Anchorite and the Cenobite, between individual prayer and communal prayer, between the Anchorite's Abba, or spiritual father, and the Cenobite's Abbot. Differences there are indeed, but I don't think there are divisions. And the bloodlines of those two family trees are much more tangled than I think we sometimes realize. This need, the tradition has felt, to oppose the anchorite and the cenobite arose very early, probably as soon as there were enough of both kinds to have an argument about whose was the true monasticism. I don't think we need to get caught up in that kind of dispute. And the reason I'm saying all of this is that I don't want us to take Antony and put him in a hermetically sealed compartment, and then take Pacomius and put him in a compartment, and try to set out these people up on a shelf.

[01:01]

as if they're separate objects for our veneration. In fact, I think there's a lot more common ground than we at first recognize. And the reason I say this is that it has very much to do with their approach to a monk's prayer, whether it's personal prayer or communal prayer. We'll get to that. The difficulty in dealing with all of this is that we are dealing with equally legitimate responses to Christ's invitation to receive his yoke. Because of this, I think we find ourselves in kind of a funny position. On the one hand, we're reading Pacomian texts, the things I'll talk about today, which describe the koinonia, or community of Pacomius, as the successor and perfection of an outmoded anchoritic life. We'll turn tomorrow to John Cashin, who views the synobium, the communal life, as the original form of monasticism, and traces it all the way back to the primordial church of Jerusalem, and then talks about the anchorite as coming out of the synobium.

[02:15]

So it's a mess when you try to sort this stuff out. And the whole issue of the relationship between the anchorite and the cenobite, and there's some question according to some commentators, about if there is any relationship, is still very much a hot topic, and that is what is fueling Albert de Vogt's controversial interpretation of the rule of Benedict. So it's very much a live question, and one which I will touch on at some point as I talk about Pocomius. This business affects our study of Pocomius because I think we make a serious mistake if we look at Pocomius solely as a founder and innovator and try to oppose his monastic vision to that of Antony or Antony's successors. Again, I'll invoke my principle of complementarity that I brought up yesterday, and I'll say that the Pocomian koinonia

[03:19]

is not so much the opposite extreme of monastic life, from that of Antony, as it is a genuine relative of the anchoritic tradition of Antony, his followers, and the hermit groupings, which regard Antony as their founder. I'm not saying the hermits come first, and then Pacomius, or Pacomius comes first, and then the hermits. I'm not interested in priority or ranking, or saying this is the true form, this is the false form. Rather, I'm trying to emphasize the fact that we should not look at Pacomius as providing an alternative whole vision of monastic life, so much as giving us a different perspective on monastic life. We can venerate Pacomius' clear sense of the ecclesial nature of communal life, but that need not make us think that Antony was not ecclesial.

[04:19]

in his conception of monasticism or the Church. Nor should Pocomius' break with his spiritual father, who was an anchorite, Appapallaman, in order to follow Pocomius' distinctive vocation, blind us to the unmistakable influence of that anchoritic formation on Pocomius' later life. The key to understanding Pocomius' significance, then, is not to consider him as someone who turned his back on the anchoritic life or thought it was misguided, but who followed his own call. What Pocomius does give us, which is distinctive, is a fuller manifestation of an absolutely essential aspect of monastic life and one Antony was aware of. And that is the fact that Christian monasticism, because it is Christian, is inevitably in communion with other Christians and with the life of the whole Church.

[05:25]

Thus the name of Pocomius' community, the Koinonia, is a very apt title. It's not simply communion among the monks themselves in the community, but it's communion with the whole body of Christ. It's the path of the apostles. And that word koinonia inevitably would make people of Pocomius' time think of that vital passage from the book of Acts that we talked about last night, Acts 2.42, which reads, talking about the disciples, apostles, they were persevering or continuing in the teaching of the apostles and in the koinonia, the fellowship, the community, but the word used is koinonia, in the breaking of the bread and in the prayers. Now that particular passage from Acts is not quoted very much directly in the Pacomian writings.

[06:30]

but the term itself points us back to this first Jerusalem church, and I think that's something we have to drop into our consideration of what Pocomius is all about. This dimension, certainly not absent in Antony's life, given his strong relationship to those in need and to the suffering church in Alexandria, becomes the predominant theme of Pocomian monasticism. What we find is an interplay between the individual and the community, between the spiritual father and the ho'okoinonia, between the private meditation on scripture and the prayer which follows, accompanies that meditation, and the communal prayer, which is called synaxis, coming together, of reading and silent prayer. So if we want to contrast this particular topic in person to Antony and what we did with Antony, we might say that the spotlight on individual transformation that we found in the life of Antony is switched off when we turn to Pacomius in these texts and the house lights come up if we're regarding all of this monastic stuff as a big theater.

[07:53]

The individual doesn't go away or disappear, nor does growth through and in prayer cease, but the perspective has been turned around. We're looking at a whole body of people instead of focusing on what happens to this individual or that individual. The place to start a study of Pacomian spirituality and therefore a study of prayer in the Pacomian writings is with the life of Pacomius himself. looking at his own trajectory from pagan origins, he wasn't born a Christian like Antony was, to his first encounter with Christians, which was extremely significant, to his baptism and life like Antony on the outskirts of a village taking care of people as they had need, to his formation as an anchorite, and then to his ultimate vocation as father of the koinonia.

[08:56]

So he wanders around a bit and goes through a number of stages before he lands in his ultimate call. Our source is the collection of lives which were preserved in various languages and translated by Armand Veilleux in this outstanding three-volume set of Pacomian writings. If you have not had a chance yet to browse in these things, I really commend them to you, because they're tremendously exciting to read. Portions of the life of Pacomius, I think, are lyrical, and I think they're very reassuring to Cenobites, because we find so many of our values expressed in his life. There are two other volumes in the series, and I'll just briefly tell you what's in them so that you have some orientation to them. The second volume consists mostly of, most importantly for our purposes, the rules of Pocomius, which are pretty dry reading, and you should probably read those only after you read The Life, because then you'll understand what they're all about, and similar materials like that, historical materials and rules.

[10:06]

Then this third volume is very interesting because it contains what we have left of the instructions given by Pocomius and his successors to the monks in the community. They're like conferences. And I'll say something probably tonight about the importance of those periods of instruction given by the superior. But most of the stuff that we'll do will come out of the life of Pocomius. Especially the first one in this book, which is very much the longest, it goes for about 200 pages. But never fear, the amount of print on a page is really small, so it reads much more quickly than you'd think. This life that we have, and which I'll base my comments on, is kind of a tricky thing. So I have to make my obligatory announcement about historical value of this text before we do anything with it. What we have in here is a translation from an original Coptic dialect into another Coptic dialect and then translated into English for us.

[11:14]

What that means is that the text that we read is probably one or two textual generations away from the original. And that always makes things a bit problematic. because we can assume that the text has been enriched or adjusted in the course of its transmission. On the other hand, though, this seems to be a pretty good text, and compared to The Life of Antony, it has a good deal of apparently genuine biographical material. So there's some pretty hard fact in here, and that we can assume is more or less reliable. The other good thing about it is that it comes from a monastic environment. It was written by those who succeeded Pacomius as a way of preserving the traditions of the foundation of the community. Now, that has its own dangers. People like to glorify founders, certainly. But at the same time, I think it's useful to us because it expresses the self-understanding of the Pacomian community.

[12:21]

So even if some of the details about Pocomius aren't exactly precise, this is the way the people who lived the life tried to understand their origins and the significance of what they did. So I think we have to respect that. The approach I'm going to take may seem a bit roundabout, because we may not even get to prayer this morning. But what I would like to do first is discuss the emergence of the Pacomian koinonia as a distinctive interpretation of monastic life. And then, after that, I'll talk about the distinctive aspects of its spirituality, which are, first of all, this common prayer in the synaxis. the individual and communal recitation in the cell or at work of the monks. And third, these instructions are conferences given by the superior, because the three of them, I think, intertwine, and they all are a way of getting at what the prayer life was like in this community.

[13:30]

So first, I want to talk about the emergence of the koinonia. I'm aided considerably by the fine editor of The Life of Pacomius, whoever wrote this thing down had a good eye for providing a structure for the work and giving us some way of understanding these funny different stages in Pacomius' life. The first 22 chapters of the work describe a series of six significant incidents, which I've called signs. Some of them are visions, some of them are voices. The first one is kind of a vow made by Pacomius. This series of signs or visions lead Pacomius progressively to an understanding of what he is supposed to do in his own Christian and monastic vocation. We don't need to look at these six signs, which I'll go through, and confer upon them an absolute historical value and say, that's exactly how it happened, or this is exactly how Pocomius described it.

[14:41]

Because again, these are a way that the tradition, perhaps Pocomius himself, had of understanding how they got to where they were from where Pocomius started. So I think they're useful simply for that reason. We might compare these six signs to that geographical progression we talked about in the life of Antony, where the different landmarks, actual landmarks, of Antony's monastic life teach us something about what his interior life was like. And I think that same kind of literary thing is going on here with these six signs. In Pacomius' case, the six signs, though, serve more than a biographical function. They situate the rise of the koinonia within a cosmic perspective of God's plan for salvation.

[15:44]

a universal perspective evident at the very start of the life of Pocomius. The work does not begin with what you might expect with something like, there was a child named Pocomius born in the village of Schnee. Rather, it begins with the statement, the word of God came to Abraham. And it has this whole survey in one page of salvation history, placing monasticism within the context of God's plan for all of humanity. So perhaps they had a grandiose conception of themselves, but that's the scope of the work. And it's only after that whole big perspective, with listing all of the prophets and significant figures, that you finally get the line, there was a certain Pacomius born in the village of Schnee. What I'd like to do is to look at each one of these six signs briefly, don't worry.

[16:47]

And you'll also know how far we are and how much left I have to do, since we'll just check them off one by one. But I think we need to get the basic themes that come through in these signs before we can begin to get a grip on what personal prayer and communal prayer meant in the Pacomian community. I've never seen anybody else who did it this way, but I've done it this way a few times, and I think it works, so I'll ask you to bear with me. This also gives us a way of covering Pacomius' biography, which I think is of interest. We pick up this young pagan and his story, first of all after a few comments about his at the point where he has been forcibly conscripted into the imperial army. There was a time whenever there was trouble in the empire, they'd go through and just round up people to join the army, whether they wanted to or not. And the way that they would ensure their compliance is that they would just put them in jail and hold them there until they needed them.

[17:52]

And that was how they collected troops. Well, Pocomius finds himself conscripted against his will and forced into imperial service and held in a prison where they're kind of holding him until they're ready to go off to wherever the battle's being fought. While he is there, he is visited by local people who bring food and care to the people in the prison. And he marvels at people who would go out of their way to take care of perfect strangers. I'll read you a little passage. In the evening, some citizens of that city brought bread and vittles to the prison, and they compelled the recruits to eat, because they saw them sunk in great affliction. When young Pacomius saw them, he asked those who were with him, Why are these people so good to us when they don't even know us? They answered, they are Christians, and they treat us with love for the sake of the God of heaven.

[18:59]

Evidently, Becomius is really impressed by this. And so it says that he goes to one side of this cell where he was being held and prays, my Lord Jesus the Christ, God of all the saints, May your goodness quickly come upon me, deliver me from this affliction, and I will serve humankind all the days of my life." So he undergoes a kind of conversion experience, apparently, according to the life, because of the example of service and charity of these Christians he meets. And he makes this promise. God, if you spring me from the prison, then I will repay you by serving humankind all the days of my life. That's what I've indicated as the first sign. His pledge to serve, if indeed he finds that there's something to this Christian God. After his release, because in fact he is released, apparently miraculously, by his lights,

[20:06]

Although Veya speculates that a convenient change in emperor was really responsible for his getting out of prison. Who's to say? After he gets out of prison, he travels south and south in Egypt means going to upper Egypt. It's kind of turned around by the way we would think it. He goes to a small, hot little village where God speaks to him. From this time on, the signs that I've marked on the board are signs from God to Pacomius. The first one was Pacomius' prayer and vow. From this point on, he receives a series of visions or commands which motivate him in what he's to do. The message is very simple to him when he finds this little village. And it is resonant with monastic overtones, even though he's not yet a monk. The message is this. Struggle and settle down here.

[21:08]

Kind of a nice definition of stability. He becomes, in response to this command to struggle and settle down in that place, a kind of village handy and holy man, available to everyone who needed him. Just as the young Antony lived on the outskirts of town, During this same period, he becomes a catechumen, so he sort of follows through with his Christian business. And on the night of his baptism, receives a very significant vision, which is number three. He was brought to the church and baptized that he might be made worthy of the holy mysteries, that is to say, the body and blood of Christ. On the night he was baptized, he had a dream. He saw the dew of heaven descend on his head, then condense in his right hand and turn into a honeycomb.

[22:11]

While he was considering it, it dropped onto the earth and spread out over the face of all the earth. As he was disturbed by this, a voice came to him from heaven. Understand this, Pachomius, for it will happen to you in a short time." So the night of his baptism, there's this dew descending on him, which is obviously a baptismal image, which turns to honey as it falls down upon him and flows through his right hand. Now, the way that I have interpreted this, and I haven't seen anybody else who does it this way, but I think it makes sense, is that you have the baptismal image of the dew, and then the honey, sweetness, I interpret as symbolic of the Word. because of the importance that the Word of God and sharing the Word of God will have in the life of Pacomius and in the life of his community.

[23:16]

And we can find biblical parallels for this notion of the sweetness of the Word, or the law of God as honey, as in Psalm 19. And this business of it spreading out through his hand and covering the face of the earth, I think is a foreshadowing of his role as teacher and leader in the Word and in monastic life, but he doesn't understand it yet. And that's why the explanation given by God is, it'll happen in a short time. Meanwhile, Pocomius becomes a monk with this old man named Appapalamon. Having convinced himself that taking care of the people in the village was just running him ragged, and was an impediment to his pursuit of the ascetical life. So he's kind of rebelling against service, and we'll find that turned around later on. The training that he receives from Appapallaman is that of the classic anchoritic tradition.

[24:21]

And if you ever want a good description of what it meant to be trained by a spiritual father in the desert tradition, you could do no better than to read the chapters of the Life of Pacomius, chapters 10 to 16, which describe this period of his life. They're very moving in their description of the relationship between this young man and his spiritual father. I won't go into detail about that because that takes us a little bit off course, but his teacher makes a remarkable statement which reminds us very strongly of things that Antony says. The old man tells the novice, we will be ready to labor with you until you get to know yourself. That is the goal of the anchoritic formation. We will labor with you until you get to know yourself." Interesting. After four years with this old man being formed in the desert tradition, Pacomius has a recurrence of that baptismal vision, number three, dew and honey.

[25:36]

In this case, the vision is slightly changed. It says in chapter 12, Pacomius again saw the vision he had had before, the dew from heaven coming down on him, falling and filling all the earth's surface. He likewise saw some keys that were being given to him secretly. So we have the dew again, and I guess we can presume the honey, but then we've got these keys. Now what do keys speak to us of symbolically? What sort of thing would you think of with keys? The church. The church, and a particular aspect, I think. Authority. Authority. Okay, exactly. It's foreshadowing his ultimate role as a monastic father and superior himself, but he doesn't understand it yet. He tells his spiritual father Palaman of the vision, as he should have, being a good disciple, and they're both puzzled.

[26:41]

But I think we can recognize the point being made here. To the themes of service, stability, and instruction or teaching that we've seen already, we add a fourth, that of authority. These indications of Pocomius' destiny, I think, are very clever foreshadowings by the writer, perhaps based on Pocomius' own recollections. of what the basic qualities of Pocomius' role in the foundation of the Koinonia and the life of the Koinonia will be. The four signs we've examined so far bring us right to the threshold of the cenobitic turn in Pocomius' life when the hints of the first four signs that we've looked at give way to the explicit call of number five and number six. while praying in a deserted village called Tabanesi.

[27:45]

And the life describes him as going off to this village to pray alone and praying to the Lord Jesus Christ, perhaps using one of those formulas, a prayer for mercy that we talked about yesterday. Pachomius hears a voice which tells him much more clearly than he's heard now of what the will of God is. He came into that place, stretched out his hands, and prayed to the Lord Jesus Christ that he might teach him his will. As he lengthened his prayer, a voice came to him from heaven, Pachomius, Pachomius, struggle, dwell in this place, and build a monastery. For many will come to you to become monks with you, and they will profit their souls. So again, we've got this struggle and subtle motif, but with the addition of build a monastery.

[28:48]

Now, we're not quite at the point of talking about the koinonia or a full-blown synabitic monastic life yet. Building a cell somewhere or a monastery does not mean building a synabitic community. All that it necessarily had to mean was that Pacomius would set up shop as a spiritual father and have disciples come to him. But we begin to see a kind of momentum building and an imperative which will lead to the koinonia. So Pacomius, with the help of his spiritual father, Appapalamun, puts up a cell. Shortly thereafter, Palaman dies, and Pacomius is joined by his brother John, who is his first disciple. This life that we have reads, Pacomius spoke the word of God to John and made him a monk with him. They practiced a great ascesis.

[29:53]

This business of speaking the word, and then his brother becomes a monk with him, becomes a kind of motif throughout the life. Pacomius spoke a word, and this happened, or that happened. Now again, this could be read as perfectly conventional spiritual father-disciple stuff. The two of them live very much like Pacomius and Palamon did. And John, in fact, doesn't want anybody else to join them. And when Pocomius tries to expand this little cell so that other people can come, John pulls the wall down. And they have a wonderful fight, which the thing goes into in great detail. But let's move to the sixth sign and complete the groundwork for the establishment of the koinonia. Pocomius has another vision, the last of this first series. As he was keeping vigil on an island, as was his custom, an angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him three times, let there be no mistake, three times, Pacomius, Pacomius, the Lord's will is to minister to the race of men and to unite them to himself.

[31:12]

minister and unite, service of others, which goes back to the first promise to serve, something which he turned away from a bit when he left the village. And this notion of uniting people, I think to one another and also to God. So the serve of Pocomius' initial promise in jail is matched and fulfilled by the minister of the sixth one. And at this point, we start to find the term koinonia, this apostolic community, this resonant biblical word used as the term to describe what they're about. It's the first time we find it used to describe Pocomius' monastic life. Let me just say a couple more things and then we can quit. This life that we have in the first part of the book gives us a rather idealized picture of the early days of the koinonia, eager newcomers arriving and being trained by Pacomius, and in fact being served by him, because his notion was that people can't begin to serve right away.

[32:31]

As he said about the first people who came to him, they are neophytes. who have not yet attained that stage, which would allow them to serve each other. Therefore, he exempted them from any labor. So service, then, is not only a basic thing for Pacomius, but he's made it almost a sacred thing. You have to be trained and disciplined and so on before you can serve. And I think our approach is the opposite. At least in my monastery, a novice shows up and he's put to work in service immediately. Pacomius has it the other way around. You have to make your way up before you can serve. Although the ideals were in place, the ideals established by these six signs, life in the early days was not as serene as this life would report. We have a fragmentary version of what is probably an earlier form of the life. It's in the back of the book. which reports that when these first disciples saw Pocomius doing all the work for them, they thought he was a fool for doing it.

[33:39]

And they were probably correct in hindsight, looking back at this. Eventually, Pocomius begins to realize that mutual service as part of the shared life is a means for growth in the koinonia and not a goal. But it took him some experience to figure that out. And this fragmentary life, which does not get preserved in the full version, portrays him as throwing these guys out, running them out of the monastery with a rather dramatic portrayal of it, and kind of rethinking how he's going to put all this into practice. These early chapters describe the shape of the koinonia's life. A whole array of officials were appointed, with a regular rotation of jobs every three weeks. He organized the monastery, which grew by leaps and bounds, into houses. We might think of Benedict's deaneries, each with a housemaster. And this system of clear jobs and people assigned to the jobs becomes the framework for mutual service.

[34:48]

Now special interest to us is the prayer life of the koinonia, which is the establishment of these times of common prayer, and also a Eucharistic sense in the community. And I'll just say a couple words about those. First of all, he does establish common prayer, formal, expected, common prayer, which he calls synaxis, or the six prayers. twice a day, morning and evening, which is complemented by instructions in scripture and spiritual topics. I'll talk about both of those in greater detail later. One last point, and that is of great significance for our understanding the Pacomian community's life of prayer, is the relationship between the community and the local church. Pacomius builds a church in this village for the monks and the villagers to share, and he would troop the brothers down to the church Saturday nights for Eucharist.

[36:02]

The Egyptian custom was Eucharist Saturday evening, Sunday morning. In time, he built a church for the monastery itself as the numbers grew, when they got to about a hundred. But he himself continued to go to the village church every Saturday evening, and he continued to provide them with the bread and the wine for the Eucharist, because they were too poor. This points us to a rich ecclesial dimension of the koinonia. It didn't think of itself as marginal to the church or as different but it thought of itself as church, constituting the local church, part of the local church with the villagers, and then when it became large enough to itself sustain the life of a local church, it does so. It is distinguished from the church not by any essential difference, but simply by its way of life.

[37:04]

And this is underscored by the fact that there was apparently a large number of non-Christians who would come to the monastic community, to the koinonia, and be baptized within the monastery, so that their conversion to the monastic life was understood as part and parcel of their conversion to the Christian life. So there's a rich baptismal association there, which is worth holding on to. With all of this in place, we can be brought to the point of looking at the components of the Koinonia spiritual life, remembering these overarching and pervasive themes of mutual service, which is clear from this stuff, and also of their relationship with the larger and also with the local church. So I'll stop there for now. It's the fourth vision, so it's a recurrence four years after his baptism of the same vision he has the night of his baptism, which he didn't understand.

[38:34]

I mean, all of these things make sense only from the end. when they're kind of foreshadowings of the sort of life that he'll set up in his community. When he sees the vision again, four years after the baptism, it's the same thing except he's given keys. And in hindsight we see, well, that's foreshadowing his role as superior or his authority as teacher and leader. So these are all kind of pieces of a puzzle, which is only whole at the end. I've read it a couple of times, but somehow, it seemed like he deliberately turned, he quoted that, they asked him about service, and he turns away from service, and then quotes I think it's even St.

[39:35]

James, which is the last. But this is very helpful to me. And his service, he sought back primarily to his role was primarily to build the monastery. Rather than, he wasn't denying service. He made the parallel with the apostles. they're not doing their service either, but their service is precisely to the church, in a sense, rather than service to the table. They're not cutting themselves off from a ministry to a ministry to the church. He's not really saying that I wouldn't be of service to anyone. His service is with respect to that. It's a focusing, actually, of service, not a rejection of service. Yeah, I think what we find in his biography is He kind of makes a mistake and then corrects it. In other words, he's in this village taking care of people and he gets sick and tired of the demands they put on him.

[40:35]

So he says, I've had enough of this. I'm going to go be a monk. You don't have to worry about this if I'm a monk. And he gradually wakes up by way of these signs and his experience with his spiritual father and so on to the fact that service is fundamental even to the monastic life. So by the time he founds the koinonia, not only is there service among the monks, but there's this business of taking care of the needs of the village, building a church, giving them bread and wine, and so on. So I think it's kind of another part of his conversion. But if you read this, it's very confusing, because obviously his biographer can't make sense of it, and they don't want to imply that he made a mistake earlier and then corrected it. So I'm kind of trying to piece it together. with this stuff. That's very helpful. At least for me it helps us sense our life. We have a strange dichotomy. There are times we really have a responsibility, which is mainly being monks.

[41:40]

And in no case should we ever leave it in order to go. You're called to the Church of the Bishops. is always a service that we're doing. It's first discovered very often, what is a service as monks. And openness. Something I saw in this beautifully displayed, I think perhaps might have some relevance to Brother Alberto's question again last night. How? always seems to pop up in our religious lives. How do we achieve it? And I think it's right there in those signs where in number one, you showed us that Proconius first actually gives his fiat to God. He says yes. And then after that,

[42:44]

by that act of cooperation, God is now willing to become very active in his life as he is from the start. We just have to first say yes. And it's that openness that we give to everything that is already fulfilled fullness of our reality, which already is given to us as pure gift. And in doing so, it's realized more and more by our constant saying yes, which is a perfect example of the life of the communist. He is constantly saying yes, and the more that he says yes, the more that he gives himself, the more that he does, the more he is self-unposed. of that which he already is.

[43:49]

So I think that's a very helpful thing for all of us. I think a really interesting aspect of this is that, you know, he gets these signs and doesn't understand them. It takes years for him to figure out what it means. So it's not that business of, you know, build me a basilica on this spot and it gets built. It's not that kind of thing at all. And I kind of like this. You know, it's only with it kind of coming again and again and building up, and then, oh, that's it. But it keeps talking about it as being puzzled. What does this mean? And then, you know, we see. Maybe that's not a very good historical reading of a text, but, you know, I think it has a lot there. The thing that Martin was describing happened after he got the first sign, and when he was saying that he saw a lot of people serving, he decided he'd go serve.

[44:55]

Is that what you mean, is that he first thought service meant going out and serving all the people, serving the people in their various needs, and then realized later that it's not exactly It's not necessarily being material or going out and actually doing it, but it's focusing on community with that kind of service. Well, I think his first example of service is these people who come to him in prison. So that becomes his understanding. So he promises to serve, and then he's told to struggle and settle down in that place. And then he does that form of service. He gets this feeling of being served. But the people came to him.

[45:57]

The example was brought to him, so I think you can regard that as a divine intervention. You could really put it that way. But that he realizes he's got to be corrected. That's what's unclear. Whether he just got fed up and wanted to get away from it, or whether it was saying, this isn't the right kind of service for me. I kind of think he needed some straightening out. And that's what he gets from his spiritual father. And then with this ongoing series of visions. Do we know where he got his synopsis from and how the stories were organized and how he chose what he chose?

[47:17]

I don't know how much we know about the origins of it, although I'll describe some of that tonight. I'll actually describe the structure of the prayer service. And I think it'll be pretty clear that it's kind of based on how even an individual could have prayed. But what I'm going to argue is that it's not the same thing as an individual's prayer. And so that's when I kind of tilt my jousting pole or whatever into Vogue Way. and bring up that whole issue of what the relationship is between communal prayer and individual prayer, which is very murky. But I think really interesting. And even the structure of the service, I think, will give us some clues. So maybe some of that I'll hit on tonight. Well, they often did.

[48:26]

You know, the word itself just means a coming together or a common action. But in these texts, they use synaxis to talk about the office, and they use the word offering to talk about the Eucharist. So that's their set of terms, but, you know, they vary from place to place. Synaxis is also, isn't it useful? It's the name of a place. These synaxes, I guess given to the place by virtue of the action done there. When going to the synaxis, you behave like this and you wear this and so on. My favorite official in the Bakomian monastery is the person who's assigned to hand out the candy every night. That's a wonderful humanizing thing in the text, if somebody was to hand out the sweets at the end of supper every night. What a great job. It's one of the rewards for digging through this stuff, is you find things like that.

[49:31]

This never ends and he gets to a good age with these problems right on his back. He almost never has a moment's rest. He's constantly faced with all these hassles. Even this reputation is called into question at the end. It's a constant vision of the demise of a man. So it's a process, and it's never finished. You never say, well, a comers finally arrived at a point in his life on this perfect, some sort of, I really don't get the impression that everybody ever, they only regard him as a father, but an ambition.

[51:14]

This man that's just struggling, struggling right to his grave, left legs, achieves this great life, everybody looks at the life, and somebody's struggling right along with the whole thing, It never ran itself. So I just say that in reflection to Alberto's question last night, what do you actually want to do when there isn't always a direction rather than something that's actually achieved? So we'll meet again this evening after Vespers? Well, I didn't ask you this, but I suppose we could bonk on your door from time to time.

[52:16]

Sure. Do you have siesta time habits and things like that? I hope to develop them here. That's one reason for leaving my own monastery for a couple of weeks. Looking at the weekday schedule, I suspect that I might take a snooze right after the main meal. But I never sleep for more than about 30 or 40 minutes. So, any time after that. Or just let me know if you have a question and we can get together or something. Welcome. Father Victor and Father Dan are attractive. Okay, I think everybody's real. You're leaving now. One set of books and then we'll also take them back. Yes.

[53:11]

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