Hard to imagine that a whole year has gone by since we did this last time, but it has. We have some new faces, and we're happy about that. A couple of things to begin. First of all, we're here on retreat, so I know people are seeing each other after a long absence, and there's great temptation to gab, gab, gab. But I would remind all of you of the value of silence in a monastery and in Saint Benedict's view of what the spiritual life is all about. And retreat is a time, special time for communion with the Lord and time spent with the Lord. So try to respect the silence of everybody. you don't want to, you know, have it for yourself, but at least respect it for everyone else. And if you do want to engage in conversation, and there's nothing wrong with that, just please do it sort of inconspicuously and unobtrusively as possible.

[01:08]

The other thing is, I was wondering, is this a good time to start, or would you want to start at seven? I debated this myself, and I thought, well, we'll just let the group decide, so. How many for seven? How many for 7-15? Seven. Wins, okay, so tomorrow we'll gather at seven. Oh incomprehensible creator, true fountain of light and only author of all knowledge, grant we beseech you to enlighten our understanding and to remove far from us all the darkness of sin and ignorance. You who make eloquent the tongues of those who want utterance. direct my tongue and pour out on my lips the grace of your blessing.

[02:16]

Give us all a diligent and obedient spirit, quickness of apprehension, and the powerful assistance of your holy grace, so that what we hear we may apply to your honor and to the eternal salvation of our souls. We make this prayer through Christ our Lord. In Saint Benedict, pray for us. I'll begin this evening with a reading from Saint Matthew's Gospel, chapter five. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountainside. After he had sat down, his disciples gathered around him and he began to teach them. How blessed are the poor in spirit. The reign of God is theirs.

[03:19]

Blessed to the sorrowing, they shall be consoled. Blessed are the lowly, they shall inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for holiness. They shall have their fill. Blessed are they who show mercy. Mercy shall be theirs. Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall see God. Blessed, too, the peacemakers. They shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those persecuted for holiness' sake. The reign of God is theirs. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of slander against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice for your reward is great in heaven.

[04:22]

They persecuted the prophets before you in the very same way. When I was young and small, I used to like to stand on my head. I was short in those days, and just about everything else in the world was much bigger and taller than I. And so it was very boring. But standing on my head, began to liven things up a little bit. Because, for example, the grass hung down like green fringe. Trees grew down, not up. And the sky became a blue lawn that went on forever and ever and ever.

[05:33]

And for as long as I could keep my balance, I could tap dance on the clouds. And birds flew under my feet. The swing set in the backyard looked like a V instead of an A. And it looked like the house was in danger of falling off the yard, shooting off like some rocket ship into space, leaving, of course, a sidewalk lined with pansies and Shasta daisies and black-eyed Susans that led nowhere, to nothing. It allowed me, in other words, to see familiar things in a whole new way. And so, in that sense, it was very exciting and unpredictable Because in a world where trees grew down and houses might fall up, well, then just about anything would be possible.

[06:47]

T.S. Eliot captures a sort of similar idea in his poem entitled Fern Hill, wherein He uses, he's speaking about his own childhood, actually, and he uses a phrase, once below a time, instead of once upon a time. Once below a time. Meaning, I think, that for a child, time in the sense of something to be measured, Time in the sense of something to be tracked. Time in the sense of that great parade of past and present and future. Well, all of that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to a child.

[07:50]

For a child, all time is now time. For example, when A child is on summer vacation. He's rarely thinking about when school will start. And in the winter, when he or she is playing in the snow, they don't think about going to the beach. So, in a sense for the child, time is more content than duration. Time is content more than duration. It is Adam and Eve time. It's Jesus' time. And although Jesus did not ask the crowd to stand on their heads when he preached the Beatitudes, he may as well have

[08:59]

because that's exactly what he was doing. He was turning the world upside down. He was saying in a way that those at the bottom will be at the top, while those who think they're at the top are really flat on their backs. looking up. When St. Benedict wrote the rule and composed Chapter 58, which is the chapter on the reception of new brothers, those coming to the monastery, and he says, when the newcomer comes for the reformation of his life, do not make his entrance too easy. And he prescribes that you just let them sit at the gate for two or three days.

[10:07]

They have to keep knocking. And of course, the whole reason is to test the spirits, to see if this is authentic, if they are really seeking God. Because Saint Benedict knows that once they come into the monastery, their world is going to be turned upside down. they will, in many ways, have to stand on their head. And it's not always an easy thing. The reformation of life, which is at the heart of the spiritual life, that's why people seek out a spiritual life. It's why it leads someone to come to a monastery or to begin a new path. They're looking for something deeper. They want to have their life be different than what it is. It's also sometimes called deconstruction.

[11:11]

Deconstruction. I remember when the monks of New Melloray Abbey in Iowa were going to renovate their church and they started pulling things down, they had these ornate Gothic arches and all this fancy architectural stuff. And when they started pulling it down, they found that that was really just all decorative. It wasn't structural. That underneath all of that or above all of that, was the original structure of the building, which was actually far more attractive than all of that gingerbread. And so they went into this period of deconstruction and the abbot, Brendan Freeman, compared that to what actually goes on in a person's life when he comes to the monastery.

[12:14]

He must deconstruct his image of God, his understanding of himself and relationships, his understanding of time. And so one's whole outlook, one's whole identity, one's whole sense of who he or she is, is completely turned upside down. And this is always the first step in transformation. And it seems to me that for men and women who are interested in Saint Benedict, and those numbers are growing and growing all over the country and the world, it's because they're looking for this deeper reality, to attach themselves to something that will help them see life,

[13:15]

in a different way and in a different life. They want, in short, to become a new creation, which is what the Christian life in general is all about. Now, the formula of the Beatitudes was nothing really new. Beatitudes were common enough expressions in those days and not just in religious circles. They're sort of like aphorisms or slogans. We have them today. Blessed are the wise, for they shall never be fooled. Blessed are the straw, for their enemies shall fear them. Blessed are the wealthy, for they will never go hungry. Blessed are they who die with the most toys, for they win.

[14:21]

Our own form of beatitudes. And another word for blessed, of course, is happy. But the French say debonair. Is that right? Bertrand, yes. Debonair. I like that. Debonair are those who invest well, for in their old age they shall be secure. So what was shocking about Jesus's list was not the form, but the content. Blessed are the meek, blessed are the mournful, Blessed are the poor in spirit. Really? Who is he kidding? There's nothing debonair about any of those things.

[15:28]

What is so happy about hungry and thirsting for righteousness? Or what is so wonderful about being reviled and persecuted? Rejoice and be glad? No one with a lick of sense would vote for any of those definitions as the definition of the good life. Of course, Jesus did not ask for a vote. He did not seek approval. He just redefined what was really important and what life was really all about. And he just put it out there for everyone to hear.

[16:34]

And so we have these portraits, if you will, of what it looks like to belong to the kingdom of God. Dreamers, victims, pushovers, fools. These are the chosen ones, the blessed, the ones who will see God face to face. the happy ones who will be satisfied. Is this standing you on your head? And it is so not because they got an advanced copy of all of the rules and played by them to win. Because winning for these types of people

[17:39]

is the farthest thing from their minds. This is the list of the losers, not the winners. Make no mistake about it. The merciful, those who keep forgiving their enemies so that their enemies can simply turn around and trounce on them all over again. If my brother wrongs me, How many times must I forgive him? Seven? No. Seventy times. Seven times. The pure in heart. Those who believe everything they hear and who get taken to the cleaners every time. The peacemakers. The ones who step right into the middle of a fistfight. and get pounded from both sides.

[18:41]

These are God's favorites, God's chosen ones. Not the effective, highly successful people in the world, but the ones who cannot even compete, who wouldn't know success, if it were handed to them as a trophy. The blessed ones who insist that there must have been some mistake. The ones who would give away the prize to someone who needed it more. Most of us don't really know what to do with or how to react to the Beatitudes. We have either heard them for so long that they have lost their punch and they simply have no shock value whatsoever.

[19:52]

They're just sort of pious platitudes or something that we crochet or needlepoint and hang over the piano or the fireplace Blessed are the poor in spirit. They're cozy and they're comfortable. Or the opposite. We hear them as a threat. They're like commandments. And so we immediately then go into judgment mode. We're worried that, we worry that I'm not measuring up. that I must begin some kind of a beatitude boot camp. I have to somehow get poor in spirit. Like there's a recipe for this. I have to get more vulnerable to be persecuted. But there are no shelts or shelt nots in Jesus's teaching, huh?

[21:02]

There's no shoulds or oughts. This is not transactional language. It's descriptive language. It's gospel language. It's really good news. Much of the power of the Beatitudes depends, I suppose, on where you are when you hear them. Because they sound very different from the top than they do from the bottom. Up front, they do sound pretty confrontational, pretty judgmental. Where is your hunger? Where is your poverty? you well-fed, comfortable Christians, sounds very uncomfortable.

[22:12]

But in the back, or from the bottom, with the victims and the dreamers and the pushovers and the fools, they sound like healing, soothing balm. Shh, they say. dry your tears. The whole earth belongs to you, though at the moment someone else holds the key. But it won't be long, it won't be long before heaven's gate will open wide for you and the first face you see will be God's. You see, each of us hears these Beatitudes differently through our own filters, through our own experience. And we hear them as something either familiar or foreign.

[23:15]

Something to be sought and desired or something to be feared and avoided. You may do with them what you want. You can take them or leave them. And many have left them. Some ignore them. Some welcome them. Some use them as a yardstick to measure their own happiness. Are you blessed? Do you see yourself as blessed? Some have used them for revolution. But I think that the best thing to do with them is to simply let them stand you on your head. And it's why I use them to open the retreat, which is a time to turn things upside down.

[24:25]

So that we're not so sure of who are the winners. and who are the losers. Upside down, you begin to see God's blessed one in places where it never would occur to you to look. And that the poor, the meek, the peacemakers, the persecuted have something to teach us. They're not just the recipients of our surplus. They are our teachers. With our feet planted in heaven, we see the world through Jesus's eyes, through God's eyes. And that is truly the beginning of the reformation of one's life.

[25:32]

So, blessed are those who stand on their heads, for they shall see the world as God sees it. And they shall find themselves in good company, turned upside down by the only one who truly knows which way is up. I would like to rise very high, Lord, above my city, above the world, above time. I would like to purify my glance and borrow your eyes. I would then see the universe, humanity, history, as the Father sees them.

[26:35]

I would see in the prodigious transformation of matter, in the perpetual seething of life, your great body that is born of the breath of the spirit. I would see the beautiful, the eternal thought of your father's love taking form step by step. Everything summed up in you, things on earth and things in heaven. And I would see that today, like yesterday, the most minute details are part of it. Every person in his place, every group and every object. I would see a factory, a theater, collective bargaining and the construction of a fountain. I would see a crowd of youngsters going to a dance, a baby being born, and an old man dying.

[27:38]

I would see the tiniest particle of matter and the smallest throbbing of life, love and hate, sin and grace. Startled, I would understand that the great adventure of love, which started at the beginning of the world, is unfolding before me. The divine story, which according to your promise will be completed only in glory after the resurrection of the flesh. When will you come before the Father saying, all is accomplished? I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I would understand that everything is linked together. That all is but a single movement of the whole of humanity and of the whole universe toward the Trinity. I would understand that nothing is secular, neither things, nor people, nor events.

[28:45]

But that on the contrary, everything has been made sacred in its origin by God. And that everything must be consecrated by man made divine. I would understand that my life, an imperceptible breath in its great whole, is an indispensable treasure in the Father's plan. Then falling on my knees, I would admire, Lord, the mystery of this world, which in spite of the innumerable and hateful snags of sin is a long throb of love toward love eternal. I would like to rise very high, Lord, above my city, above the world, above time. I would like to purify my glance and borrow your eyes.

[29:48]

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