I found this article by Father Hauser, The Theology of Obedience and the Supplement to the Way. It's a rather long article, very thorough, pretty good, especially when it gets down to the, well, first of all, the biblical and patristic theology of obedience, but then when it gets down to the practical situations of obedience. Also what Merton has to say in this anthology of his tapes and so on is very stimulating. Okay, Roberts begins by talking about Christian obedience, and so this is the general theology of obedience before you get down to the specifically monastic thing, because we have to remember that there are all these different concentric circles or different levels of obedience.

[01:10]

You can talk even about the obedience of the inanimate creatures, or of the subhuman creatures, I think we did, which is not a conscious obedience, but a conformity to God's will. The obedience of man in general to God's will, and the obedience of the Christian. The obedience of the Christian, or the obedience of the person who hears God's word, becomes something special, because he has something special to obey. When a personal relationship begins to be established, then obedience begins to take on a new meaning. Because people can sort of conform to God's will, obey God's will, in all kinds of indirect or somewhat conscious ways, but when God really speaks, then you have a whole new opportunity for obedience, and obedience becomes a new opportunity for the relationship with God. The subject of obedience is always a difficult one, because the word itself sort of hits us, especially nowadays, it strikes a person as a disagreeable word. In fact, maybe this is the major conflict between Christianity and the world today.

[02:17]

The Christianity of modern man. So it's something that we have to handle a little carefully. You can't just give all the answers on obedience, and then think that you've got it all sewed up. You can have a beautiful theology of obedience, but it can fall down, it can collapse immediately, and get down to something concrete. Where your will really begins to collide with the will of God, and you don't know how to get out of the impasse. So we have to treat this rather delicately, rather carefully, not claiming to have all the answers. There aren't any mental answers to the problem of obedience. Remember that the letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered. So there aren't any clear or beautiful theological answers to the problem of obedience. But there's a kind of a structure, and kind of a pattern, of course, to look at. He begins by talking about God's plan, and so on. And even that doesn't always sound too persuasive, doesn't always sound too sweet to us.

[03:22]

This idea of God having a plan laid out for us, we could be like a toy railroad train on the track of God's plan, something like that. It's very hard to talk about this kind of thing without oversimplifying it, and without in some way creating something which is unworthy of God, creating images which are unworthy of God. Even to talk about God's plan, unless we consider it as being sort of total mystery of which we only have some glimmers. And those glimmers we have to use as indicators and guides along the way. Let's see what Roberts has to say. Every person has been created in order to accomplish God's plan in his regard. So you might get the idea that God's plan is something that's laid down uniquely there, like the railroad tracks. But that's not really so. There are wide places and narrow places. There are places where God leads you sort of to be creative, to use your imagination, to find your way, to use your ingenuity, even in finding him, finding his presence, almost in inventing his will.

[04:23]

There's a kind of a way in which we discover God's will, rather than finding a unique thing that you have to follow, just a thread that's laid down for you. You discover God's will sometimes by inventing it, it seems to me, because part of our conformity to God's plan is to be creative, is to be inventive, is to, in some way, embody the Holy Spirit, express the action of the Spirit within us. And the Spirit himself is creative and encourages creativity. So remember Jesus in that parable of the fierce landowner who reaps where he didn't sow and collects where he didn't put anything out. Well, God is like that. And that he expects us, in some way, to be creative, and not just to discover a prefabricated will of his. So see how tricky this thing is to talk about. And we've got to find, in some way, we've got to find a liberating subject rather than an oppressive subject, and we have this business of obedience.

[05:26]

Because really it's designed to, it's meant to liberate us. And I don't merely mean to be playing with words, but this is sort of the problem which we have to confront, the paradox, the colon which we have to confront. How obedience can be liberating when it seems to be just the opposite. And we have to confront it not by playing any easy tricks with words, but by trying to see where God is in the Scripture and in the monastic tradition. This implies the need and the inner obligation to obey both God and those who have a right to command. Now, immediately this thing is set up in sort of external juridical terms, according to a juridical image which sounds a little bit like a military image, right to command and obligation to obey. And it turns us off immediately. At least it does me, that sort of approach. And we have to realize that there's always another dimension. There's always an unseen dimension. And as soon as we... It's as if you can't say the word obedience without saying the word love first. You can't say the word obedience or command without saying the word Father first.

[06:31]

Okay? Because you've got to realize that this whole obedience thing is inside God's love, and inside God's wisdom. That it's not the whole thing. Otherwise we get trapped into... We always end up getting trapped into this dualistic thing of simply God against man, or obedience against liberty, or obedience against creativity, all those things. It's a trap. And it's not true. It may look that way when we get into a particular pickle, when we're in a particular confrontation, when we find a narrow place on the road. But it's not true. And if we really get inside God's will, we'll feel it like something like Zosim expresses it, you know? Where the heart is changed. That's the point. And we discover that God's will is the kingdom of heaven. God's will is peace and joy and love and all those things that Saint Paul talks about. It's not a kind of slavery. It's not simply that which is contrary to our own will. Saint Benedict says, you know, that the road is narrow and the gate is narrow at the beginning.

[07:33]

Remember, a gate is something that lets you inside somewhere, but after you get inside, maybe it's not so narrow. Anyway. It sure is narrow in places. Look at the life of Jesus, you know, and then Gethsemane and the cross and whatever it is. It sure is in places. But that's the gate. It's not the inside of the kingdom. You think God's grace is there? God's grace is there, and yet, and sometimes God's grace may be so little felt that you feel like you're doing it completely, maybe without any help at all, or completely against your will or something like that. It feels like you're going through by the skin of your teeth. It feels like there's no help, no grace, no joy, no will there, and yet you do it. It's the thread going through the needle's eye. And the thread seems to be purely you,

[08:34]

but maybe it's purely God's grace with none of you left, and that's why it's the needle's eye. It's because it pulls you through that place which is so narrow that you really can't go through it. The camel can't go through it, only the thread, sort of, of God's grace can go through it. And so you find yourself on the other side, and it's a death and a resurrection. But that's precisely it. God's grace is so elusive at that point that you can't taste it. It's no fun anymore. It's no joy anymore. And you seem to be all alone at that point. Somebody put that thing up on the board like one set of footprints moves. It's like that. And yet that's precisely where God's grace is the most powerful, because it's going against your own inclination. But because it's going against your own inclination, there's no sensible grace there to make you happy, and you feel like you're doing it all by yourself. So it's when you seem to be doing it all by yourself that God's grace is most powerful. Doing it all by yourself against your own will, in a sense. Is this definitely it?

[09:36]

Yeah. Faith and obedience are one thing. In other words, obedience is acting or living faith, right? These words, you can line them right up. The word listen, the word believe, or faith, and the word obedience. They're one line. Because faith becomes active when, first of all, you listen to God's word. Because faith is okay, you believe in God, but it's kind of an abstract, it's kind of a blank check until God says something, right? Then when God says something and you've got his word, then the faith becomes actualized in listening, but then in doing. And in doing the word which you hear from God, the faith somehow is completed. Because man becomes complete somehow, becomes expressed in God. And that way we embody God's word. Like Jesus becomes a word in common. So we, in another sense, become a word in common. The other image, of course, is Mary, who receives the word and says,

[10:37]

Fiat, let it be done to me according to your word, according to your word. And the word becomes flesh in her possession. That's not always true, though, is that when you look at Christian martyrs and in Acts, a lot of times, they talk about the joy of separating from Jesus. Right. But really, why do you do it? Right. You can't make a law out of that. That's God's gift, too. And they usually have their Gethsemane, I think, probably before that, where they really have to wrestle with that. But then sometimes they're over on the other side by the time they're being executed. I doubt if it was always true. Probably someone had great agonies. But often, that joy seems to have been there. And that was left also as a witness for us, I think. To encourage us. You know, like St. Lawrence had his good iron and so on. Yeah, they were singing as they were executed.

[11:38]

Right, right. The thing is, though, if you sort of count on that, if you count on that joy or something, then your ego's still got something. It has to be sort of a total gift to God. Yes. And then, regardless of whether you're going to have that or not, that, I imagine, comes as a gift. That's the resurrection. We're already living the resurrection. There's nothing more to fear. That's really it. He begins to give examples here about this authority and obedience. People who have a certain Christian authority. And this authority comes from God. Those children obey their parents because that comes to them from God. By the nature of paternity. Married partners have a certain authority over each other's bodies. St. Paul talks about that. Kind of a mysterious thing.

[12:41]

Citizens, all obedience to the legitimate government of the country. St. Paul talks about that, too. Catholics owe it to their bishop and to the Pope. Okay. Nothing very romantic in all of that. Acts of obedience consist in doing what another person decides should be done because he has authority. That is the right to command. Now, we still remain on the external level of this delegated authority, this juridical thing, which is the heavy side of the picture. Not exactly mystical. And yet, it's real. But whenever we just consider this thing without the other side of the picture, it's very hard to accept it lovingly. It's very hard for us to elicit that loving acceptance from the middle of our heart when we look at this external picture. It's only when we look at the picture and see the love on the other side, the love, as it were, behind that authority, that we're able to do it. So we'll try to keep that in sight as we go on. This authority over our will

[13:46]

must come at least in an indirect way from God. Now, the exercise of authority and the nature of obedience depend on the end of the society in which they're exercised. See, this is a sociological way of talking, which remains on the external level. In a church, there's an intimate relation to the mystery of Christ. Now he's getting to the center of this thing. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Christians exercise an obedience which is not merely sociological but also truly charismatic. Actually, it might be better to start from the Christian mystery and bring the sociological comparisons in afterwards because there's the risk here of making it seem that the church is a society that's got something special. The church is a society which in addition has this charismatic force to it and fullness. But really the church is something unique. The church is the creation of God, the breath of God, the word of God, which has its own power and its own laws within it.

[14:47]

It's got these external similarities and analogies to other societies. Its interior dynamism is something else. It's only by virtue of that interior dynamism that obedience really becomes acceptable. And the power of the Holy Spirit, this is going to turn out to be very important what we're talking about here. This third person of the Trinity who is the Holy Spirit who gets us out of the dualistic bind of authority versus obedience, of obedience versus liberty, of superior versus subject. That whole deal. So you end up in all these dualistic stalemates. And in some way, obedience, the mystery of obedience, reproduces once again the life of the Trinity. Just as the mystery of the church reproduces the life of the Trinity. The life of the Son with the Father which we find expressed in and carried out on the earth in the life of Jesus is a life of obedience.

[15:48]

But it's only acceptable, it's only comprehensible, it's only God when the third person is there. And the third person is the one who bridges the gap, bridges the gap between authority and obedience, between obedience and freedom, between obedience and creativity. Just as, in a sense, he bridges the gap between the Father and the Son. Even though there is no gap because the Father generates the Son. But it's only the Holy Spirit that makes it possible. And remember how our Western theology has very often sort of relegated the Holy Spirit to the margin and set the Holy Spirit aside or forgotten about it. And that's why the thing of obedience has become so hard sometimes in the Western church. Because it's become divorced from the mystery, the total mystery, the Trinity of the Holy Spirit and therefore a dualistic thing. And like the Reformation itself, you know, the rebellion against a kind of oppressive ecclesiastical obedience in the 16th century.

[16:50]

A lot of that has to do with where we got in the West with our neglect of the mystery of the Holy Spirit. And the mystery of the church, which is a koinonia before it's a structure, which is a communion, a fellowship, a oneness, before it's a hierarchy. This begins to be recovered in Vatican II. But if you forget that, then obedience becomes a military thing, a juridical thing. Which people can no longer accept. So, this specifically Christian obedience participates in the obedience of Christ to the Father with all the communion and filial joy that this implies. And that's where we should start from. The mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of the church, the uniqueness of the Christian fact. And talk about the gift before you talk about the obligation. Because the Christian life is a gift.

[17:51]

And then inside that gift there are certain ways that one has to follow in order to realize the gift in himself. And one of these ways is obedience. We could say that the central axis is obedience. Following the footsteps of Jesus and moving through his classical mystery, going through that and that involves a death to oneself. And we should talk also about those two levels of the self. About the ego level and the deeper self, what Martin calls the true self. And how what is liberty on one level or seems to be liberty on one level can be slavery on another level because it takes you off from that deep self. And so much of what seems to be freedom to us is actually subjection, is actually some kind of slavery. And paradoxically in order to get to our real freedom we have to die to another kind of freedom. We have to allow a subjection, a suppression of another kind of freedom very often in order to let that deeper freedom emerge.

[18:52]

Which is just the law of the paschal journey as it were in other terms. You can say the same thing with respect to poverty, you can say the same thing with respect to chastity. In obedience it has a particular it's on the central axis as far as the will and the self is concerned. Even though it remains kind of kind of open and abstract it remains like an algebra when we talk about obedience because the concrete thing is not there. When you talk about chastity the concrete reality is right there you see. With obedience it remains an abstraction until there is some concrete event or demand in your life that makes it feel concrete for you. It doesn't relate for instance immediately to your body but it did for Jesus you see philosophically. Then it narrows down to a very concrete And then he refers to Hebrews 5.8 remember what that is mentioned? That's the one I covered before. That Jesus though he was son learned obedience to what he

[19:55]

suffered. Words to be pondered. How could he learn anything? And yet to be human means to learn obedience just as to be human means to suffer. Suffering means patience. Those words are all related. Although in the Greek I forget how it is. But we don't want to stress too much the suffering angle of these things because we tend to have kind of a proclivity for ruin. We tend to want shadowy and dark things at certain times. We have to be aware of that and always see the other side of it when the resurrection comes. We have to face those things. We have to face the subject of suffering. If we get fixed on that suffering then we get paralyzed. In some way we have to be able to find the light that's behind it over there. Even the word sometimes. We dwell on the word. Just like my dwelling on the word death sometimes. Unless we see that light coming from behind it all the time shining through it we get ourselves into trouble. A trouble that sometimes perversely we seek to get ourselves into. And I sleep much

[20:56]

less in the wilderness sometimes. We have to be aware of that. The Christian has thus entered explicitly and publicly into the mystery of the redemption of the human race. Okay. This is the first principle. Now what does redemption mean? He goes on to say this mystery of liberation is common to God. If you look up redemption in Webster you get first of all to regain possession of something by repurchase. Well, okay. Secondly, to rescue or deliver as from bondage by paying a ransom. Now put that in the context of what we call salvation history. And God does when he takes his people out of Egypt for instance he regains possession of them doesn't he? Because then remember he says let my people go right into the desert to offer sacrifice to me, to worship me. In other words, if they can't really be his people, they can't do what he wants until they're free in some way. But the second meaning there, to rescue or deliver as from bondage means that in some way

[21:58]

their freedom is related to their becoming his possession. Nobody else's possession. Not Pharaoh's and so on. And this all has its analogies for us on our own level. So if the mystery of Christ is a mystery of redemption, that is a mystery of liberation, therefore obedience itself must somehow lead to this liberation. And this should not just be a matter of pious words but it should be reality for us. Unfortunately it's only a reality to the extent that we're generous about giving ourselves to the obedience, to the paradox, to the death to serve. It's only somehow when you go through one side of the door that you find yourself coming out the other side. You can't stand on one side of the door and look at yourself over on the other side. You've got to go through it. This mystery of liberation, redemption is common to all. This exodus thing, remember, is fundamental also for Jesus,

[22:59]

Paschal mystery, exodus, liberation. So all obedience, in the Church, has this purpose. And then the difference of this kind of obedience from that of any other structure, any other institution, the pagan soldier, the policeman, and so on. Let me quote Solomon Jensen on this strong mark of common service to Christ, redemption, fellowship with God, with the Virgin and Christ. And this is the basis, this is the reality. See, all the obedience and the authority in the Church, insofar as it's a relation of one man to another, is temporary. It's not permanent. But the communion is permanent. The fellowship is permanent. The gift of communion is enduring forever. But the authority and the obedience

[24:00]

pass away. Just as the authority and the obedience only come into being at a certain point. St. Gregory likes to say that this only came into being because of sin. That one person has to be subject to another person, has to obey another person. Remember the sentence after the first sin, right in Genesis 2 or 3, 4. And God says that the woman should be subject to the man and so on. He should dominate over her. This first kind of oppressive dualism was introduced. It was a different kind of relationship before that. Relationship of help and relationship of equality. Okay. The vow of obedience, what does it add? He doesn't immediately talk about the vow in its context, but the fact is that you don't make a vow of obedience in the abstract.

[25:01]

You make it in a particular community which has a particular superior and so on. So it's choosing a concrete set of means to in some way obey God to help you obey God. I don't see it here. Yeah, I dimly remember now, what he did was he wanted the spiritual father to accept him, remember, to make him a monk. And he kept sending him back home, telling him how he went radio. And one day there was something about his family, he had to take care of his family. And every time he came he said, well, I still have to see about my mother. I still have to take care of her. And finally, he said, he came to the spiritual father and said, well, no, this is all settled. Now you can make me a monk. So he said, okay, I accept you as a monk. Now go back and do what you were doing. That's it. It's a paradox. But simply, the fact of obedience, the fact of being free

[26:01]

completely, makes him able to obey. But then the content of the obedience is of secondary importance. He can be doing the same thing he was doing before, but the fact that he is free completely, without any bond, without any conditions on that obedience, makes him able to be accepted as a monk. Now there, it's as if the liberation had to come before the obedience, in a sense. But the two are connected. In other words, that totality of commitment, in order to make the vow of obedience, he has to be free from any conditions. Like, remember the people who came to Jesus once said, oh boy, let me go home and bury my father. I have to go home and say goodbye to my relatives or something. But he wouldn't accept those conditions. He wouldn't let him. The vow implies a totality of availability to this divine process. And the vow puts you in a context concretely in which the thinking can be worked out. So it doesn't remain just vague. Suppose you made a vow of obedience to God, and that's all, you know,

[27:03]

in the abstract. Well, many times, every day, you run into places where you wouldn't really know whether you were being obedient to God or not. Or places where you could sort of cut corners, where you start making conditions on your obedience to God and so on. Why? Because it's too abstract. Because you need a concrete context there, in order to make it real for you, in order to be a real believer. We can deceive ourselves, and we can play games to reason. It wouldn't work that way. So the vow makes it possible to concretize this obedience we're talking about. But also, the vow implies a special, or a total commitment, in a way that ordinary Christian obedience isn't committed to that. And it's a way. It's a particular way. A choice. Remember, here we're talking about the religious life in general, not just the monastic life. Two complementary realities, he said. The community of brothers, and the church authority.

[28:04]

The community has a visible header guide to be a sign and instrument of the spiritual thrust here of other brothers. So the superior becomes an instrument. He's a sign, because in some way he represents the orientation of the community, and in some way he also represents God whom you obey. It just is a sign. It should be transparent. The relationship is really with God. The commitment is really to God. And then he's an instrument which you use sort of as a pivot for your obedience to God. Your relationship to God. Because you can get a hold of him, concretely. You can pin things down. You can have a concrete command which touches your life. Rather than just sort of making something up in your own mind. Or imagining something coming from God and not being quite sure. The hierarchy of the church is the second element. It approves our choice. And it delegates the local superior participation and so on, teaching

[29:06]

and so on. He presses pretty strongly on this insertion of the religious vow of obedience into the structure of the church. Now it's true that it does insert us into the structure of the church. But you have to make the distinction here which Clement makes between the hierarchical order of the church and the other order of monastic vocation. Those two are not the same. And originally the obedience which we found in the monastic life to a spiritual father did not insert him into the structure of the church in that way. It had him a desert. I don't think they really got that in mind at all. That's something that happened later on. And originally it had a different function and yet the same function in another way. In other words it was in order to find the way of following God's will, determine God's will, but not in the sense of determining, of being inserted into God's will conveyed through ecclesiastical authority

[30:08]

in this whole organism, this organization which is the church. It was on a different level. And it had a different track. Not the external track of service to the church through apostolate, through all the various things that had to be done, through ministry, but the internal track of purification of the heart, right? And conformity to the will of God within one's own heart in the interest of one's own purification. Now this is the direct thing and then indirectly it has another variation. So it's a different path. It's a different track and you have to be careful to keep that in mind. Lamont talks about one of those lines as a line of the Word. Word, sacrament, hierarchy, the whole deal there. And so the priest who is ordained and professes obedience to his bishop is in that line, that obedience is in view of his function, his ministry. But in the monastic life, the obedience would be in function of the person's sanctification. And in the religious life

[31:12]

it's sort of a mixture of the two, it seems to me. The non-monastic or partially monastic religious life, the active one is partly sanctification, partly function, with at least theologically and theoretically the sanctification scope of obedience coming first and the other being secondary. But often the tail comes to ride the dog. I may have oversimplified these things a little bit. Nevertheless, devout obedience does insert us into the church structure and you realize this later on where he says our ultimate superior on earth is the Pope. In other words, your vow of obedience hooks you up into a chain of authority which terminates in the Holy Father, which is related, in other words, to the whole structure of the church, not just to your own community, not just to your own religious congregation of order. But ordinarily that doesn't function that way. The Pope doesn't normally tell you what to do. The Pope

[32:13]

neither does the local superior. But the Pope is not actually, frequently in touch with you in that way. And yet he will be, indirectly and sort of diffusely through his messages to the religious and so on in the way that he directs the church and the religious orders. The importance of a living faith. You know, faith both makes obedience possible because you're relating not to a human being ultimately, you're relating to God through your obedience. And that's essential. Marmion is very good in the way he talks about that. Although if you read Marmion's chapter on obedience you may have more than one chapter because it's the center of his thing there. In Christ, the ideal of the mockery. It comes across pretty heavy. It comes across like a great monolistic black Benedictine form coming about you. But nevertheless he's got a real good grip on his thing of faith. And it's necessary to have a real good grip on that. Otherwise

[33:13]

we start cheating on obedience from the Lord. Otherwise we start hedging. Unless you really believe that you're in confrontation with God not just with a superior, with some human being, you won't be able to do it. It's not worth it. And it's also because, as he said, God's plan is bigger than our minds. And so, also it's much bigger than the mind of any superior. And so, we've got to believe that we're getting hooked into God's plan and God's direction rather than just somebody else's good idea. Or somebody else's bright leadership. He doesn't distinguish too much here, however. These two things we're talking about. The spiritual direction, as it were, from the plugging into the external structure of the Church, the hierarchical structure. Because traditionally monastic hierarchy is distinct from the Church hierarchy, from the

[34:15]

clerical hierarchy. Look at the fact that we don't even know whether St. Benedict was a priest, for instance. Now, the authority of the abbot would certainly be sanctioned by the local bishop in the old days. Not sanctioned by the Church authority, but nevertheless it's distinct. He refers you to Lumen Gentium No. 8, which I didn't check. The Venus does not reject human prudence. But human prudence is supposed to be somehow inserted into faith and dependence on the will of God. This ultimate criterion of the loving will of God, the hierarchical communion of the new people of God. The way hierarchical and communion are joined together there is maybe too facile.

[35:15]

The formal reason for obedience and the direct object of our vow is the divine will. This is a good scholastic way of presenting something. And the discernment of which the authority blessed by God is an expression and is an instrument of fellowship and trespasses that we know. Thus we enter into the great current of grace and truth that flows from God and returns to him bearing all creation. That's the important thing. The vow of obedience purifies us from our own point of view. Not that our own point of view is completely erroneous. We need to be liberated from our own point of view. We don't have to abnegate it. We don't have to abdicate it completely. It's not that our point of view... This is one of the things that creeps into this obedience thing. The idea that you're essentially evil and that you have to be completely quashed if anything good is to come out of you. And it's only from your squashing that good things will arise. This is where Luther

[36:19]

starts from, I think, more or less. This whole bitter dualistic thing between authority and man and the church in the secular world. And people looking at the church sort of as the great black step... what do you call it? Stepmother of mankind. Just out to quench every spark of human initiative and human freedom. It's not a matter of giving up our point of view. It's a matter of being free of it so we don't have to absolutize it. A matter of becoming open rather than closed into our point of view. But in order to do that we have to be able resolutely to step beyond our point of view and accept another will, another point of view at certain points. Freezes of much human narrowness unless it's entered in. What seems like breadth to us, in a way, another way also often is narrowness

[37:20]

because we're tied to our own point of view. Let's just enter into the views and ways of God. These persons that mediate our obedience are men like ourselves. And this is hard for our human nature. That's the scandal of Christianity. The scandal of the Incarnation, once again, which is reproduced in the church. That God is present to us and manifests himself to us and relates to us through men like ourselves, whether on the level of the brotherhood of living together in community, just one another, finding Christ in our brothers, or on the level of obedience and finding Christ to be superior. They're equally difficult. That's the way that God wants to relate to us. If that were the only way that he related to us, it would be a pretty depressing prospect. But it's not the only way. Why? Because there's the Holy Spirit. Because if I have to find God in you, God is also in me. And he can be related to directly within my own heart.

[38:21]

That saves the situation. That is, we do have this interior presence, this interior communion with the Spirit. Interior communion with the same Spirit that's in each one of us. I think that Andre said something about discovering love for God and how hard it is to find and discover God's love going through humans. First you have experience of God's love, then you can recognize it and share it. Lots of psychologists would say that you've got to be loved by somebody else before you can love anybody else. The theologians would tend to say, coming at it from their angle, that you've got to have an experience of God's love before you can love anybody else. Who's right? I don't know. At any rate, it seems that you have to be loved. You have to experience love before you can love anybody else. You have to receive it before you can give it. Whether that needs to come through another human being, whether you have to be

[39:23]

affirmed by somebody else before you can love anybody else is a question. I think you do, probably. Or at least, without a real miracle, I think you do. But that goes way back. It goes even into our childhood, you know, as to whether we were loved by our mother and whether our father and mother loved one another. The climate that we come out of has so much to do with whether we can love anybody else. But God doesn't normally just come down like a lightning bolt and energize us with His love and make us able to communicate unless it's mediated through somebody else. Somehow He likes to act through human situations, through human encounters. He likes to be, as it were, the third party in the relationship. Obedience and conversion of life. Now, he gets into quite a long thing

[40:25]

here about showing the relationship between those two commitments, between those two vows. And, of course, remember that now he's narrowing down from the religious life in general, the vow of obedience, to the monastic life in particular. And he didn't say it, but he is. And the vow of conversion of life, which, remember, specifies the monastic life, makes it different from the other ways of religious life. And so how does obedience relate particularly to the monastic life and through this vow of conversion of life? Remember, the center of the monastic life is supposed to be this conversion. If you look at the Rule of St. Benedict, you see that conversion and obedience line right up. You see it first of all at the beginning of the prologue and then you see it in Chapter 7. Conversion and obedience. It's good to read those passages and to meditate on that, to get the connection clearly in your mind. That conversion, actually, a turning to God, if it's a turning in faith, it's also a turning in obedience at the same moment.

[41:26]

It's saying, OK, Lord, you win. I'll do it your way instead of my way. To do it my way, ultimately, all the way, is sin. To do it his way is obedience. It's a way of faith. It is living conversion. He refers you to the many books on religious vows for the juridical, the obligation, like those catechisms of the vows. That catechism of the vows is so dry and heavy, though, maybe not to be recommended. We'll have to find a better source for the concrete things. Actually, they're specified pretty well by the Constitution. I want the novelist Constitution, Scheme 7. Scheme 4. And then the other schemes, which, as it were, make concrete, the other chapters, which

[42:28]

make concrete all the different sectors of obedience, because obedience governs all of that stuff. Scheme 4 just talks about obedience, specifically. Now we get into juridical terms again, and they're really heavy ones. The motive of our obedience in juridical terms is the dominative power. Where did he get that? Well, we gave it to him. I don't know if anybody would want to admit that at this point. At this point, everybody wants to pull out and go home. He receives his power over us from us ourselves. On entering the monastery and on making provisions, we give ourselves freely to his authority. In fact, in the beginnings of monasticism in the desert, you can see that sort of process, where they go to the spiritual father and they say, Father, give me a word. Or, Father, teach me to become a monk. Something like that. In other words, they freely commit themselves. In the religious life as it is now, one isn't thinking of the superior much when he makes his vows, I don't think, concretely

[43:28]

and directly. He's thinking more of the way of life, the community, and the monastic life in general. But that's where it comes from. We have to remember this when we think about obedience, that this is something we undertake freely, this commitment we undertake freely. It's very important to reflect on this before somebody makes his vows, before somebody professes obedience as to what he's really doing, not just to slide into it. And even though he does reflect on it, and even though he tries to make it as conscious and fully deliberate as possible, there are going to be times later in life where that's going to grind, where that's going to seem like a very tight chute. When things begin to emerge in his life that are hard to pass through that needle's eye of obedience once again. This is the vow of obedience essentially made to Christ and almost sort of to heaven in a way. To heaven? How do you mean to heaven? I just mean that he's saying that I'm laying it down

[44:30]

here and I'm living for heaven. It is, but then I'm living for heaven according to somebody else's guidance, such a thing. The specific commitment to obedience is I'm living for heaven because even conversion of life is a commitment to that also. But obedience is a commitment to do it according to somebody else's direction. Sort of saying in the meanwhile. Yes. But when I get there, first thing I'm going to do is get rid of that. It seems to me like when I was thinking about the obedience, the value of it is that it's not just obedience to an exterior thing, it's a way in terms of the capital W. That's right. And what you're doing is through this obedience it's actually a conversion of your way of being until it's liberating I think maybe in the sense that

[45:32]

our real nature is to obey God. So it's liberating in the sense that we're liberated to be who we really are. That's right. So conformity doesn't really matter. It's the internal relationship that matters. It's not who the person is. It's how you approach them. That's right. That's the monastic way of looking at it. And yet besides that there's the fact that in doing that you're inserting yourself into something, into this mystery of salvation. You're following Christ, therefore you're inserting yourself into the life of Christ. You're reproducing the life of Christ in yourself. You're receiving the Holy Spirit in yourself. Because what you said could be applied to Buddhism, could be applied to any way of obedience, right? That is, as a spiritual discipline, aside from the incarnation, aside from the Christian mystery, that's very true. And that's the monastic way of looking at it. The Christian fact adds something else to it. And then you're inserting yourself somehow into the life of the Holy Trinity through that obedience. And it adds this other dimension within you of the Holy Spirit which is liberated inside of you. Because then you're linked up

[46:33]

to the entire church. That's right. That's right. Linked up to the church, to the whole mystery, and to God in that personal way. Because you can think of obedience in a very impersonal way as a spiritual discipline. That is, by obeying this man, who's just sort of a figurehead for me, who's an instrument for me, just like a, I don't know, I don't have a good word for it. But by obeying him, simply I accomplish a process of myself. It's like he's the thing that I push against. The stone that's wearing away whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. He's the point of opposition, what I grind myself against, as it were. I'm trying to find a disagreeable enough image. In order to accomplish that inner process of myself. But if I do that, then I'm not even going to be doing it the Buddhist way. Because I think, for instance, if you look at a Zen disciple and his Roshu, there's a kind of a love there. There's more than just that cold functional kind of obedience.

[47:35]

And yet, the Christian thing sort of makes that love a principle element, because it rediscovers in it the love of Jesus for the Father, okay? Which led him to his obedience and to the cross and everything. And with that love already inside you, then you follow that track of the love. Then you have something else to follow then. So it helps to interiorize it a great deal, besides opening that power of the Spirit in you explicitly. So you really get something to count on. And a real transformation can happen. I see a kind of relationship between Western monasticism and Orthodoxy. In the old sense of the word, the stars would have a disciple, and the disciple would be obedient to the stars. But at the same time, the stars would only have one or two disciples, at the most, and would constantly work with them and pray. There was like another dimension of obedience between those

[48:37]

people. That's right. Whereas in the more large monastery in the United States, people would be obedient to the rule. You don't have that kind of thing going on Can you explain that? Well, there's a change that happened very early. Fr. Debreguet's got this book called The Community and the Abbot and the Rule of St. Benedict. Fr. Charles translated part of it. How did he translate the whole thing? Has it been published yet? Yeah. Do we have that one? Yeah, somewhere. Now he brings this out, that you get a change from the desert, for instance, to the rule of St. Benedict. Now consider these two examples. The first example you told about was a desert example. It's kind of an idealized view of the desert example, which sometimes is really harrassing, which is a kind of strictly ascetical obedience and very personal between a realized master and a few disciples whom he leads along the same path to bring them to where he is as principled as he can. Very personal and in view of their

[49:39]

sanctification and a whole intentionally personal relationship. So it's almost as if he was guiding them by the hand as his own sons, breathing the Spirit into them. Hauser's got this beautiful book on spiritual direction in the early church, in the early monastic life, in which he talks about that. Then, when you get to the monastery, what happens? When you get to a bigger monastic community, what happens? You get a whole different thing. You've got an Abbot with about 30 or 40 monks, maybe, with a different relationship with him. It may be a filial relationship, but it's a community, it's even bigger than a family. To call it a family is an exaggeration. It's an organization of some form, and that relationship is not nearly as personal and is not an immediate linking up of a person's spiritual growth to another person's direction. In other words, it's not walking hand in hand with a person along the road of spiritual progress. It's something quite different. It becomes

[50:39]

collective, it becomes generalized, and it tends to become exteriorized and juridical, so that the Benedictine thing very easily turns into a kind of exterior authority. It may be very benign, it may be very charitable, but it doesn't really do that inner work, because the Abbot doesn't really know where that individual monk is, and he's not going to work with him that intensely, and he can't because he has that many. Remember that chapter that we just had in St. Benedict's Rule about the deans of the monastery? He says, if you've got a lot of monks, divide them up and put ten of them under one sort of delegated superior that we call a Dukkana Siddhi. It works for that sort of thing. You can picture how that's a very different thing. You've got a monastery that big, the real spiritual father is remote from these people. There's a delegate there who maybe doesn't have the charism or whatever, and even he has about ten monks on him, so you're getting into a kind of an army type thing. Should he be proven by any way of life? Well, he should be, but still that charism of spiritual fatherhood like they had in the desert

[51:40]

which the abbot is supposed to have is a rare thing anyway, so you can't depend on having enough people in the monastery to have that. And when we talk about that, we're always talking in kind of idealistic terms, because we simply don't see that much of it around. But nevertheless, there is that transition from the desert pattern, a very personalized, small-scale charismatic direction, that's what David Ray called it, to the more organized community-scale abbot-monk relationship of the rule of St. Benedict. And if you read the rule, you don't find that individual kind of relationship. You've got something else there. The abbot's got to consider each monk, he's got to know his weaknesses and his capacities and so on, but he's not nearly as intimate and as continuous as that other thing was in the desert. It seems that he was part of that, Christ and the apostles, that it was a very personal type of relationship. He didn't kind of sit

[52:40]

as an authority. Oh yeah, right. Same with Paul and some of his relatives. Right. With Paul you see the transition though, because he's got some churches that are over there, you know, he's away from them, and there's remote control and so on. And with some disciples, some disciples were really close to him. Even with Jesus, you don't know how close some of those apostles and disciples were to him. You don't. But with him, there's another personal element that enters, simply because he's person carried to the nth power. So that what he's giving is actually himself in some way, you know. So there's a whole other element there. It was only true in an analogical way of a spiritual father. Perhaps the 72 is more like the monastic thing, whereas the 12 is kind of a different kind of relationship. But even within the 12, there were the insiders, there were the really close disciples, the three, remember? Peter, James, and John. The one with him in special places. And some of the others, you don't know how close they are to Jesus. And sometimes they seem

[53:42]

to show an astonishing sort of ignorance, you know, or lack of insight. So you wonder. I wonder, in the in the larger structure, I think, if that doesn't mean more responsibility on just, say, you know, relation between the members. It does, yeah. That makes up in part for the distance from the spiritual father, yeah. And also this whole sort of disappearance of spiritual fathers in the church. Yes, well what happened to our tradition of spiritual fatherhood? And that's a real question that is, you know, where are the Roshis? Where are the Starzi? Particularly in the Western church. You seem to have a few in the Eastern church. And we end up with some disappointing answers often. Well, that role has been taken over by something else. It's been taken over by the direction of the community. You've got constitution, you've got all this stuff. You've got the church guiding you. You've got, you know, other things helping you. And you've got a generally higher level of education. So, and you've got a kind

[54:42]

of horizontal spiritual, mutual spiritual guidance. Okay? People sharing their experience one way or another. Especially the charismatic groups you have there. And yet, it still leaves us with the same question. We ought to have those people. It's the same. There's still a gap. Yeah. Yeah, you'll find it in some places. Yeah, but the structure doesn't exist. Because the structure remains external. And something has to be personalized. And what you're really looking for very often is a person who can look right into your heart, tell you where you are and what you need to do, you know, the next step. And then somehow give you the encouragement that enables you to jump over that threshold and do it. But that's a little hard to find. Maybe it's a function of just historical context

[55:43]

in general, but you see it in the secular world too. I mean, the role of fatherhood in the family has been subordinated to social things. A lot of kids have more or less raised themselves among their peers. And the father's role in the upbringing has minimally changed. One thing we have to recognize is that there is a change in history and in the Church, which means that the world and the Church are going to be much less paternal now than they were in the first centuries, okay? Even the fact that we call the first centuries the centuries of the fathers. We're talking about the Church fathers and the monastic fathers, okay? There's a change. There's a difference, because the vertical element becomes reduced and the horizontal dimension grows. The horizontal dimension tends to predominate. And so as the Holy Spirit somehow works more into the dough of the Church and the mass of individuals, somehow that vertical thing does need to be gotten more into perspective. It was exaggerated in the early Church sometimes, especially where you had a few educated people and a whole mass of ignorant people,

[56:44]

okay? And so those educated people could become sometimes also the spiritual Zionist occasion. They weren't all like that, but you had the same sort of structure. But this democratization process which has occurred and the sort of common distribution of education goes along with this other spiritual democratization to a certain extent. So we shouldn't expect to see the same thing nowadays that we had in the early centuries of the Church. A more widespread Christian insight, for instance, would be in place today. And more ability for one brother to help another. And more common experience of the Holy Spirit, not just a few outstanding individuals. I think that's true. The Lord wants us to look in another direction for our health rather than just looking for a few or one outstanding individual who has all the secrets, you know? That could be dangerous too. Yeah, the guru phenomenon. A lot of people are hunting for gurus, and often what they want is that divine fellow who's got everything. He just touches you

[57:45]

and you light up like a Christmas tree. Muktanam. Right. But is that what God wants them to have? Sometimes he wants them to grow up. Now I just throw this out not because it's the only answer, but because it's how it balances the situation. We're not always supposed to look in exactly the same direction in the early centuries for the action of the Holy Spirit. I think a community today can sort of more fully and more homogeneously experience and express the Holy Spirit than in earlier centuries, in which it was like one father and a bunch of sheep. The image of a sheepfold is not that appropriate today. Especially... Right. When we say horizontal,

[58:46]

when we say horizontal, that's too crude, right? It's crude. Just like when we say vertical, it's crude. Because what we're really talking about is that koinonia, right, that fellowship, that communion, which goes beyond our geometry. Okay. But that direct relationship with the Holy Spirit. Remember even in the Old Testament where the prophet says, in those days the Holy Spirit will be poured out upon your sons and daughters, and even the children, the slave girls, and this and that, they're going to be prophesying and so on. In other words, the equalization that comes from God being realized within the human person. This has to be witnessed to and has to be manifested in I think more than in earlier times. Also, as we echo our own cultural structures, the feudal structures of king and baron and the whole vertical thing, which is no longer appropriate. Also, the disappearance of the strata within the monastic life, you know, like the priest, quorum monk,

[59:47]

lay brother, this and that, the whole deal, it doesn't go anymore. And it's part of all of this. Very good. Well. Father Basil talked about when he was at Mount Athos about their custom and the tradition of linking up with a particular spiritual father. It's as if certain people would try out different men and then finally link up with one. Do you have any comment on that? How important is that to submit yourself to the right man? It seems much more important if it's going to be this relationship of two or three people. But, as it gets bigger, maybe it's not so critical. As it gets bigger and in the different contexts we have, it's maybe not so critical. You can say that would it be true that God would lead a person to a particular guide, to a particular spiritual father? In other words, God would place great importance on that unique relationship?

[60:47]

Or is it more or less a matter of our choice? There's almost a presupposition that it is a predestined relationship. I think concretely it's usually a much simpler situation because there aren't many alternatives. There aren't many alternatives, nor is a person usually inclined towards many alternative people. It may be different in Mount Athos where you get a whole peninsula with a certain freedom maybe to go around. But when one is first choosing, then he would maybe seek out a spiritual father and settle where he is, something like that, rather than joining a community in which I'm a spiritual father. But which situation are we talking about? I guess the personal. Where he's not yet committed to. With our structures, the way it is in the Western Church, that doesn't seem so appropriate. Because realize that also, well

[61:49]

normally the spiritual father wouldn't have to be a superior, so even if he wasn't elected or something like that maybe the relationship could continue. But it doesn't seem so appropriate in the Western Church. Simply because that's not the tradition and it doesn't seem like it would work to go that way. How much difference should it make to a person say, because it's a monastery, should I join here? I don't like the prior. Or I do like the prior. I wonder how much that should weigh. I don't think you can say in the abstract it has to be balanced up against the other elements in the community. It has to be balanced up against the rapport he feels with the community, the value in the community, how well he sees his vocation embodied in the community and their orientation of life. And then what God seems to say to him in that place. Because sometimes there's just a feeling of rightness. This is it or something like that. It sort of overrides all those other considerations. Not that we don't have to think them over, we do. I'd say that normally

[62:50]

it wouldn't be the, shouldn't be the deciding issue. But it can be sort of, it has to be plowed into your computer insofar as you're thinking what is the future of this community going to be. Yep. In a given case. Then what you're saying is that maybe our direction then we kind of don't have to worry about this. The direction in the future is going to be more of a community thing than a spiritual father thing. I think we have to hope for and pray for the emergence of some spiritual father because things simply don't work without some kind of guidance. But maybe we can't look for the same kind of outstanding charismatic individuals that we've been led to look for by our tradition. Or by a kind of literature which builds people up. The monastic literature, for instance, puts some people on pedestals and ignores the rest of them.

[63:52]

That's an artificial setup. And really it's not that way. It's that there's a kind of legendary thing that builds up that does that. It sorts people out into enormous stars and non-entities. It's not really that way. I think we still have to hope and pray for that emergence of some spiritual guides, spiritual fathers. But that meanwhile we have to do it the other way very largely. Or also we have to create them in a way by our faith. Because that's the other part of it. They say that spiritual fathers are made by the disciples and not vice versa. It's the faith of the monks which creates the guidance that they need and which empowers somehow individuals to perform that function for them. Because they're not serving themselves, they're serving those monks who want that guidance, who want that light. It brings to mind more like the Levin image rather than the

[64:54]

perhaps the spiritual father image in the old one-on-one basis. Where the faith of the monks, they're calling for the guidance of the spirit. That will pull the spirit into their guides so to speak. And you can kind of feel the influence of the father of the community as it manifests within the community in general. Not necessarily on the one-to-one, you don't have to be with the community. That's true also. It's good to point that out. It's not like there's only one avenue of flow of light which is from head to body or something like that. But the flow of life within the community is integrating somehow that charism of the leader, of the spiritual father. So that the flow, the horizontal flow, call it that if you want to, is also related to him. He's part of the thing. He's not outside of him. Just relating to it through that one-to-one relationship. There are all kinds of currents of flow. Okay. We better quit for this one. So next time we'll go on from

[65:54]

Robert's 84 I guess. Yeah, it'll be a couple weeks.

[66:03]

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