing artists like Palestrina on the one hand, and Tallis and Bird on the others. They're singing songs of the Catholic tradition and the Anglican tradition, the Reformed tradition, and they're singing them in the same place at the same time. This wrote Stephen Townsend, who was from the British Embassy at the time, to the Vatican, and he was witness to this, and he wrote, this was ecumenism at its best, he said.

[45:48]

There was no discussion about theology and no argument over ordination. It called to hearts rather than heads. It reflected a salient fact. To much of the world, the difference between the different Christian faiths does not matter. If a church is attacked by a mob somewhere, they do not stop to ask whether the people are Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, or Methodist. If Christians are persecuted for their faith, there is often no special treatment for one over another. A Christian is a Christian. Pope Francis has referred to this as an ecumenism of blood that all suffer together, and I suggest to you that this too is incarnational ecumenism. Interestingly, the last piece that was sung by this joint choir was Palestrina's arrangement, one of his arrangements, of the Creed, of our belief. I brought a book to give to the um...

[46:53]

to the brothers here, and this is a gift for the monastery, and I see that there's a bunch of them here as well that were brought. I'm going to read to you a paragraph from the preface, this symposium that we're sponsoring in Paris and Strasbourg and Florence, and then at Yale and at our own community next fall. This symposium is an observance of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. The book has been edited by Monsignor Timothy Verdon. That name is probably familiar to many of you. There's a couple others. He is the academic director of our Ecumenical Center in Italy, and as you know, he was a one-time novice here. He and I, and he's become very good friends with our community. And he writes this in the preface to this book, and the book is called The Ecumenism of Beauty. And so what we're dealing with is this third point about art. At the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, he says, with the Cold War still in progress and the atomic threat still active, Pope Paul VI reminded artists that this world in which we live needs beauty if it would not fall into despair.

[48:11]

Beauty, he said, like truth, puts joy in our hearts and is a precious fruit, able to resist the wear of time, able to unite one generation with another, helping them communicate in shared admiration." The Pope's words, part of his decades-long effort to renew art in the Catholic Church, struck a chord in many Protestant faith communities as well, opening the way to today's rediscovery of the role of the visual arts in the life of all Christians. And in the new ecumenical age that the Council helped inaugurate, Paul VI believed that beauty can bridge differences, favor communication, and unite people in shared admiration created the hope that art might become an instrument of communion among separated Christians. I suggest to you that Benedictine monasticism has been part of that.

[49:12]

has always played a role in the creation of beauty, in beauty in life and in artistic forms, and can continue to do so as an element contributing to the vision of ecumenism. Timothy Kelly, who was at one time the abbot of St. John's Monastery, the president of the American Cassanese congregation, also contributed to this collection of talks in celebration of my Savior's 50th anniversary, and he spoke about monastic life, the monastic community, as art. He said, we gather into intentional communities of faith, some of which are monastic, so that by the witness of inclusive love, the world might know God's inclusive love, God's inclusive love. This too is the art, the living art of God.

[50:16]

When he resigned in 1969, Father Danisys wrote a letter to the then abbot primate, Rembrandt Weakland. Father Abbott Rembrandt was coming to the community to make a visitation and in preparation for his coming, Father Damascus wrote this letter telling him that he was preparing to resign as prior here. He said in this letter that he had inherited the formative conviction that the work of the Holy Spirit does not take place in a vacuum. It takes a particular shape what we see, what we hear, and these are my words now, what we see, hear, touch, taste. It takes a particular shape in the life of a monastery that involves, quote, action, radiation, and a living and concrete interaction with the church. Father Damascus created a monastery together with others to bring forth an incarnational representation of monastic values.

[51:27]

These in and of themselves will continue, I believe, if Benedictines remain faithful to their vocation. It will happen both in Catholic and in Protestant circles. That vocation will lead to bridge building. the sharing of our common life by our witness, our praying together and being open to all praying with us, our creation of art and ourselves being recreated in the image of God. In all of these ways, I believe that Benedictine monasticism will continue its contribution to the ecumenical vision. In all of these ways, taking this senior official's words from the Vatican Curia. In all of these ways, monasticism will continue to open the gates. Thank you very much. Do we have time for questions?

[52:38]

Are we okay with that? I don't even know what time it is. I see it's 1125. We can go for a bit. I would like to welcome any questions if you have any. and they don't necessarily have to be about the talk. Brother John said some may be interested in our community. Oh, there are books here. I feel a little embarrassed because I shouldn't, I suppose, because the treasure here from Monsignor Verdon, they included a couple of books which I recently did, which are inspired, I will say this, they're inspired some by this whole idea of art and the role that it plays. One of them is a collection of reflections on artistic images of angelic visitations in the Bible. And it's my little teeny contribution to say, we can read the scriptures, but it sure helps sometimes to have another artist help me with my imagination. And so some of these reflections are based not only on the scripture, but on the image there as well.

[53:44]

And the other is a collection of reflections on the Psalms. Again, like you, I'm a lover of the Psalms, and I think they continue to be a treasure for us to mine. And I had neither Protestant nor Catholic nor Orthodox in mind when I wrote it, because these are for all of us. So if not, that's okay as well. Yes, yes, sir. ecumenism that you speak of is absolutely beautiful and necessary and overdue. But also, with all due respect, I can observe that it seems to be, although expanded and inclusive, only Christian I, from my experiences in living, find that to just be a larger compartment. Many smaller compartments looking to expand into one larger, yet a compartment.

[54:50]

Is there a vision to find a way to include holiness and pureness and seeking the divine outside of the traditions of Christianity. And the reason why I ask that is because in my travels and my experiences, some of the absolute most utterly pure-hearted and holy people I've ever met in my life are not Christian. And so I just wonder how that fits. Thank you. That's a great question. betrays in some sense, for me, the limitations of this subject and this time, because... I obviously limited this to a Christian agenda, so to speak, or a Christian world. Mount Savior has always had its hand in interfaith conversation as well. As part of my research for this, I was looking back over some old notes and old images as well, pictures, and there was that symposium in 1975.

[55:59]

too, I think it was, on the Word, which was quite interfaith. The representation of those who were here from other faith traditions were part of that conversation, and I know Mount Savior has always done that. It is a subject that the Benedictines have been on the forefront of, and that interfaith conversation continues to go on and is led by Benedictines. Thomas Merton was an example of that, but it goes on today. Timothy Kelly sponsored a small gathering of communities before he died, back, oh gosh, it has to be late 90s, early 2000s, something like that, at St. John's Abbey, and invited me from our community and some other non-conventional, there were also Benedictines there, but we had a Buddhist monk there, a Hindu, and finding this conversing together about our commonality was so enriching for all of us.

[57:13]

And you're absolutely right, the place where we could find our focus was in a life of holiness. Now, that in itself is incarnational. Though we gave it different shapes, we were inspired by the same desire to be set apart for God, so to speak. So, that in itself would provide another another whole talk, which I don't have the knowledge to do myself, but I know others will do. So thank you. Yes, ma'am. There's a very well-known businessman, J. Erwin Miller, who believed that the role of architecture in shaping people's lives. I don't know if you know that story. I don't know the name. Well, he lived in a small town in Indiana. Anyway, so he believes that we're shaped by our environment, the built environment. And so, when you're talking about art and beauty,

[58:16]

How does that happen? What is it that is transformative about? choral music or wonderful images. What is that? Is that psychology? I think we're probably moving into realms of psychology and spirituality, which I personally find difficult to parse out. I tend to look for more illustrative ways of doing that. You know, we built our new church in 2000, and it's filled with art. There's some images, and I did a chapter in here which is talking about the art in our own church. Now, we're a predominantly Protestant community, and we filled our church with mosaic and fresco and stone carving and glass, and what I'm curious about Is why?

[59:17]

No, we did it knowing that this church was going to turn around and shape us. I was in my 40s, 50s, and 60s while this was happening. But what I'm really curious about is talking to our young people who've not known any other space. And the formation of their lives by coming into this space day after day, multiple times a day for prayer, is they're taking in a world, and we all do this, without knowing it. It's like the house we grow up in, and that house, we all know what the power of smell can do, or sometimes seeing an image that reminds us of our childhood, that becomes illustrative, I think, of the kind of effect it has on us, because nobody told us that it would. It just does by living in it. It just does by living in it. So are those images going to be productive or destructive?

[60:21]

What artistic ways are the, you know, John Chrysostom, one of his favorite ways of teaching was by being sure people sang hymns. Because he knew, Augustine, what did he say? He said something about, you know, prayer that is sung is prayed twice. It's like eating honey, he said. You eat this sweet and it gets into your system. So music is another place where that happens, where we remember hymns and they come back to us because they're carried on the wings of a form of art. It's not just the word. So to parse out exactly how it happens, I will leave that to the realm of psychology. But I think we all can say we know that it does because we've experienced it in some way. We know what it's like. We may not be able to define beauty, but we know we can look at something and we can say, wow. because something touches us and that piece of art points us to something, this is what Aquinas talked about, that it points us to something beyond itself that we define as beauty and ultimately as God.

[61:38]

So, yes sir? Early on in your talk you talked about the optimism that existed early on and then They had ground to a halt and even at the end they said we have to open up the gate. Would you speculate on what forces caused that optimism to halt or close the gate? What was going on? What happened then? I'm only going to take a slightly educated guess at this, because ecumenism is not my main field. As I said, we tend to live it more than discuss it, but what we're looking at What we're looking at is the real theological issues. I don't want to, at a theological level, a hierarchical level, the dialogues that were taking place between Orthodox and Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant, at a higher level, not the grassroots level.

[62:45]

And the aim of those dialogues was the unity of the church and continues to be. So there have been a lot of agreements that have been made as a result of these dialogues that have put aside some of our differences. One of the biggest ones, which happened not too long ago, in 1999, was the meaning of justification, which was made by Lutherans and Roman Catholics. It was breakthrough in a sense. But has it led to physical, visible unity. Are Lutherans any more ready to get down to issues of the papacy, ordination? Are Lutherans any more ready to embrace some of those issues than Catholics are to embrace issues of ordination, for example, in the Lutheran Church? So, when I use the word technicalities, I'm not using it in a pejorative way.

[63:48]

But I am saying there's a difference of what happens at that level that says, can this now translate into a united church? There's a difference between that and what's taking place right here today. And not only here, but is taking place and will be throughout 2017 at this level of people in monasteries finding these sorts of genuine bridges between them. So there are issues like Eucharist and ordination, for example, which are key, still have not been settled. of cultural issues that are beyond... Well, I wonder, I don't know, I do wonder sometimes, you know, like I said, being a product of the 60s, there was a lot of optimism then. You know, a lot of it was uneducated optimism, but there was a lot of optimism that, you know, we could overcome anything and everything, and a lot of stuff was overcome. But then you get down to real ongoing divisions,

[64:50]

And it's not quite so easy. I think culturally some of that optimism we found dashed. And the hard work that just has to keep going on of keeping the gates open and keeping on talking. There's a hotbed of ecumenism in a place in western New York. And for nine weeks, people from all faiths, people from all over the world, come and live together and celebrate not only the spiritual, celebrate the arts. There is an ecumenical house. in which probably five or six hundred people put together, all faith. Yeah. You're talking about Chautauqua, right?

[65:51]

Yes. So, I'm not as pessimistic about... and now this is a very distinct place, but I'm not that pessimistic about ecumenism in the direction it's taken. Because a lot of people there are young people. And there are representatives from all faiths, young people in their 20s, who spend the summer together. No, it's wonderful. I agree. And if I come across pessimistic about one area, it's not a general pessimism that I have. My hope is at this sort of level, in a very sort of thing. Chautauqua is an example of it. of a common life that's found some in spirituality, a lot in art. One of our founders, we had two founders, and one of them found in Chautauqua an inspiration and said that the community of Jesus, this is a part of our own model.

[66:53]

We didn't set out to be a Chautauqua, but the arts grew out in our own community. The emphasis on art grew out of all places. One of our founders, she didn't know it at the time that she was quoting the rule of Benedict. Her conviction was everything must be done to the glory of God. That means if you're cutting a lawn, if you're setting a table, if you're making dinner, if you're creating a piece of art, our aim is to treat stuff like the vessels of the altar. And so you care about it and you put into it the same amount of love. And that's what people get at places like Chautauqua. You find love because love is put into the creative work. And when that happens, I think that brings about, that builds bridges. Oh, sorry. Yes, sir. Since you had mentioned art and beauty, and let's say in the past there have been difficulties of images, that sort of thing, and then hearing that there are positive things about, people are realizing that just as a bird, when it sings, gives glory to God, because that's how God created, God created

[68:15]

people with certain abilities for music, for art, literature, that can ultimately, if it's used in the right mindset, that in and of itself gives the way to God. Absolutely. If we have the right kind of idea of thinking, and like you said, in the cells, And even way back when, images were made because a lot of people couldn't read. Absolutely. Absolutely. All of these things. And my point is that beyond not being able to read and being educated with that art, this is where I'm saying it begins forming us spiritually as well. It's formative as well as informative. But this idea is, as is the subject of this book, is being revitalized by Protestants in the Reformed tradition, a tradition in which many in the 16th, 17th century rejected the use of images, saw them as potentially idolatrous.

[69:28]

And so the Reformed tradition has built itself more on ideas than on visual images, obviously. And I'm not meaning to, I'm not saying that purely in some negative way. There were things that were embraced and things that were thrown out. What I find interesting right now in the 20th century is so much is being written, there's associations of artists that are predominantly Protestant, re-embracing the role of art. in the church, and wanting to see artwork in their church and hear beautiful music. And Gregorian chant, by the way, is another place. It's not just happening in the Catholic Church, it's happening amongst Protestants as well. So why is this happening? I think it's a move of the Spirit. But I think it's also because we need a humanism that isn't just idea-oriented. That's why I argue that it's incarnational. And that's one of the places.

[70:32]

And thanks be to God for monasteries that keep on doing it, because these are the places where it's happening. One of the places. I would love to talk further. quarter of 12, though. I've worn you out, and I am grateful for the time you've given to me. I say again how grateful I am to be here for your hospitality. He's wonderful. This has been wonderful, and I hope my next visit doesn't have to take quite this long. Next year, by the way, I should tell you that my senior burden is the speaker, right? Yeah, that's correct. So hopefully, any mistakes I've made in the artistic area, he'll correct next year. And I think you'll enjoy that very much. So thank you again.

[71:23]

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