Good evening. I'm very happy to see all the brothers from Gethsemane again. I was here two years ago for three months, which were very wonderful months for me, three months of sabbatical, and it was a time I was meditating about important decisions in my life. So it's very good to be in that atmosphere of peace and prayer. So I'm very grateful for the community and so I'm very happy to come back. And this time to meditate with you about Pacomius. I say meditate because I would like to approach Pacomius in a meditative and prayerful orientation. And I think the best thing to do to learn about Tango Muse is to listen to the sources themselves, what I tried to do, what we tried to do with the members of the seminar, and I think that would be the best thing also with the whole group.

[01:08]

The bones of St. Pachomius are protesting. Oh, I will tame him. The first thing to do will be to read the prologue of the life together. And to see how the early Pachomian monks, when they wrote his life shortly after his death, how they situate him in the context of the whole history of salvation. And this is a beautiful text, and I would like to begin by that. You have that text in those who have the English translation of the life, and unfortunately that first chapter is one of those who are translated in the worst way. Anyway, I will indicate the worst mistake as we are going. It begins like that. True is the word of God who made all things.

[02:14]

The word that came to our father Abraham when he was going to offer his only son as an agreeable sacrifice to God. Here I changed the translation. It's wrong there. So it begins by the word of God. Monastic life comes from the word of God. And that Word of God, existing from all eternity, created all things. So the Word of God created all things. And then that same Word came to our father Abraham. And it was said to Abraham, that Word was, truly I will bless you and multiply you as the stars of heaven in multitude. And again, because in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. So we have to remember that expression, the seed of Abraham and that all the nations will be blessed. That will be important for Pachomius later on. So that same word that created all things came to Abraham, spoke also through Moses and throughout the prophets.

[03:24]

For this word speaking after Moses is servant. Servant is important also because the whole ideal of Pachomius will be to be the servant of God and the servant of mankind. So speaking after Moses, his servant and the other prophets appeared as man and as Abraham's seed. It was promised to Abraham that through his seed all the nations will be blessed. So Christ came as Abraham's seed and he fulfilled the promise of blessing to all the nations. How did he fulfill it? Saying to his disciples, go forth and make disciples of all nations. baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And then, as the gospel spread throughout the earth, by divine assent, and here I change the translation, in order to put to the test the faith in God, pagan kings stirred up a great persecution against the Christians everywhere.

[04:27]

of the Word of God became man. He sent his apostles to preach the gospel and to baptize. There was persecution. And then comes the era of the martyrs. Because many martyrs, along with Peter, the Archbishop of Alexandria, through many and sundry tortures, were crowned with a victorious death, the Christian faith gained much ground and was strengthened in every land and every island throughout all the churches. As a result of the courage of the martyrs, the faith is strengthened in all the churches. And as a result, and the transition will be from that time on. Monasteries started coming into being and places for ascetics who were known for their chastity and the renunciation of their possession. For monastic life, the origin of monastic life is presented as the fruit of the fervor of the church, which is a fruit of the courage of the martyrs.

[05:38]

And so very often we hear that idea that the origin of monastic life was a kind of reaction after the Constantine Peace, a reaction to lukewarm church, and monks wanted to replace the martyrs. And it's not the way the early monks, at least the Pakaman monks, conceived it. They conceived monastic life as a result of the fervor, something that is integrated in the whole movement of the history of salvation. That started from the Word of God in all eternity, the creation, Abraham, the prophets, Christ, the apostles, martyrs, and man. That's the whole history which is going on, and we are a part of that story. So when monks who were former pagans, or when monks who had converted to Christianity from paganism, saw the struggles and the patience of the martyrs, they started a new life.

[06:43]

And then it was said, And this is a quotation from Hebrew, chapter 11, verse 37 and 38. That quotation comes very, very often in the Bahamian sources. It's applied to monks extremely often. Three or four times, I think, in the Book of Perseus and other places. Quotation is, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, wandering over deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. Just keep track of it, early monks. Thus the founder treats with proper piety and a harder assistance, holding before their eyes, day and night, not only the crucified Christ, but also the martyrs whom they had seen struggle so much." So monastic life is not something which is proper to Christianity. We find it in all the great cultures, but monastic life lived by Christians finds its motivation in the example of Christ and the example of martyrs.

[07:49]

The life of our truly virtuous and most ascetic Father Anthony was like that of the great Elijah and Elisha and of John the Baptist. When the early monks want to find the prototypes of their life, they go back through the scripture to John the Baptist at the turning point of the Old and New Testament and to the prophets of the Old Testament, especially Elijah and Elisha. Here they stop there, but some of the monks go back as far as to Adam and Eve. They said that the early monks were as Adam in the paradise. And so, first month. But they want to go back to the paradisiac state. It's difficult to go further. The most holy archbishop, Athanasius, gives as much written evidence about him after his death, and at the same time states that the behavior of our holy father Amun, the archmonk of the brothers of Montenitria, and of Theodore, his companion, was the same.

[08:56]

The meaning of that sentence is that what Athanasius wrote about Antony, it tells us also what was the life of all the other fathers of Niteria. So that's really what it was. Athanasius did not want to make a biography in the way we understand a biography today, but a book about monastic life. It was a kind of apology of the monks and a theology of monastic life. And so it says as much about all the other monks of Niteria as about the one who's supposed to have been called Anthony. And we know that, since grace poured from the lips of the Blessed One, who blesses all, Christ, for he visited the earth, and instead of filling it with grief and sighs, he infused it with an overwhelming spirit, they say, an intoxicating spirit. I don't like too much that translation. Throughout the country from among those who took to monastic life, many became admirable fathers, as has already been said, and their names are in the Book of the Living.

[10:11]

And this is important here. In Egypt and in Ethiopia, not many had turned to the monastic life up to the time of the persecutions by Diocletian and Maximian. But after that, look the other of reality. After the persecution, the bishops led people to God according to the teaching of the apostles. And the repentance of the nation or the conversion of the nations yielded a rich harvest. Then there was a man named Pacomius. So Pacomius arise as the conversion, as one of the true of that whole evolution, starting with the Word of God, coming into the history of mankind. born of pagan parents in the tribe, who having received great mercy, became a Christian. And having made progress, he became a perfect man. It is necessary to recount his life from childhood on for the glory of God, who calls everyone from everywhere to his wondrous life.

[11:17]

What we know about Pakomuth really begins with his conversion at the age of 20. but of course when we uh... that uh... the like the same we have to find something about him during his childhood and so they have a few paragraphs about his childhood so that was the prologue and i think it help us to see to it tachomeres is not uh... kind of uh... spontaneous generation something that appears, somebody that appears spontaneously in uh... in egypt outside of any context is a fruit of the whole evolution it's uh... one one link in the chain of the tradition. The tradition that goes very far back and comes down to us and we are still a part of it, I mentioned. And maybe we could ask ourselves at this point, why to study the tradition? Why to study that part of tradition as any other part?

[12:19]

I think it's important to ask that question at the beginning of this seminar, in which we will study Pachomius and Cassius, two important persons in the monastic tradition. I think we study tradition in order to get in touch with a very rich experience. John Sarnoff, this afternoon, spoke to us about the importance of that theme of experience. And we don't study tradition in order to find the definition of what monastic life will be in the abstract. Not even to find examples to imitate. If we read, for example, the Apothek Mata, in order to find examples, we will find all kinds of contradictory examples. because no one of those fathers claimed to give a teaching that would be good for everybody at all times. They give an answer to that very concrete person who comes to them and a person says to the father, father give me a word, a word for me.

[13:27]

So he gives a word for him. But through that word that he gives to him, we can began to understand what was the experience that he was living, that he was conveying to his disciple. So we don't also study tradition in order to find answers to present problems. We have problems today as everybody on earth has already had, but they are our own problems. and we are the only ones who can solve them. So it's useless to ask the only ones to solve our problems. They did solve them, their own problems, but the reason why they are great and they are still not. So if we go back to them, it's in order to get in touch with a very rich experience, as I said, their experience and our own experience. And it's by getting in touch with their experience that we can gradually live more and more consciously our own spiritual experience.

[14:32]

Because it's the same spirit that was inspiring them and which is inspiring us. It's basically the same experience that we are living. And I think this is basically the approach of Lectio Divina. If we read the fathers, it's not to learn a thing. It's not to to get more information about monastic life. But to get more information is to be formed, to be transformed, is to get in touch with the Spirit speaking in us. I think that's the approach of the Gospel too. Christ in the New Testament does not give us lectures about dogmatic theology or moral theology or anything like that. He's just speaking to us about his experience. It's a spiritual experience. It says to us that He is the Father. That He is Father and He is One. And they are united in love. And they are the common spirit. And then he says that if we love Him, if we observe His commandments, we can have the same experience.

[15:36]

His Father and He will come in us, they will make their dwelling in us, and we will be one with the Father and the Spirit as Father and Son are one. That's the whole question of experience. And then the New Testament is the disciples of Christ and the early Christian generation who conveyed to us through those writings their own faith experience of Christ. And so all our monastic sources are the same thing. Each moment in the history of monastic life is a moment of the dialogue between God and his people, God and some members of his people who are not. And so through that dialogue we receive a challenge, we receive a call. So they receive a call and they answer it. And so they transmit to us a call in their own answer to that call.

[16:37]

their own answer and the cow cannot be divided. It's lived in one reality. So by receiving that cow to monastic life and to radical Christian life through the experience of early months to live before us throughout the centuries, then that cow we have to integrate it and to live it. And then that cow, as we will live it, will be a cow for the next generation. And that's the way that we are a part of the tradition, as much as any generation before us. But we are not a part of it if we are not linked with the generation before us. And we are not if we are not oriented toward what is coming, the eschatology and the next generation. So, now let's go back to Pachomius. I first lived in Egypt at the end of the third century, beginning of the fourth century.

[17:43]

I was born in 292 and died in 347. Monastic life existed much before, so he is not the founder of monastic life. Monastic life, it's impossible to say that monastic life was founded on such and such a time. You can say that the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, were found by Scythian missionaries, such as they led St. Francis in the 12th century, founded the Franciscan and so on. But monastic life is not something that was founded at such a place and such a time. It's a whole movement. That's very old, which is not, as I said at the beginning, not specifically Christian. It existed in India and many other cultures thousands of years before Christ. That's a way of living human life. And it has its value as such. And that's the reason why it can be assumed in Christianity to express the Christian experience.

[18:45]

So it's very important to acknowledge, first of all, the value of monastic life as a way of living a human life, if we want to see it as a way of expressing the Christian experience. The same thing as, for example, many other aspects of Christian life, celibacy for example. Celibacy is a legitimate form of human life and adds a value in itself in the natural level. And there's a reason why it can be integrated into Christian life to express some dimension of the Christian experience. First, we have to acknowledge its value as a form of human life. Same thing for monastic life. And it existed not only in great religious traditions like Hinduism, but also among great Greek philosophers. And as a matter of fact, most of the vocabulary used by the Christian monastic authors, especially in Greek, were used by the Greek philosophers in the time of Pythagoras and so on.

[19:54]

Ascesis, Anachoresis, all those words came from that part. But even within Christianity, monasticism did not arise in Egypt at such a time in history. It grew out from the vitality of each local church throughout all the East at the same time. More or less at the same time, all the local church in Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, Cappadocia. It was a kind of spontaneous generation. And in Egypt at the time of Pachomius, there was different type of monasticism, hermits and group of hermits living together. Pachomius was the founder of the koinonia, which is the cenobitic form of monastic life in Egypt. When we speak about our founders, whether it is the fathers of Ceto or Saint Benedict or Saint Pachomius,

[20:55]

we tend to have the idea that at some point in their life they had a very clear ideal or a very clear idea of what they would have to found. And then the rest of their life was to implement that. That's not the way that all of them lived or experienced it. They just... The way they founded their community was a painful and difficult way. They were groping and searching and trying to see the will of God day after day, and walking in the dark most of the time, and discovering just bit by bit what God wanted of them. And it's one of the wonderful things they realized, well realized, that they knew it was what God had wanted them to do. And so maybe the best thing to do to understand what was Pacomian conception of community is to follow his own evolution.

[22:05]

Are we alright at that? I was led by God for that. I just mentioned his conception of community but I don't like that expression. I think men like Pacomian did not have any conception. monastic life was. They were not men of concepts. They were men of vision, of life. So they lived it. They did not have a preconception that then they apply. They just lived being always faithful to the inspiration of the spirit. And so let's follow his own evolution during at least the first years of his life. Pacomius was a pagan. He was born from a pagan family. in Upper Egypt, just to situate it geographically. I suppose you all know that. So this is Egypt. This is Lower Egypt, because the Nile is flowing towards the sea. And this is Lower Egypt, and here are most of the monastic circles that we know.

[23:11]

Niteria, and Skete, and the South, and most of the apothecary that came from that area here. close to Alexandria. Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city, where all kinds of influence from all the parts of the world came. It was a harbor. And it was considered as more or less outside of Egypt, a city by itself. But then if you go up the north, you have the Fayoum here, and then north and north, somewhere here, you have the place where the Pacifists lived. It was a very poor area, very far away from Alexandria. Practically no influence, no philosophical influence, no Greek influence came here. Nobody spoke, practically nobody spoke Greek here. The only people who lived there were very poor, Coptic peasants. And as John mentioned this afternoon, most of Egypt is a desert. So you don't have to go very far to find a desert.

[24:13]

A few miles or a few hundred yards sometimes on each side of the Nile is a place that can be cultivated. But as soon as you go a mile or two from the Nile, you are in the mountain and in the desert. And Coptic, which is a very poor language, has the same word for desert, mountain, and cemetery. Because you will not bury your dead in the water, so you bury them in the mountain, which is entirely a desert. So a lot of deserted villages existed there, and some of these monasteries were founded in deserted villages, where the peasant had gone away because it was too poor. So we'll come back to that, just to see where they live. So, at the age of 20, Paternus is made a convict, because Egypt was under the Roman Empire at that time, and Roman Empire emperor was at war with some king of the Far East, and he needed soldiers.

[25:27]

And when the emperor needed soldiers, he would go to one of his... the country under his power, jurisdiction, and made a certain number of young men convicts, prisoners, and bring them to war. history does not say whether they were good soldiers or not, but they were made prisoners and brought with chains towards the fighting place. So they are put on boats and brought towards Alexandria. And during the night they stop in a city called Thebes, which is the capital of Upper Egypt. And they are put in jail for the night. And some Christians of the place, there is a Christian community in Thebes, some Christians come to the jail to bring some food and some drink and things that they need to those prisoners.

[26:29]

And so this is the first contact of Pachomius with Christianity, which is the contact with the country charity of the country, Christian community. And this will give a mark, a very deep mark on his conception of Christian love, service, charity, fraternal love. And he asked, who are those people, and why they do that to them? They don't know. And he said that those are Christians, and they are named Christians according to the name of Christ, And they do that to, they do all kind of good things to everyone for the love of Christ. and the love of God was created in everyone. So Pachomius then during the night, he makes a prayer in his jail. And the prayer has different form according to different lives. We saw this morning that the group of the seminar that the lives have been compiled and translated and each new scribe, each new translator added a few things.

[27:43]

So the prayer becomes longer and longer with each one of the new scribe or new constituent. But in the Coptic, in the early Coptic lives, the Communion says, Jesus, because he has been told that Christians are the disciples of Jesus the Christ. So he says, Jesus the Christ, if you deliver me, I will do your will, and I will serve mankind all the days of my life. So you have here the two, some of the most important elements in the whole spirituality of Paragonius. The search for the will of God, do your will, and I will serve mankind. So he has been served by Christian, so he commits himself to serving mankind the rest of his life. And so all his life then will be to discover day after day what is the real will of God on him.

[28:44]

And then he knows in a general way that the will of God will be to serve mankind. But in what way does God want him to serve mankind? And he will find different ways. It is just gradually through seeking after ways of serving mankind, that he will gather people around him and he will create a community and so on. In the Greek life here, that we have in that translation, the prayer is a bit more elaborated. He said, God maker of heaven and earth. So he has been told about Christ. So God maker of heaven and earth. Probably he did not use those words. If you look upon my lower state, if you see the Greek text, that means, if you look upon my lower state, this is almost verbatim a quotation from the Magnificat.

[29:47]

And Mary says, my soul magnifies the Lord because he has looked upon the lowliness of his servant. It is the same. It is exactly the same word. So I don't think Pachomius at that time knew the magnificat and quirkiness, especially not in Greek. And so you see that the, that's been a bit elaborated. But one interesting remark is that it says here that If you free me from that affliction, I shall minister to your will all the days of my life, and loving all men, I shall serve them according to your commandment. In the sacred Greek life, that was re-elaborated later on, when it is said by Bacchomius, I shall serve mankind, it is replaced by

[30:50]

I shall serve you, God." It's very interesting that that Greek life, Second Greek life, is consistent. Every time Pachomius speaks about serving man, the Second Greek life changes into serving God. It seems that it was considered as unfitting to a monk to serve mankind. So it is much more edifying to serve God. So they replaced mankind or man by God. But for Pachomius, there was a tension between the two. It was just the same one thing. So, Israel was very successful, because a few days later, the war was finished. And so the conscript, the convicts were... End of side one. Please continue on side two. ...doesn't forget about his promise. Very often people who have made promises

[31:51]

during a storm on the sea or a situation like that, they forget about that. But it did not. So he went back to upper Egypt, to Teba'il, in his own country, and he stopped in a place called Kenaboskiya in the Carthage. And there, there is a community, a Christian. So they say here, He came directly to the upper Egypt and visited the church of a little town called Kinnabaskia. I think we should translate, he came to the church. And the church is not the physical building, it's the congregation, the ecclesia, the group of Christians living there. The church of a little town called Kinnabaskia. And there, according to the early Coptic life, He just lived there, established himself in that village, and began to grow vegetables in the garden.

[32:55]

And he grew those vegetables for himself, to make his own living, for the poor of the area, and for pilgrims who happened to pass there. So he already began to serve man. And he does that for about three years. And in the Greek life here, they make a kind of summary. They say he came there, he was baptized, and then he decided to become a monk. But it took three years to do that. And during those three years, even before he was baptized, he was serving men, and people came to live there, and to establish their dwelling there, and to live around him, because through the life, he was good to them. This is consistent in the life of Pagomius. Every time he comes to a place, people come to him. And people live around him. And why? Because he is good to them. So this is one characteristic of Pagomius.

[33:56]

Just his very way of practicing charity make people gather around him. He is, by charism, a center of the community. And so after a while he's baptized. He's catechized and then he's baptized, probably in the night of Easter, as was the custom. And I should mention that here, immediately, it is very interesting to note that many of the monks, disciples of Paganism, came directly from Paganism to monastic life. The entering into monastic life was at the same time the entering into the church. So the entering into a monastic community was... their way of entering into the church. And they were catechized in the monastery, and so every year all the catechumens, the monks who were catechumens, were baptized at Easter for the big celebration.

[35:03]

So the baptism had an extreme importance in the life of the monks. And at that early period of monastic life, we don't have the monastic profession, as we have the Dharam. And the light is considered as a way, a way proper to monk, a way of implementing or realizing the promises of baptism. So when you read in the life of Prakomya, some texts were the Pachomius or Theodore or Arceus remind the monks of the promises they have made. Be careful, it's not always the promises of monastic profession, it's the promises of baptism. And a monastic life is the realization, the faithfulness to those promises. But during the night he is baptized, he has a vision, one of the first visions he has. and it is surprising that in the Dalai Lama community there are comparatively few visions if we think about other monastic sources which are full of visions.

[36:13]

It's very sober. And so he has a vision, a beautiful one. On the night on which he was found worthy of the mystery. That's a beautiful expression. He was found worthy of the mystery. The mystery is the mystery of baptism, yoga, He had a vision. What did he see? He saw the dew of heaven fall upon him. And when the dew got in his right hand and turned into solid honey, which fell upon the earth, then he heard someone say, Heed what is taking place, for it shall come to pass in the future. that would come to be realized to you in the future and the other lives make that prophecy more and more clear, clearer and clearer. The meaning of that, the symbolism of that, is quite easy to understand. The dew of Tehran, of course, is a symbolism of baptism, the water of baptism. And the water of baptism that comes to his hand, then comes into his hand.

[37:16]

What comes into his hand is the symbol of the Eucharist, that he has received at the same time as the baptism. How is it the symbol of the Eucharist? With the pouring? In the customs of the Egyptian church at that time, those who were baptized in the night of their baptism, they received with the Eucharist a mixture of honey and milk. The honey is for me a clear allusion to the Eucharist. So what he has received is an integration into the church through the mysteries. the grace of conversion, the grace of becoming a Christian. And that grace that he has received in his hand, now fall upon the earth, for that grace he has to communicate it. to all mankind, to all the nations. Remember the text at the beginning, the promise made to Abraham that in your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

[38:20]

So he has to, in a way, to communicate that grace to all the nations. Now, the rest of his life will be to discover how to do that. How does God want him to do that? So he still continued to live in the same village for a while, serving everybody, being good to everyone. And then there is an epidemic in the village and he takes care of the sick people. And then after a while, he decides to become a monk. He feels the need for a formation and there is a senior, an elder, who is called Palaman, who lives on the outskirts of that village in the desert, that means a few yards from the village. and that senior parliament has disciples around him, the same way as in our Egypt, and so Fatimid go and become a disciple of Fatimid.

[39:22]

This is a new period of his life, a big one, but I think we'll have to wait for tomorrow, after tomorrow, to see the second part of that globing searching. End of side two. Please wind tape to the end.

[39:38]

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