I was, and now, since about 15 years, I think, a seven-fourth letter written by St. Antonius, which surely, as the same man, had been discovered by a Belgian scholar in the Coptic, And it appears that he existed was a simple man, but full of good sense, you know, common sense, and not particularly educated, and so forth. And the image we have of him is one of the Christians who, in time of affluence in the big event of the society and party of the Church, proved itself. dropped out, went on the mountain of society.

[01:03]

And he was a normal person, he was a former sinner, and he wrote, even in astrology, he didn't forget, he kept his memory, but he was normally tempted, but he grew out of that, and he became into a guide of quite a group of monks. And then Adonis used to be shot, When he wanted to terminize, to approve officially this life, he didn't issue a decree. He gave a transcript of permission. He just told the story of that man. But of course he was a writer, full of imagination, so he was a novel. At the minute of the temptation became all this sort of fancy obsessions and very friendly to read. I don't think of that, you know, but it's, in a way, the spiritual itinerary of the monks, which is exactly the same in the life of Buddha, after all, in the life of Christ also, and in the life of St.

[02:11]

Benedict, which we shall practice, we shall, if we have time, we slice from the ox-herding parable, which you know, so, first separation, detachment, coming away, self of self and self of God, temptation, struggle, affective, victory, self-control, then spiritual experience, prayer, meditation, and only after that, the right to return to the marketplace, and to share the experience with other people. And the first monk, by Léonet, this sort of people, you know, but very difficult to sit away for the bishops to absorb in the Red Society. Some of them went so far as to refuse to receive the sacrament, to go to the Eucharist, the Synachesis.

[03:15]

We are monks, we don't care, you go out of your business, we pray, we sit there in the wilderness, and then some refuse to be in communion with what they call the Great Church, you know. And all the trouble of the great bishops, I can imagine, the king of Nyssa, Augustine, in Africa, Martian, and all, the first world to try to reinsert the eccentric, the hippie, in the society. But the role of anarchicism has always been to be, to remain a certain freelance organization. you know, to name I'm free from the, I would say the business, you know, of the religious society, of the church. And it's a book of magazines, you know, and the Russian, also the historians of Monopoly are very clear about that.

[04:22]

I have some pages here of Dostoyevsky, remember one famous Russian theologians and Christianity and culture, and here's a beautiful chapter on the monasticity, which was to an extent an attempt to evade the imperial problem. It was a kind of new and impressive exodus, and the empire always regarded his ancestors to fly into desert as a threat to its claim. and to its very existence, from the time of St. Tenacious to the cruel persecution at mount by the iconoplasts, the iconopractic envelope. It was, indeed, this tenuous life, tenuous life, which is unburdened and dangerous, and so forth. So, it was with all sorts of short-scoring, ambiguity, but this man later

[05:24]

manifestations of social renunciation. And all this had to dissolve in the world, to become a stranger, empirical, a foreigner, is the word, in all earthly cities, just as the church itself was, but a stranger in earthly cities. Paroikos. And it was a surprising work for people like St. Bagus to read, to make use of this mass monks had to manage to do, to have them working to the reconstruction, to the social reconstruction. But their first tendency was to protest against every social structure. Early monotheism was not an ecclesiastical institution. It was precisely a spontaneous movement, a bribe. And it was distinctively a lay movement. Monotheism was a permanent resistance movement. in the Christian society. And so forth.

[06:27]

It's like this beautiful and strong formula, to say that. And that applies to practically all the... Monasticism and religious life, fundamental life, replay monastic life, in all the great times of reform in the Church. It's time the Church tends to be secularized, to become worldly, to be identified with the society, the secular society, with the spirit, so, you know, to susciter, there's cross-outs, there's protesters, there's not. And there are all the scholastic reforms, for instance, in the Middle Ages, in the Middle West, Lumi, and all the movements were started from l'imple, or ordinary man, and protested against their views in the church as eventually reformed church. Many of the monks at the beginning became bishops, in the early Christianity, in the Middle Ages too, they became bishops, they became popes, and then they reformed the church.

[07:35]

In the 12th century, the dispersion of them, it was published by a group of anonymous, it was not a great service, it was a group of anonymous, ordinary monks who wanted to to turn to a more simple life, less identified than affluent monasticism, with more necessary. And you could go on. For instance, the Franciscan life, there was a beautiful study in Sri Franciscan in 17, on Franciscanism as permanent concept of protest, contestation, in the church. And I think that's the value we have to to be aware of and to cultivate. The end is not protest. That could mean only to be a church, to separate from the church. But it's liberation, creative liberation, affirmation of freedom in the society, in the church, which is the result of a positive search for God.

[08:45]

That's why another The way to put it, in the language of today's sociologists, is to speak of utopia. Monasticism, in all its forms, is a sort of, is really a utopic society. You know, the difference between idealism and ideology is a sort of system, you know, chaos, and all the points of the theory have to be applied. And to accept the record, which is very clearly the Marxist ideology, it becomes a new form of slavery, because you have to obey, to absorb all the forms of this teaching. Utopia is a practical example of how it should be. I could be and I should be, at the best, at the limit. And the perfect utopia, Christian utopia, of course, is the apostolic community to which all the monks and the reformers have always claimed to re-enact the apostolic community, utopic community in which everything was common, sociality, common prayer, euthalism, and of all, which have never existed historically, the purpose of St.

[10:07]

Mary King, after He started, after telling this fabulous fact, as a sort of prayer, he said, and they were all, I went heart, went mind, everything was common, and so forth. It's just to show that in this community, it's a community that prophets, you could call it different, were realizing. So, firstly, what's the life of, when you look, what's the life of Jesus in his historical life, you know, the Gospels, where he fulfilled the prophecies, and then the life of Jesus in his Church after resurrection, and the prophecies are accomplished, and such a perfect custodium of what this their life would be. And the monastic society, and also for Lutheran Christianity, Lutheran Christianity, but that applies to all, and not only the official society, but groups like the Shaker, the Joyful Community, or various denominations, you know, always tended to be this sort of utopia.

[11:20]

Extreme case, showing that it can be done. Never perfectly, but at least we tend. Now, of course, that gave rise to various problems. both for the people involved in this exotic sort of nationality and for the responsibility of the whole church, which has to embrace all people, the past and the martyrs, the ordinary people and the protesters. How to manage, that is, that's why the spirit is necessary to keep the feather. And, as I always say, that has been mainly the achievement of great children, sweetly bishops. That's where we see that we need bishops. Because they are not sufficient. They exist for us.

[12:20]

But they need us. But we need them. And the main problem for all these dropouts, this loss, the hippies, you know, goes to discover foreign health, due to health, doctors of charity, like bad health, to have use of the state, that the most important is not to protest, but to be denied. All those eccentricities tend to a soft word, at stage performance, you know, I pass more than you, I eat less than you, I sleep better than you, I leave on a column, I leave without the minimum of school, I leave without health, all sorts of things, and I wish you were okay, have always sometimes. But after all the circumference, and that was the first reaction of that, if you are going to protest, let's do all the

[13:29]

of the opposite. That's what the reasonable people are doing. But we should spend a while. It's not okay, but you know, there is still something more important, you know. And it needs to be of humble service to you. To be of service. Charity is more important than aesthetic performance. So please, join us. Remember what you are. We accept, we admire you, we recognize that you are caring, but please don't be continuously opposed against all, so uneducated. And you know, that's not easy, look, to pass from freedom to organization, from madinality to communion, to joy, to discover the value of this of koinonia, communion. And they actually did.

[14:30]

So it was quite a problem and a very thin monk and I've always been sort of a trouble maker for the church authority, you know. And it's normal, so that could be a fair if it still happens, you know. And eventually they came to, because it's the same spirit, you know, who has been at work in the church organization, authority and so forth, and in the monk, you know, eventually we come to an agreement, you know, but it demands virtue, charity, humility on both sides. And we couldn't illustrate that with many many historical facts, you know, Christian and non-Christian in religion, for instance, in the Eastern Church, it's very clear that the monks were either against the bishop or against the emperor or against both, because they were with the people, through the people, and according to the time where it was either the bishop or the emperor or both, who were oppressing, then they were protected.

[15:44]

But they were, that's what they were, sometimes they were you know, recovered, and with the phenomenon of marginality gone, of course, the phenomenon of being recovered. And that, as I said, was a man, and it's still alive, still a fact, was the main phenomenon of relativism, a sort of dialectic, a difficult balance between being different and being united. Now, what are the main manifestations of this marginality? In all the societies there are about the same. And the first one is that there must be some manifestations of marginality. And the first one is the way of breaking, the problem of the religious habit

[16:54]

It seems to be a modern problem and something very exterior. In fact, in this time, you could tell all the history of the religious life according to the history of the Portuguese problem. The important was to be too manifest that you are a Protestant. You are different. You are the Baptist. I thought you were a certain way of dressing which is different. And normally it was a very neglected thing, the poorest. And Benedict says the monk, most of the worry about the colon or the hatchet or the shed by hermit. The only condition is that it is the cheapest possible. But costless. So you go to the market and you buy Eugene or what's the minimum item and And, in fact, the blue jean is a very good symbol of this common picture of Marginalism today.

[17:59]

You know, many years as protesters, as far as in the end of the year, you know, the old boy and blue jean, you know, it's not a kind of simplicity. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. That it's a big, you know, not dirty, but just neglected. Not smart, you know, not a pair of teeth, you know. And it's beautiful. What about the social class, economic, the class of a lot of all the same. And even men and women wear the same with blue jeans. And so this is a simple, very deep symbol today of the status of reacting against the appearance of the type. And so a certain way of the reason. And then, which is a sign, a weakness. A second main manifestation immediately is the problem for the problem of hair. Having long hair. No hair at all.

[19:03]

Today in Asia, the Hindus have the maximum of hair. All the swannies are like hair. The women's consul had the minimum. There are two ways of what they think. And neglected, you know. And in fact, you notice that all these facts are common to the hippies. years ago and still in the arts movement in the commune that performed and in fact we see all this uh manifestation of good soul i don't know this all of him and you could also stay at that space uh tell the whole history of monotheism and history and religious life uh with the history of hair

[20:11]

When St. Augustine came back to Africa after his conversion in Italy, reading The Life of Anthony, which was a sort of utopia. It was a 10% man. Everybody wanted tools and girls. They wanted, after the Etenarius had written this bestseller, which was all about the empire, everybody wanted to do it, you know. And the thing comes back to Africa, then he's appointed bishop, and he sees that there are already many, many monks. Old girl poets, professors, hippies, and difficult to insert in the society. There are trouble makers, both for the bishops and for the governors. So what do you do? So one of the first things he does is to write a critique for the monks. of the monks worked, you know, to prove them first that they must work.

[21:16]

They didn't want to work. We are some flowers, like the ladies of the field, you know, we don't work. So he says, please, do work. I mean, longer theology on coming to Saint Paul and so forth. who doesn't work, who doesn't have the right to eat, but both do work. Then they didn't want to be dragged, you know. They didn't want to pay the tax. It was a society about, like, the one in the West, known, very affluent, the Roman Empire was on this full clique of prosperity and therefore decadent, you know. millions of slaves were working in all the parts of a minority of rich people and all these peasants in Africa had to work for these Roman people and so it was a form of oppression and I think rightly so, they wanted to protest but they did not to work for these people, not to pay the tax, not to serve in the army like St.

[22:30]

Morris who was a a black African monk, who was from TV in Egypt, who was not here, the person of my monastery, but, you know, so they don't think one. And they didn't want to get their hair, they didn't want to wash. And so the last chapter, the last chapter, about 30 pages, is entitled about the hairy monk. So, we've got the theology about test. It is not too long, not too short, not too short, time to be free-rable, not too excessive, and that explains, you know, that the... Historically, appeared in this extremely mixed milieu.

[23:38]

One of those pictures and manifestations of all the monastic movements is a certain activist, a matter of food. The first way to have to refuse the ordinary life of society is to refuse this food. So, vegetarian or whatever, you know, And that's occured. And sometimes the individual is justified by a very beautiful idea, namely the respect of life, non-violence. Never kill some living being, never eat, not even eggs because it contains a germ of life. You remember when I was in a Buddhist forest in Bangkok, I was invited to a meal, or a meal that they had every morning, or two before I would have done a meal. And it struck me the quantity of cats, dogs, pets, and whatever in the refrigerator.

[24:42]

So I said, well, I always do. I said, well, you know, Buddhists are totally non-violent. So when there are too many cats, they bring in the monarchs to be fed. And there is something to feed them. And in fact, then, when you die on a small Christian monastery was started, my father said, yeah, I could see that there were also Christian cats. So, after me, then, something I already mentioned that, on which it's good to return And one of the, another manifestation of personality is the fact of wandering. For example, people are stable. They have a town, a job, they earn their living, the place, always the same, and so forth, their social relations, whereas the protester, being free, he wander.

[25:45]

Because of the war, he pays, he works, but the government is, is a wanderer, you know. And then the extreme care, the extreme manifestation of this marginality and of this protest is to be a fool for God, you know. And we have this tradition of wisehood. Apparently they are fools, but in fact they are the wise people, you know. consider them as cruel, never takes them seriously, they are despised of exactly what they want, you know, but they are fools of God, God knows, you know, and we have that in all the religious traditions. There are many of these stories you make in India, in the world, you know, you never know whether they are

[26:46]

serious one or not, you know, because somehow, of course, Galatant are exploiting the situation to beg without working and to wonder. But it's very difficult to know, you know. And if you have this idea of the wise fool, if you emulate the spiritual father, particularly it's considered as a sort of paradoxical person, you know, who jokes with you, he doesn't answer miserably, you ask him a question, he answers another question, instead of just pacifying you with a comforting answer, what lies you to think more? And you have this idea of the Zen master as a comic figure, as a full doctor in the Sufi tradition, very much so, you have it in the Buddhist tradition, in the Hindu, and you have it in the Christian tradition, and you have it in the African tradition. Last October when I was in Africa, I didn't see the same thing, but if you wish, before, they had an election of a chief in the village, and the Travis monks were there in Germany, and then there was some, the election was powerful, something had been wrong in the election, but the chief was there, and he wanted to involve his youth, the people, and...

[28:11]

Nobody dared to say anything, because he was a chief. And then there was a long, what you call, palabra, you know, palabra. And then suddenly the man appeared totally dirty, long beard, a sort of red, heavy, totally ridiculous, you know. And he asked to speak, and he spoke, and he said all the truth to the chief, you know. They had to listen to that, and then you wonder. And then they had to settle the problem. He was the only free person. And that's the fool you find in all the... I hope you want to write a drama of Shakespeare, King Lear, the only reasonable person, the only person who says reasonable thing is a fool. And all the counsellors of King Lear tell him, no, that's not to be a fool. He's wise. Listen to him. And that's why, that's the meaning of all these fools, there were in the court, court jestered, you know.

[29:16]

Even in the open table, of course they were jestered, and sometimes they were reminding the great man that you are just a man, be careful, you know. You know, the fool is the person who is free in earth to say the truth, you know. And to a certain extent, as motionless, conservatively we have to be that, you know. On the Russian Christian tradition, it's very, very strong, you know, they have quite a series of French food. They used to canonize them. In the time of the operation by the great star, the high man the temple, the great, it was the only people who were free enough to say, to protest, you know, against the emperor, or sometimes the patriarchs, where they're full for Christ, you know. And of course, some were killed, where martyrs, but that was their vocation that came up to the time where, in the 17th century, the church and state were so identified that this is canonizing the fool.

[30:20]

But there were children, if you read the pilgrim of the Russian world, wandering, no matter what sometimes he's taken for fool and put in jail and for fool. And you hear the same in all our Christianism. monastic tradition that the daisius of Loyola was considered as fools even in the in his constitution he said that may happen let's normally not do it and go for it but let's be fools for time and he was even quite in Germany and he wouldn't do better because he said well in the mental care And I think this was a sort of fool when he did sort of... And this was a hippie in his time. Jesus was free, you know, protesting in the place of Attizzi, returning his clothes to his actual father, refusing all his society. And you remember in the season, a beautiful fresco, almost a scene in the place of Bathsheba, and then people are there, the father is there, Francis is there, and the poor bishop, the bishop does not know what to do.

[31:27]

He just called out the... the music day of this Jesus Christ. So he was full. And there was quite a tradition up to our dead. And I remember, three years ago, there was an international conference on occasion of the birth of Dostoevsky in Greece. So there were 15 representatives of the Soviet Soviet the Persian Academy of French people as it is, at least officially, otherwise they would not have them from the window and are always so very well. I don't know. There were two Christians in the group. There were York and Moltmann who had to speak of the hope according to Brostoyevsky because, in fact, he discovered hope when he was a prisoner of war in this first condition, he was in the German force, and he had only one book, the same, it was Karamazov,

[32:28]

We discover all this theology of hope, clearly, and of course, from this experience. And to me, they ask me to deal with a topic which is very convenient. For me, it was the idiot. Ask me to deal with a topic which is very convenient. For me, it was the idiot. Well, Mr. Yeke, you know, this novel, you know, he said, I wanted to show the idea of a person. He said, and this, and this means, he said, is the idea of kind. I know he's a man who comes out, comes out of a mental hospital, and he said, if you talk to the Russian society of his time, denounced the agendas of power a few days before, and then he has a sort of, in a peak, how you say, return to his mentor of Peter, which was very timely, because it was a very moment where Solzhenitsyn was receiving a lot, I feel it, the global price, the president, the academic, the national government that could be there, the very important actor, and that was all.

[33:44]

He is a sort of professor, or fool in that way, And, you know, I know the person in mental health. It was very timely. Anyway, the last example of a wandering from God who was also a fool. I spoke St. Benedict Larkin. He spoke of a wandering from me. I'm going to run to the children. They said, you know, I'm going to go to 13 minutes, you know. I'm going to get on a report. And I'm going to get on a report. If you're getting involved, you should go all over there. Well, I'll get back to you. They said, you know, you're right on your flyer. They said, you know, I'm going to talk to you. [...]

[34:45]

They said, you know, I'm going to talk to you. And the last one, the first [...] one. fact that a monastic way of life, I don't think of monastic institutions, but a monastic way of life in general is a world phenomenon.

[35:46]

The dimension of human life present and active in all the great civilization of culture and culture of mankind. The dimension of human religious life. Religion is a dimension of human life, and religion, from Thanos' leg, is the form of monarchy. Also Christianity, at the end, also other forms, but one of the main forms of monarchy, in fact, almost three or four, in non-Christian Eastern religion, far Eastern religion, is monarchy. Now, we could illustrate that if we have opportunities with comparisons, similarities, parallel between structures of spiritual account, spiritual routine array, or structures of organization of life, of services.

[36:54]

But, now, let's try to discern what is the basic phenomenon which is common to all the forms of monasticism in all the nations and all civilisations that monastic is Christian and non-Christian. And it seems to me always more that the key concept which applies to all of them is concept of marginality. You know, the marginality is very much elaborated today among sociologists, psychologists, even there is a certain rather sophisticated distinction between marginality and liminality, or in certain sorts of liminality. But in a way, I think the concept of marginality for our purpose works, namely, to be, and it's very, very easy to understand,

[37:58]

When you have a bed, you know, you are in the margin, living in the margin. So there is a bed and there is the margin, and there is the space out. So to be a marginal means to be there, not to be totally identified with the ordinary society, not to be outside, just to be around, you know, to belong to it without being exactly the same. And again, we find the problem of being in a difficult balance equilibrium, you know, like my little African there, just a difficult balance between the page and out of the page. But this marginality appears in many historical facts. Now this morning we have seen the main structures of life, but within all the structures of life, general orientation, there are still some more particular features or facts which are common to practically all the monastic forms of marginality.

[39:17]

A type of training, preparation, knowledge, a certain ritual of insertion, public commitment initiation usually frequently appears with a sponsor of symbolism entering in a new sort of love relationship with the divinity and with the group the divinity takes care of interactions are the law of the community are the subject of penalty one of which is frequently the exclusion from the group, temporarily or permanently, and you know the importance in all monastic rules, like mine, of excommunication. And to check that, there is a certain observant which is either opening of conscience to the Roshi, to the Abbot, to the spiritual father, or a public

[40:25]

So you see that the fact of receiving a new name, the fact for many male communities of having a community of women there in a double monastery under the jurisdiction of one superior man or woman in ironia there was a woman who the abbess who appointed both the abbot and the bishop and uh oh Just twin, you don't have to let us speak, joined, separated, but we're going into a sort of same community.

[41:31]

So you see, there are many, many forms of being similar. And now, that brings a problem which was very clearly formulated years ago in an article on the Review for Religious Life in 1973 by Sister Agnes Keningen. Christianizing religion. religious life is not in itself something Christian, you know. It's not an original Christian contribution to the history of man. There may be some non-Christian element in religious life, and it's normal, but they must not become predominant. So we have to Christianize this religious life. And the And so we have to see how.

[42:32]

Now, I said that the basic phenomenon is marginality. Monks are essentially marginals. Or, if you write, like eccentric. There is a center and an ex, you know, out of, uh, protest, and often that leads to be a sort of anti-society, anti-culture, anti-religion. Not only a counter-religion, counter-culture, but it may lead to, if it goes too far, maybe an anti-religion. And so it's a spontaneous marginal. And we find that very clearly in, for instance, a Buddhist monk's hardware of protesters against the economic Hindu society and so forth.

[43:39]

So it's very important for us to notice the fact that the historical fact in Christianity of this phenomena of marginality and the first monk in fact, were really sort of hippies. The first Christian monks, when they started, the end of the third century, then in the fourth century, spontaneously, almost everywhere, the first historical evidence we have is of a monk called Antonius. Antonius, St. Antonius. You know that some people included me, doubted, whether St. Perlman ever existed. And after all, it does not matter very much. The important is that its life has been written. And... On occasion of this, historical or not, monk, a great bishop at Anasius, a church doctor, wanted to illustrate what is to be a monk.

[44:48]

And what? And now, since about 15 years, I think, Seven soft letters written by Sir Antonios, surely the man had been discovered by a virgin scholar in a papyrus, and it appeared that he existed. He was a simple man, but full of good sense, you know, common sense, and not particularly educated, I suppose. And the image we have of him is that one of these Christians who, in a time of affluence and decadence of the society and partly of the church, dropped out, dropped out, right on the mountain of society. And he was a normal person, he was a former sinner, even in solitude he didn't forget it. But he was...

[45:49]

normally tempted but he grew out of that and he became a spiritual guide of quite a group of monks and then agonized his bishop when he wanted to canonize to approve officially this life he didn't issue a decree he just told the story of that man. But of course he was a great writer, full of imagination, so he wrote it. Now then, he would admit it. So the temptations became all this sort of fancy obsessions and very funny to read, and all sorts of that, you know. But it's, in a way, the spiritual itinerary of the monks, which is exactly the same in the life of Buddha, after all, in the life of Christ also, and in the life of some menace, which we start, perhaps, if we start, if we have time, we slide having power, which you know.

[46:49]

So, first separation, detachment, coming away, search of self and search of God, temptation, struggle, acceptism, victory, self-control, then spiritual experience, prayer, meditation, and only after that, the right to return to the marketplace, and to share the experience with other people. Because monks were really this sort of people, you know, and very difficult to sit away for their bishops to absorb in the Great Society. Some of them went so far as to refuse to receive the sacrament, to go to the Eucharist, the Synaxist, that we are monks, we don't care, you have your business, we pray, we talk there in the white domain, so, and then

[47:50]

refused to be in communion with what they called the great church, you know. And all the trouble of the great bishops, I can imagine, in Africa, Latin, for all of you. The Pope was to try to reinflare, he says, eccentric, the hippie, in the society. But the role of monarchy has always been to be men. a certain freelance organization group, you know, to remain free from the, I would say, the business, you know, of the religious society, of the church. And it's a sort of excerpt, you know. And the Russian Orthodox historians of monotheism are very clear about that. I have some pages here. in the famous Russian theology of Christianity, and took you a chapter on monasticity, which was, to a very extent, an attempt to evade the imperial problem.

[49:07]

It was a kind of new and impressive exodus. And the empire always regarded his exodus to fly into desert and trek. to its claim, and to its very existence, from the time of the tenacious to the cruel persecution of months by the iconoclasts, the scholastic, iconoclastic temple. It was indeed a strenuous life, strenuous life, with its own burden and danger, and so forth. So, it was with all sorts of shortcoming and ambiguity that these men later this main manifestation of social enunciation. And how this helped to dissolve the world, to become a stranger and pilgrim, a foreigner to the world, in all earthly cities, just as the church itself was, but a stranger to the earthly city. Paroico. And it was quite a work for people like St.

[50:12]

Basilic to read, to make use of this monk's idea in history. managed to do, to have them working to the reconstruction, to the social reconstruction. But their first tendency was to protest against every social restriction. The only monothecism was not an ecclesiastical institution. It was precisely a spontaneous movement, a drive, and it was distinctively a lay movement. Monothecism was a permanent resistance movement in the Christian society, and so forth. You multiply this beautifully. And that applies to practically all the monasticism and religious life in all the great times of reform to the Church. It's time the Church tends to be secularized, to become worldly, to be identified with the secular society.

[51:14]

We see the Spirit is stronger to susitets, there's crops out, there's protesters, there's monks. And all the monastic reforms, in terms of the Middle Ages, in the West, in Germany, and all these movements were, started from lay people, or ordinary monks, and protested against the abuse in the church, and eventually reformed the church. Many of these monks, at the beginning, became bishops, In the early Christianity, in the Middle Ages too, they became bishops, they became prophets, and then they reformed the church. In the 12th century, the Cistercian order, the reform started by a group of anonymous, it was not a great church, it was a group of anonymous, ordinary monks, who wanted to return to a more simple life, less identified than the affluent monastases with worldly societies. And we could go on.

[52:15]

For instance, the Franciscan life, there was a beautiful study in Etude Franciscan in 17, on Franciscanism as permanent contest, a protest, protestation in the church. And I think that's the value we have to be aware of and to cultivate. The aim is not protest. could lead on it to be a sect, to be, to separate from the church. But it's liberation, creative liberation, affirmation of freedom in the society, in the church, which is the result of a positive self-control. That's why another way to put it in the language of today's sociologists is to speak of utopia. Monasticism, and in all its form, is a sort of It's really a utopic society.

[53:16]

One of the differences between ideology, and ideology is a self-existent, you know, theory. And all the points of the theory have to be applied. And to a certain extent, we see it very clearly in the Marxist ideology. It becomes a new form of strategy, because you have to obey, to absorb all the points of this teaching. Whereas utopia is a practical example of how it should be, how it could be, and how it should be, at the best, at the limit. And the perfect Christian utopia, of course, is the apostolic community, to which all the monks and the reformers and founders have always pledged to re-enact the apostolic community, this utopic community in which everything was coming of charity, common prayer, Eucharist, and so forth, which perhaps never existed historically.

[54:18]

The purpose of St. Luke, after telling various facts as a sort of refrain, he says, and they were all, when heart, when mind, everything was common, and so forth, is just to show that in this community, Christian community, the prophecies of the Old Testament were realizing. So, firstly, what the life of Saint Luke, what the life of Jesus in his historical life, you know, the gospel, where he fulfills the prophecies, and then the life of Jesus in his church after his resurrection, and the prophecies are accomplished, and that's the perfect utopia of what Christian life should be. And the monastic society And all sorts of, not only Christianity, but what applies to all, and not only the official society, but groups like the Sheikers, the Joyful Community, or various denominations, you know, always tended to be this sort of utopia.

[55:28]

Extreme case, showing that it can be done. Never perfectly, but at least we take. that of course that gave rise to various problems both for the people involved in this utopic sort of nationality and for the responsibility of the culture which has to embrace all people the best and the margin the other people under protection how to manage but easy that's why the spirit is necessary to keep the better and as i already said that has been mainly the achievement of great children, simply bishops. That's why we see that we need bishops. They are not sufficient. They exist for us. But they need us.

[56:30]

But we need them. And the main problem for all these brought-outs, there's not the hippies, you know, those do discover progressive things. You will regret what those of charity are like, that the most important is not to protest, but to be united. All those eccentric standards to a sort of more aesthetic but for months, you know, I fast more like you, I eat less than you, I flip them like you, I live on a colon, I live without the minimum of clothing, without, without, all sorts of eccentricities in me, which were okay, heroic sometimes. But after all, secondary. And that was the first reaction of them.

[57:31]

If you are going to protest in this society, let's do all the way, all the opposite of what reasonable people do. The bishop said, well, it's okay, but you know, there is still something more important. And it is to be of humble service for you. To be of service. Charity is more important than ascetic performance. So please, join us. Remind what you are. We accept, we admire you, we recognize that you are caring. But please, don't be continuously proposed against Orson or Medica. Communion, that's not, that was not difficult, you know, to pass from the conflict to the organization, from marginality to communion, to charity, to discover the value of this carrier of koinonia, communion, and this actuality.

[58:34]

So it was quite a problem, that's everything. I've always been sort of a troublemaker on the church authority, you know. And it's normal, so that won't be a fair if it still happens, you know. And eventually they came to, because it's the same spirit, you know, who is at work in the church organization, authority, and so forth, and in the mouth, you know, eventually they come to an agreement, you know. But demands virtue, chante, humility, on both sides. And the historical fact, you know, the Christian and non-Christian tradition, for instance, in the history of church, it's very clear that the monks were either against the bishop or against the emperor or against both, you know, because they were with the people, through the According to the time where it was either the bishops or the gros obo, matriarchs, who were oppressing, then they were protested.

[59:45]

But there were, that's why there were sometimes there were a recuperation, you know, recall world, and with the phenomenon of marginality called the phenomenon of being recalled. And that's our As I said, was a man, and it's still alive, still in fact. But the main phenomenon of Melastikism is a sort of dynamic, you know, difficult balance between being different and being united. Now, what are the main manifestations of this nationality? In all the societies, there are about The first one is, there must be some manifestations of imaginary. And the first one is the way of grace.

[60:49]

The problem is the religious habit, which seems to be a modern problem and something very exterior of it. In fact, it is a sign. We could have all the history of the religious life according to the history of the, of Haggis. The important one to manifest that you are a projection. You are different. You are the master. And you have a certain way, but I think we see it different. And normally it was a very... ...reflective way to prove it. And then it says the most worst, worst [...] The only condition is that it is the cheapest possible. Costly. So you go to the market and you buy blue jeans or what minimum you want to do. And in fact, blue jeans is a very good symbol of this common picture of marginality.

[61:55]

Today, you know, in the process of how many years ago, you know, there were blue jeans to the same cost of simplicity. Poverty. Internal cost. that it's a bit, not dirty, but just neglected. It's not smart to tell us peace, you know. And it's uniform. What about the social class, economic class? You belong all the same. And men and women wear the same routine. And so it's a simple, very simple today, of the standards of reacting against the accruent And so, a certain way of dressing. And then, which is a sign, a witness. And the second manifestation immediately is the problem of hair. Having long hair. For instance, today, or long, or no hair at all.

[62:58]

Today, in Asia, the Hindus are the maximum of hair. And the Buddhist bonds have a minimum. There are two ways of protesting. And neglected, you know. And in fact, you notice that all the extractions were common to the hippies years ago, and still there are some, in the commune, and in fact we see all these manifestations, and we saw that, and we saw that film, and we could also tell all the history of fanaticism and religious life, with the history of fear.

[64:02]

For instance, when St. Augustine came back to Africa after his conversion in Italy, reading The Life of Antony, which was a sort of utopia, for the sense of St. Martin. They wanted, too, St. George. They wanted, after they had written his bestseller, which was all over the past, even wanted to So the thing comes back to Africa, then he's appointed bishop, and in Attica there are already many, many monks. Old job helps, professors, hippies, and difficult to insert in the society. They are a troublemaker both for the bishop and for the governor. So what to do? So one of the first things he does is to write a critique for the monks. And the monks work. to prove them first that they must work.

[65:07]

They didn't want to work. We are like the ladies of the field. We brought some providence. We don't work. So he says, please, do work. I don't know the analogy I'm going to say before that. We don't work. They have the right to eat. Of course, do work. Then they didn't want to be drafted. They didn't want to pay the tax. It was a society about like the one in the West, now, you know, very affluent, or my empire was at this full peak of prosperity and therefore decadent, you know.

[65:50]

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