I'm going to set the machine to record the conference of Reverend Father Damasus on Psalm 84 on Saturday. In tomorrow's epistle, we read the following words. As long as the heir is a child, he differs nothing from a servant. though He be Lord of all, and bodies under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the Father. So we also, when we were children, were serving under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem them who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

[01:13]

And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Therefore now he is not a servant, but a son. And if a son, an heir also through God. These are words from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians. And I think they may be a good starting point for us to continue the topic which we had begun in former conferences, where we spoke about the obedience. And we saw this obedience, the monastic obedience, more as under the aspect of its being our service, the abandoning of our self-will, the death of the old man,

[02:19]

now are becoming children again. And at times, what we have said may have sounded, as somebody said, hot and heavy. Naturally, man does not like to stay a child forever. The coming of age is one of the eternal themes of history. the great longing of every new generation to reach that time where one comes of age. The son enters upon his inheritance after the father's death as the great event in the life of the younger generation. also in a monastery.

[03:23]

There is a generation of children at the beginning, but these children are also heirs. And the time will come, appointed by the Father, when they are not anymore under tutors and governors, but they become sons and they enter upon their inheritance. This is true in the history of a monastic family as a part of its development in time. But it's also true as a constant element in the monastic life. In the Holy Spirit, the monk is always those two things, child and son, servant and heir. He is child because he is under tutors and governors, the majores.

[04:25]

He is son because his obedience, as we have seen in the idea of Saint Benedict, is offered not in the fear of the slave, but in the love of Christ by a cheerful giver, in the fullness of the Spirit who cries in him, The monk is servant because he did not come into the monastery to do his own will but the will of the one who sent him who is his master, God himself whom he therefore serves in obedience without delay. But also the monk is heir because his is the kingdom of God. To serve God means to reign.

[05:29]

To serve God is a great dignity. To be a slave of God is also to lord it with God. This whole concept of the heir seems to me is a very, very important and is one which forms part of the Christmas season. In the Third Mass of Christmas, you heard St Paul saying in the Epistle to the Hebrews that in former times God has spoken in sundry ways through his prophets, but now in these last times he has sent the Son, whom he has also appointed the heir of all things. And then, tomorrow's epistle, again you see the same thing, and the same, shall we say, contrast.

[06:31]

The child that is born, by the fact that it is born as a child, It's clearly manifested to the world as a servant. We meditated upon that so often during this Christmas season. The fact that Christ, the second Adam, appears, is born as a child, is really the beginning of his Passion. by the fact that he comes to us as a child, he manifests to us his intention to be a servant under tutors and governors, not in order to be ministered unto, but in order to minister. We said, you know, it's such a wrong idea of Christmas to consider this sentimental aspect of the heavenly child and the lovely child.

[07:41]

I think even the German song, Holy Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht, tastes a little of this heresy. That's quite an admission. I wouldn't say it in Father Master's presence. But there is the lovely child in the curly hair, you know. Blonde, of course. Although that may historically not be exact, you know. Probably not. Because that chosen race was not blonde. So that's what the nativity and that's what the crib and that's what all that indicates clearly. But this child is heir at the same time.

[08:45]

It's the beginning of a new age. and the beginning of the age of the divine agape, of the great age of gifts. Because, just think for a moment, what is the heir? Already in the natural order of things. He is one who is blessed, who is blessed with the work and with the gifts and possessions accumulated by former generations. The heir is the one who enters into a tremendous gift that the father's love has left him. You see, the idea of the inheritance And the very word of air belongs into the realm of what I call your attention always to again and again, into the realm of the divine agape.

[09:55]

That means that love which gives, the love of the Father to the Son, the love that does not wait until the Son is good enough or something like that, the love that is not a response to the value of the one who is being loved, but the love that gives, the love that makes great. Into the realm of that whole world also belongs the concept of the heir. What generations before him have and have possessed That becomes his through the fact that he is the sun and no other reason, for no other reason. That's very important. The mere fact that he is the sun makes him the air, regardless of his achievements.

[11:07]

So the air, the concept of air, is part in the New Testament of that wonderful language and terminology which the divine charity has, one can say, invented to lead us into that mystery of a love where we are not the ones who do it all, but where our Father is the one who gives it all. So through the very fact and nothing other else but that he is the son, he is the heir. As son, he is the aim and the purpose and the fulfillment, the terminus of the father's love. The heir is also the young one. the new generation, to whom then the Father's love has opened a new future, a new future.

[12:21]

But he does not only look into the future, the heir, but he is also turned towards the past. He is the administrator of the inherited riches. The heir has to be both. He has to be a keeper of the tradition, and he has to be a leader into a new future. The heir must conserve and build, and both these things belong together. The heir can really be only building when he is faithful to what he has been given. Otherwise, the heir squanders the inheritance. He squanders them.

[13:26]

And then, of course, he destroys not only his future, but also the future of all his sons. So Christ is heir because he is son. Last in these days he has spoken to us through his son, whom he has appointed the heir of all things. That are the words of the third Mass of Christmas, of the Apostle, of the Epistle. But not only Christ as the Son is the heir, but also we, through our baptism, being incorporated into Christ, we become sons and heirs also.

[14:28]

As St. Paul says in the Epistle to the Romans, the eighth chapter, now you have not received a spirit of bondage, so as to be again in fear. But you have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by virtue of which you cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself gives testimony to our spirit that we are sons of God. But if we are sons, we are heirs also. Heirs indeed of God and joint heirs with Christ. So we are heirs. And that is the moment where the Christmas mystery becomes a reality for us.

[15:32]

Just as the birth of Christ is also the coming into being of the Christian people, so also his coming as the heir means that we become heirs with him. So we are the heirs. What then is our inheritance? Let us ask that. What is our inheritance? We see that the idea of the inheritance is foreshadowed clearly already in the Old Testament. There you have the Israelitic people to whom has been given the inheritance of the Gentiles, as we say in the Psalm. The inheritance of the Gentiles has been given to them. What does that mean? God's is the whole earth.

[16:35]

The whole earth is God's, the Lord's inheritance. He has the right to give portions of this earth to whom he wants. So in his sovereign Lordship, God has given Canaan to the Israelites as his heirs to be their inheritance. The land of Canaan, the promised land. This promised land certainly was conquered by the Israelites but one has only to study a little the history of that conquest to see right away that not their earthly power would ever have conquered this land if the Lord had not been with them, if they had not conquered in the name of the Lord.

[17:40]

Canaan, naturally, is only an earthly inheritance. The Old Testament is a concovenant of images and shadows of future realities. So also this, the conquest of Canaan as the heritage of the chosen people, of God's firstborn Son, naturally is only and really a symbol of something else, of a higher and divine reality. And indeed we can see that at the end of the spiritual development of the Jewish people, especially at the time when this earthly inheritance was taken from them in the time of the exile. So important, that time of the exile.

[18:44]

Because there, when the earthly image was destroyed, that led the Jewish people, the remnant, as it is called in Holy Scripture, to a deeper realization of the true realities which were foreshadowed or indicated in the earthly kingdom that they had possessed but which they had lost. So there we hear the voice of the faith of the Jewish people, crying, Dominus paus hereditatis mea et caricis mea. The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my chalice. Now, in the New Testament, in order to follow the story and the development

[19:49]

of the idea of the inheritance further. In the New Testament you can see in Matthew 21 the further development of this idea. There is the story of the parable of the vine dressers. and the owner of the vinedresser sends servants and the vinedresser kills the servants in the end he sends his son and he says now they will respect the son and the heir but they do not and they kill the son and then Christ closes this whole parable opening up its meaning by saying, and the kingdom, that means the inheritance, will be taken away from them and will be given to another people that brings fruit in the Holy Spirit.

[20:57]

So what is then in the New Testament The idea of the inheritance, it's the kingdom of God. The inheritance is the kingdom of God. Of this kingdom of God, Canaan was a symbol. It is interesting, of course, if somebody approaches the book of Judges or of Joshua and he reads the story of the conquest of the Promised Land and of the destruction of all the pagan altars and of the throwing out or killing of everything unclean in this country, then one may say, oh my, here, in the name of God, a lot of blood has been shed. That is the old problem in the explanation and in judging about just that period in the development of the chosen people.

[22:13]

One absolutely cannot understand this story if one doesn't see it and understand it in the spirit in which it was ordained, instituted. Canaan is a symbol of the kingdom of God, and only as a symbol of the kingdom of God the laws and the actions can be understood through which this country is given to the Israelites as the inheritance. It is a picture of the kingdom of the Son of God's love. And naturally that love of the Lord, that agape, that love of the Son is diametrically opposed to any idolatry of any human values. That's evident. We have always seen that.

[23:16]

The divine agape is the absolute opposite in that way to any worship of any human power, of any earthly values, any kind of idolizing, because the divine agape comes all from above, and therefore idols have to be shattered in order to give it room And so here, too, the conquest of the promised land means a complete revolution, an absolute cleansing of that country from all vestiges, which are the expression of the opposite of what we call the arrows without God and against God. encountered, as it were, in idol worship.

[24:20]

And that idol worship is a reality. It's a reality up to this time. Just the other day I read an article on this... What is it? In East Africa there was that... That rebellion, what was that, Father Augustine? Mau Mau, or what do they call it? In Kenya. Mau Mau. More, more. More, more, you see, this movement, you know, and it's extremely interesting, of course, and see the psychology, you know, of modern idolatry, you know, and there, of course, in connection with that, with all the nationalistic instincts, the devil is never totally wrong because he knows that would be a lost cause. There's always something in there, so also this tremendous caricature and diabolic caricature, really, a twisting of national elements, superstitious elements, sex elements of excesses, of absolutely unheard of, you know, in nature,

[25:37]

that are really, therefore, absolutely diabolic. I always wanted to say that, I only wanted to say that because Sometimes one finds a kind of an attitude, especially in this country and in connection, unfortunately, with the words of the song of the angels, Glory be to God in the highest and peace to all men of goodwill, you know, this unfortunate translation, which then says, oh, as long as everybody, we are all of goodwill, you know, therefore all forms of religion are goodwill. My, if one studies some of the religions that have existed and still exist in mankind, you know, one becomes a little leery about it, you know. And one sees, you know, that it is not a matter of good will all the time, and that it is not a matter of good faith, you know, as one also says.

[26:42]

but it is very, very often really a matter of diabolic crime. And so here too, you see, there is the conquest of the Holy Land by the Israelites, is the, one can say, the symbolic, absolute discerne causa mea legenda non sancta. is discern and divide. You know what? Separate my cause from an unholy gang. Separate my cause from an unholy gang because there are really unholy gangs. That is something which may be more in our consciousness, you know. So separate my cause from this ganging together of unholy, really diabolic elements, which is an absolute reality in the history of mankind.

[27:55]

Anybody who has had the opportunity to assist at the rise and fall of national socialism in Germany, he knows that the devil is an absolute reality in our days. There's no doubt about it. So, therefore, there is, and against that, you know, as for examination of socialism, the extreme opposite, you know, against Goering's bull, you know, or the other one is the clenched fist, but in my mind those two are absolutely the same. Is the divine agape, God's redeeming love, an absolutely new principle? which necessarily shatters and destroys the idols. But that destruction of idols is not simply a useless shedding of innocent blood, but is the liberation of mankind from the fetters into which the power of the devil has thrown us.

[29:07]

So the Jews rejected the heir and rejected the kingdom. And what was the consequence of that, that they rejected the heir and the kingdom when it came in the New Testament, Christ our Lord, and when he announced that the kingdom of God is at hand? The result of that was the death of Christ, the death of the heir. And that is, you see, a completely new New Testament concept. That is where we go from the realm of nature to the realm of the spirit. In the realm of nature, the Father dies. and leaves room to the Son so that the Son can enter into the fullness of those goods which the Father has stored up for the Son.

[30:12]

But in the New Testament the Son dies, the Son made man. Through death one enters into the inheritance. through one's own death. You see, that is the new idea that children have to die in order to become sons of adoption and heirs of the kingdom. That is not in the realm of nature and that no philosophy can grasp. That belongs strictly into the order of the divine agape, clearly said by Saint Paul in that passage which I quoted before. But if we are sons, we are heirs also, heirs indeed of God and joint heirs with Christ.

[31:18]

I quoted it until to that point. But if you read further, then you find the following words. provided, however, we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him. See, there is the new concept. What is the kingdom of God? What is the inheritance? Let us say, after the cross, after Christ has died, after the Jews, the original sons, had rejected him, What is the inheritance? It's the glorified Christ himself. It's Christ's glorious humanity. It's the Lord, it's the curious. And we enter into this inheritance, we become sons there because we suffer with him. And because we suffer with him, we may also be glorified with him.

[32:23]

You see, in the New Testament, the heir is the son of the future. He enters indeed into a new age. He also is the administrator of the past. But what is it? Through death he enters into a new life. By offering what he has, he receives what he does not have, what God gives him. Only through his death we recall Christ's death. We become sons and heirs of a new future and of old possessions. Through his death for us, Christ has redeemed us and has made us his kingdom and his priesthood. That is then, you see, the beautiful... I don't know if I succeed in bringing it to your understanding, to your attention, but that is the wonderful thing in the New Testament, that it is not only this way, as in the Old Testament, Dominus pars hereditatis me, my inheritance is the Lord,

[33:48]

But it is also the other way. We are the Lord's inheritance. We are the Lord's inheritance. In the Old Testament, also indicated in the words of Isaiah, Hereditas mea Israel. Hereditas mea Israel. You see, it's a double relation. In one way, God gives himself as our inheritance and at the same time we are God's inheritance. It's so wonderful to think, you see, that in this whole matter of redemption where God and man meet it is not only Now maybe that's a little daring to say that. It's not only in the realm of the divine agape, and whoever understands the language of God's love also understands what I want to say, which is simply the doctrine of Holy Scripture.

[35:04]

It's not only that we inherit something, that we are being enriched. It's not only so that God becomes our inheritance, but it is also so that we are God's inheritance. And that is, as it were, the answer to an idea which goes already through the whole of the Old Testament, where we find not only the idea that God wants to enrich his children, but God wants an inheritance for himself. He is looking for that, what is always called in the Old Testament, his peculiar property, really his own property.

[36:12]

It's represented in this way as if God were, from the beginning of history, on the lookout for something that he could, you understand me right, that he could really and truly own in a much deeper sense than he owns this universe. as something where he could, as the Old Testament says, take his rest. Take his rest. In the New Testament, it's this way. The Son of God looks around where he could put down his head, and he doesn't find anything. So it is like this, prayers, if God would look at mankind with this in mind, where is the place where I can put down my head, where I can rest?

[37:23]

And of course that is the reason the chosen people is in the idea of God, that peculiar inheritance, really my own people, by my own people because God in the Old Testament has given them his law to follow. They did not follow the law. How is it in the New Testament? In the New Testament it's different. God sends his Son, his Son made man. The Son gives his blood. and through His blood He redeems a new people. And by redeeming this new people, this new people becomes God's inheritance. God inherits us. Why? Because His Son dies for us and we become His heritage.

[38:30]

The place, the royal race, the chosen royal priestly kingdom, which has been washed in the blood of the Lamb, that whole beautiful picture that we see in the apocalypse. The apocalypse shows us around the throne of God, God's peculiar property, his inheritance. So you see, it's a double relation. The inheritance in the Old Testament, as well in the New Testament, has absolutely nothing in common with any capitalistic thinking. It's so completely different. It's not a matter of getting something. Oh, I wish the Christians would realise that, because most Christians live on the line, you see, that they inherit something. And that something is very often still, just as with the Jews, you know, an earthly inheritance, you know.

[39:37]

Earthly goods, earthly things, be it health, be it long life, be it success in business, you know, career or whatever, one lovina after the other, set for that until one hits the jackpot. because it chokes us, you know. The Thirteen Tuesdays of St. Anthony, you know. The Novena of the Thirteen Tuesdays. The Petra Novena of the Thirteen Tuesdays. And the inheritance of that is usually, especially to where St. Anthony is involved, something very concrete, to say the least. And, of course, that was already in the Old Testament, that a step has to be made from the earthly kingdom into God is my inheritance.

[40:45]

And what I have of earthly things is just a symbol and a pointer, a signpost to the spiritual inheritance, which is God himself. To be close to God, that is my good, as we say in Psalm 72. We have explained that. But it's still more. It's not only we who receive something, but it's also in that way, and you understand how I mean, it's God who takes something. You see, as long as, let us say, as it would be only a matter of our personal enrichment, it would not yet be really the kingdom of God. But in the New Testament it isn't a matter of any enrichment, only neither earthly nor spiritual.

[41:46]

but it is a matter, in last analysis, of ourselves, we as persons, being God's inheritance, God's loved possession, which, as it were, falls into the Father's lap by the work of redemption of the Son. so that it is we who are wanted by God and we who are being taken into possession by God. And that is the fullness, it seems to me, of the idea of the heir and of the inheritance. Through Christ, the Son of God made man. We are heirs of the kingdom, and we are at the same time the inheritance of the Father.

[42:47]

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