Okay, that's the way it took place. And I think it reminds me how influenced we are by the place and the times. And I think there was something that happened in the course of his life and in the life of the community at Weston, which really changed the whole energy and identity of that community. It was different here. And, again, that's something that's important for you to see. There was Leo and John Hammond. There was Damasus and Martin Bowler. And there was different trajectories both ways. And I think both were trying to provide a suitable monastic witness. And, you know, with different places, different things happen. And we do try and understand that. But again, we have to understand it with respect to how are we living out the spirit and the structures of the rule.

[01:08]

Back to the original question, Justin there. Yeah, it's different when you don't have a congregation and a history that you're in this tradition. And for whatever else, you know, had Maria Locke, made a foundation, let's say back in 1932 here, and then sent a bunch of mucks over, it would have been very, very different. That wasn't the case. And I think what we have is something very different, and it's good. It has a stamp that's very distinctive. It's very unique. Oh, yeah, well, end of chapter 17, 18.

[02:26]

Well, of course, at the end of the, you know, our fathers did all these psalms in one day, and here we are just fumbling to get them done in, you know, a week. Well, Benedict, you know, was aware of the fact, and this is, again, this is the historian speaking, every generation looks back on the previous generations and says, boy, they really lived the life. It isn't so. Yeah, there were some people who were living it very credibly and authentically. Other people were not or were always in need of reform. I mean, there have been decadent monks in every generation. There have been monasteries that have lived a more primitive type of monasticism with great zeal, others less so. But I think what Benedict wanted and what has taken place is enough flexibility and pliancy to meet the needs of this particular place.

[03:38]

You know, one size doesn't fit all and you just have to have a genuine appreciation for what we are receiving that's the whole idea of the tradition from the people before us and how it best fits the needs of the church you know again we're back to the signs of the times we have to discern what do we need right now you know if someone says well we don't need the office well obviously you should go somewhere else because that's a given and it's what is we have How we say the office, how we make it an effective instrument of our witness is the key. And that's viable to some change, adaptation, fine-tuning. And it's not for the purpose of, okay, I'm going to impose my agenda, or we're just going to take away some of these things that are...

[04:43]

are just ridiculous. Hymns, we don't need hymns. Hymns have been there from the start. We're going to have hymns. The hymns we take me, but we're going to have. You get the sense. Benedict wants us to be able to talk about, wants the abbot to be able to say, okay, this fits us, this doesn't. And we have to respect the fact, okay, that congregation doesn't do it, but that congregation, we're different. We're coming up to about an hour, so maybe we can continue this evening, certainly. Same way. Thank you for your attention and your contribution. Tools for good living. This is his latest, and as usual, it's very meaty. But I think this could be somewhat relevant for us. It becomes increasingly obvious as the years pass that one of our prime responsibilities to the other members of our community is the giving of good example.

[05:52]

It is a case not of flashing our virtues around, but simply of maintaining our steady fidelity to conscience and to the ordinary exercises by which the common life is sustained. Liturgy, prayer, common work, sociability, and the other staples of Cenobitic existence. This is really the last shot you all have, so take advantage of it. Again, I thought we might review a little bit what we did. We went through prayer. and then obedience, silence and humility. We went through the virtues and then vows going into consecrated celibacy and poverty and stability. He talked about both work and hospitality and tomorrow I intend to talk about conversatio in the context of community.

[07:07]

So, your turn. oh yeah I mean if you want to be careful what you pray for but I want to give you a chance or also just commentary or clarification I mean it's not just questions if there are things that still seem ambiguous or it wasn't quite clear I'd be happy to try and I can give you, I actually, for some of these, I actually include a few questions on them, so I might do that. Let's see. How am I nurtured in my spiritual life through the public prayer of my community?

[08:32]

What happens to us in the office? You know, of course, it's the thing I hear all the time. What do I get out of mass? The famous adolescent whine. And you can't expect them to really absorb the retort of give yourself over to the mass and you'll be surprised.

[09:36]

You know, you have to give it in little dollops that are different. But give yourself over to the office. Give yourself over to the fact that there is something about this particular form of prayer and generations of people who have done it, which has allowed the Lord to enter the deepest part of our heart and work on it. And part of it is the Psalms. Part of it is just our being present with the right attitude to receive the word as it comes to us. And I do think a good part of the Paschal mystery becomes more obvious just going through the office day after day, year after year. Again, I look at my own life and I can just see how jejum and notion I had coming in with respect to the office.

[10:42]

I mean, I had some zeal, I suppose, and some fervor, but I had the good sense to ask people why they kept on going to this office, and they answered quite honestly that they derived a great deal of benefit from it, but it takes a while. It takes time. And like so much else in monastic life, it's the proverbial, you know, water working on the stone. It does work. But I do think, you know, there's an aspect there of wanting to do it right. We talked about the perfectionist. And there's an aesthetic aspect. I don't want to knock musicians either, but you know, some people, it's all about getting it right. exactly, you know, the way we do it, providing the customary.

[11:43]

And that becomes the be-all and the end-all, and that's not it. I mean, it's important that we do it with a seriousness of reverence, of gravitas. It's important that we have good readers, we have good cantors. It's important that the translations are done well, that the Psalms are marked out well. But that's They're just setting the groundwork for it. As proverbial as it is, it's so true.

[14:13]

It's in the office where we experience the truth about life and community. If there are tensions in the community, boy, they will come up in the office. Whether it's the pace, recitation, frustrations we have, they're there. And how we deal with them is vital. Again, we're all in this together, we try and respect one another, and we develop this capacity, I've done it over the years, you know, the irritants, we all have our irritants, poor musicians, you know, they hear people go off key, and for me, it's actually the readers, you know, I just can't stomach people who come up cold and expect they're gonna do the reading, and it's gonna be nice. You have to prepare. You have to take time. You have to have an appreciation for the word of God. But that's my expectation. And I can't impose that in everyone. I just, I have to put up with the weaknesses of body and behavior of my brothers.

[15:16]

I do that. And when I really do it, it's amazing how fertile the word can be listening to it. And rather than get hung up on how we can get that pronunciation right. You know, we didn't have any comments on celibacy, all types of things there. You know, we could just go on and on in terms of what is a celibate witness today?

[16:26]

How do I see myself as celibate? And when did I see myself as celibate? If you've experienced the people who left places like Elmira, and there were a lot of them, and some weeks it was just, oh, there goes all this. They're all going. They're going to get married. They've been here 5, 10, 15 years. It was something we never really processed as we should have, but it was a very... sad commentary on how well we had internalized celibate chastity as a gift. Which brings my point, I think you have to have people who certainly live celibacy but also can talk about it in a comfortable way from the point of view I gave you that quote from David Moreland that convinces people, you know, we're not some type of

[17:43]

people who just cannot in any way be able to engage individuals as a single person, as someone who's a wannabe failure for marriage. We are celibists. We're called to celibacy. How do we see ourselves advancing in that state? How do we see ourselves giving an effective expression of that? You know, I think I think a lot more about myself.

[18:55]

And I think that's what it tells me that I give to myself. You know, it's like you said, you know, you don't see them. You didn't see them. I'm always searching for people in my family, seeing things that, seeing them in the world, [...] seeing them in the world. I don't know. I know I'm getting it. That's why I just got on the property where I read that. I know this. So when you catch the person I can find the truth.

[19:59]

See, I would hope that that person who was here would have heard that from him. Because it would have been, I think, a very valid and authentic response to what he was asking. And that's what we have to give. the news that's just because of the context [...]

[21:25]

So that's what I thought about it. And I think we do have some mistakes when we've done it. I think we do have some mistakes when we've done it. I think we do have some mistakes when we've done it. Well, first a clarification when I said processing things, I was referring to celibacy.

[22:27]

In other words, we needed to process how these people leaving and getting married perhaps are connected with our understanding of celibacy and how we are forming people in that. It's not that every time someone leaves, you have to sit down and have a big session and let's really examine why this took place. You can't do that. But the notion that psychology is certainly a helper in this, is something almost every formator, any superior would say yes. But we have to avoid the, I think, the trap of, okay, we can frame it all, you know, with respect to psychology. And, you know, we understand now what intimacy is and we know boundaries. You know, we got all the lexicon of the words and we got the basic idea of what we do, what we don't do.

[23:31]

Those are tools we take to then look at the call and the charism of celibacy and see how it is connected with our intimacy with Jesus and how it is a response, an ongoing response to this call that's lived in faith. And it has, both the element of sacrifice and the element of love. I mean, it's so much broader than what we discovered was our terrible inadequacies with respect to formation. Those things needed to be remedied. But we didn't have, I think the problem was not so much an inadequate psychology of celibacy as it was a theology of celibacy.

[24:49]

So how do you come to that format to go through what you're talking about? And my experience is that if I can be in touch with who I am as a person who has been doing doing it, then I understand that one of the meaningless entities that are part of the disabilities are doing doing it, either than just the skills because I have to have some kind of skills. I can't be aware of some kind of music to go in on that myself given a language because I can live the problem. So I think that what I was trying to say was that I've done a lot of reading on the spirituality of self-regulation. I find that we could stand up through the development, both components come in place from a chapter

[26:18]

We don't start doing things we do. We never start doing things we are sexual. And so having those things that you're sure it allows you to be so all mad in your life about being a sexual deal and how being a sexual deal is not really the one. How do you need to take out that practice? It's just a part of my own relationship. How do you learn that process? And I find that that's because of all Well, it's living honestly. It's living with humility. But it's also, you know, we're back to, you've got to have a person in your life who you are completely open and honest with. Because all the the different hurdles that will be there for a person.

[27:22]

Young, old, heterosexual, homosexual, with respect to living out celibacy, they will come. And if you say they haven't come yet or you don't experience them, you're living in a different universe. But you have to be able to share those and share your failures too and learn from them. And not in a way that, you know, I can go back to, I mean, about craziness, you know, some of the things that took place in the 60s and 70s, the Third Way and all that, it was just, you know, you looked around, where are these people going? Fortunately, there were enough sane people who kept in place the fact that, yes, this is a vow that we should take seriously, and it is a vow that can only be understood as part of a charism that's given to us, not some rule that is foisted upon us, you know, to try to keep us in place.

[28:22]

But the freedom that is part of being a celibate is something we don't talk about enough. The freedom to love so many people and love them in a particular way that communicates Christ with us. I would, you know, I've tried to cast silence in a positive way.

[29:28]

I'd say secrecy and shame. Those are the things you should avoid. And God knows we've had enough of that. And, you know, we talk about Catholic guilt. Well, I mean, at a certain point, we have to own up responsibility for being a celibate, being a sexual being. I think you really have seen a completely different change in the atmosphere. If you go back to the Catholicism, especially in this country, I can imagine most of the people who came in here in the 1950s and 60s were coming out of that Irish Catholic, half-Jansenist world where it was just so... Absolutely, out of the question, talk about, raise the issue of sexuality, speak of it, you know, and you were supposed to feel guilty.

[30:29]

I mean, if you would, the only time you ever used the word masturbation was in the confessional. I think that there had to be something that people sensed was not quite right about that, but we just kept on going. And we didn't deal with it adequately, as I hope I pointed out in my conference, in formation. And now at least we can do that. And sad to say, now we have to do it because we're held accountable by all these organizations that have been watching the church after the sexual abuse crisis. But there too, I think the sexual abuse crisis was the Holy Spirit speaking in high volume about what needed to be done. And one sister insisted that how important it was for an artist

[31:48]

to have meaningful relationship with seminarians. And he says, sister, you are asking something that I cannot afford as a married man to look for English. So it's a sister in the seminary and in Japanese. This is not right. And she found that was a nice idea. Yeah. But I think that was interesting because, yeah, he was so clear that he had very specific meaningful relationships with end of him, with intercourse, and I think they cannot get close to that. And I, but And what happened is that, for so long, that celibacy meant that you have no new skills.

[32:57]

And this is what I always found sad, you know, that people think that because you're celibate, I remember the wife of my husband said, you're celibate, and you're not using for all your faculties. I said, as far as the time, sex is an option. And this is where I found, you know, it's true that you're saying no to one thing because you want to have no time. And there's a skill involved in relating to others as a celibate.

[33:59]

And we picked that up and we had to have models. I mean, I don't know where I would have been without having some models of a celibate witness. And, you know, it's not, again, something that you're reading off a script, but you have a sense of what to do. And of course, I go back again, you know, prayer is essential. If you're not going to be a person of prayer and you expect to be a celibate, just, you know, let it go because you have to have it. But yeah, that memory, that was, believe me, there was a lot of that going on at a certain time and it was pretty foolish. And it was amazing how really, I mean, one thing to be underdeveloped, but how we simply were bankrupt with respect to understanding. And, you know, go back to the Fathers in the Desert again, the Apothecment, and go back to the big race.

[35:00]

They had it. They knew what was happening. And they talked about it. We also didn't have a good theology. We didn't have a good theology of sexuality, seriously. Yeah, yeah. And often it was for women, it was a terrible problem. They would be viewed by the government. They would accept it as a legal because they left it in the library. So the whole culture of sexuality was so suppressed in the women that There wasn't very healthy attitudes towards the defenders. It was very hard to be formed from it. And I know in my own way, it's a constant thought with lots of doubts and feeling the fear of that.

[36:05]

But basically, all of that, even with all this, it's a basic sense that God is calling you today. You know, I don't understand. Still, it could never satisfy. So to be well, able, you know, have a much better health system. What an advance that was to have the head of our church give us this incredibly rich and deep foundation for what we needed.

[37:11]

kind of a roadmap for that this is incorporating all the modern psychology and understanding of anthropology, what we do. He takes some flights when he starts. It certainly wasn't just the way you could call me.

[38:39]

You know, I think that's what I'm talking about. [...] Married people who must be married, who must be tired of the women who married, You might feel like you're standing by your side, you know, when you're like, you're sitting right out. You're [...] sitting right out. I think the lady is kind of beautiful. But when the lady is going to be around, what's last to the lady that's still the lady?

[39:42]

So the lady is the lady who's [...] the lady It's all I see is that you are here in the last 14, 15, 15, 20. So I see the class of the box, and the house is the five, and it's beyond all this. And I thought, what are these people? It's so weird that you don't think they come. But it's not high quality. So it's actually, when we talked about, that's what the sex class is, And that's right. He thought to them. [...]

[40:44]

He thought to them. [...] One, two, one, two, one, two, one, two, [...] You know, I think what you just described from Nakhla's old presentation is very similar to what was your gift from Father Damasus. You know, I think anytime people came across Father Damasus, there was this sense they had of there was something beyond who was taking us to, you know.

[41:51]

He didn't even have to be talking about the transfiguration of the basical mystery. But you sense that, yeah, you're going to look to this other horizon. And, you know, we can use, as I did, you know, there's an eschatological motive for celibacy. There's an eschatological motive for public. But there's an eschatological motive just for, you know, looking at this place and seeing the people. The people should point you beyond. And that's not a pie-in-the-sky thing. It's this... This beyond comes from this deep interior pondering of how God is working within us and in this world. And it was striking. I was thinking of all the people who were attracted here. There were so many. And what was happening now to a lot of our communities, lay people coming, less of our place. You were doing that before most other people were doing it. And I think a good part of how that got started was precisely the personal magnetism of the Damasus.

[42:54]

But he had to have a place where people would come. I mean, you didn't go to the Biltmore in New York City because you liked the Biltmore, and the Damasus was there that Saturday night. But when he was here at a place, there was a whole different character than that. And again, the whole notion of what monasticism does If you would ask what monasticism does in this country, let's say, a hundred years ago, everyone was going out. People were going out to school, people were going out in the parishes, people were going out doing mission work, making foundations. Okay, and that was in response to a need, but now they'll come to us. And they want to discover something that's very dear to them, you know, there's this mystery of God at work.

[43:57]

Other points to the people who are playing off? And, you know, I know my own practice, my own practice, that my mom was gone all the time. I mean, I sort of know this is the... I know the theological hints. And I can, you know, I can say, well, it's destructive here now in the book, and I can correct the tension, I was in the right place, but that's what I'm looking at, and the stupidity of self, and the prayer, and all of it.

[45:09]

But I come out of prayer, I'm dealing with it. You know, and it's that. Well, I think it has to be personal because all prayer is very personal. And I get the same thing in spiritual direction. When I was a young monk at San Anselmo, I came across a couple of English monks who I really enjoyed very much. One was very much into the Jesus prayer. I mean, it's hard for me to think I was, what, 23 years old? I'd never heard of the Jesus prayer. And he was very good, and he said, use it. And I did. And not that, you know, I expected some magic to take place, but I just somehow, I had a sense that this was important. And I've continued to use that as my means. Whenever there's distraction, that brings me back to the center.

[46:12]

It brings me back home. Saying it is just the restart button. And it puts me in the right place. It puts me in the presence of Jesus. It makes me mindful of my sinfulness, which I think we have to do. If you're going to be praying, that has to be before you always. I often think compunction is such an important dimension for Benedict in our personal prayer, and that helps me be mindful of my prayer of compunction, praying for my own sinfulness. And, you know, kind of translate what I said about Abbott Chapman, you know, pray as we can. If occasionally I'm just, I am beat and I'm tired, I just, you know, even the drowsiness, give it over and stay, you have to start nodding, and then, you know, let the Lord receive that.

[47:12]

But I think It's the faithfulness, the underlying temptation for the distraction, which is something we need to recognize, is give it up. And if we go that route, everything just erodes very quickly. Oh, there you are, it looks you again, huh? No more successful this morning than I was yesterday morning. How long are you going to do this? You just have to believe. Okay, I'll stay with it. And again, I know now the fruits, but when I was first really struggling with that, I remember keeping in mind these people who did Luxio and it made a difference. We need examples. But at least for me, in the distraction business, the thesis program has always been the... Getting out on time, but any other... Thomas, questions?

[48:41]

I don't know. [...] I started thinking about it. I'm not saying the outside of time, it's just the same time that I saw the phone when you think about 10 minutes, and what I'm saying, and it's so good to have the strength, and it's all fine, and try to stick to me.

[50:12]

Now we know what works at a certain stage in our life and what doesn't work. And we also have to be able to handle, you know, the memory starts doing funny things at certain ages, and you have to be able to work with that too. And energy levels and all these things. Again, we have to measure what we can do best. And, you know, if we've been... I know one Trappist who, when he got to the infirmary, he just realized, you know, trying to do 45 minutes of lecture was stupid because he was...

[51:15]

you would nod off at the 15-20 minutes. Okay, just do the 15 minutes in four different breaks during the day, and it worked out well. So you would just. Okay, I think we're, yeah, so. Thank you. We'll gather in the morning, and again, if any other questions or comments, I'm still around. We'll pray the Holy Spirit will see us through. Thank you. End. This then is the good zeal which monks must foster with fervent love. They should try each to be the first to show respect to the other. Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ. And may he bring us all together to everlasting life. As he comes to the end of his rule, Benedict exhorts the monks to realize that with all of their individual quirks and differences of body and behavior, they will be saved not singly or separately, but all together.

[52:32]

There's no question that at the culmination of his rule, Benedict wants to make a case for the absolute centrality of community life. And for the increasing individualism of recent generations, the communal character of Trinobritic monasticism, of which we are part, may not speak with any particular relevance. But certainly, we have to recognize the need for community today. It's an entryway symbol for understanding how we can be transformed through the structures of our common life and through the pastoral mystery. So we might just examine how this notion of community has been at work in our church. And certainly we have to acknowledge that the origin of the whole monastic ideal is there in Acts chapter two and chapter four, that first community of Christ followers sharing their goods in common, gathering each day to worship and having a meal together.

[53:41]

That model certainly was operative for especially St. Basil and St. Augustine, insisting, as they did too, on the primacy of charity when living together. In fact, there's one constant coordinate of the first century monastic literature on how community functions. It is fraternal law, caritas. That's especially the case in the last nine chapters of the rule, where we have this distillation by Benedict of the fragile relationship between individual and the community and how it needs to be kept in balance by the equilibrium of love. Much like the demands of karitas, the capacity to fully appreciate the fruits of community life is only going to be accomplished over time and with difficult. I know in my own monastic life, the idea of community seems to be the driving attraction of new members seeking to enter, and that's understandable, but also the source of the greatest disillusionment for those who come to realize, as we all inevitably do, that every Christian community and monastic community is marked by sinfulness as well as saintliness.

[55:05]

In studying monastic history, I've been struck by how much of the energy of people and community is taken up with that struggle. You know, you look at a place like Mount Saviour, early years especially, struggling to cope with the real threat of economic failure, dealing with overwork and way too many to count. And yet the community was the life raft for the people and the overriding force that conveyed the true identity and mission of the place. I question how effective that is today in any of our communities. If we look around, you know, we have our black humor, but a very honest assessment we can all make, we would not choose the people to spend the rest of our life with if we had a free choice in our community. But, God has placed us with them, and we have to have the surety to know that there's a reason for that.

[56:07]

They're the agents He wants to work for our salvation. So there is a special quality to this. And I think the quality that we see in the Manasseh tradition is very similar to one that is spelled out by Jean Vanier. I'm sure some of you are familiar with the L'Arche communities, which he is the founder, the communities for the physically and emotionally disabled. And this is how Vanier describes this type of community. Community is a terrible place in the sense that it is a place where our limitations and egotism are most clearly manifested. While we are alone, we believe we can love everyone. When we begin to live full time with others, we discover our poverty and weaknesses, our inability to get on with people. our affective or sexual disturbances, our frustrations, and jealousy.

[57:11]

However, if community is the place that brings the painful revelation of our limitations, weaknesses, and darkness, it's also a place where we are accepted, accepted with our frailty as well as our ability. In this sense, community can gradually become the place of our liberation, the place where we discover our deepest wound and accept it, the place where we can be ourselves without fear or constraint. I think that has an uncanny resonance with monastic community life. Because we know that the mutual trust so essential for living out community life is born of each day's forgiveness and re-acceptance of our frailty and our patchy lives. Again, St. Benedict tells us community life is supposed to lead us everlasting life. But that path can only lead through relationships. It's the fundamental relationship between ourselves and God and then the whole chain of human relationships that flow from this primary one.

[58:22]

We also know that a relationship can only be truly authentic and stable when it's founded on an acceptance of our limitedness, even our darker sides. It's a given that every human interaction, perhaps especially those that are shaped in the hothouse human environment of religious community, is going to be marked by some friction. That's usually where God's grace is at work, where there is some rubbing together. I think one of the biggest temptations for the well-meaning aspirants to our communities is to pretend that friction, that tensions and differences do not exist, or we mask the truth of that with polite facades. At worst, that's a type of collective arrogance that places us above the level of everyday grace. At best, it's an unconscious refusal or denial to admit the truth of original sin and how it emerges from the fabric of our daily existence.

[59:26]

Real truth-telling requires one to admit that the truth of community life can be a very messy business. As one of my confersers went to remark in praying Psalm 133, when oil runs down upon the collar of your robes, that's pretty missing. One other element that I want to mention in passing, and I made reference to it, is how fraternal correction, especially when it's connected with seeking the common good, is vital in this process. You know, In his disciplinary code, Benedict lays out a formula for disciplining wayward monks very similar to what one encounters in Scripture, Matthew 18, 15 to 16. The monk should first be corrected privately by senior monks. If he fails to bring about amendment, then there's a public rebuke. In failing that, Benedict has this process of involving the whole community.

[60:28]

The abbot and the senior monks, the sempecte, the predicum soul, went over the soul of the monk. And then the entire community is aware of what these sanctions are in terms of exclusion, but then are praying most earnestly for the reform of the recalcitrant monk. I mean, it's just one of the books I'm reading in the library, Enlightened Monks, it's about monks at the time of... the Enlightenment, and there's a whole section there in monastic prisons. They were real. But I didn't realize at the time, you know, this is the 18th century, how John Mabion, especially, people were left in prison cell with no reading, no contact with anyone. It was a perfect, you know, as of what we see happens in solitary prisons today, it's a surefire way to have them You know, lose all hope and soul. Benedict doesn't want that.

[61:31]

He wants a person to be able to have a change of heart. He wants the person to experience the support of the community. And that's why he gives us these rituals. But we have to be open to the fact that the community is going to help us. Ortegaus of Gaza has a wonderful line, let the one who is admonished be convinced of the charity and the experience of the one who censures. If one is disturbed at being blamed for the passion, this is a sign that he obeyed it willingly. To accept the correction without anger proves that one served the passion unknowingly. I mean, the psychology of the ancient monastic elders is incredible. Benedict also, arranging the rule, certainly had an understanding of human nature. And he knew, for example, that the greatest threat to the harmony of the community was murmuring.

[62:35]

That's very apparent in chapter four, when he lists this long roster of instruments and good works that include not grumbling or speaking ill of others, not nursing a grudge. And he was on to passive aggressive behavior. And he could distinguish between the viewpoint or criticism that was pressed with humility, that's the justifiable grumbling of chapter 41, and the chronic complaint. Again, you know, you read, it is good to read the Latin, you know, that word, you know exactly what it's connoting. You know, it's this heavy and dispirited heart. And he uses it, I think it's 12 times in the rule, and in every case it's admonitor. You think of, you know, the people in the exodus going through the desert. It's the constant whine.

[63:38]

The Pharisees and scribes in the gospel are constantly murmuring against Jesus. What the murmur does is upset the rhythm of fraternal correction by removing rituals of acknowledgement of sin and evil. You know, it's the perfect example of how we're examining the gospel splinter in the other's eye without engaging in the more demanding challenge of examining the being on which we sit. And it really plays into splintering the common good. And I'd just like to quote, you know, again, Michael Casey has this keen sense of what happens. And this is how he describes the murmurers. They are locked into their present discomfort and short-sightedly seek to find culprits for their existential misery. That's a great line. Culprits for our existential misery. To live like this is to live a falsehood. Its only effect will be to generate more pain, not only for ourselves, the murmur is feeling the pain, but also for those around us who are foolish enough to take our complaints seriously.

[64:50]

And I mean mea culpa. When we seriously take the murmurers' complaints, this is not justifiable criticism, we're contributing to the erosion of the common good. The opposite of that is the peace of the community. And this, again, is the hallmark of the rule. Benedict is noting the priority of peace when he speaks, for example, on the distribution of goods, says that Everyone should respect and accept the differences of need within the community so that all the members will live in peace. And I think that's closely aligned with the respect for persons and their individual differences. Certainly, that's a special responsibility of the superior. And it needs to be communicated to the guest in a very clear fashion. I think it's clearly conveyed again in chapter 4 where... Monks are warned not to give a hollow greeting of peace and to make peace with a fellow community member before the sun goes down.

[65:56]

You know, we can't just impose this or, you know, we do it every day at the liturgy, so that's fine. I think, again, the divine office is the surefire test. We're praying the psalms each day. These psalms articulate pain and conflict. But they also conclude by acknowledging our need for healing and harming. And I think Benedict clearly wants us again to go back to the person of Christ. Again recall, in chapter four again, prefer nothing whatsoever to Christ. And then prefer nothing whatsoever to the work of God. The wisdom of centuries of lived communal life is that the daily structure of community life is an inherent safeguard keep our gaze fixed on Christ. Again, the purpose of community life is not conformity or uniformity, but it's harmony, which is what we find in pots.

[67:00]

There's also a special vowel that I think is intimately tied to this bond of community, and in Latin is called conversatio morum suorum. A lot of ink has been spilled by scholars on the best way to unpack the meaning of this term. But I think the translators of R.B. 1980 captured its essence when they rendered it as fidelity to the monastic way of life. Somehow, it's the promise to accept the way of life, the monasticity of the community of people we're entering. Again, Casey has a great definition too. He says, conversatio is the integrity of monastic life the sum of its observances, everything that gives expression to the specificity of the monk's vocation. It is the all-purpose vow. But I think too, Benedict would attach this vow to that famous line in chapter 72, accepting the weaknesses of body and behavior of one's fellow community member.

[68:08]

I don't know if people are familiar with Bernard Lonergan. He was a Jesuit theologian who spoke on a lot of things with an expert on Thomas, but he has a great penchant for this notion of conversion, and he puts it in these words. He says, conversion is existential, intensely personal, utterly intimate, but it is not so private as to be solitary. It can and should happen to many, and they can form a community to sustain one another in their self-transformation and to help one another in fulfilling the promise of their new life. Finally, what can become communal can become historical. It can pass from one generation to another. It can adapt to changing circumstances, confront new situations, survive into a different age, flourish in another period or epoch. And I would hold that Lanarkin has given us a wonderful summary of Manasseh conversatio.

[69:13]

We think, too, a biblical image, Paul, the Galatians, bearing one of those burdens. I think that's done especially in conversatio through the virtue of patience, which is also a key to understanding Benedictine spirituality. Remember in the rule, at the end of the tologue, we're going to deserve to share in Christ's kingdom only if per patientissime, two patients, the greatest patients, we share in the sufferings of Christ. Now, something of a quota for this, at the end of the bull, in chapter 72, the community members are to support patcientissime, one another's weaknesses of body or behavior. I think it was Gregory the Great called patience, the root and guardian of all the virtue, and the one striving to be perfect. can't be impatient with the imperfection of his neighbor.

[70:20]

You know, this patience, it doesn't pass on the evil to others. It absorbs the evil. You know, and we're familiar, of course, with the Gandhian and Martin Luther King notion of nonviolent civil resistance. That's at the heart of the rule. This willingness to sustain even injustice for the sake of what we know is a greater good and to do it in solidarity with the Christ who did the same in his passion. An area of community life where that patient's most tested is encountered in the sick and the elderly. Recall how for Benedict, the care of the sick, like the care of the guest, is given a privileged place where both the stranger and the sick are to be seen and to be served as Christ. But that care is not exclusively one way. The sick are exhorted to not be excessive in their demands.

[71:23]

And I think the same sensitivity we see towards the elderly and the very young in chapter 37. Those who are most vulnerable in the community are given the most protection by the rule and given the ministry of presence by other community members. Certainly, I mean, this is eminently practical today. We know the crisis of health care in our country. We know the reality of increasingly aging populations. And I think, you know, we can see how a monastery can be a very effective witness here. For one, you know, our care is personalized, and you certainly do that here at Mount Saviour. Other community members are the ones who are giving their time and effort. In larger monastic communities, where you have extensive infirmaries, there's still not, for the most part, the impersonal sanitized care that's so prevalent in other institutions.

[72:26]

And we want to make every effort to avoid separating the sick and elderly from the rest of the community. We do that well, and I think it's important that they are a part of the community. with the great psalm 71 cast me not off my old age as my strength failed forsake me not and that reminds us of the precariousness of our own life you know years ago there was a remark made by an elderly monk to a guest the guest said what motivates you to get up and do all this each day and he says I get up each day learning better how to die. Boy, that guest was flummoxed. But it captures the essence of what makes monastic life different from others. It also speaks a language that we were hinting about last night, looking beyond. We will see the life beyond this life.

[73:31]

And, you know, the monastery is both the place where we spend our earthly life and the place where we enter eternal life. And the whole of our monastic formation should be lived in accordance with this understanding of the Paschal mystery. I think much of the real spiritual pedagogy of our life needs to incorporate that. And that leads me to a brief mention, you know, all the A words. Asceticism. I think You know, traditional ascetical practices of monastic life have always been present here, and that's good. You know, fasting, keeping vigils, practicing some mortification. We know what happened. A lot of monasteries just did away, wholesale, with a lot of these practices, and it didn't have the best of consequences, I think.

[74:33]

Which is not to say that asceticism should be the be-all and end-all. It's all about the motivation. We can become addicted to asceticism as well, and it can lead us nowhere. Jean Leclerc has a great line. He writes, to practice a certain type of asceticism or not is important only in function of the inner freedom that results from it. I think the best norm to assess that is its fruit. Does it free ourselves from the hold of evil? Does it bring us closer to Christ? I think, you know, early monasticism showed us the futility of competition and practices of personal renunciation. You know, Brother X is having only two loaves. I'm going to have only one or one half. That's just not part of what we do. But there's, I think, an asceticism we fail to notice. And, you know, it is community life.

[75:34]

community becomes the spiritual reality check for our personal agendas and projects. You know, we're so preoccupied with those things, we need to come up against the very chastening climate of community life. You know, the recurring teaching of the monastic elders has been to keep us from wandering outside the corral. And that's just not physically, it's in our mind we wander. And, you know, we have to depend upon people in the community to just be daily reminders of giving up something of our agenda. Great line, Kathleen Norris says, living in community is all the asceticism you need. And really, there's a lot of truth to that. Part of that experience, though, is disappointment.

[76:37]

in the expectations we have of the monastery. And we all do. We enter with our expectations. I think it's analogous to the experience we see with spouses, with friends. We have an overly idealized model of community, and it falls short of the hopes we have for it. Some of the paragons of virtue we came in looking at, admiring, have played deep. It's precisely at this time, I think, that we have to look to the underlying grace community. And it's a grace that flows directly from the communitarian contactless human frail. We see it, you know, there was just a few weeks ago, one of the priests, Monsignor, who was vocational director in our diocese, had an accusation that proved to be apparently true. And again, it was, we've all gone through this, wow.

[77:43]

But there but for the grace of God go I. And you recognize that people are struggling. And we're all struggling. We need one another. And I think this is where I found for myself looking to the older members of the community is helpful. It seems to me that our foibles and failings get accentuated as we age. And we know how that works. You know, grandparents do it all the time. You know, the grandparents indulge and mentor the grandchildren with a wisdom that they didn't have when they were parents. And the same works in monastic life. Seems to me that that's capsulized very well in that last instrument of good work to never lose hope in God's mercy members of the community have to be convinced if we are led all together to everlasting life that this is the hope and it's the hope we share we don't live next to people in community we live with people in community and we do that until death you know uh

[79:05]

once I had a wedding about a year ago we were going through the rehearsal and I would go through the vows the night before and of course the reaction of the groom until death was partly to just see kind of blast never really hit home and afterwards I commented and I said yeah would you say that and I said I did and I meant it I'm coming to mean it and it takes a whole lifetime to come to mean it But you have to take it at face value. It means just that, till death. And on that point, I think, you know, there's something in the ritual of solemn profession that really is very heartening for this. You know, we're there, sustain me, O Lord, as you have promised that I may live, and don't disappoint me in my hope. And there's added emotion. You know, we make the profession, we repeat it three times, and we see all the other profession members do it.

[80:08]

My particular community has a ritual where at the funeral of a confrere, at the end of the mass, we all gather around the coffin, and we sing the sushi bay. It's just very moving. And, you know, it always strikes me, this perseverance in the monastery in Bovet. That's what it registered. just, yeah, this is what it's all about. And when Benedict says we are to yearn for everlasting life with holy desire, yes, this becomes tangible when we realize it's not just me, the Lone Ranger, doing this. It's a shared holy desire for everlasting life. And I think, as I mentioned in the homily today, it's the totality of of this, which makes it special. You know, people have always entered and left monastic communities freely, and that's the way in which things work.

[81:14]

But, you know, we are the classic intentional community, and it is meant to bind us for life. And the weight of centuries of monastic wisdom tells us that any serious effort at formation in Christian living takes an entire life. It's such a valuable counterweight for the culture that wants to have short-term remedies, therapeutic communities. And there's a place for therapeutic communities, but not here. I think one of the signs that becomes evident if we live and give ourselves over the community life is this increased capacity to love. And this, of course, is captured at the end of the prologue when Benedict speaks of that dilation of heart, as we make progress in this way of life and faith, our heart enlarges. And, you know, there are, it's a little bit like, if you know the Buddhist tradition, the Bodhisattva figure, as it approaches death, wants to stay in order to sustain and inspire the other people who are on this side.

[82:25]

And I think the elders in our community do that. We had our founding abbot, Abbott Jarrell, he died at 102. He died in full possession of his faculties. But, you know, the last 15, 20 years of his life, he knew it was in a certain sense of borrow of time, but he was just a wonderful figure for reminding us. Yeah, this enlarged heart because it was just evident. He was this radiant person. And we need people like that. And you've had them at Mount Saviour. In a certain, I mean, I don't know how many of you know Brother David, but, you know, David Steinle Rast has a bit of that in him. I haven't talked to him in ages, but his greatness came through. This inner joy, and, you know, we can call it the holy desire, we can call it the joy of the Holy Spirit, a thought which Benedict speaks in the rule, but there's an incredible tranquility. You know, the battles have been fought.

[83:25]

The demons of an earlier time are displaced. People are living in God's presence. And this is not the first fervor of the novice. This is the transparency, the delight and virtue that we know comes. And it comes to those who have this mindfulness of God's presence in their life and who have been willing to undergo the transformation. And, you know, that is so heartening. You know, One of the things I've appreciated, I've done visitations of other communities, and if you go to a visitation, you listen to all the members, you get that sometimes. You get the love they have for the community and for all the negativity that comes in. You, especially for the older people, you really see that this is something that has been worthwhile. And, you know, they are an effective witness. So we know God has searched us out, and in case we have any doubts, we know that our fellow community members have also searched us out.

[84:35]

And they embrace us. They embrace us with our good qualities, with our spiritual warts, as a sign of God's mercy. And I think it's the embrace of community that will impart its special mark on our formation. Remind us this is not a solitary trek undertaken just with our own very paltry resources. And, you know, the tradition in which we find ourselves gives us this gift of sacred space. It surrounds us with a supportive community. It connects us to like-minded followers of every time and place. It's something we need to be grateful for. And I think when we speak of our ultimate transformation in Christ, we see that it's not done in isolation. not in some compartmentalized sphere, but in the everyday life of communal conversion. So our believing and our behaving become animated with this good zeal, this fervent love of our fellow monks.

[85:42]

And that's what leads us on the way to the kingdom. And I leave you with that, and I also leave you with my thanks for your hospitality. And it took a while for me to get to Mount Savior, but I got here. I'm glad I did. And I assure you of my ongoing prayers, I recognize you've got a lot of work cut out for you. I go back and you have another heavy week ahead, but you won't be in my prayers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I will, now, you know, I've always spoken highly about Savior, but now I can have a whole system.

[87:00]

God bless you. We'll see you. I won't disappear quite yet. If the seniors would just stay full.

[87:15]

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