I can't wander too far. I have to stay close here. I'm tethered. Can you guys hear? Yeah, okay. I'll try to speak louder. Somebody said to me this morning that teenagers today, when they rummage through their Socks, when they look in the drawer where all their socks are, they purposely take different color ones, ones that don't match. So that's another problem. So people have said I should talk about the Psalms, and I want to talk about the Psalms. Much of what I've talked about in the first two talks are really about nature, and the way we're built as human beings. And the beautiful Psalm tonight 104 about nature and the skies and the mountains.

[01:12]

A friend of mine, I just read an article by a friend of mine talked about St. Thomas Aquinas using that Psalm 104 as an image of teaching. teaching from God's Word coming down the mountains and watering people in the valleys below and the effectiveness of God's Word. I'm reminded last night when I walked out and the sky was glorious and I saw the North Star It was so beautiful, the sky. I'm not used to seeing the stars so bright as they were last night. So the beauty of God's world here on retreat and we're rummaging for God and we're letting the images come up in our hearts and our souls of the presence of God.

[02:21]

But often those images are ones of repentance. And the images are, they're mixed in with other images, but often they're images of repentance. The Psalms are a mirror of our lives, our loves and our hates, our misunderstandings and our lack of understanding. Why, oh why, oh Lord, do the evil prosper? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So many of the Psalms, Jesus prayed and they provided, they were his prayer. He made them his prayer. The Psalms reflect what we are going through. our frustrations, our enmities, our anger, as well as our victories and God's victories.

[03:29]

Long before psychoanalysis and psychotherapy was born, people suffered and yearned, yearned for freedom, looked into themselves and caught glimmers of the fact that they themselves might be part of the problem. From my hidden sins, cleanse me and save me, oh Lord. Beautiful Psalm 50, we say on Fridays, Psalm of repentance and contrition. And I'll read some of that Psalm. Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness, in your compassion blot out my offense. Oh, wash me more and more from my guilt and cleanse me from my sin. My offense is truly I know them, my sin is always before me. Against you, you alone have I sinned.

[04:34]

What is evil in your sight I have done. That you may be justified when you give sentence and be without reproach when you judge. O see, in guilt I was born, a sinner was I conceived. Indeed, you love truth in the heart. Then in the secret of my heart, teach me wisdom. O purify me, then I shall be clean. O wash me, I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear rejoicing in gladness that the bones you have crushed may thrill. From my sins, turn away your face and blot out all my guilt. A pure heart, create for me, O God. Put a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, nor deprive me of your Holy Spirit. Give me again the joy of your help with the spirit of fervor, sustain me.

[05:39]

that I may teach transgressors your ways and sinners may return to you. Oh, rescue me, God, my helper, and my tongue shall ring out your goodness. Oh, Lord, open my lips and my mouth shall declare your praise. For in sacrifice you take no delight. Burnt offering from me you would refuse. My sacrifice, a contrite spirit, A humble contrite heart, you will not spurn. In your goodness, show favor to Zion. Rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will be pleased with lawful sacrifice, burnt offerings wholly consumed. Then you will be offered young bulls on your altar. So long before the modern world turned inward to try to chart and map the inner world.

[06:47]

The psalmists and people who read the psalms were charting the inner worlds, their inner worlds. Ancient songwriters of the scriptures looked to someone to help them. God, my God, for you I long like a drear weary land. I long like a dry weary land without water. So I look on your sanctuary to see your power and glory. So it's sacramental. It's bodily. What was going on in the individual was also social. It was bodily and it was social. And they looked to Jerusalem for God's presence and God's help.

[07:53]

The yearning to be free is an individual thing, as is the prayer of a dying person. But it's also a corporate thing. I thought of that during the reading at lunch today, helping the sick. It's a corporate, so that temptation and fear, anxiety and hopelessness, can be alleviated through the presence of others. Help us, O Lord, help us to get it straight, to win the victory over our enemies. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Jerusalem and your altars where the sparrow finds a home for her young. We also read Psalm 41, the exile's nostalgia for God's temple.

[09:02]

Like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul is yearning for you, my God. My soul is thirsting for God, the God of my life. When can I enter and see the face of God? My tears have become my bread by night, by day. As I hear it said all the day long, where is your God? I wonder if some of us hear that today. These things will I remember as I pour out my soul, how I would lead the rejoicing crowd into the house of God amid cries of gladness and thanksgiving, the throng wild with joy. Why are you cast down my soul? Why groan within me? Hope in God. I will praise him still, my savior and my God. My soul is cast down within me as I think of you from the country of Jordan and Mount Hermon, from the hill of Mizar.

[10:11]

Deep is calling on deep and the roar of waters. Your tyrants and all your waves swept over me. By day, the Lord will send his loving kindness. By night, I will sing to him. Praise the God of my life. I will say to God, my rock, why have you forsaken me? Why do I go mourning, oppressed by the foe? With cries that pierce me to the heart, my enemies revile me, saying to me all the day long, where is your God? Why are you cast down my soul? Why grown within me? Hope in God, I will praise him still, my savior and my God. So the Psalms are reflections of people's hearts long ago. And that's why we say them and sing them here today.

[11:17]

at the university where I am at Seton Hall. Every evening at 10 o'clock, I open my door and there's a group of students and some priests that come and we say a night prayer together. And it's a very beautiful thing. For me, it's very beautiful. It's a wonderful ending to the day. We even have our auxiliary bishop or our coadjutor bishop come, which is really something sometimes when he's around. He lives in the dormitory, but he'll come for the night prayer. And it's great because they're young people and there's old people like me and middle-aged people. But it's a wonderful way to end the day and to find words that express some of the feelings that probably I ran over or didn't realize were within me, and find expression for those feelings.

[12:24]

Seems to me that's what the scriptures do, and that's what the, especially these psalms, and that's why they're the most important religious music, songs, poems, in the history of the world, I think. Cardinal Newman made that remark one time. Because they reflect very, very deep things. Some of the Psalms will start off on one theme, and then another theme will emerge. Because that's how our feelings are. We talk about hope against hope, or bittersweet. These are mixed feelings and mixed experiences of our hearts and our souls. And the Psalms, better than theory, better than theology, the Psalms express the reality of people's hearts. Another Psalm I thought I'd read this evening was Psalm 42.

[13:36]

And, That's an interesting psalm because it's, when I used to serve Mass as a young boy, you had to memorize this psalm in Latin. In troibo avaltare Dei, aeternum quae laetificat iuventut temeo. I will go to the altar of God, to God who gives joy to my youth. Beautiful, you know. In troibo avaltare Dei, So the Latin had this sort of joyful, joyful sound to that, laetificat, you know, laetare, Sunday, rejoice before Christmas. So I'll read this, Psalm 42. Defend me, O God, and plead my cause against the godless nation. From deceitful and cunning men, rescue me, O God.

[14:40]

And to you, O God, are my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why do I go mourning oppressed by the foe? Oh, send forth your light and your truth. Let these be my guide. Let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. And I will come to the altar of God, the God of my joy. My Redeemer, I will thank you on the harp. Oh God, my God, why are you cast down my soul? Why groan within me? Hope in God, I will praise him still, my savior and my God. Quare me, repulisti. I even remember some of those words. It's been 50 years or more. But what's, you know, expressing sadness, In unexplainable sadness, well, at least put it into words.

[15:45]

A good counselor, any good counselor would get people to get it out there, write it down, journal. Ira Prokof, this hard-headed businessman, Ira Prokof is a Jungian psychologist that taught people how to journal. that he discovered by just really hard-headed businessmen come in and sit in a chair and just twilight imagery. Just articulate and get out the twilight imagery of their spirits. And they do most of it and maybe he'd question them. And then they'd walk away, something happened to their spirit, something lifted often because they were able to put it into words.

[16:49]

They were able to express these depths of feeling and conflicting feelings, anger feelings. St. Augustine said, that's a chapter on memory where he says, hey, our insides, are vast, they're vast, they're vast caverns and rooms. There's all kinds of places we don't realize that we, things we remember and they're in us. And a good therapist, a good counselor helps people to guide them in linking what's going on in their souls. what's going on in their minds and in their active life so that they can make good decisions, so that they can use their heads and do the good and reject the stupid, the meaningless, the things that are wrong, the things that are loveless.

[18:02]

So there's a battle going on. And sometimes the way it's formulated in the Psalms, it's those guys that are the bad guys and evil people. But it seems as we get closer to the Christian context, it gets to be more subtle. the problem of evil and the, it is a battle. It is a battle. But it's a battle not against a good God and a bad God as Augustine formulated it. It's against wholeness. It's a battle between wholeness and meaning and truth and all the stupid, meaningless things that human beings get caught up in. There's a very famous section in St.

[19:11]

Augustine's writings where he says, God could have created a world where there was no evil. He could have created a world, but he thought it better to create this world where we have free human beings who are able to do stupid things, and the possibility of repentance, and the possibility of drawing good even out of evil. Father Lonergan has a thesis in his theology where he talks about the law of the cross, the law of the cross. The worst thing that could happen is for the one who is God to be rejected and suffer and die. But because it was God, he was able to transform the worst thing into our salvation.

[20:17]

So the idea with St. Augustine is that this is the world God has chosen, the world we're in with all the mixed up stuff. even in mixed up in our own lives, mixed up in our own communities, problems. But the law of the cross means these things can be transformed into good. Even the bad things people do against us and even our own sin become the means of union with God. So the Psalms are just so wonderful in touching that level of anger, that level of conflict, deep level of conflict.

[21:20]

The things I talked about last night, this morning, were about progress. But there is also decline. But God, God knows that. And God is above all. Beautiful psalm that, about God's knowing us. Psalm 138. And in this grail volume, it says, the hound of heaven. God's after us. Beautiful Francis Thompson poem, The Hound of Heaven. I fled him down the nights and down the days. I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind. And in the midst of tears, I hid from him an underrunning laughter.

[22:23]

When I was a high school student, I memorized that whole poem. It's such a great poem, The Hound of Heaven. It's got God, somebody running, and he's being chased by someone. And finally, he allows himself to fall into God's embrace. Well, this Psalm 138, the author, I guess, Father Gelino, titles it The Hound of Heaven. O Lord, you search me and you know me. You know my resting and my rising. You discern my purpose from afar. You mark when I walk or lie down. All my ways are open to you. If wherever a word is on my tongue, you know it, O Lord, through and through. Behind and before you besiege me. Your hand ever laid upon me. Too wonderful for me this knowledge, too high, beyond my reach.

[23:26]

Or where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your face? If I climb the heavens, you are there. If I lie in the grave, you are there. If I take the wings of the dawn and dwell at the sea's furthest end, even there, your hand would lead me. Your right hand would hold me fast. If I say, let the darkness hide me and the light around me be night, even darkness is not dark for you. And the night is as clear as the day. For it was you who created my being, knit me together in my mother's womb. I thank you for the wonder of my being, for the wonders of all your creation. Already you knew my soul, my body held no secret from you. When I was being fashioned in secret and molded in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw all my actions.

[24:31]

They were all of them written in your book. Every one of my days was decreed before one of them came into being. To me, how mysterious your thoughts, the sum of them not to be numbered. If I count them, they are more than this fan. To finish, I must be eternal like you. Oh God, that you would slay the wicked. Men of blood keep far away from me. With deceit, they rebel against you and set your designs at nought. Do I not hate those who hate you? Abhor those who rise against you? I hate them with a perfect hate and they are foes to me. Oh, search me, God, and know my heart. Oh, test me and know my thoughts. See that I follow not the wrong path and lead me in the path of eternal life.

[25:36]

The Psalms reflect the enmities of our being, the frustrations Not just intellectual, but emotional enemies. Let them perish, O Lord. Even smash their children on the ground. It's not nice. It's not nice. They are real earthly feelings of real earthly people. Perhaps sinful feelings. But even Aren't the scriptures, are not the scriptures the record of sin, of Adam and Eve, of disobedience, of murder, of David's lust and murder? And Jesus was born of the house of David. Some of how the spirit of Jesus was preparing a narrow gate for freedom.

[26:44]

So it's a question of bringing things that are in us to the fore so that we can make intelligent and reasonable and we can choose life. Maybe that's the best way to put it. Father Lonergan talks about consciousness as one thing. We're all conscious, but knowledge is experiencing, understanding, making good judgments. All of that is conscious, but it's a cycle to move from what's conscious to knowing and then acting. And in some ways that explains, that distinction explains Jesus' own development. his own development as he grew in age and wisdom and grace. He grew by reading the Psalms.

[27:53]

He grew by listening to Mary and Joseph. So the movement from what's going on inside to knowledge, to clear knowledge, is very, very important. people, scholars tell us that Jesus' own consciousness and knowledge that his mission was beyond Israel. The Syro-Phoenician woman, you know, who says even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. I haven't seen faith like this in the centurion. Say but the word and my servant will be healed. Jesus said, I haven't seen faith like this in all. So Jesus' own knowledge and all knowledge of his own mission and identity to the father was as human being was growing, was a growing knowledge.

[29:08]

And I think the Psalms and what he learned from the Psalms helped him so that he used the Psalms even at the last. So St. Augustine, we think of all, as I think of the Psalms, I think of all our human trials, marital troubles, the images of the refugees in Europe and Syria. I happened to be in Italy when those TV pictures were showing people coming to Italy and families and little children. So those images are part of our praying the songs now of the people who are suffering physical tragedies, just reading the newspapers. Karl Barth said you should end the scriptures in one hand and the newspapers in the other.

[30:13]

The scriptures shed light on the sorrows and the sufferings and the tragedies and the meaninglessness, apparently meaningless suffering seems to go on with so many people's lives. And Augustine says, the Psalms are prayed by the whole church. Some sinful persons needing mercy, some persecuted as Christ was persecuted, some facing the darkness. And with Jesus saying, my God, My God, why have you forsaken me? So, what I talked about yesterday and this morning was this drive for wholeness.

[31:15]

And I mentioned Father Lonergan sort of spelling that out and examples from the scientists. But in an article, Talking about that, he said, but I must not misrepresent. We do not know ourselves very well. We cannot track our subconscious influences. Our course is in the night. We have to believe and trust to risk and dare. We have to believe and trust to risk and dare. Sometimes we have to act our way into new ways of thinking. That theme of hints and guesses, discerning where the spirit of God is leading us. We have to believe and trust to risk and dare.

[32:24]

Sometimes we have to make decisions. And then we'll learn some new things. Maybe we'll learn that we made the wrong decision. Maybe we'll learn that there's a whole new world opening out before us. Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah talks about the human heart, how tricky it is and treacherous. I mentioned Augustine on memory. And there's a, a modern writer by the name of Ernst Becker. He wrote a book called The Denial of Death, and how we're always kidding ourselves. We're always self-centered. How am I doing? Even the best things we do. we tend to say, well, how am I doing? So we do something, how's my talk? Is it going over? Tell me later. But there's this almost endemic self-centeredness about our lives and he doesn't give much hope.

[33:34]

But I think an accurate reading always leaves room for grace and the possibilities of human beings loving each other, forming genuine communities, learning through their mistakes, learning from each other, learning from the troubles that we have, and becoming the new creation that God wants us to be. I was thinking of the Psalms in a way, Dante's divine comedy, the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso. The Inferno, we're our own worst enemies. We cause ourselves so many troubles. And our problems are caused often by ourselves.

[34:37]

And Dante goes through hell and he goes through the coldness of hell and ends up in this purifying place of purgatory, of letting go of things of the past and eventually meeting Beatrice and Mary, these women who introduce him to the The sun, the love that moves the sun and the other stars. The love that moves the sun and the other stars. And that's beautiful stars out here. So we pray the Psalms from our hearts and we ask the Lord to teach us how to pray.

[35:44]

We pray with one another, we pray with the church, We pray for all God's people and we ask that this process helps us on our journey, our conversion and our coming out of the darkness into the light. So thank you very much for your attention. Did you hear me? Oh, okay. So this is better. Okay. Have a good night. Maybe we could ask the Holy Spirit to come upon us. Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy faithful and enkindle in us the fire of thy love. Send forth thy spirit and they shall be created. Come into our hearts, O Lord, and fill us with your wisdom and your light.

[36:45]

and open our hearts to the presence of your son in our midst. We make our prayer through Christ our Lord. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. I'm very happy to be here. It's been a wonderful weekend for me. And I was thinking, I said, you know, just the fact that you're here is redemptive. You know, redemption's going on. Not too many people in this world come to a Benedictine monastery for a few days of quiet and prayer and listening to the Word of God and praying to God, praying the Psalms, yearning for God. opening your hearts to God, what God's doing in each of our hearts. So, I said, just your presence here is, it's really something in a world that's running around crazy and a lot of craziness and a lot of, and I'm crazy and we're all crazy.

[38:04]

And, you know, there's, So this is really something. Something redemptive is going on. So that was the theme of this third section, redemption. The idea of these three vectors. Father Lonergan called them vectors one time. He liked sort of scientific analogies in it. a missile or an airplane is explained not just by its forward propelling, but there's also the gravity and there's also the concrete result. So progress is using our heads, being who we are, being the creation that God's made us to be. Decline is all the other stuff that weighs us down and smudges us, smudges all the good things that we do.

[39:10]

And redemption, well, for us, it's Christ renewing us and taking our sins, forgiving our sins. and helping us to go out and do what he wants us to do and reestablishing progress is very important. That's where we're built. We're built to do certain things in this world and to be people in this world. So you can't just have one without, if you really want to figure out what's going on in the world, you need all three. In order to think concretely, you know, it's not just progress is our most important product, GE, you know. No, we mess it up a lot of times.

[40:11]

We have wars, you know, we mess things up. But that's not the whole thing either, you know. The whole thing includes the grace of Christ. be really concrete and coming on retreat to praise Christ and to pray and to acknowledge Christ as a community celebrating the Eucharist here with all these people this morning. So that's, we're part of a big picture. Maybe we only get little glimmers of it from time to time, hints and guesses. But we're part of a big picture that's going on. And we pray that we can figure out our role in that picture and catch a glimmer.

[41:11]

of what the Lord's asking us to do. So that was my first thought. It's just, you know, hey, we're part of something. We're part of a big movement of grace. That's not just personal, but it's communal and it's cosmic. It's cosmic. St. Paul has great cosmic vision. of what God is doing in the world. And the Psalms are such wonderful entries into that vision, you know. Even those Psalms that, you know, I was in trouble, I prayed, you answered my prayer. Oh God, where are you? At least he's calling on God and asking, where are you? that there is a mind and a person and a good person, a loving, let's say, three persons on the Blessed Trinity.

[42:27]

It's a personal world. God's in love with us. And he created us for his glory so that we would we would share in His all-sufficiency. His glory created us out of love. So even our troubles are part of His plan. Even the mess that we make of things. I love that I got it from Father Lonergan in St. Augustine. He could have created a world where there were no evil and so forth, but he thought it better to create a world where we can mess it up, but then we can ask for forgiveness, and we can be transformed, and we can learn how to serve others.

[43:39]

And even our sufferings are redemptive. Even the mess we make of things, it can contribute. Jesus, by his death, I think that was the point of the readings this morning. You know, he can sympathize. He suffered. God himself sympathizes with our with our suffering, our darkness, our, you know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken us? He can sympathize with that because he went through it. He experienced it from within. He's true, truly human, truly human. So, so much to be grateful for. I was looking at my own article.

[44:43]

I read my own stuff, you know. I say, whoa, did I say that? Where did I learn that? I don't know where that came from. But there's a quote that I learned, picked up from a Benedictine by the name of Feis, and he talks about community. It's a very beautiful thing. The school of virtue is the community in which one finds oneself. We are life or death for each other. From others, we learn honesty. Their presence invites us to live for something greater than ourselves. They are, in fact, the abiding sacrament of Christ. So I must listen humbly to what they say, to what God tells me through them, and then put their message into practice.

[45:53]

So much of our sufferings are from the communities we're part of, the people we live with. And that can be in a broad sense, like, you know, locally, And yet God can teach us, maybe wants to teach us through the concretes of our lives, through the people in our lives and teach us to become something. Teach us to learn new habits of the heart. One of the lessons I'm learning lately is to keep my mouth shut. I write that down in my little journal, keep your mouth shut. You don't have to correct everything every time, you know, you just swallow it a bit, you know.

[47:02]

So God is teaching this great mystery of bringing us in out of the darkness into the light. And we're made to do something and be something and make decisions, decisions that affect the world around us, but also affect us, you know, keeping your mouth shut. Well, you learn how to be somebody who listens maybe to really what other people are saying and what God's saying Ah, through them. It seems to me this is all in the Psalms. The Psalms are just such a rich treasure of wisdom that are mirrors of our own experience, our own lives, our own hearts. I thought I'd read Psalms 114 and 115. I have written on my paper here

[48:05]

We can be right, but we can be right in the wrong way. I have a good friend at Seton Hall, a teacher, one of the deans down there, as a matter of fact. And he'll say, you know, you can be right, but you can be right in the wrong way. And he, fortunately, is the dean of the School of Diplomacy. He's an expert in conflict resolution. He was in charge of the School of Conflict Resolution in George Mason. So you really, you need people or politics and you need people that can learn those lessons. This is the prayer, Psalm 114, a prayer of a man saved from death.

[49:10]

Hallelujah. I love the Lord, for he has heard the cry of my appeal. For he turned his ear to me in the day when I called him. They surrounded me, the snares of death, with the anguish of the tomb. They caught me, sorrow and distress. I called on the Lord's name. Oh Lord, my God, deliver me. How gracious is the Lord and just. Our God has compassion. The Lord protects the simple hearts. I was helpless, so he saved me. Turn back my soul to your rest. Turn back my soul to your rest. For the Lord has been good. He has kept my soul from death. my eyes from tears and my feet from stumbling. I will walk in the presence of the Lord in the land of the living.

[50:17]

Beautiful ending. I will walk in the presence of the Lord in the land of the living. I'll walk with my community, my buddies. I'll move forward. And this is, This is Psalm 115. 115. I trusted even when I said I am sorely afflicted. And when I said in my alarm, no man can be trusted. How can I repay the Lord for his goodness to me? The cup of salvation I will raise. I will call on the Lord's name. My vows to the Lord I will fulfill before all his people. O precious, in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his faithful.

[51:21]

Your servant, Lord, your servant am I. You have loosened my bonds. A thanksgiving sacrifice I make. I will call on the Lord's name. My vows to the Lord I will fulfill before all his people in the courts of the house of the Lord in your midst, oh Jerusalem. So it's before Jerusalem, before his people, I raise the chalice, take the cup of salvation. It's what we did this morning in the Eucharist. Eucharist means Thanksgiving. We don't have all our problems solved. There's still loose ends, still things that grab our hearts, but we thank God. We thank God for his goodness to us in the presence of his people.

[52:26]

And we trust his plan as he usually slowly brings us out of the darkness into the light. Some people have some of these sudden conversions, St. Paul, and there are key moments in our process of transformation, but usually, usually it's a life, a life journey, it is a life journey of transformation. So redemption, redemption is this, transformation of our lives and our suffering into praise, into praise. There was a book years ago called Power in Praise. And so much of the Psalms are praise and thanks.

[53:30]

And you might not feel it all the time. You know, you don't always feel it, but there's a power to praising God and his providence that brought us to this moment, maybe allowed us to have these sufferings so that we ourselves can sympathize with others in their suffering. So I thought that was a, you know, when I think of the psalms, they're filled with praise, filled with praise. There's psalms of sorrow, psalms of need, psalms of tremendous suffering. Someone who put his, my friend, the one I trusted, has turned against me. The Psalms of Jesus that spoke to Jesus of loss, tremendous loss, and yet turning to God, turning.

[54:48]

One of the thoughts I had today in this talk was that I'm sorry to be always quoting Father Lonergan, but that's your problem, not mine. One of the things he says is, today the very question of God is important. The very question of God. How many are we here? We're 30 or 40, whatever. But there's thousands of people out there, and some of them couldn't care less. Some of them probably have a bit of a question, but to even say, hey, this is a really important question, you might be a scientist, but there's more than science.

[55:49]

And what explains this? 13 billion year old world, 13.6. But don't ask me to explain the .6 or even the 13 billion. You know, it's a biological evolution, humanity. What's it all about, Alfie? You know, what's it all about? And is there Is there a mind behind what takes our greatest minds to plumb? And is there a good, loving being who gives meaning to the word good? Or do we just make it up when we say that's good and that's bad? Are we just making it up or is there something?

[56:54]

objective about getting things correct and true and truly human, truly, truly loving. So anyway, that very question of God is important for our culture, seems to me, that it is a valid question. I think what surprised me, I work a lot with the faculty at Seton Hall and they're very, you might say they're hired for their secular knowledge with, you know, for many years not too much focus on the religious side of things. But what strikes me, even though a lot of the guilds, a lot of the professions are very atheistic, and nevertheless, here, there, there are people asking these kind of questions.

[58:10]

What does it mean to be fully a human being? And does that being fully a human being open up to the question of the transcendent. So anyway, what we're doing in our lives is we're helping each other to transform the darkness and the sufferings of ourselves and one another into the light, into the light with the help of Christ who sympathizes with us and suffers with us. The name of the game is transformation. The basic process that's going on is the process of moving out of the darkness into the light.

[59:15]

Intellectually, morally, in terms of how we relate to each other, a lot of addiction, a lot of things that grab people, that they're being called out of into the light. and religiously, that we worship God, a God who is in love with us. And the way that transformation happens in our lives, it affects the way we look at the past, and it affects what we do in the future. So transformation is the name of the game. Father Lonergan's theology, conversion. He talks about conversion as a basic category.

[60:20]

I was in a meeting one time and with Father Lonergan, it was a... a group of Lonergan scholars, so they were sort of heady people, you know, sort of philosophical, theological, big technical terms and everything. And somebody raised their hand and said, Father, how in, he had been talking about conversion, and somebody raised their hand and they said, Father, how in fact do we get converted? And without missing a beat, he said, well, by being kicked around. I said, oh my gosh, I was looking for a technical answer. How do we get converted? We get converted by life, by, you know, the stuff getting kicked out of us, you know. Seems to me every year more of it, you know.

[61:26]

So that's our lives, and it's a redemptive It's a transformative process. In order that we can be ourselves on these various levels, intellectually, with our community, with one another, and with the culture, with the culture, the larger culture that we're a part of. And one of the aspects of that is is we, Kierkegaard used to talk about the leap of faith, faith is a leap, you know, and there is something to that. But we need to leap to using our heads too, to reason, to living reasonably. And that's, we need the grace of Christ to heal us, just so we can be ourselves.

[62:30]

And in that process, we know we're becoming, we're coming more and more into the life of the Trinity. Sons and daughters of the Father, brothers and sisters of Jesus, temples of the Holy Spirit, sets out this Christ the Gospel, sets out this beautiful vision of the future. that's happening even now, beginning even now. So, I was struck by the beautiful readings this morning in this morning's Mass. Jesus is the great high priest who can sympathize with what we're going through. and can tell us, keep going, have courage, keep trying, keep moving.

[63:37]

The great high priest who suffered and he carried the sufferings and he carried the death as service to you and me and to all people. as service. So can we carry, you know, keeping still and keeping quiet in order to be of service to our brothers and sisters? Can He transform our lives slowly but surely? into the people Christ wants us to be. I'll just finish with a quote that I thought again from my article, but it's not me. It's a prayer of St.

[64:40]

Francis in the footnotes, the last footnote. It's a beautiful, beautiful prayer of St. Francis. So, progress, how we smudge it up and mess it up, and redemption as one dimension being brought into the life of the Trinity, another dimension healing our lives and reestablishing progress as, yeah, we were created. to be something and do something and make the world a better place ecologically. Things that Pope Francis has talked about, we're supposed to make this world better. And knowing all the while that we mess it up.

[65:43]

I love his talk to the families where he's talking about family life And in the midst of his talk, I'm listening, you know, and he said, you know, sometimes the plates fly. Yeah, it must have been a phrase in Spanish or what. And I picked, I said, oh my gosh, they must say that. It happens in Argentina too. I love it, you know, the plates fly, they do fly, and that Seton Hall where I am, the plates fly, you know, we have battles, real battles, and yet God is there, God is teaching us, God's through the liturgy, through this beautiful repetition, quiet, singing, repetitive things that can get into our bodies. I've heard myself singing some of the psalms in my room.

[66:46]

It becomes part of your very soul, your very body. this redemptive process. But there's a beautiful prayer of St. Francis I thought that is really beautiful. St. Francis illustrates this, the poem of St. Francis of Assisi. I love the sun. I love the stars. I love Claire and the sisters. I love the human heart and everything beautiful. O Lord, forgive me. It is you alone that I am meant to love. But the Lord was smiling when he said in reply, I love the sun. I love the stars. I love Claire and the sisters. I love the human heart and everything beautiful. O Francis, what can I forgive?

[67:47]

I love the same things as you. So it's a beautiful affirmation of our humanity and that's re-establishing progress, re-establishing creation as Christ sharing in our suffering in order so that we can truly be ourselves and with one another. So anyway, it's been very good for me to share with you. And I've had a chance to talk to some of you, which I've enjoyed very much. And I'll be here till noontime, prayer at noon. So anyway, it's nice being with you. Thank you.

[68:36]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v004
@Score_JJ