It is a beautiful occasion to celebrate on a Sunday, the dedicatio ecclesiae and the dedication of this church, I mean the church of the mother of all churches, the church of the Savior, Santissimi Salvatoris. And it's in itself a beautiful thought that the center of worship of Christianity, the mother of all churches, is dedicated to the the Savior.

[01:00]

And we rejoice in a special way because it brings us, as it were, close under the wings of the martyr on your ecclesia, the fact that also our Domus Day, our House of God, is dedicated to the Savior. As you know, the theme of the house of God is one of the most beautiful, the most rich and barric of all the themes of Holy Scripture. It starts the idea of building the temple is the basic idea of the reason for creation Creation in itself is a temple, the cosmic temple.

[02:06]

And this cosmic temple of creation is in itself only the framework for a greater and more important, more beautiful temple, and that is the temple of grace in the hearts of men who have been saved. And then the temple which is our Lord Jesus Christ, where the Son of God takes into the close bond of the hypostatic union the human nature, the body of our Lord. And the whole end, the end towards which the history of salvation tends is again the heavenly Jerusalem. The temple, the city where God dwells.

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The mystery of the temple is so central in the whole history of salvation because the temple is of a way of expressing and describing the presence of God among us in his creation, the various worries in which he is present, in the present in the cosmic temple, the temple of this visible universe, through his power, in the temple of the souls, through the knowledge and the love that faith inspire in the hearts of man. in the temple which is the savior through the hypostatic union. And this closeness, the specific closeness of the hypostatic union that is extended in the temple, the new temple, the heavenly Jerusalem through the Holy Eucharist

[04:21]

and later on fulfilled forever in the vision of the Lamb, the wedding feast of the Lamb. Now, as I say, this topic is so beautiful and so comprehensive, so deep, that one looks again anxiously for a way to share it, to make it a living world, to those who listen also, especially to those to us here who are gathered together this evening in this Domus day of Mount Savior, ready to celebrate the dedication of the Holy Savior in Rome. And I take in honor to approach this topic in a way which may be fruitful for all of us simply by taking the antiphones of the first vespers.

[05:27]

These antiphones which at the first glance may be lookless, chosen in a very arbitrary way, but I don't think that they are. They are, they express in a very deep way the specific message which the dedication of a church directs to each one, to the soul of each one of us. We started today's Vespers by singing Domum Tuam Domine Dece Sanctitudo in longitudinem dieu. Thy house, O Lord, is due holiness for all eternity. And one can see, I think already, from the wording of this antiphon, that this is the basic theme, that is the center, the holiness which is due, which is the raison d'etre for the house of God, in longitudinem diego, for ever.

[06:46]

So there is the basic theme, theme that reaches from the beginning to the end. Holiness is the eternal theme of the house of God. Let us just keep that in mind as our first point, and let us then mention the second antiphon, which is Domus Mea Domus Orationis Vocalitum. My house will be called a house of prayer. Holiness, the comprehensive, basically. Prayer, the first way in which this holiness, as it were, is reached. My house will be called a house of prayer. House of God, the place where prayer is offered to God.

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Prayer is offered to God. The third can be formed. Domus Domini, Firmiterificatest, Benefundatest, Supra firma vitra. The house of the Lord is firmly constructed, built. It is well grounded on a firm rock. A house that is grounded on a firm rock. What is this Petra? That Petra is our faith. Faith is that virtue through which the firmness of God enters into us.

[08:58]

We share in the firmness and eternity the alaytaya, the truth of God through faith. Faith is that virtue which makes, consolidates our heart. Without faith, we flutter from one thing to the other, without clear direction. The house of God is built on a firm rock through faith. And then the last antiphon, that this house of God is built on a firm rock precious stones and genius edificata. The material with which this house is built, the stones which compose it, are jewels, precious stones.

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Beauty is the flower is that which gives the house of God the last perfection. But this beauty actually is the beauty of the souls which one goes. So there we have four characteristics of the house of God, which are not in any way only objective or philosophical, definitions, by which every one of us concerns us widely. Yes, my dear brethren, we have built here a house of God, we have built this house of God, certainly with

[11:13]

with many human imperfections but we have built it for the one purpose that holiness may be given to it and that place may be consecrated by holiness and at this consecration through holiness is the eternal, everlasting purpose of this building, as it is also the purpose of the building that we are going to, with the help of God, hope to erect in the near future, I mean our monastery. The meaning of it is holiness. Yeah, that is by the way a sentence of enormous personal and practical importance. I think just at this very stage in which our thoughts are turning to the building of the house of God, we realize how human weakness easily deflects and loses sight of the real purpose.

[12:33]

If the purpose of the house of God is holiness, sanctity, then certainly also everything that goes into the house of God should be sanctified, should already be consequent. So that all the attention that we are bound to give in the future also to the building of this house, all that attention is, and you experience that in your own personal life every day, All that attention is always exposed to the danger that, as I say, the mechanical or external law of the thing gets us all and absorbs us and pushes us so that we lose sight that the preparation or the building of the house of God is, for example, in this special present stage, not only

[13:36]

a, to say, exchange of views. Well, that this very exchange of views should already be in itself a school of holiness. The same thing is in our monastic life. So many external material things go into maintaining, keeping up the monastic life. But all these things, all these preparations, all these actions, all these efforts that go into this maintaining and expanding the house of God must be in themselves already consecrated. We cannot say, oh, now we are now in the planning stage. And in the planning stage, the only thing that we have to do is we do the thing to say, well, of course, everybody has another idea how the thing should be well done. And then the first thing is all various opinions clash and wide away there we are taken up by the externals by the technicalities to such an extent that we lose sight of the fact that everything every stone and of course ideas are the most important stones that go into the building of the house of heaven that the

[15:06]

great necessity that these ideas already are constantly being sanctified. This principle of what is sanctity? Sanctity is the divine perfection seen by us or let us say sensed by us in its transcendent purity. this transcendent purity of divine perfection, which includes, to our way of conceiving it, this absolute remoteness from anything perfect, from anything imperfect. The sanctity of God is the glory of God's perfection, the majestic glory of God's perfection, in itself absolutely pure, untouched and untouchable by the approach of anything impure.

[16:14]

In this way, God's holiness is a devouring fire. Nothing impure can enter into its presence. And this sanctity, the majestic sanctity of God, The glory of God is something that has of us absolute perfect obedience, the timodon, the fear of the law. Servite domino intimore. That is the first principle that St. Benedict quotes when in his chapter on prayer he describes the attitude of which we as living stones should have when we are present in that house which is devoted to sanctity, consecrated by the presence of God's sanctity. Servite Domino in timore. This sanctity was the predominant theme of the first sanctuary that Moses built in the desert.

[17:28]

that's building that dedication this first dedication of a sanctuary which Moses performed in the desert that ended in the death of the two sons of Aaron who just had been ordained priests to this sanctuary but then had taken fire, and incense simply on their own initiative, and they had approached the sanctuary with a sacrifice, as we would say, in goodwill, maybe in tremendous zeal, but, as Holy Scripture clearly states, a sacrifice that God had not prescribed, that God had not asked for. And therefore, death was the answer to this act of homage, because it was not dictated by the Timor Domini.

[18:38]

And then the closing sentence there of Holy Scripture is, and in this way, I want to be honored through the honor of obedience. That is characteristic and essential for the first sanctuary, for that sanctuary which Moses built, in the desert and which was the domus, the house for the Lord. Rather, no, the will of God was preserved. That is the sanctity. So, the building of the sanctuary is our human attempt to imitate exactly the bishop as Moses had seen in heaven, of that divine scheme, of that divine pattern, so that the entering into it and the very building and the very planning of it must be constantly, constantly be consecrated through the spirit of obedience, through the spirit of knowing the will of God, through a deep reverence, a deep fear that we by no means may miss on account of our

[19:57]

the impulsiveness of our own nature, or the pride of our own nature, may miss the will of God, may not hear what his voice and what his will is, so that the sanctuary here on earth is the exact pattern of the heavenly sanctuary, which is his will. And that is the sanctitudo, which is the eternal wall of the sanctuary from the beginning to the end. But then the other is the sanctuary, the house of God, is a house of prayer. A house of prayer. The prayer is the answer of the heart. Holiness is an inner quality of God. The prayer is the reaction of man to the holiness of God, but an inner personal reaction.

[21:01]

The house of God is a house of prayer. That means it is not only a place where rules and regulations are published and are being kept, but it is the place of meeting, and that place of meeting is a meeting, a personal meeting from heart to heart. Man presents himself in this sanctuary, in this house of God, as this who was sinner, as this individual that cries for salvation. As to say it right away, what the essential thing in prayer is, and to say it in the light of Christian revelation, it is the voice of the Son directed to the Father. My house will be called a house of prayer. The house that the Lord speaks of is, first of all, across his own house, temple of his own human nature, taken into the union of the divine person.

[22:13]

And this house is the house of the Son. That is the word of the Son. And that is the Subsisted prayer to the Father. Our Lord Jesus Christ is prayer. Because he is the Son. And as the Son he has that unalterable relation to the Father. His being, the Son, means that he is the word addressed to the Father. So that is the other element. One thing in sanctitude is holiness. You know very well that the holiness of a house, and especially of a church, a sanctuary like this book, the holiness of it is by then being kept, as I say, through the obedience to that servitium intimo, the service in the fear of the Lord.

[23:15]

That fear of the Lord and that remoteness from anything that is self-will on the human part, even with this good intention of these two newly ordained priests and sons of Arnon bringing a fire and offering something, but it was not wanted by God. Even that, how is that expressed in our life, in our practical life? It's the meaning of silence. The meaning of silence is that honor of the presence and the expression of our actual submission to the holiness of God. That is silence. Silence reflects, therefore, the majesty of God's holiness. And that's another thing that you will always see yourself, we all do that, I include myself, involved in the talking, in a discussion.

[24:18]

reading something that ends somehow in a fight. The silence, the monastic silence, is the reminder to us that we should turn into the peace of Christ, that we should again, you know, take our bearings and say, now what are we doing this for? What is the purpose of this? A monastery or a chapel is not being built for us to live there comfortably. That's not the meaning of it. The meaning of it is the presence of the holiness. That holiness is realized in silence. Silence realizes the separation of the holy from the unholy. That's the demarcation now between the profane and that what is consecrated. And so, The prayer, the house of prayer, that means that we, personally, our soul begins to speak.

[25:22]

Out of the silence of the Timor Domini, the voice rises, but it is the voice of the soul. And of course, that is clear for every one of us, that we are not sons of God by nature, but we are sons of God by nature. So to be sons of God by nature, we need that constant conversion from minute to minute, not only once in baptism, but constantly repeated. Prayer is, that's the danger, and one can see that here constantly in our own way of offering prayer to God, common prayer. It's certainly, we have made Many progress, thanks to the grace of God, that by many people who come here, our way of prayer, our way of singing the divine office, is recognized, filled as something that is really filled with personal devotion, and therefore is prayer.

[26:31]

That's what people call prayer, because they have that instinctive, basic realization that prayer wants a soul, There is no prayer without a soul. But how easily can common prayer degenerate into a soulless threshing of straw? And that is the danger we have again and again to react to it. In every rehearsal, every time you get together, you go singing. Everyone has to be ready to get out of the rut of this externalism, of this machine, of this incapacity, sometimes simply laziness, to get out of the rut, so that this actual act of singing has in itself the quality of meeting the Father in the voice of the song.

[27:36]

That must be heard. That's the beauty of the gibberish. That's the meaning of singing, he said. What is the singing? If it is not the expression of the children, of the song, only the song can sing. Only the children can sing. Because freedom is needed where song rises to heaven. And that freedom is only given to us through the love of the Father who sent his son to die for our sins. So all that must be alive in our prayer. Then we make this house really here the Domus Arcius, a house of prayer. And then it's the other. Religion is not a kind of the afflighting of the flighties, so to speak.

[28:39]

Religion is not a dream of the dreamers who lose the contact with reality, even run away from reality, in order to be better off, you know, in some soft clouds. That's not the essence of religion. That's the caricature of religion. Christianity is that is our faith. That faith grows in our hearts through the Magisterium Ecclesia, through the teaching, where we really have to learn, learn the Catechism. And that's so beautiful, too, that just a Benedictine family, a Benedictine house, a Benedictine monastery, in that way, is the place for where teaching is being done, where learning is being done, where the two meet in order to constitute a firm, solid ground for the spiritual life.

[29:53]

And as the last reason for the firmness which faith gives to us. It is to us as Christians the hypostatical union, I'm sure you understand what I mean, the union in waters of the divine and human nature in our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the foundation, the firm foundation of our faith. Where this, where Isaiah the prophet speaks let us say formality, solemnly, about the solidity of faith, he refers to that stone, to that foundation stone, which is being put in the foundations of Mount Sinai, of the city of Jerusalem. And that foundation stone later in sacrifice, that is the foundation stone of which is sealed, as it were, by the eye of God.

[31:03]

And the stone which is sealed by the eye of God is the human nature of our Lord, Jesus Christ, united in the unity of one person to the person of the Son. The person of the Son is the eye of God. The stone that is sealed with God's eye, the Christian prophet Zechariah speaks, is that the Son of God made man. The world becomes flesh. That's the foundation stone of our faith. And our faith draws its firmness from the unity, the ungrateful unity of the divine and human nature in our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the importance of the incarnation for our faith. That is why three times a day when we recall on the incarnation, that is the that is the mystery of faith.

[32:13]

That is the stone on which our whole building is placed. And therefore also one should You absolutely will. Quietly pay attention to the Argelus when it is what's a good question. It's that film it and if you don't need base on the stone. And then comes the Lapidus Plexus. The walls of this new temple are built from living stones. And these living stones are precious stones. They are jewels. What is the precious stone? What is a jewel? A jewel, the essence of a jewel is that it has in, let us say, crystallized in itself although it's found in the depth of the earth. You have to dig it out to get to the jewels.

[33:15]

There hidden in the earth among the common things, all the sand and all the rock and all the earth and all the dirt, suddenly there is that dew of a completely different nature. Such a completely different nature from what surrounds them here on the surface of this earth that the pagans, the people of the antiquity, always were just stirred when they met. For example, in the darkness of the earth, be the gold, glittering gold, or silver, or precious stones. Or in the shale, the pearl. They structure completely. There's no continuity between these two. The darkness of the earth,

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ground in which it is found, and the gold, and the silver, and the precious stones, and the pearls. Those are, and that is what they always are, these are the ways of light that fill, as it were, as in mysterious dew upon this earth, upon heaven. That is the light of the gods. which they left in some mysterious way here on this earth, to remind us to wake up our desire that our hearts may ascend, that by the very fact that we find these precious stones here on this earth, we may certainly be reminded of the fact that this earth somehow has to do with every Jerusalem, somehow is linked to heaven. Somehow it is in a fairly mysterious affinity still to the light.

[35:24]

We find it here on this earth. These precious stones, all their beauty, which the apocalypse describes, the pompous, the onateness, the splendor, of the heavenly Jerusalem. That, of course, refers in the context of Revelation to the beauty of the redeemed soul. The greatest beauty in this world is the soul which, created by the love of God, redeemed by the love of God, exhales the love of God in the hymn of thanksgiving. That is beauty. That's the essence of beauty. Nothing because what is beauty? Beauty is the source of delight. The source of delight.

[36:27]

Such great delights that one does not want to touch it, but just stands in front of it, taken by all at the end. more and more overcome by this feeling of tremendous delight. That is beauty. And where is that beauty? What is that beauty? There is no other. The highest beauty in this world is the Father creating the response, the human soul. And that redeems through the love of Christ the heart of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That is the source of all beauty. That is the beauty. In relation to that, in comparison to that, all material beauty has only the meaning of a shadow.

[37:35]

A signal. Some weak, some But the essence of beauty is the loving soul. So therefore, these lapides preziosi, that are those souls that are filled with the divine light of God's love, of the divine agony. That is beauty. The sharing from the part of man of the divine love of charity. So there we go. We see these various antiphones in a beautiful, wonderful way. The mystery of the house of God as it concerns our souls. As it is not a technical problem to build. Not a simple thing of material beauty, of taste.

[38:39]

Something like that. But a thing which into which the essence of our heart goes. Santitude of holiness should consecrate the house of God for all eternity. Longitude in heaven here. What a tremendous warning to us, isn't it? Because coming in here, day after day, we also realize how easily what is, let us say, begun in sanctity degenerates, loses that consecration. We are the same as also what we have built. Ibnabji 2 did end here. What a tremendous prayer that is in all our hearts. who are here, a small group of men, and beginning the monastery, beginning a house of God, and a house of God, of course, in longitudinem diego.

[39:50]

And then, of course, what is our highest desire? Not only to be considered by the coming generation, future generations, let us say, as clever builders who have thought of everything, you see, put in the right plumbing, got the right dimensions for everything. It's all very nice if one can also go too far. But, I mean, that is not, you know, the way we survive. That is not the way in which we lay the foundations. But the sanctitudinal holiness, that is, and that must be our deepest prayer, that they never degenerate. that that may carry on and dwell here from the beginning to the end, in longitude and empty air. And that holiness, of course, the vital personal element in which that holiness becomes a living thing is the meeting in prayer between the Son and the Father, our Father who art in heaven.

[40:59]

So that that's intimate personal meeting may be carried on in this house, that it may become an actual reality in every hour, canonical hour, in every Mass that is sung here. What a tremendous program, what a wonderful challenge also, a beautiful challenge that is for everyone of us, and also what a responsibility for every individual that this individual may not interfere, and as St. Benedict says in his chapter on prayer, may not put an obstacle into somebody else's way, that this personal meeting may take place and may take place as part and in the common prayer of the community. Therefore, the necessity of keeping the recollection and the dignity of keeping the unity of rhythm, the attention to what the other does, and all these things that constantly go into the community prayer.

[42:10]

And nobody may tell me that those things are distractions. They are not distractions. They are incense in the eyes of God that ascends to him and is pleasing to our heaven. And then the prayer and the faith, you know, the firmness of faith. That we see that we are not swayed, you know, by all kinds of doubts and of hesitations and of criticisms. Now, we are not doing this right, we don't do this right, maybe this is wrong and that is wrong, and then inferiority complexes. comparing ourselves with others and always finding that we are the ones, you know, who are marching behind us, you know, all the others, you know, we read with one on this whole murmuring around, you see, that murmuring with St.

[43:10]

Benedict always considers the cancer of community life. The cancer of community life because it destroys the firmness of faith and the simplicity and the joy of faith. But then the last, of course, in which the temple is really completed is then that infinite beauty of the soul filled by divine agape, created, redeemed, and filled by it. And that is then really the doguste. That is the faithful image of the son of And that is the way in which the house of God really becomes the body of Christ.

[44:06]

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