In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. All Father in Heaven, we raised up in the Church Saint Benedict to be our Father. So grant that we may live by the Spirit in whose service Saint Benedict lived his life. so that we may love what St. Benedict loved and put into practice what he taught. And we ask this grace now in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. Well, my dear brethren, Well, this evening I'd like to start by giving a very simple commentary on the life of a monastic figure whom I'm sure you have never heard of. And I'm sure you've never heard of the place from which she came, unless some of you have looked at the book that's on the table back there about Ada Bethune of Schaerbeck. which is now part of Brussels.

[01:06]

If you're going from Brussels to Louvain, you pass by this huge, huge suburb called Schaerbeek on the way. And so, at any rate, this is a 13th century life written about, as I said, a quite unknown—so Sturgeon Nunn who became a leper. And the person who wrote the life, whoever it was, is absolutely remarkable for his spiritual deferment and his ability to express in very beautiful Latin and a very wonderful theologically structured brief life what, for him, the monastic life is about. And there's nothing in this, so far as I can see, from what little I know about 12th and 13th century monastic hagiography, that would be all that specifically subservient. I think anyone then of monastic milieu would recognize himself or herself in what is described here.

[02:13]

Now, probably the author is the Cistercian chaplain of the convent where Alice lived most of her life. And he would have come from a great monastery called Villers, which was one of the great centers of spirituality in the lowlands. And these Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, no matter what, you know, they all shared in those times pretty much the same spirituality. And the abbots of the Cistercian houses used to help the Beguines, you know, these holy women who lived in a kind of loosely organized religious life. Well, so at any rate, it was a beautiful situation. I very much, in a way, like what you see here at Mount Faber, where all kinds of religious come here, don't they? And they all recognize something that's very beautiful and meaningful for them, lay people, people belonging to other religious congregations. I'm completely at home here.

[03:15]

I think you can come to Gethsemane and experience a certain unity and our monastic vision. So I think this is something of the spirit of the age. Now, I'm going to begin by just saying something about the saints. And the two Hasidic, you know, the Hasidim, these holy Jews who are filled with joy and enthusiasm, these holy people, these are two of their aphorisms. And the first one goes like this. There are those who suffer very greatly and cannot tell what is in their hearts. And they go their ways full of sufferings. But if they meet someone whose face is bright with laughter, he can quicken them, make them come alive with his gladness. And it is no small thing to quicken a human being.

[04:19]

Okay, now, we're not all that full of sorrow, perhaps, but it's a good thing that we have contact with these friends of God whose faces are bright with the glory of God and with the divine laughter. And we all have our difficult periods. These are people who have entered wholly into the glory of God and been transformed by the life of Christ, and they come back to us, so to speak, and they help draw us into this experience of God's glory and God's goodness and God's mercy. And so, this is one of the things that we should keep in mind when we read the lives of the saints, either in the past or in the present. So, they're really signs of God's mercy for us, to encourage us, and to give us a deeper knowledge of what it means to live in Christ. There's a wonderful article by the great theologian Hans Urs von Bosovar about the saints as a force of theology.

[05:22]

They've lived the mystery of Christ. They've articulated the mystery of Christ. And you can look at that and see something of what the mystery of Christ is about. So, at any rate, Alice is going to come with us, to us, leper though she is, you know, with this face that's bright with laughter and the light and glory of God. And there's this other Hasidic thing that I love very much, too. It goes this way. When people are married and dance, it sometimes happens that they catch hold of someone who is sitting outside and grieving and pull him into the round. and make him rejoice with them. Now, this is like a village round dance. It's not elegant ballroom dance, but the kind of dance where everyone joins hands and dances around in a circle. And then from time to time, someone reaches out and grabs a wallflower and pulls that person into this circle of love and mutual understanding and communication of life.

[06:35]

And that's very much what the saints worry about, too. They're caught up in the dance of the Three Divine Perfects and the Blessed Trinity. Whereas you want to use the technical theological term, it's called Fertile Infestation. So it's the divine dance of communication of love and life and everything else that's going on in the Blessed Trinity. And the Blessed Trinity is the ideal monastic community, in a sense a kind of a closed society. But the Blessed Trinity just reaches out and through Christ and the Holy Spirit latches onto us and draws us into the divine life of the Blessed Trinity. And the same for those people, you know, who are dancing around in the glory of God, and they can reach out to us and pull us into this great participation. And our monastery has got to be like this round dance. You know, all of the people I was looking at, the people at Vespers today, it was just absolutely overwhelmingly beautiful for me.

[07:41]

You can really see what prayer is when you look at, you know, some of these people who've come in to join in your prayer. And they just feel drawn deeper into the life of Christ and the mystery of God when they come here. And it's because if you fell off, you were carrying on this wonderful, light-hearted and very serious monastic dance, so to speak. And just by being yourselves and living together as a community and loving each other and serving each other, you form a community that is reaching out to bring other people into the circle of God's love and God's life. So this is very, very important for the monastery. So we have to take this kind of divine dance, I think, very, very seriously. For me, Alice, for me, is someone who does that perfectly. And I don't know exactly why I love her so much. I've sort of known her for years and years.

[08:42]

I read her life when I was a very, very young monk. And just somehow the saints who—I didn't choose her, but she does. And so I've read and meditated on her life just periodically and spoken rather often about her. So I just want to share a few things from her life with you. I'm going to skip the prologue. Prologues in hagiography are usually—not always, but usually—extremely dull. The author always says the same thing. He writes the life of the saint under obedience. He is absolutely unworthy to speak about such a remarkable personage. He's a bore and a peasant with no literary skill, and he always is couched in the most elegant identity that you can imagine. And usually there's a mention about possibly detractors, but he swears everything he says is gospel truth.

[09:43]

And, in fact, these prologues to the lives of the saints were so much alike that sometimes the author just didn't bother to write his own prologue. He just borrowed the whole prologue from some other life, and, you know, it fits. So I'm going to begin then with And this little girl, whose name is Aladis, or Alice, whether you have five or six different forms for the name, and I'm going to call her Alice. And so it begins in a rather dull way. Just as there was—referring to Alice, who's been spoken about in the prologue—the aforesaid lady, referring to her in the religious life. So from the beginning of the Tenderest Age, of course, you have already a colossal model of virtue. It's just hagiographical commonplace. And so she was described as a marvelous lovable and pleasing to everyone.

[10:47]

She's barely been born and already she has these characteristics. But we have to remember, you know, that our devotion and the way we live the mystery of Christ has got to be something that's beautiful and pleasing to others. When people come to our monastic communities, they feel attracted to Christianity, because there are a lot of non-Christians or lapsed Christians, lapsed Catholics. But they have to be able to experience something of the beauty and the joy of what it means to be a Christian. And it doesn't work. If we really try to radiate this, if we don't have it within us, it's nothing you can push a button and produce, and it's something maybe that takes a lifetime of effort. We all, you know, monks and lay people too, have this, okay? In whom Christ is just living so intensely that somehow this communicates thought to others.

[11:51]

was called for St. Bernard, you kunde devotia, the pleasing devotion. And that was one of John Leclerc's favorite themes. I just looked at the most recent issue of Studia Monastica, And do you know what his last article was, published in it? To die and to smile in monastic tradition. That's, that's, that's what Jean-Luc Lear called all over, and that's our tradition too. Okay, so anyway, she's a pleasing person. People like to be with her. And then, so something that really sets me against her in a way, here's this little pot, and this little tiny girl. And it says that, nevertheless, yet not in the way that Dinah was, who went out all too and cautiously in quest of the comeliness of other women, and made her way into the open squares.

[12:56]

Now, you all know the story of Dinah in the book of Genesis, and how Dinah was the daughter of Leah and Jacob. And then she's a little gadabout, and she goes out and byways, just out of curiosity. She was always a symbol of the curious person, the one who went around sticking his or her nose into other people's business, the one who just was curious in a bad way about everything. She goes out to the street, and someone falls in love with her and takes her off. and ravishes her. And then that's the beginning of a blood feud that's just absolutely horrendous, that results in the death of many people, absolutely ghastly. So this little girl, Alice, is not like Diana. But it's absolutely repulsive so far as I can see, in a sense, until you look a bit deeper. She should stay at home. She doesn't like to play with the other children. I mean, this is horrible.

[13:56]

It's not like the normal children that I know and that I love. But there's a theological depth about this. Now, of course, we're dealing with medieval sociological phenomenon here. But rather, in the way of the mother of God, who used to linger in her room, and nourish her grace, staying home at all times." Now, this is theologically very profound. What we're talking about is the hidden life of our Blessed Mother. And this is one of the big themes of St. Ambrose, when he's talking about the visitation, how unusually extraordinary it was for our Blessed Mother to be traveling outside. that when the angel finds her, she's at prayer, retired in her chamber, getting ready to become the Mother of God, preparing to be able to give her fiat, her response, to the proclamation of the imminent incarnation through her instrumentality.

[15:02]

So it's part of this mystery of our Blessed Mother being completely hidden in God. and being the means by which the Word becomes flesh. So that this theological mystery now is expressed by Mary dwelling in her little constricted chamber, which becomes the center of the whole universe when the Word becomes flesh. The name of the monastery to which this little girl is going to be going is called precisely Câmara Sancta Maria, the Chamber of Saint Mary, the Chamber of Our Lady, the Mother of God. So already in her earliest age, there's a kind of a foreshadowing of what her vocation is going to be. And there's this beautiful expression here, what is she doing as she stays in her chamber? She's nurturing this grace.

[16:05]

Now, you've heard the title of a book by St. Mechtil called the book Special Grace, maybe. And this is a technical expression you find in a lot of medieval spiritual writers. And it simply means a special grace is your particular vocation. See, Fr. Martin has a special grace. And Galileo has a special grace, and each one of us has this special grace. But it's the grace now that has to grow and be nurtured and evolve and develop. And so, it's not a fair amount of failure. okay, is the chamber of our Blessed Mother, where the Word has to take a palpable, visible form in our community, and where our vocations have to grow and be nourished here within the confines of our cloister of separation from the world in this restricted, confined space. But it's going to be something that's going to reach out and take in the whole world, the whole cosmos.

[17:09]

But we have to be here as individuals and as a collective community nurturing this particular grace. And let me see. I wanted to maybe have a quotation from an author I find very difficult, but very fruitful. I don't know what Don Demas would say about this. This is the great German novelist Thomas Mann. And I don't know, I must have masochistic impulses someplace, because I have an oftentimes hard time reading Thomas Mann, but I struggle with it. And there's always something that I find very fruitful, very positive about it. For about 10 years, when I had to travel mostly in Europe on buses and trains, I would have a copy of this great novel, Dr. Faustus, in my pocket. It took me about 10 years to get through it. But it was basically a wonderful experience.

[18:10]

And it's about a great musician who went mad at the end. clearly headed in that direction from the first pages of the novel. But it's a wonderful study of what it means to be a musician and a poet, someone who experiences reality at depth and then tries to communicate it. But at any rate, it's a wonderful study. one episode, he belongs to a youth group. Now he's studying theology. But in Germany, you know, their youth groups were really serious. It wasn't quite like High Boy Scouts. And they would go out and get close to nature, like Dan Burkhardt Neuenkreuzer was part of this Christian war movement, I think it was called. And there was real spirituality about leaving a decadent society and getting close not only to nature, but to the things that are most real in our human culture and experience. So there was a tremendous enthusiasm. At any rate, these young men go out on their camping trips, and then they talk about the deepest aspects of existential theology.

[19:19]

I mean, lots of things that we talked about when I was a boy, Scott, I don't believe you did. But for Edith, there was a long, long, long, long discussion going on for about 15 pages about the youthfulness of the German spirit. And I bet Dom Demmers is laughing his head off at this. But there's a long, long conversation being carried on by these various protagonists that are speaking about the spirit of youth in the German tradition. And our protagonist, Adrian Leverkuhn, makes some funny remark, and I won't communicate it because I can't find anything the least bit funny about it. It's too deep for me. But anyway, the guy answers him. He says, very funny, Leverkuhn. And yet, I am surprised that your Protestantism allows you to be so witty. This is something that Andamasis used to talk about, too. How some German characters could be very, very dark and didn't have this bright, happy, jacund devotion that we associate with the German monasticism.

[20:27]

It is possible, if necessary, to take more seriously what I mean by youth. Now, this is the important thing. To be young, means to be original, to have remained nearer to the forces of life. It means to be able to stand up and shake off the fetters of an outlived civilization, to dare, where others lack the courage, to plunge again into the elemental. Now, to be young means to remain close, nearer to the forces of life. Now this, I think, is the force of our monastic vitality, because we have a controlled and prepared environment. in which we can remain absolutely as close as possible and plunged into the very forces of life.

[21:30]

Every time we pray, every time we celebrate the sacraments, everything about our life together in Christ should be keeping us plunged into the very center of this life-giving reality which is the mystery of Christ. So this is why one of the distinguishing characteristics of our kind of monasticism, and I think all kinds of monasticism, is this vitality in youthfulness, especially in the Ulster's, where very often you see this original spirit that's the most vital and most attractive. So it means to be able to stand up and shake off the fetters of an outlived civilization just exactly what Don Damasus was doing, you know, when he came and founded Mount Savior. And he was shaking off the shackles of the kind of superficial culture and romanticism and all of that business, and getting back to the elemental forces, you know, the primordial realities and providing a place where we can live in this total liberty, this total freedom, and this real joy with, obviously, a great deal of suffering and pain.

[22:42]

But nevertheless, everything that's outdated, that should be bypassed, should be outdated and bypassed in our community, our monastic community. So where others lack the courage, then we have the courage to stand up and shake off these fetters and to plunge again into the elemental. So it's like what we're doing, we're plunging into the baptism of Jesus Christ and rising with him to a new life. So at any rate, it's important then as a community that we nurture this grace collectively, and as an individual. And I don't think we should ever isolate ourselves from the whole community of almost like the collective personality that you find expressed in some of the prophets of the Old Testament, especially in Isaiah. Remember when it comes to the suffering fervent? You don't know from passage to passage all the time.

[23:44]

When the suffering fervent is one individual or when it's a collective group. And there's just something about the individual which is, so much encapsulates the collective experience that you really can't tell when one begins and the other ends. And it's got to be this way in our communities, where we're all in this together and with each other. absolutely individuals, I'll be talking about that later, each one made by God in a very special, beautiful way, but we're also together a group that has a corporate identity. And I would say that in communities where you don't have real individuals, you don't have a real corporate identity and vice versa too. And you never have to worry about giving up your individual personality or getting smothered by the corporate group. And our monastery is, we're really monastic communities. There's a lovely story from the early Cistercian tradition.

[24:48]

that I love very much. About a 12th-century Cistercian abbot of the monastery of Clairvaux. I think Bernard had died in 1953, and then he was succeeded by an abbot, a certain Robert de Bruges. I think he was abbot five or six years, and then he died. And they were looking for a new successor to St. Bernard. And so there had been an abbey founded from Clairvaux up near the Belgian border, a place called Cambron. And the abbot was a certain university washout by the name of Fosdred. And he got wind that the monks of Clairvaux were thinking about electing him. And so, he hit the road for the nearest Carthusian monastery to hide out. And so, you know, it's—the St. Bernadette is a rather difficult act to follow. You must have felt much the same when you were done. Now, you were elected, so you can sympathize with Fosdred.

[25:54]

So he had spent a couple of days hiding out in this Carthusian monastery, and so it's night, and he has a dream or a vision. And in all of the Cistercian appearances of Our Blessed Mother, she's very straightforward, and there's no nonsense about her at all. She's a very common sense person, and who tells it like it is, and just no nonsense. So, you know, he's all upset, and he's all overwrought, and he falls at the feet of Our Lady with this impossible situation. And she just looks at him, and she says, well, why are you worrying, little man? He just goes, oh, you poor fellow. And then she takes the Divine Child whom she is carrying, and she plops him in the foster's arms, And all she says is, here, take my boy and look after him. And then he wakes up. And that's all that happens.

[26:56]

He's awfully upset and our Blessed Mother just says, take my boy and look after him. And then the text goes on to say that Phosphorus comes to himself, and then he understands what his vocation as abbot of Clairvaux is. I'm sorry I don't have the Latin text with me, but it says he understands that the monks are the members of the body of Christ. And that his function as abbot is to help them grow to the full measure of the maturity of Christ. And so that the whole community now is conceived of as the body of Christ that is growing and coming to full maturity. And so Father Martin, among his priorities, as Father Abbott of this community. He has to help us individually and as a community come to this perfect maturity in Christ, so that when people come to this monastery, they just look at us as a community and understand what the Church is, what the body of Christ is.

[28:06]

And just know that Jesus Christ is present and acting not only in this community, but through this particular community. So that's awfully important then. So you as a collective group now will have to, just like Alice is doing, nourishing this grace of vocation. You people, too, are going to have to be nourishing this grace of your very special vocation in the Church. I'm just sort of talking off the top of my head here, but the other night one of us, maybe it was I, mentioned the great monastery of St. Benedict on the Loire River Fleury. When I was there a number of years ago, Fr. Davril told me that the monastery is situated at the confluence of three different rivers, and it was originally built on an abandoned druid site. And he said that many monasteries in that area had been founded where three rivers flowed together, and the Druids had built their shrines there where you had three rivers converging or flowing from the same place, because the idea was that the holiness of the whole region,

[29:22]

was effected by the flowing forth of these three forces of life and vitality, these three rivers. And so what the Christians did, they simply took over the Druid shrines and baptized them, so to speak, and they became monasteries. So that these monasteries within that particular region would be a force of life and vitality and holiness for the whole region. Now, I mean, we shouldn't think. in terms of having a monopoly on holiness in this particular area. But our communities have to be, like every Christian church, a source of vitality and holiness for the region all about. And this is one of the reasons so many people come to you, and I've met so many people. who have come to Gethsemane and love Gethsemane, and they said, you know, I first encountered monastic life at Mount Savior up there in New York. And just dozens and dozens of people I know have visited your monastery or made retreats here, and somehow your

[30:27]

life has affected them very, very, very deeply. And I think you all understand that and appreciate that. So just keep living the life to the full and nourishing this grace, which is yours individually and yours collectively. Well, now, she's still, she had lost her place. She's still this little girl. She comes to the age of seven now, during which she was kept at home by her parents. Incredible phrase, you know. She abandons the pomp of the world at the age of seven, okay, and fearing to be stained by it, okay. And so she enters the monastery, which is called the Chamber of Our Lady Camara Sancta Maria, La Cambra in French, okay. Monastery of the Cistercian Order. So, her parents, there's nothing said about her parents here.

[31:30]

And when you get used to reading hagiographic literature of the people, you know how to interpret that. If they were aristocrats, you would have had a phrase saying, they were noble by blood, but nobler still by virtue. But there's nothing of that there. So they're obviously not noble. They're probably, the father's probably a merchant, and they're probably reasonably well-off. so that they can send not only Alice but her older sister to this convent, the Cistercian nuns, to get their education. So at the age of seven now, she enters as a student in the little convent just a few miles from Schaerbeck. We get, for the first time, and we're going to see developing in this little life, the theme of light. And briefly, I'll sort of tell you what the end of the story is going to be. We're going to see that Alice begins with just an infusion of what we call perfectly natural light, natural gifts, natural talents, and how all of these are going to be in the service of Christ, and she's going to grow.

[32:43]

And she's going to be drawn up more and more into the flight of Christ, until she herself becomes totally transformed by the flight of Christ, and is caught up in glory, and is going to be numbered among the first of those who burn, whose essence is to proclaim the glory of God for all eternity. So she herself finally, ultimately becomes a synod of light. So we'll talk about that. This light to give off fire, as well as light. Indeed, God, the Father of Lights, from whom comes every best gift, had issued to her, or had given her, no, there is a list of five or six things which God gives her, and the interesting thing is that not one of these is what we would call, quote, a supernatural gift. They're purely gifts and talents of what we might call a natural order, but they're all in the service of divine love and the mystery of Christ.

[33:49]

I think this is sort of important for us, too. We might not have the greatest natural gifts in the world, but everything we are and everything we have has got to develop and grow in such a way that it contributes to our life in Christ. So we may not, for example, have the greatest intellect in the world, but what intellect we have, we have to be able to use in a positive way in the fulfillment of our vocation in Christ. And this is a very important thing. When we come to the monastery, we're not abandoning our human nature at all. We'll be talking about that in the next few days. Now, the first thing that God gives her, the Father of Lights, is a sensitivity with a capacity for everything. Now, this is something that really is astonishing. In a sense, when people think of monks especially as Trappist monks, somehow we have a reputation for having been or being still anti-intellectual.

[34:55]

And they think very often of monks who get to the world as zombies shuffling around the cloister. And that's not what a monastery is about at all. Unfortunately, I have two pairs of glasses and I can see my nose with neither one of them. But the monastery, is a place where, in a sense, you become dead to the world, but in order to become more and more alive. And St. Thomas says that insensitivity is a mortal sin, and he certainly is right. Our monastic education has to be of such a nature that it really means a coming alive more and more. And there's a marvelous sermon that I love very much by St. Bernard. We're hearing a little bit about St. Bernard in the refectory now. And it's one of his lesson sermons. And it's fun to read.

[35:57]

It's about the pilgrim, the Tarakurina, about the dead man, and about the man who has been crucified. And so this is a kind of a stodgy translation. I'll just read a few lines from it. But it's talking about the monk as a pilgrim. And so we're on our journey through life, headed for the promised land. He goes, now for the pilgrim walks along, well this translation says the high road, but the Latin text says the royal road. Now I'm not sure all of the youngsters know what the royal road is. Several texts in the Old Testament, numbers I think in Deuteronomy, they tell about how the chosen people are trying to take the most direct way into the promised land. And they have to pass through the territory of these wild pagan kings who stand for the devil. And so Israel sends to one of these kings and he says, can we pass through your land in order to get to where we're going?

[37:04]

And we're not going to turn to the right or to the left. We're not going to get involved with anything. We're going to go straight to our destination by the King's Highway. And this is an expression because when they used to have a king making his progress through his territory, they would make a special highway for the king that would go absolutely straight without having to make any detours whatsoever. And that was called the King's Highway. And of course, this is applied to monastic life. that the monastic life for us is this royal, Christ the King's highway through which he's passed, leading us the straightest way possible into the promised land without our being encumbered by any excess baggage or anything whatsoever. We don't turn to the right, we don't turn to the left, we don't get held back by anything whatsoever. We go straight ahead. So that's this King for the Royal Highway. He turns neither to right nor left, and if he should chance to see persons engaged in angry discussions, some of the theological discussions current now, with inclusive language problems and a lot of the things that make life interesting in a monastery, if he sees persons engaged in angry discussions, he pays no attention.

[38:23]

He may meet with wedding parties, or people amusing themselves with dancing, or occupied with some other worldly affairs, but he passes on because he is a pilgrim and has nothing to do with things of this kind. He longs for the homeland, and towards the homeland his steps are bent." And then that develops a little bit. And then he begins describing that the man who has attained even to a higher type of monastic experience, a higher type of experience than the pilgrim. And now this sounds horrible to begin with. This is the man who's dead. Who then is he that is further removed from the ways of this world than even the pilgrim? And in the last, and it's a clear allusion there to the instruments of good work in chapter 4, the 20th instrument of good work, that the monk makes himself alien, foreign to the acts of the world, to worldly behavior.

[39:26]

Who then is he that is further removed from the ways of this world than even that pilgrim? Doubtless he is one of those to whom the apostle says, for you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. Then he goes on, for whereas it is very possible for the pilgrim to be delayed longer than is right in seeking provision for his journey, or to be overburdened with the weight of them, the man who is dead remains quite unconfirmed. even if a sepulcher be wanting." Okay, so he's dead and he doesn't even have to worry about getting buried. He's not aware of that. Now, this sounds horrible, huh? The monster is dead. Abuse and praise, flattery and detraction are all the like for the dead man. He does not so much as hear them because he is dead. Oh, happy death, which thus keeps us unspotted from the world. He alienates us all together from this world.

[40:27]

Now, but it is necessary that Christ should live in him who has ceased to live in himself. This is what the apostle teaches where he says, I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me. As if he should say, To all other things I am as one dead. I neither perceive them nor attend to them nor trouble myself about them. But if there be any things that appertain to Christ, These shall find me both alive and alert." Now this is very, very important for us, because this means we're dead to the world in the sense of the world that turns from God, in the Joannine meaning, most of the time, of the world. This world of shadow, this world of untruth, this realm of unlikeness, that we are dead to. But only so that we can become more and more fully alive in Christ. So the sign of a person who's really dead to the world in this monastic tradition is a person who's totally alive in Christ, who loves Christ.

[41:36]

And if nothing else is possible to me, he says, I shall at least be sensitive, and there's our word that we used for Alice, be sensitive to all that concerns him. I shall feel pleasure on beholding everything that is done for his honor, in pain at whatever I see opposed to the interest of his glory." Okay, now, this is a marvelous text, and this tells us something about what monastic humanism is for the tradition in which we live. Okay, so there has to be a real ascetic effort, a real what used to be called mortification, a putting to death of everything in our life that keeps us from being fully alive in Christ. So our monasteries have to be these great centers of vitality, of being alive in Christ. And if you see anyone who's living a life in such a way that he's closed off to this different aspects of the mystery of Christ, that person hasn't come wholly alive yet.

[42:39]

And so our communities just have to be this hearth. that sort of teeming with life that communicates itself through us to others. Once again, I keep coming back. I think this is one of the great functions of a monastic community. It should be true of absolutely every Christian community. You know, we've all known parishes and families where there's something so good and so deep that radiates. When we come to a monastery and we have this prepared environment, which should contribute as directly as possible to our experiencing the fullness of vitality and life in Christ. The third thing, which I will go into now, is The man who's been crucified, he's not only dead, but he's put on the cross. And this is the supreme identification with Jesus, and this great act of universal love and self-sacrificing, communication of God's mercy and love to the whole world.

[43:45]

So that this is the supreme way of being alive, when we can enter into this in the fullness of our being. So that's enough for, I think, the night. I'll pick it up there tomorrow and talk to you in 15 minutes. Okay. Any questions or discussions? No, I'm not very good at answering questions. The whole thing really bemuses me. But I see this, you know, lived in my monastery by so many of the mantras, just are fully incredible, especially the oldest years. Remember your vertical? You told about what a wonderful thing it was for your community, when it was still a relatively young community, to have these monks from Maria Lake come, who had been through it, so to speak, and were mature, formed monks.

[44:49]

and how this communicated itself to the brethren in the community. We've been blessed so much with a wonderful older generation, I guess. They're dying out, of course, all the time. But we always were careful when we made a foundation, and we made a lot of foundations. I think we have about seven in affiliation now. We were always careful when we sent out the pioneers. to include a good sprinkling of the Old Sturge. We really felt that they were absolutely essential for any monastic community, any of our foundations and all. That was absolutely great. I was thinking this morning we spoke about the narrowest group of people. They didn't have a back that goes in, I don't know, but it did not avoid the virtues. That's right. that Christ took that restriction in our beginnings, you know, but again that there was well there for, you know, for the time of his gestation, nine months and so forth.

[46:05]

He willingly took the restraint and the narrowness, you know, to grow and Well, even in, you know, contemporary literature, that's something of a theme. You know, all of the, for example, great American novelists or people like Fannie O'Connor, they talk about a very, very particular group. And, you know, she just knows the deep south of her area around Georgia and all of her characters come from this most particular isolated part of, you know, American experience. In fact, when she went to college, her English professor made her write out everything because she couldn't understand what she was saying. She had such a broad southern accent. But nevertheless, no matter how particular it is, it's something that touches an element that's universal. And so from this very particularity, it springs out into something that's applicable for the whole human experience and universal.

[47:07]

And I think of all of the artists who have willingly renounced all kinds of things to remain within a very, very restricted compass. But through that, they just kind of expand all over the place. I think like Gregorian chant. what I love and really love passionately. You know, it renounces all the possibility for musical effect, stays within a 10-note range, what composer now would think of writing music that stayed in that range? Renounces a complement polyphony, you know, to a big extent, okay? It reduces itself to a scale which admits of only one changed note possibility for B-flat or B-natural. And you know, I suppose we dare renounce all of that. It's perfectly in the service of the Word. It renounces the kind of independent existence apart from the Word. And it makes all of these radical renunciations. And you know, the really great composers will tell you, I might have written some masterpieces, but I can't write anything to approach, you know, a Gregorian gradual or alleluia.

[48:14]

And I think there's a fruitfulness as part of this constriction, or a willingness to remain within a restricted area. So I think that's something interesting to reflect on in our monastic experience. And just for any great artist, I have to make a series of renunciations and choices that exclude other possibilities. We certainly have to, when we come to monastic life. Every time I see... Someone in the church carrying a baby, and my heart just melts. I just think the family is the greatest thing in the world. But that's something you have to renounce, you know, for the sake of the kingdom of God. And so that's the kind of renunciation we have to make, you know, with real joy and recognizing what it is we renounce. But that's going to mean in the providence of God, a kind of a deeper fruitfulness, a deeper communion, than would otherwise be possible.

[49:17]

So it's just, well, it's the truth, that's it. Did Fosterette succeed Bernie? Did you say Fosterette succeeded Bernie? He accepted the abbess and he was just a great abbot. He always had a problem though, a tension between being abbot and he wanted to be a simple monk. And so the things that would drag him up the wall would be things like, for example, when the wardrobe keeper would put on his bed in the dormitory a cowl that was a bit nicer, because he was an abbot. And there's a lovely episode where he observes the wardrobe keeper to pieces, verbally, and he says, what are you trying to do? Keep me from being a monk because I'm an abbot? Does it mean that I can't be poor with my brethren and share with them all things? He's really terrified of anything that can keep him from being a real monk.

[50:22]

And so this is the tension I think any monastic superior is going to feel. Because he has to be in the community in such a way that he encapsulates a whole community in himself and his experience. And so he's identified with the community from within and not from above or outside or anything like that. So that when you become a superior you have to become more of a monkhood in the community than ever before. Isn't this true, Father Martin? I would hope so. Eventually. That would be true. He's a real father. I hope his name is in the words.

[51:04]

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