And as I said this morning, I propose to continue with this fourth degree of humility, giving it a little bit closer reading, especially this one short part, cacite conscientia patieniam plactatur, It seems to me that, for several reasons, this fourth degree is really the most profound degree in the 12, in the 12-step ladder. And so, you know, that's another reason to question whether the ladder is really going from the bottom to the top.

[01:02]

When you reach the apex at degree four, well, you know. And of course this morning we saw pretty well, I think, that it's a pretty tortured topic, this suffering injustice. And as I said, I'm going to look at the words very closely. Unjust authority, before I start that, let me just clarify one point that I think that I'm going to have to contradict myself. One of the things I said this morning I don't believe. That is, I said that this is a question of objectively injustice, objective injustice.

[02:13]

I'd have to turn that around now and say that I'm pretty sure that he is addressing the monk. You know, it's from the side of the sufferer, and therefore it is a question of one's perception. You see, it's something like chapter 68. And there are some other places in the rule, too, where it's a question of what you think is happening to you. So, that part, and the word in Uralese, which is sometimes toned down in translations, by the way, but it really means unjust in Latin. However, As I say, I think it's from the standpoint of the person who's suffering.

[03:20]

Of course, that's very real. I mean, the suffering is still real. You know, even a hypochondriac. Objectively, there's nothing wrong with him. However, he is subjectively suffering. Now, we could say that this question of unjust authority is a graver problem for a centibrite than for an anchorite, because theoretically, anyway, an anchorite is not bound to authority in that sense. At least, you know, the classic idea of an anchorite is that that is not subject to an abbot, I guess, although in our monasteries, you have an anchor, right? And some of the Benedictines do also, and they are under the abbot. But like in Chastain's point of view, it's a centibite who simply has to stay, has to stay in there because it's part of the bargain.

[04:30]

I have to say, too, though, that if you read the Desert Fathers, It appears that some of them anyway, in a few cases, recognized that their Abba was not good and was not holy and not wise, and they chose to stay with him, voluntarily endured this situation. I found that out from a book, a rather new book by Graham Gould which is on the communal aspects of desert monasticism, that is, in the apothegmata, the communal dimensions of that. It's one of those thin little books that costs an arm and a leg. These days, you can pay 50 bucks for a book that's 150 pages long. Well, very limited audience, of course. Now, I might say, though, that There is a word here that sort of takes the bite out of injuries, injustices, and that is kwibuslibet irogatis, some kind of injustice.

[05:41]

That sort of relativizes it. Benedict may be indicating here that, frankly, objectively, this may be sort of a trivial problem, but it's driving me crazy, that the monk is really suffering. But there's another word here also, there's a couple of words that go along with injustices, and one of them is duris, duris rebus. Now, hard, hard things. That word turns up again in chapter 58 and verse 8 on the question of the novice. And you know the novice is supposed to learn the harsh and difficult things that will bring him to God.

[06:45]

At least my understanding of that It's not that the novice master or anybody else sets out to provide artificial hardships, but rather that somehow the Dvishad does involve an open and frank discussion of what really are the hard things about this life, what it's really going to be like. And also, when the novice sees and runs into hard things that cannot be eliminated, because that's just the nature of the life, that will be dealt with honestly. It may be that some of the brothers are hard. Hard cases. And, you know, a novice sees those things and says, well, what about Father so-and-so? You know, he's a jerk. Yeah, I know, well, okay.

[07:48]

And you don't just say, well, wash your mouth out with soap, kid. Because, I mean, he is a jerk. But, but he's our jerk. And, you know, okay. Now, the verb, the key, a very key word, of course, amplectare, amplectature. Amplexus in Latin is an embrace. There's no way around it. And consequently, we'd have to say that he's asking us, he's telling us that we're not to simply think of ourselves as victims. We're not just somehow weak and unable to cope with this stuff and being run over by a truck, but we are active participants somehow in this situation.

[08:52]

Certainly embrace converts a willingness to suffer. I mean, a general willingness. In other words, if you have sort of categorically ruled out suffering, from your horizons, then there's a massive problem here. And you're not gonna be humble, you're not humble, and you're probably not gonna work out at all as a monk. And frankly, that's one of the great, I would say one of the great problems is that we live in a convenience society in which hardship and suffering is abhorred. And that the great, it seems like the great project of many people is to avoid suffering in all its forms. And of course, advertising panders to that constantly, telling you, well, you need this and you need that, and you ought to, you're all up to yourself, see?

[10:00]

You ought to baby yourself. Now, the translation that we find in R.B. 1980, his heart quietly embraces suffering, has the unfortunate aspect that it doesn't indicate that the word patience is the object. Patiencia, he embraces patience. Now, it's kind of a awkward expression, we don't quite, you know, you don't normally think of embracing patient. But nevertheless, I have to say that this word patient is a real key word in the RB. Michael Casey, the Australian Cistercian writer, has got a very nice article on that. I think it appeared in Chirunga. which I notice you don't get, and it's too bad because then you don't get Casey.

[11:04]

Or you do? Or you're used to? Okay. Anyway, we're missing Casey, that's all I can say. We're also missing Cardone. Ha ha, because I do publish in there because they got such low standards now. It's a beautiful article of Casey's, but I've thought a lot about it myself. It turns up in very key places in the RB. It turns up, for example, right at the end of the prologue, and that's a very crucial part of the rule, the last five or so verses. I can just read that and you'll remember it, and I won't go through all of these. But we shall to patience share in the sufferings of Christ that we may deserve also to share in his kingdom. It almost sounds like patience there is the doorway to the kingdom for the monk.

[12:08]

And that's a very rhetorical sentence, because it's passionibus Christi per patientiam pacici paimur. You've got loose dentures, stay away from that one. There's about five Ps in there, all this alliteration, and what you see then in the Latin is that passionibus, well, you don't quite see it, but passionibus, the passion of Christ, is a cognate with patience. They both come off the same root, patior, to bear. So, see, patience has got a pretty poor reputation. In our society, people are patient because they can't do much about things. They're sort of put up with things. Because we're very activistic. and patience sounds rather passive.

[13:13]

Well, you know, patsy or passive. Whereas, at least in the RB, it turns out, here, I started talking about that and I didn't carry through. At the end of the program, here in chapter seven, In the chapter on the novices, 58, twice he claims that the novitiate is to learn patience. Well, God knows we learned enough patience in my novitiate. I don't know if we learned it, but we certainly sort of thought we were putting up with quite a bit. I guess this just pops into my mind. I'm in the sixth grade. We're practicing basketball. The kids are standing in a semicircle, and the coach has got the only ball in the gym, and he's shooting layups. And finally, one of the kids says to the other one, what are we practicing here?

[14:15]

And the kid says, patient. That's what my sixth grade in South Minneapolis. Pretty smart kids. Okay, now, see the difficulty here is in the translation to get all this stuff in. It's like this, this problem sometimes in translating is you take the watch apart, you got the pieces laying out here, you put it back together, the darn thing is running, but you got some pieces left on the table. And often you got adverbs and stuff left over. tacite, now literally, silently, tacit, taciturnity, and so forth. Its literal meaning in the Oxford Latin Dictionary is physical silence, you don't cry out. However, it looks as if Benedict has

[15:23]

Seen Fit, to include inner silence by including the word consciencia. Consciencia, in the conscience, somehow, in the heart. How do you translate consciencia there? It's a good question. That word consciencia, by the way, And this indicates that sometimes we're dealing here with some pretty tangled textual history. In Cassian's version of step four, he had a completely different word, constancia. Now, you know, constancia is quite close to consciencia, and I don't know what the, even in the critical editions of the rule, of whether some scribes maybe had constancia, but the point seems to be, and I mean, this is interesting, that Cashin uses that word constancia in another place, in Conference 16,

[16:40]

to indicate that it's that endurance in a hard situation. You know, in Greek you got hupomone, persevere to the end, you know, the Latin constancia, to the end. But the interesting thing is that Taschen in Conference 16 is talking about tranquilitas, Now, the discussion there has to do with friendship. And he's talking about, well, what happens when friends start squabbling? The big thing for Cassian is don't lose your tranquility. Now, it seems to me that, and there's similar vocabulary, see, in these two places. Cassian's step four and conference 16.26, It appears that there's a kind of stoic background, see?

[17:48]

And that's the part that I think we have to be careful about. I don't think that Christianity, although Cassian is certainly a Christian, but you know, those stoic issues are not exactly Christian issues. Keeping your tranquilitas is not the big thing for a Christian, as far as I can see. Keeping your cool. We recognize now psychologically that there are people who are very good at keeping their cool, but who are not maybe very unhappy or are not loving. I mean, love is more primary than tranquility. To simply create a lifestyle, for example, that enables you to maintain your tranquilitas is not necessarily all that admirable for a Christian. God, I'm sure the abbot wishes he could maintain a lifestyle that would enable him to have his tranquilitas, but he's got some bozo coming in, yelling at him about some tractor.

[18:59]

And he says, that's the end of that, I'll have no more of this kind of stuff, I'm gonna be tranquil. Well, okay, but you're not abbot. I think de Beauvoir has also bought into this to a certain extent. He's got a little book on fasting, nice book, but he says in there that he's following the R.B. literally on eating. He only eats one meal in the afternoon, but he said, it would be quite impossible if I had to deal with my confers. See, if I had to engage in encounters with people, you couldn't maintain your fasting, and I think he means his tranquilita. As a great scholar, his confreres revere him, and they protect him, and they wouldn't think of disturbing his tranquilita. But is that really the point for a Christian? Is that why we created this lifestyle? I mean, we can just be selfish old bachelors and have a lot of tranquility time.

[20:03]

Okay. I suggested this morning, and I still worry about that, that a quiet heart may be misinterpreted as a suggestion that we can actually come to believe that injustice is justice. And I'm sure that I've seen that in some books, back in the novitiate or whenever, some of these books about monastic humility, that you would even somehow interiorize it so that you would no longer see the injustice. Unfortunately, people then become blind to evil. and then that progresses until there's no more conscience. We see that with Nazi Germany. Apparently all sorts of high-minded wonderful people had internalized Nazi propaganda just in order to avoid trouble and finally wound up being quite enthusiastic butchers.

[21:20]

Self-censorship results in more melody. That's a hell of a sentence. I wrote that. I was inspired that day. But nonviolent resistance is quite different. Okay. Getting back to consciencia, Boyas, a French scholar, good RB scholar, thinks that Benedict has replaced Constantium with Conscientia because he wants to avoid martyr language. Here again. He's eliminated the word martyr later on in this fourth step. Here he's changed Constantia to Conscientia. Well. we rather easily imagine ourselves to be victims and martyrs.

[22:23]

Mowgli, in his commentary, says that he thinks that step four of Benedict implies And of course, he's going back to Cassian's language in step four, that it implies Institute four, eight to nine, because of the resonances of the vocabulary. There's common vocabulary, which encourages an Abba to test a disciple deliberately. And he says that since the Master had used the same Scripture proofs, namely Luke 10.16 and John 6.38 — I come not to do the will of my own will, but the one of him who sent me and so on — that they use the same Scripture testimonia, Woodley thinks that the Master shares the same philosophy of formation.

[23:37]

Well, I have to admit that there is a place in the R.M., namely at Tema Patris 40, the theme of the Our Father. If you know something about the R.M., it's got a huge preface, a huge prologue. Part of it is a commentary on the R. Father, and in there he says that our will must be thwarted. It appears that the Master believes that the only possible salvation for a Cenobite is that his will be systematically crushed. Your hair's standing up in the back of your neck. I do remember some aspects of that in my formation.

[24:43]

It seemed like they were sort of waiting to notice your enthusiasms and then say no. Now, of course, some of my enthusiasms were nutty, and they should have said no. And we don't just let people follow their inclinations. somehow those inclinations are also great, and are the working of the Holy Spirit. And in some ways, they're indispensable. And if they're crushed, I mean, if somebody thinks that's their project, to snuff out the will of people, then there's something very dangerous going on here. Now, I shouldn't criticize Volgaire without him being here to smack me, because he's more than capable of defending himself, and he's a great master.

[25:50]

But his role in the Baptists, that he buys into this, he somehow thinks that, he thinks at least that Benedict shares that view, that somehow the will has got to be, I don't know if he'd say crushed, that's pretty drastic, but that the will really has to be shackled. Now, I can just tell you about a little interview I had with him when I was a student in Rome. I went to him one day, and I said, what should I write about? Sort of meaning, look, I'm going to go home, and I, you know, what should I do? I mean, how do you work? And he said, what are your interests? Follow your interests, because there is where the dynamism is, and that's where the head of steam is. And I must say that as an editor of a prestigious periodical,

[26:57]

One of the basic lessons that I've learned is that the primary energy in the whole publication process has to come from the writer. And if the writer hasn't got it, nothing's much gonna happen. And when they get cold feet and then start saying things like, oh, well, I don't know if I should publish this and so on, that I say, okay, fine, it's your decision. Because if you don't want to do it, we won't do it. And I think that even more crucially, to be an independent writer, and not to have to publish. See, I don't have to publish. I don't have a university job. So it's got to come out of my guts. Well, there's got to be ideas flowing and interest, interest. And where that comes from, I don't know. But I do know that where people don't have it, nothing's gonna get done.

[28:04]

And unfortunately, that's what happens too often. People come home from graduate school, they're superbly trained, and you see, in grad school, they just set you these projects. You got a thesis and all this stuff, and you gotta get it done. You're up against the wall. But when you come home, Nobody's gonna tell you you gotta write, so you don't write. And I've had a couple of conferences that I tried to personally nurse through, you know, sort of present them with ideas and stuff, and they say, oh yeah, that's great, they took it, we'll do something. I thought finally, hey, wait a minute, these are my ideas. You know, so all I'm saying is, this whole question about initiative, is very delicate. And you know, in my community, we have learned a very hard lesson. We had to close a school, intruded a vacuum, and really now the most precious valuable thing that we need is initiative and ideas by the monks as to, you know, work that will be

[29:20]

you know, fruitful work and all this stuff, and where you've got a bunch of people saying, give me a job, or, you know, tell me what to do, it's hard. You haven't supposed to have all the imagination and ideas and stuff? Can't. So, I guess that's enough of this. We've got 15 minutes, if anybody would like to talk about this back there. One of the things that has been said is that you might think that justice is more reasonable about that. I think the reason for that is that the ad is actually a council. That's also the major togetherness that's important to the SDN 13. The other thing is that I noticed that sometimes you get into a three-cornered game

[30:27]

with the monk, the council, and the abbot, but nevertheless, Benedict says, do everything with counsel and you won't be sorry, and that applies to the abbot and to the monk. Mr. Anders, we've been reacting to quite positive reports, more than anybody could say. In fact, I have been quite glad to be in contact with some of the consultants and others that have been going with this. And there's other people going in the same direction. And I agree with them, to hold on and we might be coming to it. So I think that it's true. And it didn't happen nearly as quickly. You have it as an affinity, and you can talk to other people, and they don't feel quite the same way, and you can be sincere to them.

[32:01]

One thing, it's sort of like a contest, which is that a contest is a very different narrative, seems to me, in human relations. You know, to expect all of this to be death to somebody, I think, uh, unacceptably, is really impossible. A parent with a child, say, you're 40 years old, and the stage is just right in the middle of May, and, uh, when you're 80, you see, you're making a 10th stage, I'd like to explain to you a little bit because it's very troublesome to explain it to you. You always, like, when you're in like the security encounters, you've got to get there

[33:09]

The only exception you may see if they're preparing you guys to do something that's obviously physical, then you are allowed to do it. But otherwise, you should do all of the interactions when you follow up on the condition, even if you think that you did it wrong or that you didn't do it right. Because you've been there, you get all the marks from that. Well, I mean, and I certainly think the distinction between what is evil and what is simply inconvenient or what I don't like or what I'll find very difficult, I mean, that's important to keep that distinction. But it still begs the huge question about, you know, sinful. I mean, I brought up a case this morning about putting somebody, I think, radically unfit in charge of a large institution. Is that a sin? You know, I mean, that whole business is pretty slippery.

[34:18]

It isn't one of the ordinarily categorized, labeled sins, obviously, but it could be gross negligence or, you know, real mismanagement or something very wrong. because lots of people are going to suffer. Lots of people are going to suffer. I might say, by the way, I said this morning, well, in fact, the whole thing worked out just fine. Yeah, on one end, the one guy he sent to South America is still in charge of the school after 35 years and doing a superb job. But on our end, the guy he named for our place was incredibly incompetent, and unfortunately, the school was in such turmoil for two years that when the monks came to decide whether to keep the thing going, they had such a bad taste in their mouth, many of them, and so we closed. We closed our high school, and I still think it was quite a mistake, but anyway. And so clearly it's had consequences, and yeah.

[35:20]

I agree. Blessedly, it's rare. I've heard it. You told somebody about it? No, but yeah, I told somebody to discuss it, and he started to discuss it, and he didn't do it. And I thought that my conscience discussed it. Yeah. Yeah. But it's just rare that I... Yeah. Well, uh... You know, I tried to add to somebody this morning a possible kind of a case that it seems to me, and I've actually said this in print someplace.

[36:29]

Let's say you're the administrator of a big hospital, a sister basically, you know. These orders have huge hospitals. And let's say that the owner is insisting that you You know, they're trying to organize this hospital into a union shop. And you're told you break that union. You take steps to break that union. We don't want that union in here. All right? This is a very controverted kind of question. And you may, as an individual, believe that that's really wrong to be busting unions or engaging in that kind of activity. Or maybe the opposite. Maybe you're told to bring the union in and you think it's all evil the way that unit operates? Those are tough questions. And you're now dealing with huge institutions, millions of dollars, employees and all this stuff. You can't just say, well, I did what I was told and that's all that counts.

[37:34]

I mean, if you're in that position, that you are capable of managing an institution of that size, you better know a few things. And one of them, you got to have some ideas about about little bit of managed practices and all this stuff. You can't just be a simpleton. I mean, we will not simply be able to go before the throne of God and say, I did what I was told. I'm sorry. The abbot will not be holding your hands. And it's going to be a little lonely up there. So. We've got to embrace it. I think that's just an idea. I think that we need to be honest with the understanding of the damage that we've done. I'd like to point out the identity of Chris Ray, who passed away in the United States, sacrificed I know, I know, but you know, I have to say this.

[38:40]

I mean, a lot of that kind of wisdom I can certainly understand, but it sounds quite a bit like the rule of the master. And I have to say that the unfortunate effect can be sometimes of religious who don't know what they want or what they think or what they feel or anything. They're sort of I don't know what you'd call that. I mean, it's important to understand your own heart and to not have somehow anesthetized it or whatever it is. And so, to sort of systematically set out to seek, you know, whether to seek hardships and all that kind of stuff, it's got its problems, you know? And I wonder if it's, I mean, perhaps masochism, I don't know, but I can point to one situation. When I first came to the monastery, certain monks were, it seemed to me, systematically neglecting their health.

[39:49]

And it seemed that they thought they were doing something virtuous, and I guess it was this offer it up business, offer it up. Somehow that pendulum has now swung to such an extent that they're concerned a little about their health. Same guys, 40 years later. We do have in our society, in this country, we've moved a long ways toward taking care of yourself. Eat right, exercise, and all this stuff, until you get a tremendous amount of concern for the self. I understand it's a problem and surely for a monk, but the other end, the other extreme of not paying attention to your heart is, for example, somebody told me, he came to the novice master and he said, I don't know what to do.

[40:55]

I don't know whether to stay or to leave. And a novice manager said, well, what do you want to do? It's a short thing, I was not the manager. What do I want to do? I mean, is that simple? Well, for heaven's sake, your heart must be, you know, it must have some validity. I mean, why are you here if you don't want to be here, you know, and if you want to leave? So, I don't know if I'm being very coherent here, but I think it's possible to be sort of all the time neglecting your heart. Frankly, if you take that maxim, surely, for example, people are going to be doing better work when it's something that they like doing, that it's their And we can't all be doing work that we like to do, and we can't all be doing work we love to do.

[42:03]

But surely you're better off when you've got people who have got that kind of fire, because I worry sometimes, once in a while I run into a confrer who seems to be perfectly responsible and doing a good job, and he frankly admits, I can't stand this job. You've been doing it for 20 years, I know, but I really don't like it at all. Very heroic, but I just wonder about it, whether he should be... Hey, look, I'm digging a hole deeper and deeper. Let's go to Tom.

[42:36]

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