We're speaking of these last weeks on the Constitution of the Church, and the second chapter of the People of God, and it's a special morning and connection also with tomorrow, a Sunday, in the introvert and brief scheme of thinking that out, a shout of joy, that if he heard on a new proclaiming it to the ends of the earth, that God has freed his people. Alleluia, Alleluia. Do you realize that these 50 days between Easter and Pentecost are a very special way of the time of the people of God, the time of Judaism, the time of liberty, and the time of praise, the glory of the Kingship. All these things go together Remember, we spoke about it already, right?

[01:07]

And through the words of the Constitution, it has pleased God to make men holy and save them, not merely as individuals without any mutual bonds, but by making them into a single being, a people which acknowledges Him in truth, serves him in holiness. He therefore, in the constitution of the universe, chose a way for his wife, as the people of dream said. He did it so by giving them the law of history, and the prophets, and the psalms, in other words, the book. The book is the gift, the book is the constitution, the which the people of God receive and wear its form, its form of life.

[02:11]

However, this book, the law, the Torah, we may call it, this book was not out of one's eyes, still contained. The book itself pointed, constantly pointed beyond itself to another, a new prophet, to the Messiah, to a new prophet, a new Lord. Remember the words of Jeroboam, I will give my Lord in their bowels and I will abide in their hearts. Now Jesus executed this new covenant. He came to Nazareth, as you remember, to the synagogue, and the book was given to him.

[03:17]

And he read All this definition is very important and the Catholic received and understood it because this is the tradition, this is the break between the old and the new, which is this Bible. So the book was given to him and he read, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me and sent me out to preach the good tidings to the poor, to restore the broken-hearted, to rid the prisoners of greed and the blind from their suffering, to set the oppressed at liberty, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Those were the words he read. And then if he shut the book, the evangelists, they are in sorrowing and weeping, the Protestants are in repose, he shut the book, he gave it back to the re-intentment, and he stood up, sitting down on the far left side of the ditch, and all of us in the circle of things, their eyes on him, the attention was there.

[04:48]

tension of the moment. Everybody feels here something important is happening. And thus he began to speak it. He said, this scripture which I have read in your healing, today it is fulfilled. So the book was fulfilled in Christ. And that means that Christ brought together a new people, made up, as the Council says, of Jew and Gentile, making them all not prodigal flesh, but illicit. For those who believe in him are reborn, not from a perishable seed, but from an imperishable one. through the Word of the Living God, not from the flesh, but from the water of the Holy Spirit back into them, are definitely, translation says, finally, evidently established as a chosen place, a holy priesthood, a holy nation, a virtuous people,

[06:12]

You, who in times past were not the people, but now the people of God. Now we have already spoken in the past about the concept of the people of God. Still I would like to expand this concept a little further, because, as you know, the strong individualism which, especially in Germanic countries, becomes very acute as soon as it comes to religion. The slogan, Religiousness by the Circle of Religion is by nature quite a thing, capitalizes on this natural trend expressed by organized religion. Organized religion today is maybe the most acute problem, especially that the Church, like Christianity, finds in this world today.

[07:23]

Because this organized religion, for so many in a mysterious, but not extremely efficient world indeed, is felt as a clash between bureaucracy, and spiritual enthusiasm. Religious faith is by nature spontaneous and free, and God sees the heart of man. Therefore religion is a matter of the heart. But as soon as religion is organized, it develops with the kind of inner necessity power, with, discipline, and through discipline as Christians. All this is so very true, that it is necessary to incline upon the Church as an organization, and to ask the question

[08:40]

between them, of the relation between organization and spirit. And I really think the best way to do it is to start with the concept of the people of God. And I think this is the reason why the Constitution of the Church practically starts with this concept of the people of God. I think in thinking back on the last part of this, I realized I should have explained this quite at the beginning. The difference, I may suggest, the Council simply starts a different approach to the Church. And I've understood in St Anselmo, there are treaties on the Church, darker from the principle, ecclesialist, so she has her figure. The Church is a perfect society, that's of course a scholastic, technical term, societat perfecta.

[09:48]

Anyhow, this term, societat perfecta, immediately shifts, or is at least apt to shift the emphasis to the juridical aspect, the society aspect. Remember, with the concept of society, that we always associate the concept of distance, togetherness, but not distance, as society. And spiritually, indeed, it creates also this, let us say, sorrowing, or threatening, or even deadening picture. of organized religion. The concept of the people eating the food of God leads, in a very different direction, to a different aspect.

[10:56]

Because if we reflect on the people, sociology has always since romanticized But then especially younger people, people like Weber, Sow and so on, have spoken about the people as a society which is communistic, communistic. By community it can be referred to what we have mentioned at different times in these last weeks. Community is a natural, existential society. It is an inter-enhanced community of people, as an inherent biological principle. community of blood.

[11:59]

And equivalently with that also the country, because these two concepts always fall upon one another, the blood and the body, those two. And they are also important, they are constitutive of the concept of human. In German we express it as Father of man. Father is the community of blood, schematically conceived as a recipient of God's jumpy quantum. And the dance will come to be the natural home in which this, yet an existential community of blood, lives and therefore also, in a sense, is forever fed, you know, as in a mother's womb. in the country. So you leave here and you realize as soon as the speed of people really emphasizes God, an inner God, wise in part, a God of common experience, one could simply say they are God.

[13:18]

All that makes that very essential difference between the people and the vermin. The vermin is the oxygen being, because the vermin has an accidental accumulation that has no real identity. The people, with the concept of the people, it's always this kind of idea connected about deep feeling of identity. Nobody identifies himself really existentially with a radical, because a radical is simply a product of an accidental, actual relation. On the sun, if anyone can say healing, it is healing the drug. It's a healing like housing, as one says to Germany. So it's not, as it is said, at least the intention of staying together.

[14:28]

There is no inner stability. The verbal in the speech of the Pope is misplaced, and is, for that matter, in his direction, uncontrolled. It's a contagion. We see that very often happen in our lives, don't we? So therefore, it does not enter into people necessarily, enter into a continuity, for example, of keeping the heritage of the farms. In a continuity of tradition, from generation to generation, you see right away that this is based on the idea of value. And of value, at the same time, too, has definitely, it seems to me, the renewal of a certain sacredness.

[15:42]

It's there that we are inseparably connected. with the attitude of reverence, all these things go into what makes a people. The rabbi does not have this idea of value. It's not based on value. The memory of a rabbi is a value. There is not something sacred There is no measure. Divine being is spontaneous, they are momentaneous. Hatred, for example, may gather the family together. So we can see right away, the wellness has nothing to do with what we would call the spirit. The people on the country is a community of things.

[16:46]

of faith in values, and in values which are being handed down from generation to generation, and are as a way of saying, the glory of the people. It is a community, not only of faith, at work, it's a community of life, which is expressed in the observance of proper customs, in abacus, helping one another, in the dying for the common good, in the service to the common will. A people is not possible without the reality of what we call the public servant. But there is still more to the people in comparison to, say, the rabbi or to the individual.

[17:56]

Because the people reaches into a completely new dimension into which neither the individual nor the rabbi reaches. And that is that of the public. The people, it is a member of a family of nations. The family of nations form, let's say, the public sphere of mankind. And that is, of course, something which in itself is again sociologically, also in its reality and value, is something different. on what we call private interests, or private property. Public property, in that way, is the sphere that we usually try to define it, to describe it, as that of fame, fame, glory.

[19:06]

So, You see then, when you just, when you think a little about these various aspects of the people, then you will also realize that it really makes a difference in the approach to the church, on an organizational level, recognizing the idea that it is a visible organization. And the approach to the Church as a visible organization is done, and I say, in the light of the idea of the people. If it would be on the idea of organization, then, to say it again, it would be immediately in the utilitarian realm of the Church. Then maybe the odds would be very responsive to come up. than of paid officials, of promotions to different posters, of collections with bank accounts.

[20:22]

So, if we take the people of God with counsel, or as we approach to the church as a physical organization, then we have, let us say, a better chance to call into a deeper insight into what the Council calls, when it defines the Church, as the unbreakable sacrament of unity. The unbreakable sacrament of unity. But that isn't to be in the distance. Let us first go over a little step by step. The first thing is of course that here The object of this chapter is the people of God. Now if you take the concepts of the people that we have just kind of touched upon, and you transfer them to this specific sphere, in people, yes, in people of God, what does that mean?

[21:34]

Now that first of course means that this figure is of God's choice. God in some way has taken it on, or declared it as His will, has therefore entered it into a covenant with this being. And what is the covenant with this being? It is the law, through which then the people of God, because God's people, chosen as an answer to God's connection and choice, the people that obeys God's will. People that obeys God's will. These two things have to meet, the divine choice and the obedient So they obey what is the people of God.

[22:37]

The people of God is the people which means that they are all united on the lines of God's law. Or maybe to say the larger concept of God's will. If you take the concept of God's law, then immediately you think of the law as it came to Moses. the Ten Commandments and the entire vast arrangement of all kinds of regulations, serving food, serving all kinds of things, in fact, affecting, one can say, the entire life of man. Now there is here, in all conscience, another which is very important, answered by people, as by God has chosen a people.

[23:38]

I think we already touched upon it. If the people of God answer to His choice, and His call obeys His will as a people, then it is impossible. The will of God, the rule of God, will simply be limited to the invisible realm of personal feelings, that is art. So that's what that is in some ways the mission, or not the mission of this idea of the people of God, that the community of life lives in with the people of God. is, of course, of that kind, a total war in this way that it extends, say, into all various realms of human existence. And therefore, the idea of the people of God remains so lost, as it were, right from the beginning, the idea that Christianity can, or any religion, can simply be a matter of the sacristy, as we say, or of private feelings and private acts of relation of the hearts to God.

[25:06]

But it is, therefore, a total which therefore takes in their own concrete relation towards the other members of the people of God. Therefore, a social one, and as a social one means a great, you can see that, totality. But of course, a people obeying the will of God, what is that? That cannot simply be, let us say simply, a law of life dictated by God, and therefore good, because God's will is not essentially, for example, a registered late affair, but God's will is essential. In other words, God's will is love. And it is the love of God's heart, the free love of what we call the Father.

[26:13]

So that to be God's people means to be a servant, the servant of God's love, that is God's people. And that is, of course, again, a concept that is absolutely fundamental in the Old Testament, as you all But if they do not want this, then nonsense will be. The point of this lecture is that we, the people of God, beings to be, the people that we have it here in Troy that I just read to you, let out a shout of joy that it be heard proclaiming unto the ends of the earth. Therefore, it is the voice that praises the God of the Universe. It is therefore the voice that has the sacred public standing in the world of

[27:23]

So we can ask ourselves now, in the authority of that choir, God of the keys, saying, God of the people, is, or when I say naturally, the King. As the letter says, the Quarantine, so we stand in dignity of the King. You see, as soon as we know how to enter into this world, Relation to God was, you see, quite a way that this, the idea of Holy Spirituality, the idea of a relation, the people of God, that means one can say the organizational unity of God's worshipers, worshipers of the true God, is not a matter Not a matter simply of utility, utilitarian situation.

[28:29]

It's not a matter of will. It is a matter of God's choice, and of course, in Amsterdam and in Sweden, a matter of God's law, sending universally, often wasting, not of God, and of course, of glory. So God does not save individuals, but he saves, for this reason, the individuals by making them into a single people, that's the concept. So the single people, the one people, therefore, stands as the principle of unity. you immediately realize God does not address himself in his saving will to the individual as an individual, but rather in the beginning addresses himself to the people.

[29:37]

Why? Because he is the one God. He is the one Father. And therefore, one spirit in one family of God's children, those two things naturally, unnecessarily correspond to one. And then you must immediately realize, and therefore the one people of God, while the community of the Old Testament, and already absolutely deliberately and consciously represents not a self-satisfied autarkic unit and would distinguish itself from the others and say, we are the ones. We in other, as we are withdrawing or bending back or centering back on itself.

[30:42]

But the one people of God, if it is the people of God, that means the creator of the universe in the Old Testament, then this one people of God can only be a force, and can for them never be the darkness reality. Because this one people of God, who didn't save for no reason, then warred among many, many others. But it is that there can be one people of God only if it is and stands as the beginning and at the same time as the, one can say, the sacrament, the sacramental sign of the universal gathering together of all the nations, and of all the men, of the whole of mankind.

[31:43]

So the ideal of the people of God, and is of course always so important, because, to come back to a concept like the organization, an organization, or a party, or a firm, whatever it is, in the organization, It's not only a matter of power, not only a matter of wealth, not only a matter of promotion, but it is actually also a matter of exclusiveness. It is a matter of, one might say, self-contained, sometimes one says self-sufficiency, more than self-complacency. Very, very evident, for example, in the phenomenon of party.

[32:46]

The party and party spirit. What is party spirit? Party spirit, the one excelling in party spirit is the one who knows how to threaten the organ, let us say, the party head. That is because it's not necessary. It's simply in the face. That is too one of the reasons why I think that the family of being, you know, the, for example, the ideology, party, communist party, the Danish free ethnic has already is more or more leading into certain conflicts and in certain narrowing and narrowing. In such an organization, merit, in what it says, is gloriousness. And the one who gets ahead, you know, who knows how to do it.

[33:48]

And that is, of course, can be fake. So therefore, it seems to me, the idea of king, really seems to be seen as being the people of God. One God, one spirit, one among all his children. But of course, for what purpose? Impossibly not for the purpose of being together with one another, and being satisfied and happy in that kind of, say, of narrowness, behind the childish walls. A social concept of the people, evidently necessary, is reaching out, reaching out for service, and reaching out for universal service. Now you know what, if you look at the realities of church life, you look at the realities

[34:59]

and you think about the things that we are just talking about, then you realize that this concept of the people of God, that we, all people of God, can have, is widely understood, and is, I would say, in the power of the concept of the people of God. We would succeed in not only transcending things, But in a certain sense, getting over the idea of an organization, so much would be gained. It is true that within an organization, affinity is developed, people get to know one another, elements of the awareness, you know, to real openness, that way exactly. or the reading somewhere, I can say, for the people of God in the past, the Old Testament.

[36:02]

Any such attitude of bending backwards or insinuating is fatal, and was fatal. But much worse still, if we apply this concept to the Church. We apply it to the Church, then, first of all, We have to remember that the Church is a pillar, why? Because this Church has a Father. Who is that Father? That is Christ the Lord. And Christ the Lord, he is the pillar. And Saint Benedict says in his rule that we have received the spirit of adoption of songs, and in this spirit of adoption of songs we cry, Allah, Father.

[37:04]

And he immediately applies that to the devil, and then he explains that the devil is indeed the representative of Christ. So it is proposed at this time of the year, this week, of this June, to Christ. And Christ is, as the Father of the people of God, through His Spirit, now the head of this inner body. And that is of course now important, that we realize that the Church, as I would prefer instead of saying organization, I would prefer to say as a sacramentum unitat, as a physical manifestation of unity. That the Church as a physical organism or the manifestation of unity is first of all essential. the manifestation of some kind of utilitarian unity.

[38:09]

But the Church is the manifestation of the unity of what? In other words, of peace of what? You remember how the Church, for that matter, was founded as ancestor. Then, after the Resurrection, the Lord approached the Apostles and said, So the unity of the Church is the manifestation of the peace of Christ. What is this peace of Christ? This peace of Christ is the infinite love in which He, by giving His Body and His Blood, has torn down His prayer, the wall that separated God through his obedience and through a calm and disobedience, the resistance of independent man, independent mankind, in its manifest world, the false guardians of the world.

[39:11]

And this bridge, this enmity, this wall has been torn down, has been torn down by this total obedience of Christ and to be His servant. And this Christ's service has established Him, what we may call, the state of peace, that is the fullness of the divine life. We also call it glory. So that is really the unity of the Church, One can say the organic expression of the unity of Christ. Christ is Lord our Lord. Christ died for our unity. And therefore the Church, for whom He gave His blood, preserves this unity. Why?

[40:12]

In order to give the peace of Christ to all the blood. You realize, of course, that one of the widest differences which we have had in the past and which we still have, or is the fact, that Christianity, at least at its present state, simply is not the physical sacrament of you. It's just this. This Christianity, split into all kinds of different churches, is in itself a bogging stone for the believers. And absolutely clear, because what can Christianity mean for the believers? Only if Christianity brings peace. What does Christianity bring peace? You know, immediately, when it starts out somewhere, it starts in opposition to another Christian group.

[41:14]

Therefore, our entire missionary activity during the 19th century has been increasingly different. And especially one can see that in those countries, which is a great majority of countries, where there are various missionary rivalries. You know, they're constantly tearing the pieces. The Sydney, the government, the Lord Governor of France. And therefore, Hayden's wife would say, now, if I want to become a Christian, have I go to a ring or a look or office with a hundred various denominations, I will tell you all that I like, get to an orderly side, then I'm a Christian. So therefore, the trembling is inevitable. Of course, you realize that in this way, especially with all the church, of the Church of Jesus, but in a strange, sort of different way, always has kept this principle.

[42:24]

The Church is involved, not because it is an organization, not because it's organized religion, but simply because it's a sacrament, it's a mystery of that divine unit which Christ, the Son of God, made man. inhaling the heavens, and shares with us through and in His Spirit. So their point is really the Spirit that is the principle, the self of in Christianity, of organized religion. Why a spirit of charity? That is, of course, so tremendously important. There are things like that. Because in that way we must be clear, we must have an upper mind, also as a monastery. We must have in mind this tremendous danger which consists in this, that we simply as an organization shift the emphasis from the spirit and the flesh.

[43:37]

And that in that way, again, if in some way, we laugh on the plain, which, and to hold any kind of error, goes the Old Testament and the New Testament. And you know, to a church, there's one remaining effort, and then they do overcome. So let us not fall into that mistake. But let us see, you know, the visible unity of the people of God, as the unity of Christ's peace, expressed in cognate mutual love of His negative.

[44:14]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v004
@Score_JJ