all should think of and think about is really the matter of community activities, I mean of the vita communis, you know, that is the guiding idea of the whole rule and the burdens but also the blessings which the vita communis Now into the Villa Comunes belong the official and as such in the rule recognized community activities. And that is, for example, sleeping. And those community activities are regulated by the horario. That is the meaning of the hurrah, to regulate the community activities. And therefore, sleeping, our sleeping a certain time is allotted

[01:03]

And there, the whole community sleeps during that time. That doesn't mean that they are not exceptions. That is always, you know, in every of these conspec-tudines, you can right away see, yes, there might be those who sleep. But then, of course, this community activity is also, or develops in a certain area. which is set aside for that. It's evident that the sleeping, you know, should not be mixed up. The sleeping area should not be mixed up with another area. It makes it impossible then, really, for the others to sleep. That's, for example, one of the difficulties which has been mentioned in the course of our discussions about the dormitory. and said, yes, but now maybe our life is such, you know, that certain, for example, certain people cannot, you know, at a certain time, at the fixed time, you know, for example, come to the dormitory.

[02:16]

And that is, of course, is a conservation. If the air we have doesn't fulfill that, you know, then, of course, it's no use of having it. It seems to me, if you consider our situation now, that the fact, you know, that, for example, up there in St. Joseph's, that the sleeping area and the study area, let's leave it there, is mixed, you know, and it causes a constant, how do you say, friction and difficulties. And, as I said before, for example, imagine after widgets, there's the interval, and people then retire into their cells, while at the same time others may have any sleep in, and of course it makes it rather difficult, especially for people who are sensitive. If one would have the dormitory and the reading area simply separated,

[03:24]

And then these collisions may be avoided. And then the sleeping area would be developed much more and have much more of a protection also for the one who has the permission to sleep in here. have much more time also one could regulate the sleeping area in such a way that for example it is that you know not everybody in his heavy shoes but the sleeping area is a very nice description also in this little passage from the Constructulines of york you know where i i forgot it now you know but um that must be a kind of monastic saying or sort of the middle ages when you enter the dormitory then walk as the uh as the peacocks do, you know, just like this.

[04:26]

I hope I'm not wrong, but it looks to me like walking like a peacock. But, I mean, inside that, we come to enter the dormitory, you see, in one's socks, you know. And they're not moved around otherwise, you know, in the dormitory. And that which, for example, also in the Middle Ages would also have these exceptions, that a cellar also happened, you know, who, by the way, had his... bed in the dormitory with the community, and that would be the logical thing, but he might come in later, so he had the bed next to the entrance door, and he would then also grab the boost of only, you know, and, you know, with the bed, you know, and rest.

[05:31]

So that really not much of an... a disturbance for the whole community would result, maybe less of a disturbance than today, where everybody, you know, has his cell in one or one long corridor, and yes, there might be people who come later, but of course then, you know, with their shoes and so on, go in there, close the door, they start, you know, bring up their beds, you know, and... putting off their clothes and their shoes, and boom, boom, boom, you know, and all that, you know, goes on. All these things might very well be avoided if one arranges them accordingly. But on the other hand also, for example, the Lectio Divina has at certain times, you know, and of course it is a great help for the individual,

[06:34]

if then he, in a community action, if he does so with the community. so that at this interval where the reading is there, that's where people are together. I wouldn't say that, for example, the reading area shouldn't afford a certain amount of privacy to the individual. I think it helps, especially in concentrated study. It helps if he has, say, a carrel, a kind of carrel by himself in which he can read and also study and work with the assignment in a certain time. I think that is very good. If other people won't see it already, everybody around and sitting around each one on a desk in an open hall, that may really offer difficulties and unnecessary, seems to me, distractions.

[07:38]

So those things depend, but I could see that, for example, having for the Lectio Divina is certainly would again simplify and really make our life much more meaningful. For example, you can see that now, the question of books. It's a constant. I would like to know how much time is being lost. It was tremendous time being lost that if you looked as a student and you had to use the library and you looked for a book, yeah, it's rather so-and-so, you see. Now, then you want to go and get the book or so on, Father So-and-so just happens to be on a journey, you see. And maybe then the book is difficult, you know, to read. Or he is not in his sin, you know. Therefore, you have to wait, you know. Or maybe Father So-and-so has given the book just to Father So-and-so also was looking for the same book.

[08:45]

You go to Father So-and-so, and he says, no, you go to Father So-and-so, he has the whole now. See, I mean, there are all kinds of complications and really great waste of time which may in that very result. While if the books, you know, are kept, you know, in one place, and there they are in the reading area, And only in great exceptions I could think of that too, you know, that somebody who has to do some extra work, you know, may even perhaps have his own cell to do that work for that time, you know, that's possible. But on the whole, I think that wouldn't even be necessary. And in that way, keeping the books in one area altogether Yes, it to me is a really effort for the great advantage. But all these things have to say them for your own thinking and for your own consideration.

[09:46]

And I still wanted to say that next week we have the visit of a monk of the community, Protestant community of Tisei, who at the present time lives here in this country and is in this country together with another monk. director of a little center of ecumenical studies in the state of Massachusetts, not far from Boston, Packard Maths. And I had invited him, you know, to come because I had heard so much of Tissier and also the influence of that community, which is very near to the place of the old Abbey of Cluny in France. I wasn't able to go there and get any personal contact on this trip, but then I was invited to a conference which this Frère Laurent was going to give this month in Boston, and so we got in touch and invited them.

[11:00]

They couldn't come here, And we very joyfully, you know, said that we would like very much indeed a council. That will be next week on the 18th to the 20th of February. Then also another thing is that we have to, I wanted to ask you to remember that in your prayers, also to your thanksgiving, because we finally succeeded to sell this house that we have in France, and the two were relatively favorable terms, really, because now You see, the difficulties in the colonies, North African colonies, especially in Algiers, also make a cause, as it were, a re-migration of many Frenchmen into the metropolitan towns.

[12:12]

So this year was We serve that purpose of the house there. It has been taken over by an organization of Algerians. We serve as a school in that. and they get it at very favorable conditions too. So, as we have a solution now, the next thing we have to pray for is that the Conseil d'Etat of France, you know, will agree to this arrangement. So, that is quite, you know, perfect. because that became us becoming a very difficult opposition because we had to maintain the house all the time, we had to maintain a man to live there, to take care of it, and all these things.

[13:25]

Then Father John McHugh I think we all remember with great gratitude the visit of these two Protestants who came here to visit and to explain their approach to the problem of the reunion of the churches and also in the case of Laura to explain the idea and the spirit of the monastic life of this community at they say, and then how out of that Unitas Fraterna lived in a monastic circle, how then this serves as the concrete starting point for an extension of that same Charity Vertules of all men.

[14:33]

This way perceives a truly ecumenical Catholic character and some people have asked me if we couldn't devote me an evening to a discuss these things a little among ourselves, and I think that may be very useful for us, because it is also, as Frère Laurent explained, it is their position that they start from another background, and to use that to the best advantage, really, for the pole of the church, that is their idea, not to use their present situation as a departing point for an attack.

[15:35]

on other positions but to use their present position outside of the for us the visible body of the church that the authority of the church as not as an attack against the authority but as a possibility in which for the prophet be of the whole god willing god disposing that way for the experience of the whole Christian body, then a fresh approach may be made. And that is a thing, darling, that we all could also see in a man like that, of that sincerity, of that deep spiritual quality, that deep faith. in Christ and love for Christ, which is there, and that gives faith.

[16:38]

He was a lawyer before he entered the monastery, so he had no professional theological background, but that may help with the grace of God in a case like that, approach the things, the traditional things of the faith which are so, to which we are so used, which are so familiar to us with new eyes and then also with a new enthusiasm. And that may be really a service for the whole because We always suffer from the fact that maybe we are too familiar with the things, the good gifts that Christ has given to us, too familiar with the tradition of the Church and with our own setter, the Holy Rule, so that we take too much for granted.

[17:45]

And therefore, the edge of our understanding becomes a little, how does one say that? Dulled. Dulled, you know, becomes a little dulled. And we don't get the, let us say, the fresh color, the newness of it. That's very often that is the great grace for a convert who has not been has not grown up within the church. He certainly sees these things with new eyes, and they're certainly here too. The approach or the attempt is made for new formulas, for other words, formulas, which may have a greater, more immediate, and are more easily accessible to modern man. who has an entirely different background, entirely different way of thinking, and also our speaking.

[18:52]

And all that is therefore a, for example, a comparison between the rule of Taizé and the rule of Saint-Denis, which for us would be, I think, a very fruitful thing. I mean, I don't say that now for, let's say, a confessional reason. I think that the rule of Saint Benedict would stand the comparison, stand up very well under the comparison, because I think that the basic idea that sits in Taizé, in the rule of Taizé, expressed right in the beginning, nobody can take up a rule If not for the sake of the Lord Jesus, for following to imitate him must be an instrument that we may mold it into that divine image of the Lord.

[19:55]

That is also the principle of the rule of St. Benedict. And that is what we wanted to just to see into and make it clear to us what way St. Benedict's rule is conceived exactly on those scriptural lines, the lines of the true, classical, ecclesiastic, spiritual tradition. There's a word that I just found so beautiful, I think, in this connection and very much apropos in this conference, it's really a little book of Father Kalani, where he quotes Rupert Lucertus of Doris, who speaks about this character of the world. Such a beautiful thing, he says, it is fitting improper for us to say of the already mentioned rule of our most holy father saint benedict that the holy spirit with whom the saint was filled disposed it truly by his mind and that he spoke by his mouth that the rule was built entirely upon the foundation laid down by god

[21:24]

the foundation of the evangelical authority upon which our builder, our writer, gazed with the open eyes of his mind while he wrote. Such a beautiful sentence. I think that characterizes really the spirit and the attitude of St. Benedict. He gazed upon the form, the norm, the way, one can say the instruction, the Torah, direction laid down by the Evangelical authority Berduccato Evangelii through the under the leadership the guidance of the Gospel we away follow the way of perfection and that is why in the beginning of it is so beautifully expressed in the Prologue where the whole thing right away is followed and begun in a positive way and right way followed into the center of the entire business, auskulta of feeling.

[22:33]

The one who is willing to listen to this instruction of the rule is, by that very desire, already feelings. He is song. He is prodigal song. He is coming back, but he is song. is accepted by his father that you may return in obedience to the one whom you have left in the sloth of disobedience. That is the basic scriptural situation here. The word of scripture about the fall of Adam, the first Adam, and the coming of the second Adam. That basic teaching, gospel, the news on the Scripture is right away made there the starting point for the entire rule that follows.

[23:35]

That is our situation. We are disobedient sons. Therefore, The way in which we return, and that is what the rule is all about, is that we turn to conversio, to shuba, as one says in Hebrew, and for that we go back to him through obedience, because we have left him in the sloth of disobedience. And there, that is the key to the whole. Anybody who is willing to do that, anybody who sees himself as Paul Eagle's son, sees what is the obstacle to his union with God, that it is his pride and his disobedience, and then opens his ear, the ear of his heart, to the teachings of his loving Father, He is right away taken into this living process of salvation.

[24:38]

He becomes a member of the economy of salvation. He follows the ways of God. In him scripture, the word of God really and truly lives. and that is the meaning of the whole rule so we really rejoice in that clearness and in that classical way in which Saint Benedict wide away characterizes the situation puts before us the setting in which our life develops and the goal and means and all that in the Holy Spirit addressing us as sons. So that is for example something that if you compare that with the rule of Taizé, I must say that Maybe there is a point, but I say that with great hesitation and not as a kind of unfriendly criticism of it.

[25:43]

But maybe there is a point, you may agree to rule yourself, which is not as clear there as it is, by the way, clear in the room. That is the typical gospel situation. that the disobedient prodigal son returns to his father, and that the rule is the way for that return. That word humility may not, seems to me, doesn't play the role, the central role, which is thus in the rule of Saint Benedict.

[26:22]

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