The first of its kind, as I understand it, retreat for oblates in general, not just a particular group. It's always good to meet new members of the family. I have to admit that I feel a little bit like the great-granddaughter of the 27th President of the United States, William Howard Taft. who wrote in her fourth grade autobiography, my great-grandfather was the President of the United States of America. My grandfather was a United States Senator. My father is a U.S. Ambassador. And I, she said, am a Brownie. I feel a little bit like a brownie. So many of you have been associated with Mount Savior and the community here for so many years and know one another well.

[01:12]

And I'm sort of the new kid on the block. So I feel a bit like that fourth grade granddaughter. But it's a great pleasure for me to greet you and to welcome you here in the name of the whole monastic community of Mount Savior. Many of you have traveled today and it's late, so I hope not to keep you too long this evening. I just want to sort of set the tone for our next couple of days together and share with you a few thoughts on our topic of conversion. Before I start, I want to ask that all cell phones are turned off. And I also want, during the retreat, to encourage silence.

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I know many of you haven't seen each other in a long time, and it's a great opportunity to sit around and gab. But our purpose here is beyond that, and it is a monastic experience. And of course, at the heart of the monastic experience is silence in order to encounter God. And so I would encourage to whatever extent possible to keep conversation quiet and at a minimum and so that you're not disturbing other people who may really need the quiet. Oh incomprehensible creator, true fountain of light, and only author of all knowledge. Grant we beseech you to enlighten our understanding and to remove the darkness of sin and ignorance.

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You who make eloquent the tongues of those who want utterance, direct my tongue and pour out on my lips the grace of your blessing. Give us all a diligent spirit, quickness of apprehension, and the powerful assistance of your holy grace, so that what we hear, we may apply to your honor and the eternal salvation of our souls. We ask this through Christ our Lord. from the Gospel of Saint Luke. Now there were shepherds in that region, in the fields, and keeping the night watch over their flocks. The angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear.

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The angel said to them, do not be afraid. For behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all people. For today in the city of David, a savior has been born for you who is the Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. As the classic Italian film, La dolce vitae, opens, a helicopter is flying through the sky, not very high above the ground.

[06:03]

And hanging down from the helicopter in a kind of halter is a life-sized statue. of a man dressed in robes. The statue's arms are outstretched so that it appears that he's flying all by himself, especially when the camera sort of leaves out the helicopter and all you see is this huge statue in the sky dangling from some ropes. It flies over a field where there are some men working. And of course, it creates quite a stir and a lot of excitement. And the men start to wave their hands and twirl their hats and jump up and down and hoop and holler at this very strange sight.

[07:09]

And one of the men finally recognizes who this statue is of, and shouts in Italian, Ecco! C'è Gesù! It's Jesus. And so they run through the field, waving at the helicopter as it continues on its journey, and they pass out of sight. And after a while, it reaches the outskirts of Rome, where it passes over a building on the roof of which is a swimming pool. And around the swimming pool is a bevy of bathing beauties in their bikinis, basking in the sun. And of course, like the men in the field, they too get up and start jumping around at this very unusual sight.

[08:18]

But this time, instead of the helicopter keep going, it starts to circle around. Because of course, the young Italian pilots are very interested in these bathing beauties. And they're trying to get a really good look at these girls. And they keep circling and circling, hovering over the pool, where, above the roar of this engine, they're trying to get the girls' telephone numbers and explaining to them that they're on their way to the Vatican to deliver this statue, but they will be only too glad to come back once their mission is accomplished. Now, of course, during all of this, the reaction of the audience and of myself in the theater where I was when I first saw this was to laugh hysterically, to laugh at the incongruity of it all.

[09:26]

There's this statue dangling in the sky on the one hand, and these buxom-y, bosom-y bathing beauties on the other. One made out of stone, so cold and remote. The other made out of flesh and bursting with life. No one in the audience was in any doubt about which of the two came out ahead in this scenario and whose expense the laughter was directed. Anyway, the helicopter continues on and shortly the great dome of St.

[10:29]

Peter's looms in the distance. And for the first time now, the camera begins to zoom in on the statue itself. And finally on the face. So that the whole screen is now filled with the bearded face of Christ. And at that moment, No one laughed. They even stopped munching on the popcorn. No one laughed. Because there was something about that face. It was almost as if the face was their own face. The secret face. that they had never seen before, but had some inkling, some notion that somehow it belonged to them.

[11:40]

That's what I think this retreat is about. For a moment, just for a little while, to see the face of Christ. to be still and silent in its presence. Because, you know, there's much about the whole religious enterprise that seems so irrelevant and out of place, much like the stone statue seems out of place dangling in the air from the helicopter. And we can get so caught up in the doctrine and the rules and the regulations that we need to step back, to be in silence, so that something new can come to life.

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Some spirit, some hope, as something is born in us that is new and strange and unexpected. Just as the story of the incarnation, the birth of Jesus which we just read, the child born in the night among the beasts, the sweet breath and steaming dung of the beasts in the air. It is the same in the scene of Zacchaeus, which we heard last Sunday in the Gospel. This short little man shimmying up a sycamore tree like a monkey in order to glute Christ.

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And Jesus walking by stops and returns the glance and looks at Zacchaeus and says, come down. Today, salvation has come to this house. It is the same experience of the young Benedict. in Rome, tired of the degradation he sees around him and his fleeing to the cave at Subiaco to be alone and to discover the face of Christ. This is what conversion is really all about.

[15:03]

This opening oneself to the presence of Christ, so that having met him, nothing is ever quite the same again. Once we have seen Jesus born in a stable, We can never be sure where he will appear, or to what length he will go, or to what ludicrous depth of self-humiliation he will endure in pursuit of us. This is where conversion begins. If holiness and if the awful tremendous power and majesty of God were present in these least auspicious of events, the stable, the cave, the sycamore tree, then there is no place or no time

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so lowly and earthbound that holiness can be present there too. This can be scary stuff because it means that we're never safe. That there's really no place we can hide from God. No place where His power cannot break in and recreate the human heart. And that is what we're trying to do on retreat. To recreate our hearts. To enter into an opportunity for conversion. For Christ to enter in and to transform us. To stir up new life and new energy and new enthusiasm, new courage and new gladness.

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To be embraced by those outstretched arms that reach between heaven and earth. To show us His face. that bewildering, beguiling, mysterious face, that face that is imprinted on our hearts. I hope that in these next two days, that the face of Christ will become clearer for you, more brilliant, more engaging, so that like that audience in the theater, you will encounter him in silence and stillness and allow him

[18:55]

to recreate a new heart and a new spirit within you. Lord Jesus Christ, Thou Son of the Most High, Prince of Peace, be born again into our world. Where there is war in this world, wherever there is pain, wherever there is loneliness, wherever there is no hope, come, thou long expected one, with healing in thy wings. Holy child, whom the shepherds and the kings and the dumb beasts adored, Be born again. Wherever there is boredom, wherever there is fear of failure, wherever there is temptation too strong to resist, wherever there is bitterness of heart, come, thou blessed one, with healing in thy wings.

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be born in each of us who raises his face to thy face, not knowing fully who he is or who thou art, knowing only that thy love is beyond his knowing and that no other has the power to make him whole. Come, Lord Jesus, to each who longs for Thee, even though he has forgotten Thy name. Come quickly. Amen. Good morning. I apologize for the distance between us, but we're taping these talks for an oblate who very much wanted to be with us, but because of illness could not be here.

[21:25]

So in order to pick up, I need to be near the microphone for the recording equipment to pick up. So hope you all had a good night. Welcome Sister Camille. A young boy went with his father to church for the first time, was very curious about everything that was going on. So he asked his father, what does that mean when they pass that basket around like that? He said, oh, that's the people bringing their offerings to give so that the church can provide for the poor and the needy. He said, why are all those people shaking each other's hands? He said, oh, that's when people give a greeting of peace to their neighbor. And he said, what does it mean when the priest takes off his watch and puts it on the pulpit?

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The father said, oh, it doesn't mean anything at all. Just ignore that completely. Oh incomprehensible creator, true fountain of light and only author of all knowledge, grant we beseech you to enlighten our understanding and to remove all darkness of sin and ignorance. You who make eloquent the tongues of those who want utterance, direct my tongue and pour out on my lips the grace of your blessing. Give us all a diligent and obedient spirit, quickness of apprehension, and the powerful assistance of your holy grace, so that what we hear, we may apply to your honor and the eternal salvation of our souls.

[23:32]

We make this prayer through Christ our Lord. From the Gospel of Saint John, Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. He came to Jesus at night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you are doing unless God is with him. Jesus answered and said to him, Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. Nicodemus said to him, how can a person once grown old be born again? Surely he cannot re-enter his mother's womb and be born again, can he?

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Jesus answered, Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. One of my favorite stories from the desert fathers and mothers concerns an incident between Abba Moses and Abba Lot. Lot said to Moses, Father, according to as I am able, I keep my little rule and my little fast. My prayer

[25:38]

and my meditation and contemplative silence. And as according as I am able, I strive to cleanse my heart from evil thoughts. Now, what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven. And his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. And he said, why not be changed into fire? Conversion. Change. Being born again. A person can have a conversion experience in a variety of ways.

[26:42]

As we saw last night from everything from a stone face in the sky to some other kind of heartbreaking experience of beauty or of grief or of love in which One's soul transcends the ordinary, if even for a moment, and glimpses a kind of timelessness. An example that I'm familiar with recently is a man by the name of Gerald Thomas Straub. You may not know his name, but I'm sure you know some of his work, at least his former work. He was a Hollywood and New York producer of television shows and was responsible for such things as General Hospital, long running, very popular soap opera.

[28:00]

He was pretty much a practicing atheist and agnostic and was on vacation in Italy. It was oppressively hot and so he ducked into a church simply to escape the heat and sat there for a few moments. And something happened to him in that church, which he is unable to completely explain. But he said, in those few moments, a cold church and a cold heart met. And my life changed. He left Hollywood and left New York. and has dedicated his life ever since to the service of the poor.

[29:11]

He does a lot of work with the Franciscans in Philadelphia, working in their soup kitchen. But he also is a producer now of documentaries all over the world. of the tragedy of poverty and human suffering in order to try to raise people's consciousness. And so here is a man who had this experience which changed his life. But you see, no matter how enlightening any one experience may be, a conversion experience is not the same thing as conversion of life. Because conversion can transform one's ways of seeing something.

[30:16]

But conversion of life transforms one's way of being. For example, Saul of Tarsus on his way to Damascus when he was dramatically knocked off his horse had a very emotional experience and was left deeply shaken and in some ways changed. But it was really just the beginning of something that the now St. Paul had to forge into a lifetime of conversion and of surrendering his life to the Lord. In other words, if there is nothing more than emotion, then the conversion experience is more experience than conversion.

[31:24]

It is this notion of continual, ongoing conversion that the Benedictine vow of conversatio is all about. It is a way of life aimed at bringing about a profound, though slow, and sometimes imperceptible, incremental change of one's mind, one's heart, one's attitudes, and yes, one's outward behaviors. Kathleen Norris, in her book called Amazing Grace, likens the process to the kind of biological change that the human species undergoes.

[32:34]

You know, every few days, our cells, those building blocks of life in the body, are constantly changing and renewing themselves. And yet, she says, for all of that change, we remain recognizably ourselves. And so, conversion of life in some ways is trying to remember what we were at an earlier time, our childhood. Plato says that learning is simply the remembering of something we have forgotten. Learning is remembering something we have forgotten. And so, as much as conversion is ushering us into something that is strange and new, it is also ushering us into something that is old and familiar.

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It is restoring in us that childlike condition that we lost long ago. It's sort of like hearing music and remembering a long forgotten tune, but it's deep within. In a way, it's taking us back to the garden. And this is why Jesus talks about being born again, born anew, reclaiming and getting back in touch with the state of lost innocence. And that is what conversion of life is all about. Think, for example, of the Old Testament story. We had it not too long ago in the liturgy of the Syrian general, Naaman.

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He was a great warrior. And he was instructed by a young Israelite slave girl to go to visit the prophet Elisha because Naaman was infected with leprosy. And she told him to go to see Elisha and he would tell him how to be cured. And so he goes on his great steed with a large retinue of his warriors. And they go to see Elisha bearing great gifts. Elisha refuses even to see them, but he sends his servant and tells him, tell Naaman to bathe in the Jordan. Nominus quite put out that here the prophet won't even meet him and sends a servant to tell him to bathe in what he considers to be nothing but a big mud hole.

[36:11]

Back in his own country, he has two wonderful rivers of sparkling water. Why should he bathe in the Jordan? But his servants plead with him and basically say, look, what have you got to lose? No, I'll look like a fool. But they persist and finally wear him down. And Naaman enters the waters of the Jordan. And when he comes out, the scripture tells us that his flesh is restored to that of a little child. To be converted, to be healed, he had to become small as a child. Saint Gregory the Great, in his famous dialogues,

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which is, of course, the only kind of historical evidence that we have about the life of Saint Benedict. Talking about Saint Benedict says that during his boyhood, he showed mature understanding. And this continued to unfold in Benedict's life, even into his adulthood. We glimpsed the same thing in Saint Teresa of Lisieux. You know, at school, she was placed in a class with children several years older than herself. But she often found playtime with others to be quite difficult. She writes, I didn't know how to play like other children. And as a consequence, I wasn't a very pleasant companion.

[38:29]

I did my best to imitate them, but without much success. I was very much bored by it all. Now, Therese was not bored because she was a snob or because she thought herself better. She was bored because she was mature beyond her years. And so, you see, the converted person brings innocence to adulthood and maturity to childhood. The mystery of conversion is that every fault of the grown-up must be transformed into childlike virtue. And at the same time, every childish fault in the adult must be outgrown and surrendered.

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So that cynicism must give way to faith. Despair to hope. Hatred to love, and simultaneously childish greed into generosity, petulance into patience, and selfish stinginess into loving kindness. The work of a lifetime. And so continuous conversion holds the wisdom of age in playful tension with the innocence and childlike trust. Almost in the story of Moses and Lot.

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There's a sort of playfulness in Moses as he stands up and in reply to Lot's question, holds out his hands and they turn into flames and columns of fire. And so, conversion is all about reclaiming our childhood. And then secondly, moving us more and more into love. There's a story they tell of about Saint John, the great apostle, who as a very old man had to be carried, actually, to the weekly Sunday Eucharist. And because of his venerable status, he was always asked at those gatherings to say something. And every time he would speak, he said the same thing.

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Love one another. That's all. Love one another. One of his disciples finally mustered up the courage to say, Father, why do you always give the same sermon? He said, in the end, There is no other servant. Love is what it's all about. And love is all that there is. And so this conversion of life is leading us more and more into this transformation of love. When Abbot Moses said to become like burning lamps of fire, He meant that the Holy Spirit should fill our lives so that we can be burning with love for God and for other people our whole lives.

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For Saint Benedict, conversion of life was not simply learning how to love, but being consumed by it and transformed into it. The final words of the rule go like this. No one should pursue what he thinks advantageous for himself, but rather what seems best for another. They should labor with chaste love at the charity of the brotherhood. They should fear God. They should love their abbot with sincere and humble charity and prefer nothing whatsoever to Christ. The little flower, Therese, similarly

[44:15]

develops that same idea. She was reading from St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the great hymn of love. She says, I continued my reading and this sentence consoled me. Yet strive after the better gifts and I point out to you a yet more excellent way. And the apostle, she says, explains how all the most perfect gifts are nothing without love. That charity is the excellent way that leads most surely to God. I finally had rest, she says. Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that if the church had a body composed of different members, the most necessary and most noble of all could not be lacking to it.

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And so I understood that the church had a heart and that this heart was burning with love. Then in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out, O Jesus, my love, my vocation. At last, I found it. My vocation is to be love. Why speak of a delirious joy? No, she says, this expression is not exact. For it was rather the calm and serene peace of the navigator perceiving the beacon with which leads him to the port. Oh, luminous beacon of love, I know how to reach you.

[46:35]

Love and unlove for God. I want to emphasize that we're not talking here about some dramatic, highly emotional, all of a sudden magically induced change of one's essence. That somehow all of our faults are magically left behind us. No. It's much more subtle. The detestable parts of ourselves, unfortunately, do not just vanish. But we are able to see them and ourselves as God sees us and as they truly are. Again, Kathleen Norris relates the story

[47:38]

of a friend of hers, a Montana pastor, who says that a member of his small-town church, a woman who used to be a terrible drunk, and also what is cruelly and but aptly termed a cocaine whore, he said her self-esteem was so ragged that he suspects that she wasn't sleeping with anyone who could provide her with booze or cocaine, but with anyone who showed her the slightest bit of attention. But when she finally decided to sober up, some remarkable things happened. She joined AA. and began attending church with other AA members.

[48:41]

With her reputation, it took considerable courage for her to show up in this tiny church, the pastor said. To put it mildly, not everyone greeted her with enthusiasm. But some people did, including the pastor and his wife. and she kept coming back. Even before she became a church member, she caused some buzz in the congregation because she actually began to volunteer for things, including committees that most people begged off. She signed up for every Bible study the church offered. volunteered to work at every church project, from visiting shut-ins to teaching vacation Bible school. It was as if she had tasted salvation and couldn't get enough of it, or of the new relationships which these activities led her to.

[49:57]

Salvation took such hold in her that as the pastor put it, he began to wonder if Christians don't underestimate promiscuity. Because she was still a promiscuous person, still loving without much discrimination. But the difference was, she was no longer self-destructive. but a bearer of new life to others. She remained a damaged person, but she didn't let that damage define her. Slowly, imperceptibly, but very credibly, she was being born again. She was on the road to continuous conversion.

[51:02]

And this is all, this is what we are all called to, especially Benedictines and those who want to practice Benedictine spirituality. It is a great gift for the church. Saint Paul, I think, says it best. Live as children of light. Being made new in the attitude of our minds, we must put on the new self. Created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the full stature of the fullness of Christ.

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That is conversion of life. O God, You who are the God know less of those who know you not than of those who love you much. Be present with us at the times of choosing, when time stands still, and all that lies behind and all that lies ahead are caught up in the mystery of a single moment. Be present to us all who must choose between many voices. Help us to know how much a suffering world needs us. Help us to know that there are words of truth and healing that will never be spoken unless we speak them.

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And deeds of compassion and courage that will never be done unless we do them. Help us never to mistake success for victory or failure for defeat. Grant that we may never be entirely content with whatever beauty the world may bestow on us, but that we may know at least that we are created not for happiness but for joy. And that joy is to him or her alone who commits in love to you and to one's brothers and sisters. Lead us and all the world ever deeper into the knowledge that finally

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all men and women are one, and that there can never be joy for any until there is joy for all. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

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