the great turning point of her life. And I told her this morning about this dream she has about the golden cross being lowered down in the context of the quotation from the Song of Songs that my beloved is a bundle of myrrh for me and he shall abide between my breasts. Well, just for some reason, This episode of the cross means a great deal to me because of one of the old monks we had in my monastery. And his name was Father Amadeus. And Father Amadeus was on his very last leg when I arrived as an apostolate and novice. And about the only thing he was able to do in the community was to give retreats. And in those days, it was an enormous community. There were three or four retreats going on all the time. You had to make a three-day retreat before you became a novice and before you make simple profession, a week-long retreat before you make solemn profession.

[01:09]

Then for all of the minor orders and everyone in the choir and the bishop eventually went on to the priesthood as a general rule in those days. And so just retreat conferences right and left. And when I got the habit, his conferences were just astonishing. He had a great love for Elizabeth of Dijon and the mystery of the Trinity. But he would sit there, kind of a rather large man, and very plain features. And very slow speaking, he was from Luxembourg, and he'd come from a Jewish family, but he had been educated partly in Ireland at Mount Melare. Then he had joined the Columban Fathers, and so forth. Well, I'll tell you more about that in a moment. But he'd read a text by Don Marmion about the Blessed Trinity. And then there'd be this long, long, long pause. Then you could... You'd hear, Oh, Beata Trinitas.

[02:12]

Oh, Blessed Trinity. What can you say about the Blessed Trinity? And a long, long pause. Oh, Beata Trinitas. But he had this tremendous love for the Mass. I mean, that was so, so clear. And I remember he started blanking out on celebrating Mass. And then we always had to have a priest with him to help him in case he blanked out. And then came the point, of course, where he had to stop celebrating Mass. And I never also get the anguish in his face when it was All Souls Day, the day before All Saints. And Dom and James announced that all the priests could celebrate three Masses. And Father Idubal turned around to him and made signs, are you going to celebrate three Masses tomorrow? And the poor man just almost broke out into tears and just shook his head. But I used to get permission to visit with him in the infirmary. And you would find him there seated in his room with a dictionary.

[03:15]

Now, the man knew about eight languages. He was just brilliant linguistically. And he would be reading an English dictionary and trying to remember the words because his mind was going, this brilliant mind, and he's having this difficulty in communication. And so the whole of our conversation, I never stayed more than 10 or 15 minutes, but the whole of our conversation would just be repeating the names of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph slowly. I mean, some of the best conversations I guess I've ever had. And then he had to withdraw more and more. But our infirmary at that time was on the second floor. and you could look into the door that led to the chapter room on the outside there. And we novices used to file out choir novices through that door into the novitiate. And we had about 90 choir novices at that time. And Old Father Amadeus would know this, you know, when anyone who had been a novice was no longer there. And that used to shake them very much, you know, a novice leaving the community.

[04:20]

And he had that kind of a personal concern for each one of the brethren. And I remember one feast of the Annunciation, there was a chapel in the infirmary. And he had a hard time, as I said, communicating. And he had arthritis. So we had this enormous rosary for him. It was about that big. So he could hold it in his gnarled old hands. And so he was sitting in the back pew in the infirmary. And It was about the time for Vespers, and all of a sudden, you know, this big smile comes across his face, and he staggers up with his rosary to the altar. He lays his rosary, the last thing, you know, that he has on the altar, I suppose as a gift for a blessed mother. But, you know, it's so humiliating for him to have his needs taken care of, you know, by other people, because he had always been rather fiercely independent. But as I said, I never will forget and visiting him and reading the Passion and things like that in the last couple of weeks of his life.

[05:24]

But do you all know what the night watch was in those days? We'd go around making the rounds of the monastery at night with a special watch, and there would be a key at various stations, and you'd insert it so you could prove that someone had been there looking for fires and so forth. So I was on the midnight night watch. And I went through the infirmary and the light was on in his room. So I looked in because he used to sometimes sneak out and be found wandering around the cloister about two o'clock in the morning. And he would, I think two or three times, he wouldn't break silence, but he was carrying a piece of paper and he had managed to scrawl on it very clumsily the message, today I am a priest and for 50 years. Now, actually, he'd been a priest for about 56 years. But he was always reliving the anniversary of his priestly ordination. Now, I might as well tell you why. Because when he had been a missionary with the Columban Fathers in Australia, he lost his faith.

[06:30]

And apparently, I inherited his notebooks. And the prior didn't know what he was giving me, nor did I. When he passed them on, I passed them on finally to Father Lewis. But he had come to the monastery after, through the prayers of a friend and a help, he had regained this tremendous gift of faith. He was overwhelmed, like God had given him back this gift of faith, that he wanted to spend the whole of his life now just being able, at the most, to serve Mass. And so I know he spent two years at the monastery before he was able to celebrate Mass again, and no one knew why except the abbot, and I presume one or two others. But when he died, Dom James wasn't there. And the priory at that time had no idea why for two years he hadn't been celebrating Mass. But so he had this intense love for the Mass and for the priesthood. And when he's able to celebrate Mass again, there's just a resurrection from the dead.

[07:32]

And he was so grateful for that. And so when he celebrated the 50th anniversary of his ordination at the priesthood, that was just the most incredible thing. So no matter what day it was, he was always reliving that day of manifesting God's goodness and forgiveness and love. So at any rate, I looked in the room and there was Father Amadeus lying in this child's bed, the kind of... What do you call it? A guardrail? So they can't climb out of the dead? Well, he had that. And at this stage, you know, he was beyond talking, and I think beyond being able to think any intelligible consecutive thoughts at all. But he was looking at his crucifix on the wall. And all he was doing was making these enormous, very slow, solemn signs of the cross. I've never seen any more beautiful sign of the cross in my whole life. And that just summed up, I think, the whole of his faith and the whole of his love and the whole of absolutely everything.

[08:40]

And that just brings so vividly in my mind and my memory, those great signs of the cross and what a sign of the cross can be. So every time I look at this text about Blessed Alice, and when she sees this golden cross being lowered down, so she can come closer and see it, I think of all Father Amadeus. He is an incredible person. Well, actually, maybe I spent too much time on that, but... that Crofton is expressing what the essence of her experience is going to be now for the rest of her life. And that text about the bundle of myrrh, that means so much, not only to monastics in general, but I think to particularly anyone who has a love for St. Bernard. Because when, at the Revolution, St. Bernard's tomb at Clairvaux was broken open and his bones removed,

[09:41]

and transferred to a local parish church, they found among his remains a little wooden plaque. And on the plaque was written in black ink, which was still very legible, this text of the Song of Songs, My Beloved is unto me a bundle of myrrh that shall dwell between my breasts. And apparently it was a little plaque that he had had in his tiny little cell under the night stairs to the dormitory. And this text had meant so much to him that it hadn't been buried with him. And we superstitions have a special love for some of the texts of St. Bernard from the Song of Songs. And for Bernard, in this text, he says, from the very beginning of my conversion to God, that's his monastic conversion, his entry into monastic life, to make up for all the merits which I knew myself to lack, I applied myself with diligence to collect together and to bind into a bundle and to place between my breasts all the cares and furrows which my Lord had to endure.

[10:52]

And then he enumerates all the sufferings of Jesus. In the first place, the sufferings of his childhood years. Then the labors he underwent in preaching, the fatigue of his journeyings, his watching and prayer, his temptations and fasting, his tears of compassion, and it goes on. And you also, dearest brethren, if you are wise, will never suffer this precious little bundle of myrrh to be taken from the center of your heart, deepest pain, even for the space of a single hour, that you will keep constantly before your minds and ponder in assiduous meditation all that Christ endured for your sins, so that, like a spouse, you also may be able to say, a bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me. You shall abide between my breasts. Now, obviously, this is incomplete, and Bernard's spirituality by itself, because he's a big man of the resurrection, too. But he has, like Don Damascus Vinson, this kind of unity of the paschal mystery.

[11:54]

There's a certain integrity and wholeness there. But at any rate, the passion of Jesus is certainly part of that. And there's a story about St. Bernard, and this collection of stories I've been quoting from, but how one time he was visiting a daughter house of Clairvaux, and a monk was looking at and praying by himself in the little oratory. And so Bernard was prostrate, stretched out on the ground, and praying before the crucifix. And you see very often pictures of Jesus leaning down from the crucifix and embracing Bernard. Well, actually, I think according to the story, it's like the veneration of the cross on a Good Friday day. crucifixes lying on the ground. And in Cistercian monasteries, they only allowed one image, and that was the cross with the crucifix. And it had to be painted rather than a raised image. No statues of Our Lady or anything like that, but a puritanical.

[12:56]

So here Jesus is on the cross, and basically Bernard is doing what we used to do on Good Friday, venerating the cross and kissing the feet of Jesus on the cross. And then according to the story, this monk sees Jesus all of a sudden lean forward and embrace Bernard. And that's all that happens. But this is a way of saying that the Lord Jesus is drawing Bernard into this sharing of this redemptive mystery on the cross. Bernard is being called to participate at real depth. in the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I think that this is basically the meaning of this dream that Alice has at this particular point. Well, then what happens immediately after that is she gets leprosy. And apparently from all of the clinical descriptions, which Father Martin can probably verify, it really was leprosy.

[13:58]

In those days, they didn't know the difference between leprosy and maybe a dozen other diseases, but this was the real thing. And maybe some of you know that in the Middle Ages, there were rites for the, what do you call it, the exclusion of lepers from the community, and rather terrifying rites. The person who had contracted leprosy, as soon as that was verified, would go to the church, And the community would, the Christian parish, would go to the church too. And the leper would have to stay in the back corner of the church. And then they celebrated a mass for the leper, a funeral mass. Because the idea was that the leper was already, for practical purposes, dead. So that at the end of the requiem mass, the priest came with a bell and a cask. which he blessed and gave to the leper and gave the leper a special garb.

[15:02]

And the cask was for the leper to use to collect water in because the leper couldn't drink directly from a river or a well or a fountain. So the leper had to take the cask, put it in and get the water and drink from the cask. And then the parish was obliged to build a leper's hut for the person. And then from that time on, that person was not allowed in church. was not allowed to share in the sacraments. And then the person just rotted away until on his or her deathbed he received the last rites. So that was a terrifying thing. Now, Alice has it much better, because she's much loved in the community. The text here describes her absolute horror of being separated from this community that she loves so passionately, and they love her too. And it says they're deprived of this, and they call her now a light, this great light. I spoke about this theme of light. And so there's this terrifying description of what happens when they build a little house for her near the apse of the church, and her first night excluded from the community.

[16:13]

And so it tells you, she's just absolutely torn apart. Then what does she do? She flees to the Lord Jesus. And then there's this wonderful scene, which I think would be difficult for us to try to imagine. She drinks from the blood and water that flow from the open side of Christ. Now, this is a wonderful theological expression of exactly what we find, you know, in the Gospel of St. John, where the lance of the centurion opens up the side of Jesus on the cross, and blood and water come forth. And we all know the traditional, characteristic exegesis, that these are the sacraments that flow from the heart of Christ. This is the earliest form of expression of devotion to the Sacred Heart. And I think it's just a magnificent expression, that from the very depth of Jesus' being on the cross, flow forth our life.

[17:17]

And now she's going to be associated with Jesus more and more in this pastoral mystery. And she's living her life and just drinking from the very forces of salvation. You shall drink from the wounds or from the well of salvation. And you think of the Asperages that we sing on Sundays, and you think too of the Vidi Agam, I saw the water coming forth from the temple of Christ's body, and it goes forth and it communicates salvation to those who receive it. So now, Alice, because of her leprosy now, is in this terrible situation, but it brings you closer to the very heart of the mystery of salvation. And the text... is this, almost unbearably beautiful, that explains that when Alice gets her leprosy, it says that God wants to take this vessel of election.

[18:19]

I mean, she's very specially loved. We're all loved in a very, very special way. But she's very specially loved by God. And he wants to take her away from all temporal disturbances, and all the stains of the world, and to be utterly purified. He says it's not because she was guilty of anything, and he wasn't punishing her, but because he wanted to visit her, like a bridegroom coming to his bride. So in this absolute privacy and hiddenness, this is where this great love between Jesus and Alice comes, is going to grow and evolve. And then this is so difficult for us to understand. It calls this leprosy a pledge and a sign of perfect love, some expression of love, to mark that person with leprosy and just have the person rot away until death.

[19:26]

But this is a sign of God's love for her, so that she can more freely give herself to God and then within the bridal chamber of her own heart, okay, be there, okay, with the Lord Jesus. And then it says, so he strikes her with this incurable disease, leprosy, and then there's this understatement of the censoring, okay, which not many want to have, pautis desideribli, okay, desirable by very few, okay, but this is nevertheless as the author understands it, a sign of God's love. Well, the truth is, there's loads and loads of us who have had experiences like this. When we have been struck over something that's humiliating, or enormously difficult, or apparently unjust, and something that really just absolutely tears us to pieces,

[20:28]

And this, in God's providence, for those who truly love God, can become the occasion for the fulfillment of our real vocation. Something very, very deep. So the very things that seem to be the greatest obstacle to us in God's providence become the occasion for our getting closer to God and fulfilling our real vocation. Here, she seems to have lost everything. Her life in the community, her participation in the life of the community, and if all in view to a deeper fulfillment and enrichment of her true vocation. So when we're in a bad way, or we're in a situation in which we really seem to have lost everything, that is maybe when the real action is going to begin. So, she flies to Jesus. And so they have to build a hut for her, and they have even a little chapel attached to it. And then they build a hut apparently every four years for her.

[21:29]

They burn the first one down and build another. And so I don't know exactly how long. I should be able to figure out how many times that happened. But she's been living in her hut for four years, and she's able to go into the back of the church and receive just the sacred host in the Eucharist. But that's a wonderful thing that she can do that much. And she's able to follow the officers somewhat, because her hut is very practically flush with the apse of the church, and she can hear the sisters singing. And from the window that opens up toward the apse, she can follow some of the officers. But she's still pretty much excluded. And so at any rate, they've just built, after four years, a new hut for her. This is, I think, one of the high points of medieval Latin ideography. So she enters now for the first time, this new hut that they've built for her, and she finds the Lord waiting for her, standing with outspread arms, like Jesus on the cross, in the middle of the hut.

[22:39]

And then he welcomes and receives her in his arms in an embrace, like a natural embrace. And he says, Welcome, dearest daughter. This is very, very interesting, too, because Christ as he is in the rule, you know, Christ is Father. He's Abba, the spirituality of Christ is Father. And they just seem to, I don't think they thought it out clearly in the Christian tradition, but they just seem to instinctively feel this. So Jesus can call Alice's daughter as if he is her father because he communicates life. He raises up life. And so he's the father of the fall. And then she says, welcome, dearest daughter. Be welcome again. He says, oh, long devoured in this tabernacle of my covenant. So this leper's hut is going to be the tabernacle where God dwells with man, where God is with us, where their promises are fulfilled.

[23:40]

Now remember how when she began in her home, she was in the chamber. And she goes into the monastery, the chamber of Our Lady. And now she's in the tabernacle, where God himself is dwelling. Now he says, as long as you're going to be in this body, I'm going to remain with you. And this is one of them. And I shall be, as it were, your cellarer. And you all know. Do you still retain the name cellarer here? Okay, well. So he's the one who provides. for everyone in the monastery, all the material goods. And Saint Benedict says the seller has to be as it were a father to the community. And this is the only place that I know in hagiography where Jesus is presented as a feller. You know, he's dried, grim, he's this or he's that. But feller, I think this is wonderful. And I was giving some conferences at our Italian community of nuns at a place called Vittorchiano, some conferences in hagiography.

[24:46]

I was telling them about Blessed Alice and lots of others, too. And I didn't realize that one of the nuns, who's just a marvelous artist, was making sketches of some of these scenes. And so she gave them to me at the end of the week that I set Vittoriano. And for Alice, she had Alice lying in her bed, and the bed is just like the beds that the nuns have in the infirmary in Vittoriano. And I know because I distributed communion. in the infirmary, and so she has Alice lying there with a big beatific smile on her face, and one of her hands has already dropped off, and she has this metal hook there, and Jesus is there by the bedside with a halo, and there's a long beard, and he's carrying provisions in an arm, and there's a wonderful Italian provolone cheese there, an Italian faucet, and And he's saying, I'm going to be your fellow. And that's our monastic spirit.

[25:48]

So I think that's a very, very beautiful, beautiful scene. And I'm going to, let's see. I'm going to skip over a scene where a local lady is snooping, and she sees Alice in her little chapel, and the chapel is just flooded with light, and Alice seems to be blazing with light, too. But this is part of the progression of the light theme, where light is just now bursting forth from this poor young woman, okay, who's afflicted with leprosy. I'm going to go on to a weird experience she has now. This is... couple of years before 1250 and there was a new devotion that was spreading like wildfire in the church just about this time they had discovered the remains now there's some historical problems about this i know but they had discovered the remains in around cologne of the 11 000 virgins and saint ursula the scholars have a little bit of difficulty coping with 11 000 virgins okay

[26:57]

who were all martyring. I'm not going to go into that trial. But it was a tremendous devotion in all kinds of places, especially communities of women. Because here you have these people who are consecrated to Christ by their virginity and who shed their blood, the blood of martyrdom for the Lord. And this massive number. I have unfortunate associations was on our liturgy commission when we were working on the calendar of an international committee. And the church, I think, had dropped the commemoration of the feast of St. Ursula and the 11,000 virgins, at least in the universal calendar. And so the question was, do we want to keep a commemoration in the Cistercian calendar? Now, this is Cistercian for the strict observance. And we had... an observer from the other branch of the Cistercian family. He used to be called a common observant.

[27:59]

Don Bernard Kahl, the abbot of Oatreeve in Switzerland, just a wonderful, wonderful man and tremendously devout. Just, I don't know anyone who has greater love for Cistercian traditions than Don Bernard Kahl and his monasteries in all 12th century Cistercian monastery. Beautiful, beautiful community. But we Trappists didn't want to have anything to do with St. Ursula and the 11,000 virgins. And Don Bernard Cowell was rather strong on retaining either a feast or a commemoration. And he said, in Germany and in Austria, especially among their Cistercians, there's a great devotion to these 11,000 virgins. And he went so far as to say there's one convent of nuns in Austria where they have a procession through the cloister on the feast day of the 11,000 virgins. And he says, each of the nuns carries as a relic a skull of one of the virgins.

[29:05]

And my immediate response, and I said it out loud, was... by God, mass psychosis. And it was terrible because I really hurt Don Bruton. I never would have done that intentionally. But every time I read this episode, I find it a little upsetting to begin with. But it goes like this. It's the feast day of the 11,000 virgins. And Alice, as usual, is listening to The Office. from a distance. And she's filled with an enormous sadness because she can't be with her sisters and celebrate this office and praise for the 11,000 virgins with them. And so, as usual, she turns to the Lord and she points out that she's so upset about it and she says, I ask you, and this is interesting too, she calls him Pater Sancte, Holy Father, like Jesus addresses his father in

[30:09]

the high priestly prayer. I ask your Holy Father, and this is what I desire, now I'm unable to praise these holy virgins with my other sisters because, and then she says, of this very special gift with which you've graced me. She calls for leprosy, this very special gift, speciale dono, Po me ditaste. Ditare means to enrich, to give something to someone that's valuable. So she recognizes her leprosy as a special gift directly from God. So she says, I ask you, you have given me the special gift, but it means that I can't be with my sisters. So she says, if I can't praise these holy virgins and martyrs now with my sisters in this life, at least promise me... that I will be able to be with them and praise them in heaven and the life to come. And then Jesus said something that I used to be somewhat scandalized at.

[31:12]

And the Lord says to her, most sweet daughter, I'm not going to associate you with these virgins as you desire, but I will associate you in my kingdom in a place that's much higher, loco eminentiori. I thought this was terrible, because Jesus isn't giving her what she wants. And if he places her in a higher place, that's nice, but she's not going to be with her sisters. And that's what she wants to be. And I think it was our Father Lewis who pointed out in some of his notes about this life. I think the background of it is the kind of theological thinking you have in people like Pseudo-Dionysius, who wrote the Heavenly Hierarchy, in which you have everything arranged in the hierarchical order in creation. And you have all of the choirs of angels. Now, all of the highest choirs of angels receive everything directly from God.

[32:13]

But everything that they have, everything that they are, are for the sake of the lower orders. So everything passes from God through them to the lower choirs of angels. And from the lower choirs of angels to the whole of creation, and then everything is returned to God, you might say, in an inverse way. So that the ones who are highest for God are the ones that, in a sense, are closest to everyone that's below. And this is like, you know, the saints. The saints that are most hidden and close to God are also the ones who are closest to us, huh? You don't... Jesus, okay. The sacred humanity caught up in the Blessed Trinity, in the bosom of the Trinity. And who's closest to us? Jesus. After Jesus' Blessed Mother, he's the most hidden, secret person in the world. And she's closest to God, you know, in the order of redemption, in the Christological order. She belongs to the order of the Incarnation. And she, so close to God, is the one who's closest to us, too.

[33:19]

And to Joseph, you know, who's specially hidden, and about whom we know practically nothing, patron of the universal church. And so at any rate, now, those who are closest to God, you might say higher than any of us, everything comes to us through them, and there's this very special union of us within. So this is something to think about. Now, I don't understand this stuff, but at any rate, this is something that's worth thinking about. So I guess I have two minutes. I'll tell you one last story about this. She has a blood sister in the community. Her name is Ida. And Ida has been appointed to be more or less her special nurse. And, of course, Alice depends on Lady Ida. And then Ida takes sick and seriously ill, and she's expected to die. And, as usual, Alice begins shouting, And so she's not only upset about the imminent death of her sister, but she's mad.

[34:25]

And she's mad at the Lord. And this is, I'm quoting her directly now. Dominate me, my Lord. Know this for certain. I think in modern parlance we'd say, get this straight. Something that's very, very direct. Get this straight. If it were possible, For me to treat you as meanly as you're treating me, I wouldn't hesitate a moment. There's a theological note attached by the Jesuit editor at the Artifact Verma. Obviously, this is a mental delirium. All right. But I think this is very typically monastic in our tradition. that God and Jesus are so real and so real as persons that we can get mad at them. Now, it's obviously madness and anger that's rooted in love.

[35:29]

But there's this holy familiarity in which we can kind of shake our hands at the Lord, and he understands this, I think. And I get a little bit suspicious when you have the mystics with their flowery, and I'm like, oh, the most compassionate Lord. And so with a kind of nice flowery speech. But this real anger and hurt that Jesus would treat her and her sister in this way, I find amazingly beautiful. And you know your biblical theology, so you know what parousia is. You know, this... Oh, I don't know how we translate it. The simple confidence or familiarity, I guess, would be the term. Sorry, I see you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It has a note of delicacy about it, too. In the Greek city-state, only a citizen could speak up in the council. And because he could speak up, he had this panacea.

[36:32]

And then this is applied to children who can be familiar with those who are close to them and to their parents. And so St. Paul uses this word of the Christian who can speak up and speak up familiarly to God because God is our Father and we're God's children. So we have this simplicity of speech and conduct in our relationships with God. And this is a wonderful example. on the Tuesday, Parisia, Parisia, whichever of the accent they lie. So with that, I'll leave you, and tomorrow morning we'll get Alice even deeper into her real vocation. Actually, there are about two more minutes. And there are no objections to questions? Frankly, I don't know what I'm talking about half the time, because this is just too deep. But it's the realest stuff in the world. This being drawn into the depths of the mystery of Christ and sharing in his passion and his death and his resurrection, as Alice is doing here, and as all of us will have to do, each in his own particular way and circumstances.

[37:46]

There are lots of stories like these. I mean, of St. Spice in that time. But people here, they're kind of the great ones. Yeah, yeah, and that's a shame. No, the... There's this wonderful collection, a huge collection of stories called the Exordium Monium, the book, great book of beginnings. It was collected by a guy, a monk of Clairvaux, who became abbot of a German monastery in the early 1200s. And so it's like oral history. He knew all of these old monks from the early days, and he knew the community of Citeaux very well, although he was a monk of Clairvaux. And then he took other collections of stories like this and wrote them down. He introduced them with terrible moralizing introductions and conclusions. So if you cut out the introduction and the conclusion, you more or less have the real story. And they're just unbearably beautiful, many of them.

[38:47]

Some of them have been on the moralizing side. But for example, the monk... who sees our lady presiding in chapter all that happens is he walks into the chapter room and it seems as though he sees our lady seated in the abbot's chair in chapter and he sees the monks gathered around just like any like you are exactly right now and our blessed mother would be in this chair and she's holding like uh the mother holding divine wisdom and her child, the fairest of the sons of men. And all that happens is that she gives him to the prior to embrace and kiss, and then she gives him to the sub-prior to do the same thing, and then each monk passes the divine child around the chapter room until everyone has embraced and kissed Jesus. Now, you begin thinking what went on in our monastic chapter rooms, at least the Cistercian chapter rooms, This was the place where you heard the word of God, but it was also the place where people went to confession.

[39:48]

They didn't go to confession in church. And this was the place where they had the chapter false, where the monastic rites of reconciliation and peace were celebrated. And so you have all of this beautiful symbol of peace pervading the whole community in the chapter room, and beginning from our Blessed Mother, who's there to give the divine child to each of us. So this whole collection is just filled with stories like this. And it's absolutely amazing. beautiful when you know how to exegete these texts. Now, I don't want to make a slam about the great scholars or anything like that, but I don't think they know how to read these texts. They're worried about historicity, facticity, is it a mental delirium? And then you have real funny stories in it, too, like the monk who has his own private garden, of herbs and simples with which he makes his medicines, because he's a hypochondriac.

[40:53]

And the brethren are going down the dormitory stairs to celebrate vigils, and there is our Blessed Mother waiting at the bottom. And as they pass her, she gives them a drink from her own bowl of elixir, and they all drink this draught of devotion, you know, celebrate vigils with great cleats. And this monk comes up to her, In his turn, she says, oh no, you have your own medicine. And so he gets the point. And so you have all kinds of wonderful, crazy things. The story about Constantius that I told you, the brigand, that comes from the exordium. And most of these stories are just filled with a real theological debt. One of my favorites is the monk who had a crisis in faith, and he could no longer believe in the real presence, that bread and wine could become the body and blood of Christ.

[41:56]

And so he knew he was going to go to hell, but he certainly could not believe in the real presence. And so it becomes clear he stops going to communion. And so Cistercians went to communion every Sunday, which was extraordinary in the 12th century. And so this becomes noticeable that he's not going to communion. And then some people investigate and find out what the problem is. And so the seniors in the community then speak with them. And they go through all of the scriptural proofs. that are supposed to demonstrate that Jesus is really and truly present in the bread and wine after the consecration, and he can't accept it. And he says, I know I'm going to go to hell, but I just can't believe. And then they say, well, okay, the abbot is going to have to take care of this. So they take him to St. Bernard, and then St. Bernard does the same thing. He says, He begins explaining the theological basis, the justification of our belief in the real presence.

[42:59]

And the monk explains, you know, he just cannot believe. And then the most incredible thing, what would you do in a situation like that? Because we've had, not in my community, but I know one community where a monk lost the faith in the real presence. He had to leave the community mass. He finally left the community. But I go, what would you do? Berlin says, all right. Go to communion, because if you can't go to communion on the strength of your own faith, go to communion on the strength of my faith. So that there was so much love and communion between Bernard and his monks that the monk could go to communion on the strength of Bernard's faith, and with that he recovered his faith of the real presence. Well, that tells you something about what community life can be in a real world. monastery. And the realest thing in the world is the mystical body of Christ. And this real communion of love and faith and everything else.

[44:00]

So that's in the exhorting. I'm sorry. Sometimes I'll have to come and talk about the exhorting monument. We better be dead in a couple. We have ten more minutes. Until tomorrow. First, you've got to stuff the barge down for the whiskey. Oh, that's fair. We had a supply that was all locked up for a fruitcake. Why do you think a fruitcake is so popular? All right. Actually, there's 70. Oh, okay. Berger, right? Oh, I remember. [...]

[44:56]

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