Good evening. I'm very happy to see all the brothers from Gethsemane again. I was here two years ago for three months, which were very wonderful months for me, three months of sabbatical. And it was a time I was meditating about the important decisions in my life. It was very good to be in that atmosphere of peace and prayer. So I'm very grateful for the community. And so I'm very happy to come back on this time to meditate with you about Pacomius. I say meditate because I would like to approach Pacomius in a meditative and prayerful orientation. And I think the best thing to do to learn about Pacomius is to listen to the sources themselves. What I tried to do, we will try to do with the members of the seminar.

[01:03]

And I think that will be the best thing also with the whole group. And the bones of St. Pacomius are protesting. Oh, I will pay him. The first thing we'll be to do will be to read the prologue. of the life together. And to see how the early Pacomian monks, when they wrote his life shortly after his death, how they situate him in the context of the whole history of salvation. And this is a beautiful text, and I would like to begin by that. You have that text in those who have the English translation of the life. And unfortunately, that first chapter is one of those who are translated in the worst way. Anyway, I will indicate the worst mistake as we are going.

[02:07]

It begins like that. True is the word of God. He made all things. The word that came to our father Abraham when he was going to offer his humble son as an equitable sacrifice to God. Here I change the tradition. wrong there. So, it begins by the word of God. Monastic life comes from the word of God. And that word of God, existing from all eternity, created all things. So, the word of God created all things. And then that same word came to our father Abraham. And it was said to Abraham, that word was, truly, I will bless you. and multiply you as the stars of heaven in multitude. And again, because in your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. So we have to remember that expression, the seed of Abraham, and that all the nations will be blessed.

[03:13]

That would be important for Camus later on. So that same word that created all things came to Abraham, spoke also through Moses and throughout the prophets. For this word, speaking after Moses, his servant, servant is important also, because the whole ideal of Pachymus would be to be the servant of God and the servant of mankind. So, speaking after Moses, his servant, and the other prophets, appeared as man and as Abraham's sin. It was promised to Abraham that through his sin, all the nations will be blessed. So, Christ and as Abraham said, and he fulfilled the promise of blessing to other nations. How did he fulfill it? Saying to his disciples, go forth and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And then, as the gospel spread throughout the earth, by divine ascent, and here I change the translation, in order to put to the test the faith in God,

[04:22]

Pagan kings stood at a great persecution against the Christians everywhere. The word of God became known. He sent his apostles to preach the gospel and to baptize. There was persecution. And then comes the era of the martyrs. Because many martyrs, along with Peter, the Archbishop of Alexandria, through many and sundry tortures, were crowned with a victorious death, the Christian faith gained much ground. and was strengthened in every land and every island throughout all the churches. As a result of the courage of the martyrs, the faith is strengthened in all the churches. And as a result, and the transition will be from that time on, monasteries started coming into being, and places for ascetics who were known for their chastity and the renunciation of their possession.

[05:27]

For monastic life, the origin of monastic life is presented as the fruit of the fervor of the church, which is a fruit of the courage of the martyrs. And so very often we hear that idea that the origin of monastic life was a kind of reaction after the Constantine peace a reaction to a lukewarm church, and monks who wanted to replace the martyrs. And it's not the way the early monks, at least the Proclamation monks, conceived it. They conceived monastic life as a result of the fervor, something that is integrated in the whole movement of the history of salvation. That started from the Word of God in all eternity, the creation, Abraham, the prophets, Christ, the apostles, martyrs, and none. That's a whole history which is going on, and we are a part of that story.

[06:30]

So when monks who were former pagans, or when monks who had converted to Christianism from paganism, saw the struggles and the patience of the martyrs, they started a new life. Of them it was said... And this is a quotation from Hebrew, chapter 11, verse 37 and 38. That quotation comes very, very often in the Bahamian sources, is applied to monks, extremely often, three or four times, I think, in the book of Persiasius and other places. Quotation is, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, wandering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. Description of the early monks. So, monastic life is not something which is proper to Christianity.

[07:35]

We find it in all the great cultures. But monastic life lived by Christians find its motivation in the example of Christ, and the example of Macphyrus. The life of our truly virtuous and most ascetic father, Anthony, was like that of the great Elias and Elisha, and of John the Baptist. When the early monks want to find the prototypes of their life, they go back to the scripture, John the Baptist, at the... turning point of the Old and New Testament, and to the prophets of the Old Testament, especially Eliah and Elisha. And here they stop there, but some of the monks go back as far as to Adam and Eve. It's the early month of Adam in the paradise. And so, first month. But they want to go back to the paradisiac state. It's difficult to go further.

[08:38]

The most holy archbishop, Athanasius, gives as much written evidence about him after his death, and at the same time states that the behavior of our holy father Amun, the archmonk of the brothers of Mount Nitria, and of Theodore, his companion, was the same. The meaning of that sentence is that what Athanasius wrote about Anthony, it tells us also what was the life of all the other fathers of Nitria. So that's really what it was. Athanasius did not want to make a biography in the way we understand a biography today, but a book about monastic life as a kind of apology of the monks and a theology of monastic life. And so it says as much about all the other monks of Niteria as about the one who's supposed to have been called Anthony. And we know that since grace pulled from the lips of the blessed one who blesses all, Christ, for he visited the earth, and instead of filling it with grief and sighs, he infused it with an overwhelming spirit.

[09:50]

They say here, intoxicating spirit. I don't like too much that translation. Well, I would like that thing, but... Throughout the country, from among those who took to monastic life, many became admirable fathers, as has already been said, and their names are in the Book of the Living. And this is important here. In Egypt and in Thebaid, not many had turned to the monastic life up to the time of the persecutions by Diocletian and Maximian. But after that, look at the order of reality. After the persecution, the bishops led people to God according to the teaching of the apostle. And the repentance of the nation, or the conversion of the nations, yielded a rich harvest. Then, there was a man named Pacomius. So, Pacomius arrives as the conclusion, as one of the truth of that whole evolution, starting with the word of God, coming into the history of mankind.

[10:55]

Born of pagan parents in the February, who, having received great mercy, became a Christian, and having made progress, he became a perfect man. It is necessary to recount his life from childhood on for the glory of God, who caused everyone from everywhere to his wondrous life. What we know about Michael Muth really begins with his conversion at the age of 20. But of course, when we tell the life of a son, we have to find something about him during his childhood, too. And so they have a few paragraphs about this childhood. So that was the prologue. And I think it helped us to say to it, Thachomius is not a kind of spontaneous regeneration, something that appears spontaneously in Egypt, outside of any context. It is a fruit of the whole evolution. It's one link in the chain of the tradition, the tradition that goes

[11:59]

very far back, and comes down to us, and we are still a part of it, as I mentioned. And maybe we could ask ourselves at this point, why to study tradition, why to study that part of tradition as any other part? I think it's important to ask that question at the beginning of this seminar, in which we will study Accomius and Cassian. to important persons in the monastic tradition. I think we study tradition in order to get in touch with a very rich experience. John Sonopold this afternoon spoke to us about the importance of that theme of experience. And we don't study tradition in order to find a definition of what monastic life will be in the abstract. Not even to find examples to imitate. If we read, for example, the apothegmata, in order to find examples, we will find all kind of contradictory examples.

[13:10]

Because no one of those fathers claim to give a teaching that will be good for everybody at all times. They give an answer to that very concrete person who come to them and say, that person say to the father, father, give me a word. a word for me. So he gives a word for him. But through that word that he gives to him, we can begin to understand what was the experience that he was living, that he was conveying to his disciples. So we don't also study tradition in order to find answers to present problems. We have problems today as long as everybody on third has already had. But they are our own problems. And we are the only ones who can solve them. So it's useless to ask the only ones to solve our problems. They did solve them, their own problems. But the reason why? They are great. And they are still known.

[14:12]

So if we go back to them in order to get in touch with a very great experience, as I said. Their experience and our own experience. And it's by getting in touch with their experience that we can gradually live more and more consciously our own spiritual experience because it's the same spirit that was inspiring them and which is inspiring us. It's basically the same experience that we are living. And I think this is basically the approach of Lectio Divina. If we read the Father's, it's not to learn a thing. It's not to get more information about magnetic life, but to get more information. is to be formed, to be transformed, is to get in touch with the Spirit speaking in us. I think that's the approach of the Gospel too. Christ in the New Testament does not give us lectures about dogmatic theology or moral theology or anything like that.

[15:16]

He's just speaking to us about His experience, His spiritual experience. He says to us that He is a Father, that His Father and He are one. And they are united in love. They have the common spirit. And then it says that if we love Him, if we observe His commandments, we can have the same experience. His Father and He will come in us. They will make their dwelling in us. And we will be one with the Father and the Spirit as Father and Son are one. That's all a question of experience. And then the New Testament is the... the disciples of Christ and the early Christian generation who conveyed to us through those writings their own faith experience of Christ. And so all our monastic sources are the same thing. Each moment in the history of monastic life is a moment of the dialogue between God and his people, God and some members of his people who were not.

[16:20]

And so through that dialogue, We receive a challenge. We receive a call. They receive a call and they answer it. And so they transmit to us a call in their own answer to that call. Their own answer and the call cannot be divided. It's lived in one reality. So by receiving that call to monastic life and to radical Christian life, through the experience of early months to live before us throughout the centuries, then that call, we have to integrate it and to live it. And then that call, as we will live it, will be a call for the next generation. And that's the way that we are a part of the tradition as much as any generation before us. But we are not a part of it if we are not linked with the generation before us.

[17:22]

And we are not, if we are not, oriented to what is coming, the eschatology and the next generation. So, now let's go back to Pycomius. Pycomius lived in Egypt at the end of the third century, beginning of the fourth century. He was born in 292 and died in 347. Monastic life existed much before, for he is not the founder of monastic life. Monastic life, it's impossible to say that monastic life was founded on such and such a time. You can say that the Society of Jesus, the Jews, were founded by Satanus at such a date. St. Francis in the 12th century founded the Franciscan and so on. But monastic life is not something that was founded at such a place and such a time. It's a whole movement that's very old, which is not, as I said at the beginning, not specifically Christian.

[18:26]

It existed in India and many other cultures, thousands of years before Christ. That's a way of living human life. And it has its value as such. And that's the reason why it can be assumed in Christianity to express the Christian experience. So it's very important to acknowledge, first of all, the value of monastic life as a way of living human life, if we want to see it as a way of expressing the Christian experience. The same thing as, for example, many other aspects of Christian life, for celibacy, for example. Celibacy is a legitimate and form of human life. and adds a value in itself in the natural level. And there's a reason why it can be integrated into Christian life to express some dimension of the Christian experience. But first, we have to acknowledge its value as from human life.

[19:29]

Same thing for monastic life. And it existed not only in the great religious tradition, like Hinduism, but also among Greek philosophers. And as a matter of fact, most of the vocabulary used by the Christian monastic authors, especially in Greek, were used by the Greek philosophers in the time of Pythagoras, and so on. Thesis, Anarchesis, all those words came from that time. But even within Christianity, it Monasticism did not arise in Egypt at such a time in history. It grew out from the vitality of each local church throughout all the East at the same time, more or less at the same time, all the local churches in Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, Cappadocia. It was a kind of spontaneous generation.

[20:31]

And in Egypt at the time of Pacomius, There was different types of monasticism. Hermits and group of hermits were being together. Pachomius was the founder of the Cognonia, which is the synopedic form of monastic life in Egypt. When we speak about our founders, whether it is the fathers of Seto, or Saint Benedict, or Saint Pachomius, we tend to have the idea that at some point in their life, they had a very clear idea or a very clear idea of what they would have to find. And then the rest of their life was to implement that. That's not the way that all of them lived or experienced it. The way they found their community was a painful and difficult way. They were groping and searching and trying to see the will of God day after day.

[21:32]

walking in the dark most of the time, and discovering just bit by bit what God wanted of them. And it's one of the wonderful things they realized, well realized, that they knew it was what God had wanted them to do. And so maybe the best thing to do to understand what was a common conception of community is to follow his own evolution. How we arrive at that? I was led by God for that. I said, I just mentioned his conception of community, but I don't like that expression. I think men like Pachomius did not have any conception of what monastic life was. They were not men of concepts. They were men of vision of life. So they lived it. They did not have a preconception that then they applied. They just lived

[22:33]

being always faithful to the inspiration of the spirit. And so let's follow his own evolution during at least the first years of his life. Pacumius was a pagan. He was born from a pagan family in Upper Egypt, just to situate it geographically. I suppose you all know that. So this is Egypt. This is Lower Egypt, because the Nile is flowing towards the sea. And this is Lower Egypt, and here are most of the monastic circles that we know, Nittria, and skate, and the south, and most of the apothegma that came from that area here, close to Alexandria. Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city, where all kinds of influence from all the parts of the world came, because it was a harbor. It was considered as more or less outside of Egypt, a city by itself.

[23:37]

But then, if you go up the north, you have the Fayum here, and then north and north, somewhere here, you have the place where Pythomias lived. It was a very poor area, very far away from Alexandria. Practically no influence, no philosophical influence, no Greek influence came here. Practically, nobody spoke Greek here. The only people who lived there were very poor, catechizant. And as John mentioned this afternoon, most of Egypt is a desert, so you don't have to go very far to find a desert. A few miles or a few hundred yards sometimes on each side of the Nile is a place that can be cultivated. But as soon as you go a mile or two from the Nile, you are in the mountain and in the desert. And Coptic, which is a very poor language, has the same word for desert, mountain, and cemetery.

[24:39]

Because you will not bury your dead in the water. So you bury them in the mountain, which is entirely desert. So a lot of deserted villages existed there. And some of his monasteries were founded in a deserted village, where the peasants had gone away because it was too poor. So we're going to come back to that, just to see where they live. So at the age of 20, Patelius is made a conflict, because Egypt was under the Roman Empire at that time. And Roman Empire emperor was at war with some king of the parties, and he needed soldiers. And when the emperor needed soldiers, he would go to one of his country under his power, his jurisdiction, and make a certain number of young men, convicts, prisoners, and bring them to war.

[25:44]

History does not say whether they were good soldiers or not, but they were made prisoners and brought with chains towards the fighting place. So they are... put on boats and brought towards Alexandria. And during the night, they stopped in a city called Thebes, which is the capital of Upper Egypt. And they are put in jail for the night. And some Christians of the place, there is a Christian community in Thebes, some Christians come to the jail to bring some food and some drink and things that they need to those prisoners. And so this is the first contact of Pacomius with Christianity, which is the contact with the concrete charity of the concrete Christian community. And this will give a very deep mark on his transition of Christian life.

[26:52]

service, charity, fraternal love. And he asked, who are those people? And why they do that to them? They don't know. And he said that those are Christians. And they are named Christians according to the name of Christ. And they do that to, they do all kind of good things to everyone for the love of Christ. And the love of God who has created everyone. So Pacomius, then during the night, he makes a prayer. And the prayer has different forms according to different likes. We saw this morning that the lives have been compiled and translated, and each new scribe, each new translator adds a few things. So the prayer becomes longer and longer, each one of the new scribe or new translator. In the early Coptic lives, Pacquemius says, Jesus, because he has been told that Christians are the disciples of Jesus the Christ.

[28:04]

So he says, Jesus the Christ, if you deliver me, I will do your will, and I will serve mankind all the days of my life. So you appear to... some of the most important elements in the whole spirituality of the community. The search for the will of God. Do your will. And I will serve mankind. So he has been served by Christians, so he committed himself to serving mankind the rest of his life. And so all his life then will be to discover, day after, what is the real will of God on him. And then he knows, in a general way, that the will of God will be to serve mankind. In what way does God want him to serve mankind? And he will find different ways. It is just gradually through seeking after ways of serving mankind that he will gather people around him and he will create a community and so on.

[29:05]

We'll see that later on. In the Greek life here that we have in that translation, the prayer is a bit more elaborated. He said, God maker of heaven and earth. So he has been told about Christ. So God, maker of heaven and earth, probably did not use those words. If you look upon my lower state, if you see the Greek text, that means if you look upon my lower state, this is almost verbatim a quotation from the Magnificat. And Mary says, Mary says, my soul magnifies the Lord because he has looked upon the alleliness of his servant. Exactly the same word. So I don't think Pachomius at that time knew the Magnificat, especially not in Greek.

[30:09]

And so you see that it has been a bit elaborated. But one interesting remark is that it says here that if you free me from that affliction, I shall minister to your will all the days of my life, and loving all men, I shall serve them according to your commandments. In the second brief lie that was re-elaborated later on, When it is said by Pacomius, I shall serve mankind, it is replaced by I shall serve you, God. It's very interesting that that Greek life, second Greek life, is consistent. Every time Pacomius speaks about serving man, the second Greek life changes into serving God. It seems that it was considered as unfitting to a monk to serve mankind. So it is much more edifying to serve God.

[31:13]

So they replaced mankind or man by God. But for Pycomius, there was a tension between the two. It was just the same one thing. So this prayer was very successful because a few days later, the war was finished. And so the conscripts were... End of side one. Please continue on side two. doesn't forget about these promises. Very often people who have made promises during a storm on the sea or situations like that, they forget about them. But he did not. So he went back to Upper Egypt, to Tebaez, in his own country. And he stopped in a place called Kenaboschia in Qatar. And there is a community, a Christian,

[32:16]

So they say here, he came directly to the Upper Egypt and visited the church of a little town called Kenaboschia. I think we should have said he came to the church, and the church is not the physical building, it's the congregation, the ecclesia, a group of Christians living there. To a church of a little town called Kenaboschia. And there, according to the early Coptic life, He just lived there, established himself in that village, and began to grow vegetables from the garden. And he grew those vegetables for himself, to make his own living, for a pool of the area, and for pilgrims who happened to pass there. So he already began to serve men. And he does that for about three years. And in the Greek life here, they make a kind of scenery. They say he came there, he was baptized, and then he decided to become a man.

[33:20]

But it took three years to do that. And during those three years, even before he was baptized, he was serving men, and people came to live there and to establish their dwelling there and to live around him because through the life he was good to them. This is consistent in the life of Michael Miller. Every time he comes to a place, people came to him. And people lived around him. And why? Because he is good to them. This is one characteristic of my community. Just his very way of practicing charity, make people gather around him. He is, by charism, a center of the community. And so, after a while, he is baptized. is catechized and then is baptized, probably in the night of Easter, as was the custom. And I should mention that here, immediately.

[34:23]

It is very interesting to note that many of the monks, disciples of Pachymus, came directly from paganism to monastic life. Their entering into monastic life was, at the same time, the entering into the church. So the entering into a monastic community was their way of entering into the church. And they were catechized in the monastery. And so every year, all the catechumens, the monks who were catechumens, were baptized at Easter for the big celebration. So the baptism had an extreme importance in the life of the monk. And at that early period of monastic life, We don't have the monastic profession, as we have it around. And the light is considered as a way, a way proper to mind, a way of implementing or realizing the promises of baptism.

[35:29]

So when you read in the light of Pacomius, some texts where Pacomius or Theodore or Arceus remind the monks of the promises they have made, be careful, it's not... always the promises of the monastic profession is the promises of baptism. And the monastic life is the realization, the faithfulness to those promises. But during the night he is baptized, he has a vision, one of the first visions he has. And it is surprising that in the life of my community there are comparatively few visions if we think about other monastic sources. which are full of visions all the time. It's very sober. And so he has a vision, a beautiful one. On the night on which he was found worthy of the mystery. That's a beautiful expression. He was found worthy of the mystery. The mystery is the mystery of baptism, yoga. He had a vision.

[36:32]

What did he see? He said the dew of heaven fell upon him. And when the dew got her in his right hand, and turned into solid honey, which fell upon the earth. Then he heard someone say, heed what is taking place, for it shall come to pass in the future, that will come to be realized to you in the future. And the other lives make that prophecy more and more clear, clearer and clearer. The meaning of that, the symbolism of that is quite easy to understand. The do of Eden. of course, the symbolism of baptism, the water of baptism. And that water of baptism that comes to his hand, then comes into his hand. What comes into his hand is the symbol of the Eucharist. Yes, you see at the same time as the baptism. How is it the symbol of Eucharist? In the customs of the Egyptian church at that time, those who were baptized in the night of their baptism,

[37:38]

they received with the Eucharist a mixture of honey and milk. The honey is a clear, for me, a clear allusion to Eucharist. So what he has received is his integration into the church through the mysteries, the grace of conversion, the grace of becoming a Christian. And that grace that he has received, and he said in his hand, now fall upon the earth, So that grace, he has to communicate it to all mankind, to all the nations. Remember the text at the beginning, the promise made to Abraham that in your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. He has to, in a way, to communicate that grace to all the nations. Now, the rest of his life will be to discover how to do that. How does God want him to do that? So he still continued to live in the same village for a while, serving everybody, being good to everyone.

[38:45]

And then there is an epidemic in the village, and he takes care of the sick people. And then after a while, he decides to become a monk. He feels the need for a formation, and there is a senior, an elder, who is called Palaman, who lives. on the outskirts of that village in the desert. That means from the village. And that senior, Palaman, has disciples around him, the same way as in our Egypt. And so, go and become a disciple of Palaman. It's a new period of this time that begins. But we'll have to wait for tomorrow, after tomorrow, to see the second part of that groping and searching. End of side two. Please wind tape to the end.

[39:38]

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