Dear brethren, in reading Father Bourdieu's book on liturgical piety, I come across a passage in which the author speaks about the developments which took place in the 12th and the 13th century from the objective to subjective piety, which Abbot Herwegen and the School of Mariella have pointed out. It is true that the use of these words, objective and subjective in relation to piety, gives rise to many controversies. And it may help to illustrate what is meant here when we take an example from the history of monasticism, which is offered by two outstanding saints, St. Hildegard of Eibingen and St. Gertrude. St. Hildegard was born in 1098. She wrote her best-known work, Schivias, or Know the Ways, between 1141 and 1151, during which time she became abbess of a small community of nuns which moved to the Rupertsberg near Bingen on the Rhine.

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Gertrud of Hilpda was born in 1256. and lived until about 1302. One century separate the two. In her book, The Ambassador of Divine Love, St. Gertrude gives us a beautiful description of the decisive experience which led her to writing. One day between Easter and Ascension, she says, I entered before prime into the cloister. sat down at the fish pond and contemplated the loveliness of this spot. The crystal clearness of the water flowing by, the green of the surrounding trees, the free and graceful flight of the birds, especially of the doves, but first of all the quiet stillness of this sheltered place, filled me with delight. I began to think what one could add

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to make it perfect. I thought I should have a friend who with his confidence, his devotion, and his love would sweeten the solitude. At this moment did you, my dear Lord, cause of indescribable delight, turn my thoughts toward you, and doubtlessly you were the one who inspired these thoughts. you showed to me how my heart could become a lovely dwelling place for you. For this I have to return to you in unfailing gratitude the river of graces, as this water warns me to do. I have to blossom forth like these trees in the fresh green of good works. Like these doves I should see all earthly things from above, and with an easy flight I should rise to the things of heaven, where my soul, free from the worries and ambitions of the world, concentrates all her energies on you alone.

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then my heart shall give you an abode which surpasses all earthly loveliness." The whole day my mind was filled with these thoughts. In the evening before retiring, when I went on my knees to pray, I suddenly thought of the words of the Gospel, Who loves me shall keep my word, and my Father shall love him, and we shall come and make our abode with him. Then my heart of dust felt that you had presently arrived. This happened nine years ago, and ever since, as often as I entered into my heart, I found you there. In an uninterrupted series of visions, St. Gertrude, only 26 years of age, experiences the glowing fire of the Divine Presence.

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the longing for union dissolves gradually all selfishness in her earthly ego. Love moulds it into the crucified bridegroom to such a degree that she receives the stigmata of his wounds in her bodily heart, and similar to the great Teresa of Avila, her heart is pierced by the arrow of divine love, which keeps her forever on the bed of suffering and takes away all taste for earthly consolations. St. Gertrude receives the command to write down her mystical experiences. What she writes is the history of her soul. She tells about the miracles of divine grace which formed her interior being, that those who read it, as she says, may delight in the sweetness of your love, and attracted by it may experience greater things. You know, searcher of my heart, that nothing has forced me to write these things but pure love for your glory.

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Give to all who read them in humility joy over your condescension, compassion with my unworthiness, contrition for their own spiritual progress, that from the golden senses of their loving hearts may ascend to you an odor of such sweetness as to make up a hundredfold for all my own failings, my ingratitude, my negligence. Now we go back one century to St. Hildegard. who many people praise as the first of the great number of German mystics. Her book, She Vias, is in fact one series of visions, but they are completely different from those of St. Gertrude. I take it as an example, a vision of Our Lord, which she describes at the end of one of her plays, which is called Ordo Virtutum, The Order of Powers.

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She sees him with outstretched hands standing before his Heavenly Father and saying, Father, I show you my wounds. I suffer weakness in my body because my little ones became weak. Remember that you pledged not to turn your eyes away until you would see my body full of precious stones. Father, I show you my wounds. Have mercy on those whom I have redeemed. The difference between St. Hildegard and St. Gertrude is clear. The latter sees our Lord turned to her as the bridegroom of her soul, that he may write with his precious blood his wounds into her heart, that he may read there his love and his sorrow. In St. Hildegard's vision, Christ stands facing the Father as the High Priest and as the head of his body, interceding for its members, who still suffer until sin and death have been conquered in them.

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St. Hildegard's vision is theological, insofar as it shows Christ in his theological function as Son of God and as our High Priest. It is, shall we say, ecclesiastical or corporate because it shows him as the head of his mystical body, the Church. Saint Gertrude's vision is psychological insofar as it describes the psychological relation of the bridegroom abiding in her soul. It is individual because it is concerned solely with Saint Gertrude's heart. Abbot Ildefons characterized St. Hilgard's vision as objective, and that of St. Gertrude as subjective, and one can easily see what he meant by that. St. Gertrude's attention is turned to her own experience. She describes the effect which Christ's personal love for her has on her heart.

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St. Hildegard's attention is wholly turned to what she calls the powerful work which God has worked in his Son. Her vision is a participation of the eternal vision in which the Father sees, even before the world was made, the body of his Son full of precious stones, the vision which moved him to restore all things in heaven and on earth in Christ. It is what St. Paul calls the mystery of God, which was hidden before the ages, but is now made known to the church. This vision lifts St. Hildegard above and beyond all her subjective experiences into the realm of God's truth and of his all-embracing law. She sees and she is absorbed into the grace which, rising from the eternal wills of God's being, embraces the whole cosmos. The power of Christ, the economy of salvation, in short, the Magnaria Dei, the great deeds of God, which the Holy Spirit showed to the apostles and urged them to announce them to the world and Pentecost, they are the sole object of her attention.

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Not that she would talk about them with the so-called objectivity of a detached scholar, but with the passion and the enthusiasm of a true prophetess who lives only for her ministry. When she speaks about herself, she does so only to say that, I know not myself anymore, neither according to the spirit nor according to the soul. I do not think of myself, but I hang on to the living God. I leave it to him that he, whose is neither beginning nor end, may keep me from all evil. This is certainly not indifference to personal devotion. St. Hildegard knew very well what it meant to fall into the hands of the living God. In all this, she says, the vessel of my body was burnt like clay in the potter's oven.

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but she is not sent to describe her personal experience. She is what she calls herself, preferably, a homosimplex, and with this she wants to say that before God she does not know herself. Her preoccupation is not her own sanctification. She knows she is fulfilling God's will if she faithfully serves to manifest to the world what is shown to her in the divine light which fills her at any moment, and which shows her the Magnaria Dei, the universal pattern of salvation, the Word of God, rather than her own psychological reaction to it. It is evident that both St. Hildegard as well as St. Gertrude are great Catholic saints. If they are different, and that is the case, cannot be denied. If one is more objective and the other more subjective, The question is not who is right and who is wrong, since both are unquestionably right.

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But it is certainly legitimate to ask which of these two attitudes corresponds more to that of the rule of St. Benedict. Again, I would never say that St. Gertrude's subjective spirit runs contrary to the spirit of the rule. Both St. Hildegard as well as St. Gertrude move in the realm of obedience, in their union with Christ, but the emphasis is different, the outlook is different, the aspect is different. St. Hildegard is absorbed by the divine truth, by divine revelation, by the word of God, which kindles her soul like a fire. while Saint Gertrude is overwhelmed by the personal attention which Christ, as the bridegroom of her soul, gives to her. There can be no doubt that the patristic age to which Saint Benedict belongs was more directed in the direction of Saint Hildegard, while Saint Gertrude really indicates something new.

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Apotilde von's contention is that here, in the concentration of our attention on the subjective effects which God's revelation has on us and our souls, an attitude develops which then later culminates in the Reformation and in the Renaissance, and which becomes more and more man-centered instead of being Christ-centered. And when we speak about objective and subjective piety, it is really absolutely necessary to take these two words, Christ-centered and man-centered, in order to indicate what is really meant and also the reason why subjective piety in that way is being criticized. I personally would like that the discussion and the difference between subjective piety and objective piety would be explained more according and on the lines of the rule and of Saint Benedict's thinking.

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Saint Benedict clearly is opposed to so-called subjective piety. He condemns it when he speaks about the Sarabites. The Sarabites are monks, as he says, who their law is their own good pleasure. Whatever they think or choose to do, that they call holy. What they like not, that they regard as unlawful. Therefore, this subjective piety, we may call it, of the Sarabite is an attempt of the individual to cloak his selfish desires and intentions under the title of the will of God. Give a holy title to your own subjective desires. That is subjective piety, so to speak, at its worst.

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But then we have still another kind of subjective piety, and that is that of the Pharisee. The Pharisee is the one who says when he goes to the temple, I thank you, O God, that I am not like the other one. because I fulfill the law, and I do this, and I do that for you. And in this way he throws around his weight, and he does and fulfills the law in last analysis for his own glorifications. St. Benedict knows that attitude, that subjective piety, too, in Among the Monks and in the Monasteries, when he speaks of those monks who glory in their good observance. In opposition to this subjective piety, the objective piety certainly is that of the publican, who says, Dominum non sum dinos,

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I am not worthy. But only say a word and my soul shall be healed. This objective piety of the publican and of the believer is objective because here the subject, man, is thrown, as it were, in awe and in reverence on guard while he in his own ego is diminished to nothingness in the virtue of humility. Another example of subjective piety is the older son in the parable of the prodigal son. He builds and he relies on the fact that he was always with his father and that he always helped his father while the other one just left him and squandered his goods.

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Objective piety in this relation is that of the prodigal son, who, when he comes to his father, says, I have sinned before heaven and before you as an example of compunction. Therefore, subjective piety would be that kind of piety which becomes a means to a human personal selfish end. The human self really remains the centre. Holy titles are given that one may follow one's own will under the cloak of piety. Or one obeys really the law of the Lord, but one does it looking with contempt at the next one who does not do as good a job as one does oneself. And again, one uses the law of God and the observance of the law of God as a means into one's own glorification.

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This kind of subjectivism is what Saint Benedict absolutely disavows. While on the other side, the what we may call that kind of piety in which the individual realizes that he is nothing, that he is a worm and not a human being, that he therefore expects all and receives all from the love of God, This objective piety, a piety which receives its directions, which receives its light, which receives all its power from God, this kind of piety certainly is nothing objective in that sense that the individual self or the heart would remain detached On the contrary, this objective piety is the kind of piety which enters, which pierces the heart.

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Therefore, if somebody asks, for example, now, objective piety of the patristic age, now, how does the school, our school, come into this? Our school just is a means of producing real piety. genuine objective piety, but this objective piety certainly includes the compunction of the heart. But this compunction of the heart is the result of our looking at Christ looking at the crucified Lord first, and in the light of the crucified Lord, seeing ourselves. That is then the right self-knowledge, which is derived really from the knowledge of Christ. Tomorrow's Mass, the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, we have in the Collect a perfect example of this what we may call objective piety.

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Grant to us, O Lord, we beseech thee in the spirit to think

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