And because not only the Son, but the Father and the Holy Spirit are truly called Truth, it's evident that one and the same Truth, keeping what is proper to the person, works these things in these three stages. In the first, he teaches as a master. In the second, he consoles as friend and brother. Nobody else in the whole of spiritual literature I know ever talks about the Holy Spirit as amicus et frater, friend and brother. In the third, he clasps us to him, astringent, he clasps us to him as a father does his sons. This, as you see, is not just an abstract vision of the way to human fulfilment, but

[01:01]

a very lively description of the way it can actually come about. I expect you'll remember that Burnham finishes this section by saying it is a very slow climber. And perhaps in some ways it was. I always think it's very hard to forgive him for letter number one. Do you remember letter number one? Written to the young man who ran away to Clooney. It's a brilliant piece of rhetoric, absolutely devastating, and a very terrible thing to do to anybody else. I don't doubt he lived through that. Of course, one of the sorts of ways I suppose he got through it was living to see what happened in the crusade for which he preached. He came to see what a ghastly fit it was, and what a mistake it had been to support it.

[02:08]

He had all sorts of things that woke him up. I have no doubt the percative came quite a lot at the end too. But I honestly don't think there's a faster or surer way than this one. That's why one comes back to it so often, more than any other. Because it's very simple, it's very lucid, it's very evangelical. And I think if you really read it sentence by sentence, very often, you won't go very wrong. Well, let's have a pause, shall we? You had something you wanted to talk about, Peter? You weren't quite clear as to what the assimilation to the Trinity was. You're talking about the Master, Friend and Brother? That's right, yes.

[03:10]

It's actually paragraph 20 in which Bernard is saying, in fact, that at each of these stages of development, obviously, God is considered precisely as truth in the way which is appropriate to each of the persons, is what he goes on to do then. First of all, he makes disciples. You learn the truth in the first stage, by self-knowledge. And then, in the extension of one's charity to one's neighbour, one is consoled by friendship. And then, eventually, you become a son, which is, of course, really what the Christian vocation is, to become a son or daughter. And then he simply says that, of course, since these are...

[04:12]

If you take what is proper to the persons, then you can say that in the first stage, the son is the teacher or the Master. And in the second stage, the Holy Spirit is the Friend and the Brother. And in the third, the Father draws you to his arms. Did that seem to be unusual or unsatisfactory in that analysis of the thing? Did you find that so? Had you had it done like that before? Or had you read it very closely? Do you think my enthusiasm is misplaced? It does seem to me to be a very unique kind of work. It's an entirely original work, a very young man writing this work, and it's full of quite fresh sorts of insights. Because, really, there's very, very little dependence on...

[05:17]

Obviously, Bernard Sommer absorbed some of the kind of... as they all did, I think, absorbed some of the kind of way of thinking about the interiority of things from Augustine. I think that's what they chiefly learned. It wasn't spliced ideas. I suppose this is the way one goes on, you know, in thought, as one's reading, is that sometimes you think, where on earth did I read that? One can't always place it. I was so happy to find things about the Proud Virgins straight away by putting my finger on it and guessing where it was. I hadn't really looked at it for some time, but I knew it was there in the sermons on Our Lady. And, of course, it really was... At least once, certainly, when I began religious life, I think, in the houses of both men and women,

[06:18]

it was really very shocking how many people had lived in community for many years with absolutely no sense of the common life at all. They might just sort of have been all in little boxes. And so there was no kind of mutual enrichment, such as we get even in a class like this, and there just simply wasn't, because the conception of obedience was interpreted in such a very mechanical kind of way that most people didn't even know this appeared everywhere, and Mother knew best about everything, in fact. I did come across a place where, in fact, it was a common-life problem, where the sisters had all been certainly invalidly professed because they hadn't even seen the rule. I said, Mother, do you want the rule? It must be an extraordinary case. Yes? You made a reference to St. Bernard's preaching of the crusade.

[07:23]

And I think it's a very balanced, critical thing I've heard said about it. Well, as I say, I think there is evidence. I mean, I can't just put it before you out of my head like that, because inevitably a lot of historical information is very difficult to remember. But I think there's enough evidence that Bernard did come to regret what he'd done. I mean, when he saw what really happened. Crusades, of course, were the greatest possible disgrace for Europe. All they did was smash up the Byzantine world. They really were just thugs, quite straightforward thugs, and were guilty of terrible atrocities. I mean, you think of the Church of Santa Sphira being absolutely wrecked by these brigands. It really was terrible. But, of course, this extraordinary thing, I suppose, although this is, for me,

[08:31]

this is a very special thing, and some of the things on the Canticle are, and I suppose the book on loving God, these are very remarkable things. Bernard has an extraordinarily clear mind. That's why I suppose he was so brave, in a certain way, in saying things that nobody else, as far as I can see, ever said before, or has ever said since, quite so clearly. But there's a kind of coolness about him, which is also rather frightening, I think, which comes out of the letters, I'd say, especially in letter one. And also, of course, the fact that it was, after all, in the affair over the recent double lives, Peter the Venerable comes out best, without any doubt. The Abbot of Cluny, who was the kindest of them all, who took him in. But obviously Bernard must have been, I suppose,

[09:35]

he must have suffered a great deal from the fact that he was made to be a very busy man, because he was so gifted. All his life, he must have been... It was, of course, over the addition of these works that I first met John McClure. I was still quite young. I don't think I was actually a priest, I think I was perhaps a deacon. He came to see me when I was in bed with the flu, the first time. And I'd just brought his studies, the manuscripts he'd touched, when he was beginning the work. So I said, would you sign it for me? Actually, it was a piece of Peter Damian. So he said, well, as I may have it in the air, we'll put that in the books. I can't say about that, it might be a bit sad. That's one of the books I did bring with me. But the reason why I was thinking of the manuscripts suddenly is, of course, that Bernard, like nearly all these early Cistercian writers,

[10:38]

obviously did quite a lot of preaching in one way or another. And like St Augustine, he could preach and write in different styles according to the people he was talking to. These texts are very much more concentrated kind of writing. But then they too were finished off. Most of these people had a stenographer or somebody else taking them out. Sometimes they made their own sketches of the omelettes. And it's one of the things which, of course, will obviously have to be discussed about those new finds in connection with Ayred. And I'm hoping that the volume which is said to be in press is not too terrible. Of the sermons available. Because some of the things they should have looked at, I know they haven't. They haven't really seriously considered, of course, the Timber.

[11:41]

Most people don't realise that medieval writers also published. And of course the only way to publish them was to have a complete copy. This one wouldn't do, for instance. If I pause sometimes going through the typing, it's so bad at some points that if I could guess what I meant, I wouldn't have known. So what most people like Bernard did was they either had their own draft of what they'd said or they compared other people's drafts and then they made a fair copy which was deposited somewhere or passed from house to house. And so most assertion houses had a kind of homiliary books, you know, to carry you through the year. And so that's how it takes... In this particular volume of the treatises you haven't got anything so complicated but you'll notice if you look at the Latin text of the sermons on the Canticle

[12:45]

and much more of the seasonal sermons, especially the seasonal sermons in volume 4 and 5, then sometimes you've got an almost totally different version in the bottom which is near enough to be authentic to what Bernard and Mary have said. And then it's written up in the form which they preferred which is not always something we would prefer. We often find the drafters more attractive nowadays to look at. I think it does make one feel nearer to these writers when you're looking at the drafts because you can guess what it sounded like. Things coming up very simply. Of course it was an extremely austere life. I mean, I suppose, he used to have his license. As soon as I first saw it, which was extremely severe, I could never have survived for a very long time.

[13:46]

It was nothing like so severe as it must have been, for instance, when it was lived in England in the Middle Ages. I've never forgotten that I went once to Tinton, which is an abbey in Wales, on a November day. It's true there's no roof on Tinton now. And a wind was blowing, a vast wind was blowing. There was a small, this vast monastery had a califactory less than half the size of the room we're sitting in at the moment. That was the only heating there was in the house. So I suppose they were all sewn in for the winter, in fact it was as tragic as it used to be. In Thomas Merton's younger days, I remember how he complained about prickly heat in summer because they were sleeping in their hammocks and they were very much sewn up. I suppose people probably did... Monasteries, of course, were not vastly more uncomfortable than ordinary houses were in the Middle Ages. Of course, most houses must have been fairly draughty.

[14:51]

You had to be very well off to have either quartz or glass in your windows. So it was a very tough life. And Ben, as you know, really ruined his health by all kinds of immoderate fasting and so on. Yes? Could you kind of link up for me a little bit what you read from Father Staniloy, you know, the Pledge of Revelation? Yes. I didn't see how it fit in. You didn't see how it fit in? No. Perhaps it doesn't, but I think it does. I think what he's really saying is that... You see, of course, you do remember the quotation, the phrase about the first fruit of the Spirit comes, of course, from Romans 8,

[15:54]

where St Paul is saying, we who have the first fruit of the Spirit have grown within ourselves. In other words, if you like, we're in the situation we were talking about yesterday, in the original sin situation. But what Father Staniloy is saying is that we have at least... We have already these things, not in promise, but in fact, I'm going to say, if we're really living a Christian life, we already have some foretaste of the... We already have some foretaste of the... of the Beatitude of Heaven. As you know, of course, one of the sorts of things we'd have to talk about, we went on for several years together, is the notion which you get in something like Gregory of Nyssa, that, of course, we should ask God,

[16:56]

indefinitely, I mean, penetrating into the mystery of God. God will always be mysterious. In fact, one of the most interesting papers we had at our Protistic conference in the summer, it was a very short one, by Father Paul of Omni, who is now about the age of Bob. But he apparently wrote a thesis, when he was in Rome, on St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 13, showing that, of course, St. Paul is actually saying, faith remains in heaven. There's no doubt that's what the Greek says, really. And this, of course, does fit with God's remaining mystery, which is more... wonderful, even in heaven. And this is the kind of intriguing that Gregory of Nyssa thinks. So, if you like, I suppose,

[18:03]

although this seems much more alive, perhaps, seeing an orthodox context, I think it's theologically, you know, perfectly acceptable in the sense of the word that we have to say that the world is different, that life is different now, really, and different in the same way as it will be. And that the acts of New Testament revelation are already actualized. I suppose that, in a certain way, I think, again, this is what many of the first... what made St. Joseph so very attractive at the time when it came into blossom, during St. Bernard's lifetime, about 250 houses all over Europe, was the sense of the extreme nearness, all the sort of things they were talking about.

[19:06]

And it must have been, I think, a very exciting experience of the common life. Across very different types of people. You remember, this was the very first time that houses really provided in a very big way for people who were illiterate in every sort of way. Pune had always had, of course, some people of that kind, too. But, as you know, the whole thing got rather out of hand at a later stage when there were actually very rather revolutions in some of the houses. But... I think that, if you like, the atmosphere of the house, when it was lived, really, under very dynamic... Albert, who was teaching this kind of thing, must have seemed so different from the very barbarous and crude life in the world as it must have been in most places.

[20:10]

It must really have seemed very much like Palliduses plus Thomas. Don't you think? This is really why I thought it was appropriate to lead in with that, I think it is, if you like. All he's really saying is that all these things are, in a very real sense, actualized. And you'll remember from the passage the other day, we had from him the other day, the idea of the Holy Spirit's imminent is exactly parallel with Ferdinand's second friend and brother. And this is of the Holy Spirit. And this is something that nobody else says, I think, in the West. I can't think of anybody who says anything like it. That's why the charismatic movement doesn't seem to have got over. And of course, as you know,

[21:19]

in addition to the enormous, which was obviously done by personal contact, expansion of the men, a great number of women's houses came under Cistercian influence, so that we don't really know whether it's St. Gertrude of Hillel was really living in a house of Cistercian servants or not, with absolute certainty, it rather looks as though they must have come under Cistercian influence, that particular community. So all that area, right up through the countries, the bits of the woods, which I know so well, along the borders of modern Western Germany and Belgium, was full of little places where this kind of life was being lived. And I suppose it's one of the ways in which,

[22:24]

although they're individual places, one knows, where this kind of life again is still a long, long way from being realised. Community is talked about a lot, the more it's talked about generally, the less it exists, I think. But I don't know what, do you not feel this is very much more, if you like, this is kind of see-through of the man, of the theological principles of the recreation of the image, which you don't get in purely theoretical treaties. And the fact that it's got a specifically Christian dimension of the neighbour, because this is always the bit of the Gospel that's never really worked out properly, isn't it? It's very seldom it is. St Guston, of course, has one or two very careful discussions of it,

[23:25]

which we might eventually come back to someday. I won't forget the idea of trying to do something more about this. Looking through the little book you put into my hands, Mark, I can see lots of things that I would like to work through there. I find it very hard to believe that he's really thought it all up without any kind of outside help. I think that Pedersen, as I say, the Danish Pedersen, is the man who's done some of it a bit more thoroughly than he has, anyway. But I suppose we could say that perhaps one of the things we do lack to have a completely New Testament kind of anthropologies is to work in the dimension of new, the spirit, the presence of the spirit. Let's say body, soul and spirit are kind of triad instead of two, body and soul, which is mainly philosophical and Greek philosophy at that.

[24:26]

And it's not St Paul's Anthropology. So that has to be done, but I don't quite know, I don't quite see yet how to do that. We need people of the stature, these kind of people, to be able to bring this off, I think. And the circumstances in which to do it. I mean, such work as I've done, you see I've done in the midst of everywhere, I've been in quite a busy life, and I think I've learned more from having, as my old teacher, Richard Alden once said to me, I've learned more by teaching than I would have learned by myself, because by people's asking questions, you see what you ought to have done, and usually find you haven't done it. At least you haven't done it to your satisfaction. So I can say that what I am going to try to do tomorrow is to put together some of the things which I think are the context,

[25:27]

which somehow or other we've been going round the edges of in some of the questions, and deal with faith and providence, and religion, mostly from St Thomas, because, well, as I say, I was just looking through the bit on superstition, which is, of course, too much religion. And in fact, of course, then I can also, I should also, inevitably bring in Father Schmemann, saying, of course, Christianity is the end of all religion, which it is, of course, in principle. And I suppose one can almost say that satirical austerity was also what this was about. Christianity being the end of religion, or it was not necessary.

[26:28]

But, of course, the trouble is that when we're beginning, most people need more. And, of course, they had more, as Gilles Saint-Saëns collectively says, and it was still, I think, the best book on, the general book on St. Bernard, the very first one, published in 1903, as far as I remember. The one thing they didn't give up was their books. The books were very good, and they did really do their next year in a way which made all this come alive. And it must have been very exciting to hear these things, even when they were quite short being preached, I think, these sorts of things. And then I think of trying to do a kind of on Monday, of trying to do a kind of drawing together again the Christological element, which I think is worth mentioning in chat, because I think I can honestly say that it's been very interesting to find

[27:31]

in all of you this sort of echo for this feeling of the artistic view of Christology and how much it comes into the centre of theology rather than, as it were, starting with God and working back to the Trinity. And I think it's one, let's say, I suppose we're not all blown up, but that's something you can't think about anyway, there's no point in thinking about that. We have to go on, say we were going to go on for a long time, and I think it's going to be one of the things which is obviously going to be very economically important, enormously so, because insofar as it affects people's prayer life, it's bound to make the foundations of Christian reunion theological in the deepest sense of the word, because the more people really pray...

[28:37]

It's very interesting, of course, you'll remember, and on Lordship you'll remember that the Welsh lady, what's her name? Anne Griffiths, yes, who was brought up in a very cloudless media and who began to pray more and more and more, and of course her theology got better and better in the things she wrote. You can't really pray without actually becoming a theologian, you just get to know what is right. So eventually she was writing very, very orthodox hymns in this very strangely cut-off media. I may say, for those of you who don't know, Anne Griffiths is a very extraordinary, interesting case of a woman brought up in a very small cloudless media in Wales who devoted a lot of time to prayer. People apparently said, you know, if she went out to get a bit of potatoes, she would wait for a very long time

[29:39]

and she would often be absorbed in prayer for about a couple of hours, or she came back and cooked the meal or whatever it was. And somehow or other God taught her, and it does, it's an extreme book. You're talking about the biographies? Pardon? Herbert Hodges' biography and translations of her hymns too. Oh yes, yes. Writers and well-sitters. Oh yes. Yes. I think, of course, one's remy of this kind of thing doesn't mean, say, that one shouldn't really do the sort of thing I would try to do with you today. One shouldn't really think about these things as well. But of course they never really come alive for you if you don't try to live them too. And that's the way you become a theologian. Is there anything else you want to ask? Yes. Come on, Ken.

[30:41]

In the Cistercians and today in the Church, when we talk of the image, Ken, and we mean the soul or the mind, is likeness synonymous with the image, or do we... I think it's fair to ask you the question, what would you like it to be? Because I think this is where, if you like, people have sometimes made a choice, as I pointed out, I think probably yesterday. And again, at the beginning of the day. That's really why I'd rather rush through St Thomas on the image. Because in fact some writers, as I showed you in Leo, for instance, Leo doesn't ever explicitly make a distinction between image and likeness. But he clearly presupposes it in the way he talks. Because you become like, just as in Bernard too, you become like God

[31:48]

by being merciful. This is where the likeness shines out. I guess then my question is, it's not really a dogma, something that's written out. Well, it's a dogma. What is dogmatic is that all men are made in the image of God. Whether they realize this or not. This is certainly dogmatic, isn't it? We must say this. I'm now saying I don't quite see what else you could say. It clearly is dogmatic, although it isn't. Because it's so nearly implicit even in documents in which this is not said to be something you must believe, without which you will be condemned. It's so evidently written into them that you can't... There are various ways in which we can know

[32:49]

whether something is dogmatic or not. It may be defined and counseled, which is relatively modern and relatively rare to that extent. Or it may be simply something which everybody is so consistently taught. And obviously you can't read the New Testament without believing it's out, can you? Because it's explicitly made part of the pattern of the way we become conformed to Christ. It's the renewal of the image. It's explicitly written at least in the New Testament letters. So I don't see how we can regard it as anything other than dogmatic. But obviously what Elisabeth Oshin's work preoccupied one with was the realisation of this as an experience. Which does mean to say that one learns to live out the likeness. It sounds very dull to say this,

[33:50]

but it is practising the virtues in the most abstract way to say it. It's actually reacting in a given situation in a Christian way, isn't it? Living from love. Which is a very expensive business, in fact. That's very exacting for all of us. Because according to our temple it makes different kinds of claims upon us. So it seems there's no satisfactorily abstract way of giving a list of what those things are going to be. It may be anything from cooking the lunch to preparing a lecture. For me I feel it's the same thing. I don't much mind, which I do. In fact I rather prefer to cook the lunch on their own. I feel a bit safer about that. And I can think of one of my very favourite Benedictines

[35:00]

who's a prior now and a very difficult Mastery saying to me once, I always feel happy when I'm mending the boilers. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to mend the boilers at all. He's actually a very good scripture. I think it's because he's also a person who's very serviceable. He feels he expresses his sense of community best when he's doing things as I'm trying. It's like when I was standing in the hospital they probably don't have much use for what he can do otherwise at the moment. Which is very sad. I noticed from this that the one old scholar they had left whom I remember saying to me once when we were going down the Vespers down the stairs saying I don't know who will do it later on because nobody else wants to do it.

[36:04]

Does this answer your question? I think it makes monastic life very worthwhile, doesn't it? Even when sometimes one's too tired to feel anything's worthwhile. But it does make it worthwhile even when one's tired. One doesn't... I found actually the sense of solidarity with people who are tired especially at this time of day is one thing that's actually helped me to persevere in religious life. If you're married, if you're with a father in the family or if you're responsible for somebody like my friend Mike yesterday was looking after people on the streets

[37:16]

you can't be there whatever you're feeling like. And that does help one through very often. Even if you feel much rather that I don't get to sleep. Have you got anything more, Mark? One's drawing out at the moment. Peter, there? Yes? It seems, from what little I know about it that religious life as such hasn't always been... as it was lived there's always been an encouragement

[38:18]

to living with this kind of responsibility. No, I entirely agree with you. I think obviously one of the reasons why it did tend to get terribly desiccated just about the turn of the century was it came to life very much indeed at the end of the 19th century both within the church and outside it because of course there are now fairly flourishing groups of people living a religious life in various Protestant bodies including Lutheran ones. But I think what had kind of overtaken me after the kind of romantic attraction to the Middle Ages was passed which is it I suppose by about 1920 at least in its very great strength then somehow or other

[39:20]

the very size of the buildings and the need for administration reduced the number of people who were capable of teaching. It happened all over the church not just in religious life you see for instance the situation has been in America and England for some time we're just beginning to get out of it now certainly it's happening faster in England than it is in America Bishops tended to be appointed because they were good canon lawyers rather than theologians which meant of course that you got the most fantastic pastoral letters very often a pastoral letter by Advent or Lent not even mentioned the season we're talking about some collection rather than something else there was no real teaching I can remember many pastoral letters

[40:21]

that had one sentence of doctrine in them once that begins to happen let's say once administration takes over and then of course that tends to produce only administrators I think what you remember something Dr. Johnson said there's a certain truth about religious life he said that a country gets the government it deserves and in one way people in religious life often got the superiors they deserved because in fact nobody required they didn't require of each other the qualities which make one fully human and so of course they didn't want the kind of superior who would do anything other than be a good administrator they didn't want somebody who was going to teach anything and yes well I was going to say are you finished? well in light of that though

[41:24]

they're getting what they want going back to what you referenced well it was slightly cynical of mine well yes but in chapter 72 the idea of supporting one another's weakness what about the responsibility and accountability people are to have for living in community Benedict rules for those who commit faults he does so if people don't want to take responsibility or accountability for their behavior yes but as you know what so easily happened was that in fact it was reduced to such if you have too many rules more than the rule itself nearly everybody had constitutions of some kind in fact religious life whether in the monasteries or in other communities was very much alike nearly everybody was brought up in the same sort of issues as I was I was brought up there like a tramp as a Dominican and this meant among other things

[42:25]

of course there were certain people who didn't speak and couldn't speak in fact my novice mosque would never allow me very easily even to go to confession on any other day than the day when the man was sitting there at one specific time and one specific man so it was really quite difficult to break out of that circle you surely see what I'm saying this didn't create accountability because in fact it prevented it ever arising nobody ever had a relationship as straightforward and human to make any demand at all you simply said may I do so and so and you got the answer yes or no my novice mosque always said no I think he only said yes once to anything I asked for so you see you can't in that way you can never get anybody who can do anything

[43:27]

I suppose the reason why what has happened this is obviously a kind of caricature of the situation but it is very interesting for me one of the most moving experiences I have had in teaching was when I was asked to try to help some superiors of women's congregations while I was teaching in London between 6-7 6-9 and it was very moving indeed to discover that the only people who could now have gotten their houses were generally people who had been cooks or somewhere low down the line who really knew what went on I've never forgotten talking to a Benedictine prioress who said she was lighting lamps for St Joseph for occasions and in the same conversation revealed to me she didn't know how the kitchen stove worked so I thought you might just as well blow out all the lamps and learn about the stove

[44:30]

it's obvious isn't it eventually I found that when you've got a list of these people up in front of you it was only the ones who knew what really went on who could then take over I've certainly the kind of contact I can remember having gone into one congregation I visited the relics of when I was in England I think it was last month or two when I first went there they were just like prolegland ladies with servants about the house that's the distinction between there was no fraternity there was no feeling of being sisters and so on the categories were so clearly marked and of course as I say it was generally I've always known these kind of people in fact one of the lay brothers who had written to me was a great hero of mine when I was a novice and I still remember the extraordinary experience you would never get into a religious house nowadays of sitting, of standing, waiting for the community to come for supper

[45:37]

listening to the clock ticking there was no other sound at all and we've been in contact with each other ever since and everybody's gone so it was very frightening I think whatever you may feel about what's going on now it's much much better than it was 30 years ago, much better and it's much more like the real thing was because there was the danger of the romantic revival of monastic life one of the things that I've just been speaking of the community of men where you've got a great big building put up as though it were the middle ages now of course they've got less if you look down the list you'll see it's 30 men but I know perfectly well I can tick off a lot of people haven't been there for 10 years so it comes down to about 10 10 at the most, perhaps 5 of those can walk about

[46:38]

but it comes to very few and that's really an almost impossible thing they can't produce very much else because they're all too tired it's all straightforward due to our time keeping the thing going but we are getting through that one too because as the buildings fall down or become impossible to run people have to move somewhere else so the community of sisters that I visited which is now just what remains of what was a big congregation at one time is really very much better off with two ordinary townhouses slapped together with a corridor between which is quite all they need instead of a vast place that needed a huge staff to run it and was absolutely dead from the point of view of the things we're talking about they often had chaplains who won their last legs who found everything to be built in

[47:40]

and so on nobody can help being ill and old and so on, that should be normal in fact it's one of the things I suppose most communities need to do is to take responsibility for those who are getting old so they can provide for them at home rather than send them away somewhere else but really as I say it seems to me the decline in theological life in nearly all religious houses was bound up with this because of having reduced everything to a formula so things like chapter 72 they weren't really very real there always were a few people with the courage to break through this I can say I think among bishops and other people once in their own lives who could in the absence of a living tradition of chapter 72 yes but of course I don't think on the whole

[48:43]

it can be found with continuously talking about it I think somehow rather really reflecting on the theology of this thing and then trying to realise it whilst trying to live it oneself one is trying to say to an obviously real claim even if it comes at an awkward time as one does one does one's best to meet it I think then the thing comes to life at least we have every reason to believe that God will bless it and help it to do so but I suppose we have to accept the fact that the number of places that do bring this off for a very prolonged period have always been small if you look over the history of religious life you'll see that I find it very marked for instance somebody that I have worked on

[49:43]

his Ocean Manuscripts of the 12th and early 13th century it's very striking the difference between the first 50 years and the second because the first 50 years when they had less equipment you know there was more work to do fewer books and all the rest of it but it was all mine then they got all the books and all the equipment and all died so you never have to be too comfortable you have to have enough to survive but not too settled it seems and that's the trouble about having big orders I think this is one of my reserves about what C.T.O. was doing it was an important kind of experiment to see whether you could keep things alive by having general chapters which worked very well to begin with once you've got a big top heavy order it's a much more dubious proposition and in the dark ages they had the advantage

[50:45]

if the monastery just stopped being a vile proposition they went away and let it fall down so even there of course you see just look at it Jarrow produced Bede in the 8th century and Bede was taken to the monastery as a little boy of 7 and it looks as though there was one point when he was left with the abbot alone and they decided they weren't going to see the office in spite of that there were only 2 of them because the whole office was wiped out by a plague or by an invasion or something and somehow or other it lived for a full generation of men and then of course there was another kind of wave and it went perhaps that's enough perhaps that's the other aspect of your first question John Baptist really we can't just establish heaven on earth

[51:50]

and make quite sure we've got it safe so perhaps the Lord just has to disturb us from time to time and he has to take up our roots and go on it's always a pilgrimage this is one of the aspects of the monastic life that the Irish tradition implies again implies for short periods when the right people were there you see when Colin Baines was at Luxor and they went on to Bobbio it was a kind of crisis because so many people turned up and lived in tents all round him so that they could have spiritual health and instructions that made all the local bishops really annoyed that's why he went off, that's why Bobbio was founded at all and for time was dead there are no formulas

[52:53]

which don't mean you need people in the end theology is all about people what we've tried to look at in these two days is really what it's all about isn't it it's about God and man and if you forget it, that's what it's about that's what we need do you retire? do we retire? we don't have to stay if there's anything at all they want to say any more than that I hope I haven't just killed it by saying that

[53:54]

it does seem to me, as I said, I've spent a long time on monastic history and it does seem to me that this story is so evident it happened very clearly at Beck Beck is a very very interesting example going back a bit earlier that the whole time between the foundation of Cleaning and the foundation of Ceto is very fascinating from this point of view because you get several things you see Beck being founded in the 10th century by an old soldier who was 40 when he began to learn Latin so that he could sing the opposite choir he was the first abbot of Beck and then up from Italy came Lampranck who could teach a bit and the thing came to life very much indeed and then Anselm also came from northern Italy

[54:55]

not far from Milan, from Aosta and so you've got two very remarkable men working together and they both of them became in succession Archbishop of Canterbury so you've got a whole school of theology surrounded by delightful people like Gilbert Crispin they didn't write very much but they were very real people and that was the sort of second wave Cuny was the very first one Cuny was extraordinary how impressive the early Cuny was it was more important than anything that went on in Rome that was the time when the Popes hunted in the woods they didn't have anything else to do and the Abbot of Cuny was much more important from the point of view of life than any other but I expect, my guess is that

[56:00]

by the end of the century most big groups will have broken down and there will be a few masters here and there living by what we've learned from these things but live new all the time which is what we're doing really, aren't we? You see this, yes? Yes, please Mark, come on I've been talking too much, I didn't like to talk much for this day, didn't I? Yes, what were you saying? Well, in light of these great movements of monasticism and the history of monasticism what would you say regarding the state of monasticism today and its continuity Is it undergoing what you would call an authentic renewal in an authentic direction and self-understanding? It looks to me as though it is, don't you think so?

[57:04]

It's happening here and there In one way, as you know, what we're trying to do here at the moment is fairly unique in the world I don't have to know of any other place where this is going on It's a sort of attempt to do something because we feel a mutual need to do it And I suppose this has got something of some importance for the future of it The other aspect which is not so intimate to us but is very real, I think, everywhere are the fact that there are little groups You see the Benedictine sisters in Australia, for instance have founded a small daughter house at the moment where I'm in touch with, as you'll be hearing There are only about six or seven of them there It seems to be much more likely to be the sort of number that people are going to be able to live in because in this way they're going to know each other and are going to work together better I don't think one has to make it artificially but if one is reduced in numbers

[58:07]

then perhaps one has to accept the facts of one's situation and accept the fact that which certainly earlier monasticism did that sometimes people would come and go over a period of time Of course the things never really worked unless there were some who spent the whole of their life there There always had to be a few But perhaps we have to get used to in the West and get over the whole of Christian monasticism to what is clearly there in the oriental tradition that people do go into monastic life for perhaps half a lifetime and then go on to something else That again, presuppose that the Biron can have too many buildings and too much to keep up You see, we went all the way up to the St. the other night

[59:07]

It's difficult living with what is essentially temporary buildings And so I immediately said What would you have done if you'd built something more permanent It might be much more terrible Because although you've been running around and putting up things and falling down and deciding what to do about them You have at least got the embarrassment that it exists in some place I'll never forget when I found one of the sermons available in Troyes I stayed in the Grand Seminaire The big seminary in Troyes Which was built for, I suppose, about 300 students at the end of the 18th or beginning of the 19th century And there was I, sitting with five professors And the library was full of dust Nobody ever went to the library at all Then we were in a corner having a meal with actually five very charming professors One who came from the region near Lourdes who was able to sing vernacular songs

[60:09]

of the kind that Bernadette would have heard I had enjoyed this trip very much indeed from that point of view But the thing was absolutely broken down Utterly, utterly unreal A kind of museum piece And 15 students for all years In that diocese I don't suppose it exists anymore They probably just accepted the fact that they can't keep running at all And I've also not forgot that I found my way to it by asking an old lady on the street how do I find the Grand Seminaire And she said, well they live up there and I live down here with the rats Which was again an absurd situation because it was a complete division between all the ecclesiastics and the people they ministered to Not that it did in the country of course France still has many clergy who have their garden and have the kind of solidarity

[61:09]

with the people which is very useful in keeping the church alive So my only feeling is What I just can't tell is that probably we will all get smaller as groups And we just have to get used to that We're not going to have big numbers And it isn't really necessary from that side of the whole thing But it should be Because we rather need to have groups where we at least know each other Because otherwise you can't develop any of the human virtues that really are necessary for us If we are a monastery of more than 200 people then how can you know them There are at least one in this country There is more than that You just simply can't do it It's nice as a contemporary experience I remember it was very exciting When I first came to America in 75 We were about 200 together

[62:14]

for the baptism of our Lord The church was full of us celebrating mass You can't celebrate mass We had the other gentlemen That's all very well But it's a showpiece Not the thing that really counts about the continuity It's always been It reminds me of one of the nice things I think it is in the foundations where it is of course having terrible jobs to find a job to find a place to sit up My own view is that the houses of poor women ought not to make very much noise in 4D I think this has been the main thing I've watched Just think now

[63:15]

that the cloister has started to make noise It's much more used now by people pushing the perambulator The cloister has now reduced to about 3 rooms on the top of the pathway which is all they actually need The rest of it is open to people who want to come and spend a quiet weekend Why not? Instead of polishing all those floors all the time which is the way it was half that time Not very much else that was useful at the time You made the remark once that institutions take a very long time to work They do, they do It's extraordinary Just the question I'm not thinking that monasticism is done for It has been pointed out It's not a divine institution

[64:16]

It's a human institution With perhaps other religious institutions or ways of religious life that might just have reached the end of their need I would say something that's very much How does a group just say Well, I guess as long as there are Well, I think that really the kind of thing The reason why I made a special point of mentioning chapter 72 in connection with this stuff It seems to me these are complementary things They've got the spiritual vision of what chapter 72 is all about And it seems to me This is really one wouldn't like to say in many places But this is the reason why I believe monastic life in some form is the only viable form of religious life to survive the 20th century Because only the rules have been picked

[65:18]

And it has been relived and re-read I mean after all remember you see Nobody has ever read the rule as it's written on paper Sturgeon didn't do it any more than anybody else They cut out the school for one thing And most people have done when it really worked Very well, except for Beck Where it did work very well indeed Where they had a school and it worked very well and it fed the monastery But I think it seems to me You see for instance somebody who's seen a good deal of Dominican life, spent a lot of time actually I never tried to write a book about it Though I could have done But I think the thing that convinces me that the Dominicans can't survive the 20th century Is the life of Domini written by Pierre Biquet Which really does show How much this conception of life As it was done in the constitutions And even still is

[66:20]

And I've just come out of it partly In coming to America I transfiliated the province of France Because France happens to be responsible for Scandinavia Now Paris is in a ridiculous situation It was easy for me to come to be a monk Because it so happened That this province is so divided

[66:42]

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