And last time we spent part of an hour, I think, talking about a kind of framework, and a bit about the bibliography, about the books that are available. Unfortunately, not much is available in English on Dorotheus, and Dorotheus and Bartholomew and John, because they comprise our circle. Most of the stuff is in French. I urge you to learn to read French at least sometime. We've got Wheeler, this translation with a long introduction to Dorotheus. The introduction is largely a historical introduction. It's on the life of Dorotheus. Whereas usually when people write an introduction, they also go into the spiritual doctrine. He's got that sort of mixed into his account. And you'll notice that in that introduction is the life of Dosithi, as he calls him in English, or Dosithius. It's from page 37 to 44. Now the documents, actually the source documents about our people, seem to consist of three things.

[01:06]

The letters of Bartholomew and John. There are about 840 letters written by Bartholomew and John, the old men, who are both reclusives. And some of them are written to Dorotheus, and some of them are written to his monks. They only corresponded, they only communicated by letter, not by voice. And so, those are unique, those letters, in being the only collection from ancient times, as far as I know, of letters of spiritual direction. His father Hauser comments on this. Those things are not so rare in our time, but they're very rare to have them preserved from that time. And you see, it's the particular situation of that reclusion that made it happen, because otherwise those things would have been said, and the record of them would have been lost. They're like the Apothegmaton in that respect. They're written down usually by a secretary and transmitted to somebody else. Then there's the life of Dosithius, which is usually printed along with the works of Dorotheus. He was the first disciple of Dorotheus, it seems.

[02:08]

And his life is kind of a concrete epitome of Dorotheus' teaching of that whole way of life, the virtues of Dosithius. And we've got that in our introduction, instead of printing it. And it's a pretty full account of the life of Dosithius, too. I don't think anything essential, anything important is left out. It's nearly as long as the original. It's just woven into the introduction, or given as a kind of digression in the introduction. Where did he write them, or where did he get the information? Okay, I think they're in his books, somewhat scattered in his books, like Penthos, and especially the one on spiritual direction. There's one called Direction Spirituelle en Orient Autrefroid, which means spiritual direction in the East in the good old days.

[03:13]

And one of his chief sources is the letters of Bartholomew, Pius and John, you see, for spiritual direction, because that's the best preserved source. And he loves Bartholomew, Pius and John, he's got a very high esteem for them. So, from time to time I can get some of his comments on that. I can get those books and just give you something there. Okay, so the three sources are the letters of Bartholomew, Pius and John. Which are, actually, we have them in full, the collection is still entirely preserved. It's in Greek, it's in French, this is the French edition. They do a beautiful job on some of these things. I think these were put out by Cervantes, I believe. Yes, this Regnault, he has really done a service as far as these particular Masters are concerned.

[04:20]

He's edited a whole bunch of things. The critical edition of Dorotheus, for instance, is his work together with one of his students. And then this little book, Spiritual Masters in the Desert of Judah, which has the life of Tositheus, it has a collection of Dorotheus discourses, same as we have in here, and then selections from the letters of Bartholomew, Pius and John, from the three basic sources. And then his introductions are good too. He's the number one authority in this, and he's a good authority too, he's a person who writes deeply about these things, when he's discussing. He's also edited other, this is put out by Solem, a monastery, it's a Benedictine monastery. He's also done some editing of the Epitegmaton, and written about, he wrote a very good introduction to the sayings of the Fathers. Okay, so that caught people's frustration. There's one in Greek and English.

[05:21]

Yeah, do you have that? It's under your name, you're the one. You should put it on the shelf, because you've had it for a year. Yeah. Now your sins come out. But it's not to Dorotheus, it's letters to other people. He started, I think the first part of the collection, he started a piece of the collection, and he was going to do the whole thing, but he died. If you put that on the shelf over there, then the others can get a look at it too, just to get a sample. He's a scholar, he might teach us something. That's right. He needs to learn a few more words, a few more English words. Right now, instead of... He tends to use it in a mixture. Keep Romuald in your prayers. Last week he wasn't so cheerful. He was getting intimidated by the studies again. Take the speed reading? You have to take that in the interterm. That's after Thanksgiving, when the first semester is over, and the bad news comes in.

[06:24]

Then they have what they call an interterm until Christmas. And they can concentrate on one thing during that time. So he would concentrate on reading. Get some tutoring, reading and composition. Get some tutoring and take a speed reading course. He's interested in that now, so that's good. About the background now. We said something about dates and places last time, and chronology and maps and so on. And Chitty gives a general background to this whole area, but he doesn't give you much particular background on that. If you read that section, these fathers were talking about... What he talks about is the letters of Borsinufius and John. And he tells you a little bit about the monastery of Tharatha. But he doesn't tell you much about Dorotheus. See, he was the one who edited the letters, so I suppose he knew it all from that point of view. He was not so familiar with the other sources. It's surprising that he doesn't tell more about the general history.

[07:25]

He gives the broad background, because his book is probably the fullest book on the broad background of that time. But when he focuses in on this area, he doesn't tell you much about that particular scene. There's one thing that he does say, which is very interesting. It's on page 132 in Chitty's book, Desert is a City. He talks about the two old men, the great old man and the other old man. Borsinufius... Barsinufius, is it? That B changes into a B. Also a modern Greek. And the other old man, John, was also called John the Prophet. And who were just like two expressions of the same soul. And they did differ in the kind of advice that they gave, the field that they covered, which is interesting. The community took the form of a synovium with the cells of anchorites in varying degrees of enclosure clustered around it. Now that's fascinating, because it suggests what? It suggests the Canobalese kind of life.

[08:26]

With synovium and moving out into solitude. A common life radiating out into different degrees of solitude. You've got different patterns. The Holy Land seems to have been especially fertile in those kinds of combinations. A common life with a solitary life. We don't see the same sort of thing so often in Egypt. The two seem to be more distinct. Here they're united. And what's more, the relationship between the people involved is a fascinating expression, I guess. And which has a lot to say to us, because we're going to be living in the same territory, as it were. And having the same kind of relationships, having the same kind of problems, the same realities to confront. Bartholomew is a lot like St. Romuald, in a way. The main difference being that he just stays in one place. But remember how St. Romuald, being predominantly a hermit, yet related to the cenobitical life. And he would go around and he'd reform a monastery and he'd stay there for a little while.

[09:29]

Or he'd park himself in a cell nearby the monastery, and then act as spiritual father for the abbot and for the monks. And then he'd move to somewhere else, and shut himself up like Bartholomew. But Bartholomew stayed in one place. Also, you have to remember that his was a time of founding, and St. Romuald was a time of reform, when there was an existing monasticism. And the hermitical monasticism was coming into a new relationship with it. And St. Romuald was more of an organizer, it seems. But the two are very much alike, and they're fascinating characters, both of them alike. Now there's this article which you're probably reading now, aren't you? By Lunchtime? The one by Nate. Yeah. Which opens up this rather interesting aspect of the situation more. And he talks about the relationships between Arsenopheus, John, Abbot Ceridos, and Dorotheus.

[10:32]

There's one thing, by the way, there's a kind of inconsistency. In the Wheeler's introduction there, he says that Dorotheus left the monastery, that he didn't leave the monastery of Tuatha and found his own monastery, as most of the sources say. I haven't found anybody else that agrees with him on that, so I don't know what the evidence is. He says that Dorotheus stayed at Tuatha and then later became a hesychast himself, right, in a solitary cell. Whereas the others say that he found a monastery of his own and remained there for the rest of his life. I don't think they say that he moved out into solitude in this new monastery, either. You can correct me if you find anything wrong there. It seems to me like the three justifications he gave for this opinion were this sort of thing you could interpret it one way or the other. They weren't clear at all. He was presenting them like they were concrete evidence and he didn't seem to be making them clear. It seemed to me he was a bit wasting his time. Yeah, it was kind of a wishful thinking.

[11:33]

There's no way you could determine it the way he gave them symptoms. It makes it a neater situation. We can think also of it being a more unified situation with Barcinopheus and John Dorotheus and his disciples still all in the same circle. But we just don't know. I'd like to emphasize a couple of points in this article by Francois Nate that is a form of charismatic authority in Gaza. Now, what he's talking about is the way in which Barcinopheus and Barcinopheus' charism and personality radiated out to these various circles, especially to the monastery, how it related to the life of the Sanobian. And the characters that he talks about are Barcinopheus and John, of course, and then Dorotheus and the abbot, Salidas. He talks about the relationship between Dorotheus and John, and then between Barcinopheus and Dorotheus.

[12:39]

And John is the consultant on more practical matters. He's the one who tells you how to answer a particular problem. So Dorotheus would recur to him on the questions of how to get along with the brothers, how to exercise his office, and so on. And John is sort of the lesser of the two old men. The other one is the great old man. They defer to one another, but John handles more the practical questions, and especially the questions of relationships or dealing with other people, of the exterior life in its details. Whereas Barcinopheus is more the spiritual master and treats things, as Nate says here, in terms of ultimate values rather than practical solutions, no matter what he's talking about. He'll often, it seems, go off into just a spiritual homily, in a way, which moves back from the practical question and tries to motivate the person in terms of the ultimate values,

[13:45]

in terms of the presence of God, or the experience of God, or whatever. Dorotheus consults John on everything that concerns his relationship with the brethren, especially as to the measure of obedience due to Abbot Serritus. And then, the two old men always back up the abbot. They work perfectly in unison there. And yet the abbot always defers to the old men, as far as deep spiritual direction is concerned. But as somebody else points out, it couldn't have been that way all the time. That is, that opening of the heart couldn't have only been to Barcinopheus and John. It must have also been directly to the abbot. In fact, we can't consider that the monks got all of their spiritual direction by a letter from the grand old man, or the old man, the recluses. Part of it must have been directly from the abbot. The old man may have been consulted when there was particular difficulty in the abbot's offerings.

[14:47]

I think so, yes. Especially a particular difficulty which related to how to deal with the abbot, or something like that. Or the interpretation of obedience. Suppose the abbot just said something, and the question of how to react to it, how to relate to it. And it may have been sometimes that the abbot was busy, and he couldn't have enough contact with the monks, especially as regards to the inner life. And so his general contact with them may have been on a less individual, less personal level. Whereas John deals with relations with the brethren, Barcinopheus' role is realized in the spirit of prayer, vocation, spiritual struggle, and the fundamental orientations of life, such as the necessity for working in the infirmary, and the need for a hesitastic life. So these are letters from the two to Dorotheus. Not to anybody else. Perhaps the same principles over the last one.

[15:49]

There appear in these letters two types of relationship, or even of authority. Barcinopheus instructs Dorotheus in the light of ultimate values, especially prayer and intercession in Jesus Christ, whose role in his day-to-day life is authenticated by John. So it's as if Barcinopheus traces the great lines in the ultimate framework, and then John fills in some of the details. And he's got two conclusions here. In the first place, John advises Dorotheus, chiefly on points relating to life in the monastic community, where he upholds wholeheartedly the authority of Abbot Cerritos, whose position could not have been very easy. Secondly, John the prophet not only effaces himself before Barcinopheus as soon as it's a question of vocation, prayer, or intercession, or the inner life, but freely admits that his own confidence in God's authority and endurance and strength rest on the profound communion and prayer which unite the two hermits of Gaza in Jesus Christ. So Barcinopheus is a mysterious figure. He's off in the distance there. You never see him.

[16:52]

In fact, they said that he lived for 50 more years in a cellar. Nobody saw him. In fact, the patriarch of Herbivores came to him, got sceptical about him, didn't think there was anybody there. So finally he came to check up on the open door, and fire came out. Scorched. Scorched a certain number. But that was usual in those days. You had to burn up a few of the bystanders in order to make a really good show. It was like Elijah. Fifty soldiers at a blast. We might say that Barcinopheus was the novice master of Dorotheus. Most of his letters refer to the earlier part of his life. The great old man shows himself to be a spiritual master who unceasingly recalls his disciple to the essentials. Rarely can one find in ascetic writings a spiritual father who gives so constantly and so uncompromisingly the word of life, which both demands and arouses inner liberation and conversion to trust in the merciful God who is the lover of mankind.

[17:55]

It's the sort of thing that we can interpret in two ways. You interpret it either with frustration and resentment as being a kind of vague generality. What good does that do? I could hear that from anybody. The same old words. Vague generality or sort of the doting of an old man. Or you interpret it as being the essence and if you find the essence, then you have the rest. Remember that definition of a master as someone who teaches essence and who doesn't deal so much with the details or with the periphery. A master is someone who teaches essence. When the essence is perceived, he teaches what is necessary to expand the perception. He begins from the center and not from the fringe. He imparts an understanding of the basic principles of the art before going on to the meticulous details. Anyway, that kind of thing. So Barson Hoppe maybe talks about the center. But the point of all this, the fascinating point is that if you have the center, in a way you have everything. The whole of the education is designed to put you in possession of the center,

[18:59]

but of the essence, in the same way that the master is in possession of the essence. And it's as if that's what he's trying to train you to all the time. A Zen master will do something like that by frustrating the disciple about all of the details, either by forcing him into the details and making him open and close doors for four years or something, or when he asks a question about a detail, just refuse or just in some way block the question and answer with an enigmatic answer, a kind of koan. Trying to teach, as it were, by induction. The essence of the thing, which must be then very simple, and which is transmitted by a kind of living contact rather than any particular words. It's a matter of catching on somehow, or maybe catching... There seems to be a communication to it in the story of Saint Seraphim, where he has a person in the apple, and he takes the apple and something happens to him. Yeah. Sometimes there's an object,

[20:02]

like there was a sacramental transmission, and one night it was an onion. I was having that as a question that I was just going to know more about than I know about the sources of the techniques and the procedures that develop within the Master's tradition in the East. I was thinking about how, in last night's reading, Paul is already backing down on the purity of the message because of the pressure of his surroundings. And I was thinking, well, I wonder how much of our aesthetic tradition is really the creation of the surroundings and not actually a Christian message. But then, in cases where there is a figure like Bartholomew, who's always going back to the center, I think that would tend to purify the thing and keep that from happening, keep it from kind of being created from the outside. Rather, you know, the source of the development, the form would always be coming from the inside, and this would be like a person.

[21:03]

That kind of person is the kind of touchstone that you go back to, or the kind of light that you go back to to light your own light, or the touchstone that you go back to to check on the authenticity, which means, authenticity means originality, that it goes back to the, and has the fullness and truth of the original gift, of the original charism. A person like that is supposed to be exactly that. But that has to be verified for him somehow by his spiritual freedom. That is somehow, we feel at least, the need to check out that person with the way that we conceive the charism, what it should confer on the individual. And what you find is a kind of paradox of strictness and freedom, of largeness and generosity, but at the same time, of great exigency, a great demandingness, a great severity and openness at the same time. Something very difficult to analyze, but that's what we find in a person like this.

[22:05]

If you don't find the severity, you don't really, of course the severity in a recluse is almost taken for granted, because he's a person who's deprived himself of so much that it's a pretty good guarantee. That if he's not simply neurotic or selfish, that the genuine austerity at least is there. If we don't see that austerity, we disbelieve him. If he's a bit lax, a bit self-indulgent of himself, it's impossible to believe in authenticity. But on the other hand, if he doesn't have that liberty of spirit, it's not the real thing. Now, the mistake more often in monastic circles is probably to credit the authenticity which had the severity but didn't have the liberty of spirit, than the contrary. The typical example is exactly as in Dostoevsky and the Brothers Karamazov where you have these two fathers, Zosimos and Feropont. And Feropont is a severe ascetic. We talked about him before. He's a severe ascetic who certainly has the austerity in every sense.

[23:08]

In fact, when he walks around, you can hear 30 pounds of iron clanking under his tattered old habit. And it's supposed to clank and you're supposed to hear it too. He's that kind of ascetic. Really severe. He may never eat anything when he knows he may eat a radish once a week. And then the other one is Father Zosimos who likes a little jam in his tea and who, I guess, associates with the ladies or something sometimes. But in the end, he's a genuine one. You have to find his austerity somewhere. And you find it when he's talking to one of the ladies and he says, Love is a dreadful and terrible thing. Remember? She's a lady who's a philanthropic woman who thinks in some way that she's derived of Christian virtue. And he tells her, No, you're just kidding around. Love is a dreadful thing. Real love. It's something that calls for a giving and you haven't begun to do. So it's there.

[24:10]

You don't see it on the surface. I remember one of the things he did. Like the first verse would come in, Strawberries and things. You take one life and you eat it like a strawberry. Which father was it? That was Zosimos. Was it? Zosimos and Dostoyevsky? Yeah. I remember that very clearly. Because there's another father in the Desert Fathers who did the same thing. But he would take one, I think it was Arsenius himself, he would take one of each fruit and he asked them to bring him one of each fruit and he would taste it. And it was almost like a sacrificial, or a sacramental thing, okay? In which he blessed the fruits of the earth to recognize the goodness of the creature. That's exactly the sense I got with Dawson. That was exactly the sense I got. And a wonderful example of temperance too. Yeah. It was even part of his teaching and giving it up. That's right. But he has to give recognition to the positivity of the creation. That's his thing, you know? He was the god. Yeah. Whereas Farrapont wouldn't do that. Farrapont would see a demon behind every chair. Demons all over the place. And finally he goes completely off his rock and just gets...

[25:11]

But he was the one that they all believed in, whereas they disbelieved him. And it was awesome, especially when he began to decompose. You remember? That's when Farrapont had to say David. That's when... Yeah, Farrapont had to say David. He went right off, right off the rails too. Okay, and then he gets a little bit into the essentials of the spirituality, which is very simple, you know, which is so simple that you don't have much fun theorizing about it or trying to find a structure in it like you can do with Gashin or especially with Evagrius. Not a philosophical thing at all. In fact, Bartholomew and John had a reputation of being anti-intellectual, especially down on Evagrius. See, Evagrius was the whipping boy in those days for the ones who were against theological speculation. Whereas Dorotheus had more of an education and he even brings some of the non-Christian philosophers into his discourses when he's talking about the virtues and so on.

[26:13]

We'll run into that. Evagrius was probably condemned some of his teachings. Oh, yes. He was condemned and jumped up and down on his teachings. And some of them are really wild. Some of his teachings are very gnostic, if you take them seriously. The ones, the purely monastic teachings like we have in the chapters on prayer and the Praktika, you can't find very much wrong with them. What you can say is wrong with them is simply their incompleteness in that it's an intellectualist tendency and it's not balanced out as it might be with other values, but you can't expect everything from one man. But his influence has been enormous and the negative reaction to him has been just as enormous. Because his Gnostic chapters are really Gnostic. He sets up the whole speculative system. And he and Origen were put in the same category. Through the struggles which the young one faces

[27:20]

in his fight against himself, the personality of Barcinopius gave life to a system of teaching The inner life of Barcinopius shines through these teachings which otherwise would seem just to be fragmented. What he's trying to say in all of this is that somehow the great old man in the background, the luminosity of his very human personality transfigured somehow by his sanctity, by the Holy Spirit, is the secret and the key and the essence of all of this teaching. And that the rest of it comes from there. That's what he's talking about in terms of this charismatic authority that he attributes to him. He keeps returning to this question of his personality. Barcinopius' personality manifests itself in the language usual in those days and in that of the monastic tradition whether biblical or pragmatic. Confunction, vigilance, humility, opening of the heart, intercession, ceaseless prayer, tears and charity are the focal points of teaching which reflect at the same time the personality of the spiritual father. He reminds us of Romuald in this also.

[28:23]

That St. Romuald was this kind of personality who just by being what he was seemed to have his effect more than by what he said. He didn't hide anything. He didn't at least write anything significantly that has come down to us. He wrote a treatise against the demons which we don't know. Constant remembrance of God according to the measure of each, humility, trust in one's spiritual father, intercession. Several of these things are tied together very tightly. These are the basic elements in the instruction of the master of Gaza that determines his way of conceiving authority. He made a kind of covenant, a kind of pact with Dorotheus it seems. Barcinopius did. An agreement. You keep my advice and I will be obligated to support you in my prayer. In Barcinopius' method of teaching

[29:25]

we believe the instruction given reaches a level that is more existential in character linked with the very heart of the mystery of Dorotheus' developing vocation. Moreover, the father of Gaza keeps to general counsels which leave to his disciple the initiative and the freedom to submit to them according to the degree of his faith. Remember the parables of Jesus in the Gospel? Which are like that but in another way. Where you can take as much as you want somehow it's not do this exactly which doesn't leave anything to initiative or to freedom. It's just the freedom to say yes or no. And often times we want that kind of a directive. We want to be told exactly what to do so that we really won't have to engage the freedom of trying to decide or create or find our way. We don't want that kind of uncertainty, that kind of insecurity, that kind of freedom. But just the kind of compulsion to be able to say yes, gritting our teeth and then do it. Sometimes we need that. St. Benedict does one for that too in the book.

[30:27]

But there's something else which is better which is to motivate the person and then let his own spontaneity, in a sense his enlightenment or inspirited spontaneity move him from within. In the measure in which he wants to. It's not an on-off thing, a kind of open-ended thing. The invitation to further sacrifice is based paradoxically upon the perception of a God of mercy, compassion and love. At this level what Barcinopheus offers in his letters is instruction to be sure but above all he offers his inner life and all that is best in himself. He talks about the role of the abbot, who is a kind of, it's a strange role, very self-effacing. He has to be the go-between between Barcinopheus and John and the monks. And he himself is a disciple of Barcinopheus. All decisions are made jointly

[31:31]

by Cerritos, John and Barcinopheus. In the life of Docetius, for example, it's clear that they all took part in the decision to build an infirmary. When Dorotheus was in open disagreement with his abbot, the abbot's authority, as we have seen, was upheld completely by John. John upheld the authority of the abbot when Dorotheus had a problem with the abbot, when he had a question of obedience. The abbot also serves as an intermediary in the discussions between the monks, the guests and the sick. He supervises the distribution of the material goods. In short, Cerritos is in all things the abbot of the synovium, in that he is the one individual who has the task of running the community and organizing its life as a whole. It's a horrible job, in a sense, in that without the ultimate, what do you call it, the ultimate fullness, or the ultimate, as it were, enjoyment of the fruits of the monastic life that Barcinopheus and John has,

[32:31]

he has all of the headaches and the hassles. But no doubt there's a gift for that. Abbot Cerritos is a humble disciple of the fathers of Gaza, and his role as the abbot of the synovium is subject to the role of Barcinopheus as a spiritual father. Such a formal government was possible not only because of the exceptional qualities of the father of Gaza, Barcinopheus, but also because of the humility and trust of Abbot Cerritos. It would be very hard to find that in the West in our days. I think it probably does exist. We have an abbot who is actually the spiritual father of the spiritual son, in an effective, continual way, of another monk who lives in another monastery. You find it in the East, and that was the case, still is the case, I think, in Stepanakita, where Paisios, the spiritual father, when he's dead, Paisios was the spiritual father and Rosalus, the aguminus, the superior,

[33:34]

was his son, and so were many of the monks in the monastery. You can see this kind of thing was still going on. And the relationship was somewhat similar. The monks would go out and consult the old man. He didn't have the right to talk to him. He'd be busy. Okay, then he gives some conclusions. You'll be listening to this anyway, but I think this paper is kind of important in that it gives us an interview into the workings of these relationships that are going on, and sheds some kind of light, some kind of background of what we're up against ourselves. We don't have a parsimony of these. What I mean is we've got the same kind of duality between solitude and community, and the same issues we're going to be dealing with, and also the same possibilities. Is there still a community in the eastern monastic community

[34:37]

that is like this, like the Sunobin? In Mount Athos they have something pretty similar. You see, in Mount Athos you have twenty big Sunobins. I mean, physically they're great. Twenty big monasteries. And the relationship of the little communities, of the skeets and of the hermits, the individuals, two of them, depends on the economy of the island as a whole, of the peninsula. If there are a lot of monks there, then you're going to have hermits related to the Sunobin in that way. But if you've only got a handful of monks on the Sunobin, no hermits around, just because there are too few monks on Athos, you can't have them. But it has existed, you see. It did exist at Serpenikida just a few years ago. And, see, sometimes the spiritual father will be inside the monastery. Sometimes he'll be the superior of the monastery, and sometimes he'll be outside the monastery. But in the West it's become standardized so that, what do you know, the spiritual father is the abbot. And after a while, the interior dimension of spiritual fatherhood

[35:38]

becomes forgotten behind the administrative and external aspect of it, which the abbot comes to represent. He tends to become very much an administrator for what? Administrator in a warm and family sense, but still, the individual relationship with each monk does not tend to be on such an intimate and such a deeply spiritual level. Because the abbot has too much to do. He can't handle it. For one thing. The tradition has just developed differently. It's impossible. It's impossible. So Saint Benedict institutes these deans, you see, which could be, they could turn into spiritual fathers. But the notion of spiritual father doesn't quite, except for the abbot, it doesn't quite crystallize in the religious environment. For one thing, because he wants to avoid dividing that authority, you see, so you don't really find that possibility of a father who is not the abbot right in the room, I don't think. The deans are sort of delegates,

[36:38]

you know, the main intermediates in some way. And in external matters they would have this authority, but they might be somebody that you'd go to sort of to tell them your troubles and to get a little sympathy and so on. But it's hard to find that real charism of discernment and direction credited to them. It seems like when you're talking about the evangelical center, you know, you keep the thing authentic because you're always telling the essence happens and there's somebody like that. Yes. It seems like in a way Benedict's goal makes it impossible for the spiritual father to give that much of himself to being centered and being able to dispense the essence rather than practical teaching. So it's almost like it's complicated and it's like a busy guy trying to keep things on a certain level. I don't know whether he'd be a rare genius or somebody who could administrate

[37:39]

and still stay that center. This is what you tend to find, at least in modern Benedictinism. In the Middle Ages to some extent, but in the modern time especially, the Benedictine life tends to become very extroverted, very taken up in works and the abbot himself, even, well, like many of the bishops also in the United States, the abbot himself tends to become oriented towards these extroverted things and the person who's chosen as abbot often is the best, the one who can best manage all of those things and keep things going, keep things balanced. On that external level and not on the level of Benedictine, it takes an awful lot of force to change that part of it. Now, you get an example once in a while that somebody will try to do it in a classic of Benedictine setup. One was Abbot Flavius of Cariacasano who decided that when he became abbot he was going to try to separate himself from a lot of the administrative things, keep a large

[38:40]

measure of solitude for himself, and then relate to his monks on that interior level. That's the way I understand it. Somewhat, as you can imagine, Thomas Martin had even elected abbot. Well, he's not abbot anymore, he's down in Berryville. They sent him to Berryville because he's a good manager to get him out of a financial problem or something. That's the explicit reason but there are other reasons to go to Berryville if he was in trouble. And I don't think that the community as a whole appreciated it. He had some disciples, you know, but I think most of the monks were probably not that happy with this. He probably would have made a lot of changes too if he stayed long enough, but he didn't want to stay as long did. Remember, there are almost 100 monks in that monastery and it's almost impossible for someone to live a deeply spiritual life and deal with that many people on a deep level, plus the

[39:40]

external stuff. So even if he wanted to be a purely spiritual father to his know the actual reason why he wanted to return to this monastery. He's always been careful with it. And that's not unusual. it's not like that. People have a truly unique location. They don't have else going to this place. They are forcing themselves to develop their own awareness. Exactly. You see, if you can find one change at work in the history of, let's call it the history of the West, okay, and also in the history of Western Christianity, it seems to be the move from vertical to horizontal. And by this I don't mean that all

[40:40]

verticality disappears. But at first you have this vertical pole erected very strongly and some of the early saints, even the stylites are kind of a symbolic representation of the people standing up. And the figure of the abbot becomes established after a while. There's a very strongly vertical thing and the authority thing is extremely strong. And the spiritual fatherhood thing is extremely strong. And at a certain point the revolutionary movements of the modern time, and especially the Protestant Reformation, which was a kind of revolt against the verticality of Roman Catholicism, the authority of the pope in particular, but that whole thing in the name of what? In the name of a kind of horizontalizing and personal responsibility, personal decision, personal

[41:41]

response, personal freedom. And ever since, the Vatican too represents another sort of shift in point of view of the Church trying to catch up with that inevitable, unavoidable historical move from the vertical to the horizontal, or rather from the purely vertical to the integration of the vertical to the horizontal. It has a lot to do with the education of people, and the fact that in the old days you had a few people who were educated in it, and the massive people didn't. Maybe they weren't even literate, okay, and so that verticality was put right into the society together with the class distinction between nobles and then in the Middle Ages the people who read Latin and so on could do the Latin language and the people who didn't didn't know it. So that whole thing. But nowadays there are very few spiritual fathers to be found, and it's as if we are really encouraged to find another manner of... It's only complementary. It doesn't totally take the

[42:41]

place of spiritual paternity because we still have to seek that. Certainly until it exists we have to resort to something else. The charismatic movement, once again, is original, at least in its first outrush, its first birth, was a horizontal form of spiritual guidance in which with the community or with a brother or sister there were discernment of the spirit. But after a while part of it rigidifies into a very vertical form, the headship thing in the Ann Arbor and Notre Dame movement because that's a whole other issue. But there is that thing, you see, and so that's something we have to keep in the back of our minds when we are reading all of this early monastic literature, that God does not provide us with exactly the same beings. If he did, then those spiritual fathers would be here for us, you see. Which means that we have to seek creatively for what

[43:41]

the spirit has actually given to us. And the fact that sometimes we know better than some of the things that we read in the literature, we realize a certain imbalance, also is telling us something. Not that we throw away the monastic literature, but that the spirit is speaking in our hearts and asking us to ultimately discover for ourselves as it were the incarnation of that same wisdom in our time. There's a mystery here which is, it seems contradictory often because of the paternalism of it. And if Christianity is the gift of freedom, why does one put himself under a master and close himself into an institution which seems to keep him a child all his life? If you read the Life of Odysseus, it puts it sort of at its most charge, the contradiction

[44:42]

in the question. But that's the paradox of the monastic way, that one there should be another chapter afterwards in which we see, if he didn't die after those five years, in which we see him expanding into the freedom that should belong to the children of God, which is the freedom in the testament. And that chapter often seems to be missing in the monastic pedagogy. It's already consistent here. We have to be careful because there is a principle of authority built right into the gospel, okay? He who hears you hears me. I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and so on, okay? There are two principles. There's a principle of authority and of verticality and of transmission

[45:42]

of the word, as it were, through the apostles, through the bishops, and through the abbots, and so on, too, okay? And then along that's like the principle of the word, but on the other hand there's the principle of equality and of the spirit in which you have no father on earth but your own brothers. And those two principles are side by side and it's as if our whole problem is how to relate the two. And the relation between the two has to be different eventually. And today it really has to be something new, because otherwise we become a laughing stock to ourselves as well as to the world. Because there's a maturity that is offered to us today which we can't really renounce in terms of the spirituality and the religion. We can for a while but not very much. It seems the values, when asked what the values of the spirit are, that doesn't change, but the form doesn't change. I think the danger is that

[46:53]

we're guide our all the time. And we're going to feel good about it while we're doing it all the time. And we're going to be able to stay in control of it ourselves. We're going to be able to guide our own ship all the time. Or is there a tunnel and a death? You really have to become a child once again even in a kind of dumb way or maybe you're going to become apparently quite sick or something like that. Is there a real death to die? Now, that's much harder for us to accept as modern people, as contemporary people, than we think it is. Much harder. We have a real problem letting go in the way that some of them could let go in the old days. And so if the story of Dosithius there scandalizes us, we have to think twice before we throw it out, before we say that that was resigning himself to a kind of immaturity. No, he's dying to death. We don't see the whole resurrection. It's as if it does need that other chapter, you know, which is given there in terms of that recognition that he's

[47:58]

in heaven on the very surface. He died to death, and that's the hardest part. And how to do it. I think so. I've been thinking lately, we talk a lot about dying, but if you're going to die, you've got to get sick too. Usually it's not dying, it's not just like that, it's another getting sick and dying. And so in us, it's like the sickness has to come to the surface, the darkness, the shadow side which is in us already has to come to the surface, and that's our sickness when it comes to the surface. And through it all we have to keep a kind of light, we have to keep contact with them. It's much more perplexing than we think, and usually we don't know how to handle it,

[48:58]

because we get scared as soon as we see a person getting a little weird. We need, actually, in the psychological point of view, to say, this guy is much blacker than that, but if you can discern God's word, and you can discern that gift of the spirit, then you know. I think that's what we have to do. It's very difficult. I say difficult, it's not difficult, it's impossible, because it has to come from God. The knowledge that this person is going to be able to come around off his wild excursion, but there's something in there. The thing that they would say, of course, is that humility and that openness and that obedience, they would say that that's the essential. And if you have that, then anything else can be handled. That would

[50:00]

be their criteria. you don't have that confidence, confidence. In those days, you'd see clinicals going to that potential college, and that's literally killing themselves and saying, this is wonderful. You'd never find anything better than that. California. California. There are psychologists who write about going through psychosis and coming out better than they were before. Sometimes they're writing science fiction, and sometimes they gossip about it. But that's a mighty tricky thing to do. The shamans too, the other ones, they, in their experience, there was a sickness, there was a mental and physical at the same time. Another

[51:08]

question is, what is the setting for handling? Can it be handled in a community? Maybe not. Can it be handled in solitude? Maybe not. Anyway, I'll finish up with this little article. The evidence of the Cerritos is in an interesting place. This is the way that Nate expresses it. The role of Cerritos as an abbot, on the other hand, may be summed up in the following way. The institution is like posted between the Desert Fathers and the rule of St. Benedict, the community of St. Benedict, and mediating between the two, you see. And he puts himself in the role of mediator between these great desert father figures, and the community which is

[52:08]

running like the community of St. Benedict as an institutional monastery. Now, any monastery of any size has to be institutional. Maybe it's the only example of this kind in the history of monastic texts. The spiritual dimension involved in the opening of the heart clearly predominates over the more practical aspects of St. Benedict. The role of the abbot as the director of the community and even his spiritual father is secondary to that of the hermit who has been recognized as charismatic. Abbot Servido represents therefore a rather uncommon type of abbot who comes nearer to being a spiritual son obedient to Barcenopius, pretty far from most hermits. The study of the forms of authority found in Gesa brings us back to the personality of Barcenopius which is indeed the cornerstone for an understanding of the life and method of spiritual instruction which derived from it. Then he

[53:09]

gets into a somewhat pointless question, how can you call Barcenopius a model of charismatic authority? He's worried about the definition of charismatic. He's not a founder of monastic order. He doesn't show all these superhuman powers that some people would require. And yet he does claim very extraordinary experiences of intimacy with God. And I think he did do some miracles, didn't he? So he fills the bill really for that one. And also if he's not a founder he seems to have been the cement, as it were, of the gravitational core of the settlement. What's that? That's right. I'm not sure. I guess they just closed it up again. I never said it was there. Might have been there for another 50 years.

[54:10]

Let it cool off. The precepts of by a charismatic master of this type. What's he getting to? Are lesser set of rules and the realization and practice of the gospel as lived in its entirety. Bar Sanufius, the central figure in the monastic order of Gaza, represents par excellence this particular form of charismatic authority. Okay. He sort of goes round and round this point about what is it exactly that Bar Sanufius has, what is it that he does, and what is this authority that he manifests. I like to think of a essence because somehow he is the one who has this pearl of living this essence in some way, and radiates it more than anything else, and then says the word which in some way comes from that place, comes from that core,

[55:11]

and which orients or discerns or relocates or restores everything else, you see. He's the center in that sense, the center which is in itself completely silent, completely separate from things, desert. Okay, next time maybe we can look briefly at the life of Dorsotheus and then go on with that first discourse of Dorsotheus which is on the next version. It's pointed out by Reinhold in one of his papers on this that there are two discourses which are like summaries of the whole of the monastic collection. One is the first one and the other is the fourteenth one. I think those are the first and the last in this collection. So, in the first one you'll find it's a little bit like the Prologue of the Rule of St. Benedict. He sets out the foundations, the theological foundations of the monastic book. And the

[56:13]

fourteenth one is called On Building Up Riches in Their Harmony. It's probably like the foundation and a total look at the structure. By the way, these are only a few of the I've written. I've written a lot of the church I've lot of books about the church itself. written a lot of the stuff

[57:33]

I've The prestigious Church And his story of the fire might have a historian from Tibet, and one of their, probably their most famous essay is a 90-milligrade one. And there he is, his career of asceticism after he'd been many years up in the Malays living on some light and things like that. He was doing a series of meditations which are the element meditations. And he was doing a water meditation one time in his cave, and this guy came up there and called him to a crowd. And he was in the cave, and he told him. If he opened the door, he could have caused a flood. Yeah, I think he might have done a fire trick, too. The thing is, it's a totally different thing. The manifestation's the same. You've got a limited number of elements, too.

[58:29]

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