October 24th, 1995, Serial No. 00132

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Rule of Benedict Novice Class # 1 - 1990s

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she's very good in terms of contemporary experience and it would be very handy if you had a xerox of if anybody wants to volunteer to do some company
it is going to make five of those worse
how was i some sometimes we get him to your cousin we have so little time that it's best if you read it before my next session which will be friday the next session was friday this week as we were squeezed together
so that's part of chapter nine
one chapter in this country club of and nine so as he goes from one fifty four to one eighty eight for long among section
today i'd like to do two things one to look at that introduction to chapter nine of continue to grow of which i believe i gave you a copy restaurant there
so if you don't have an with your below that i can convince the second thing is to talk about kind of sergio moro
which i don't want to spend a lot of time on because i don't think you really can and as such without talking about to hold a monastic life
so let's take a look at this i've read some of it out loud every opportunity if anybody wants to know if you don't have one i can give you the book
it starts not enough
page one hundred and twenty eight
this is a good article a good tossing around the contemporary problems about monastic commitment and gives you a little bit of depth and swiftly
i'm thinking about these things first of all there's a very brief historical this is the introduction as all chat about longevity there's a very brief part of a paragraph just about on historical patterns of going and we've seen most of that already as we were looking at that
history from the rt nineteen eighty last time
roberts and his book centered on christ the cistercian
perspective on all of which talks about three phases before the with a nice clarity i'm not sure that it's quite as clear cut as he presents it but the earliest basement you just had a change of clothing and which reflects baptism not which that's the way the taking up the of the monastic members
signify then there was an oral promise and then he says run there was a written document and six century which we find and st benedict's rule
and then that's where this part in consider your called picks up which i may refer to as reece after this just for sure easy chief editor
within the christian tradition religious vows are found various expressions talking about religious vows not just to monastic those the monastic practice of making those to early conversion of life and obedience existed for several centuries before okay he's talking about the in practice okay because i don't think you had those three commandments specifically before so
minifigs so that six century that's where roberts accountant leaves on the brief on i just went to you before the churches theologians well that means nuts the thirteenth century that's the scholastics thomas aquinas term and a little before that mean
that as i don't know which is named peter lombard had already treated of them
with scholastic theology and constitutive elements of about christian life going to be designated poverty chastity and obedience we show that that's an analytical approach which is quite beautiful and quite useful but what it does is to cover up and forget the unity of the profession the unity of the happen and the unity of the whole thank you
negative aspect of it you can call it an aspect of nature of it which already has somewhat obscured in the three thousand to go to conversion of like obedience when we look at them from a contemporary point the auditor's analytical point of view we tend to look at something like i'm ashamed to see how it works so we look for the parts no way the she were moved in
it's bolted to work but that doesn't work so well with these things because they're likely to be three synonyms for this name thing they're not quite but
the they're moving around the same single his name
and the scholastic theological tradition from the thirteenth century brought about the the expression and can unlock that you will find a canon law the vows or express this have angelica councils or vows are exposed to department and to you been
maybe the president can almost touch with chest area in southern israel
so we have to traditions which flow together into simple thousand which you have five hours but that's the reason why i have five as when you make a simple profession and you only have three when you do you a solemn profession which is according to the tradition of analytic contrition and so prior to canada and prior to the thirteenth century scholastic
analysis into poverty chastity and obedience the putting a poverty first by the way it goes along with the scholastic
approach which is largely influenced by the mendicants that as thomas quantities of dominican that's the time when yeah the franciscans the dominicans a resurgence of religious like a broader sense than the monastic life itself they did away with many domestic things and they were mendicants which means that they begged for their living that they were preachers and a day
lived from the return from the gospel which and course there's the bridges should do so
pryor's mendicants so poverty comes first so that's a different are different vision of the next to religious life
different in that way of on a number of other ways okay
and those two tradition side by side with that explanation survive right time to now
now he starts to talk about the problems involved in about a religious power today and he gives you an economical definition of the a deliberate and free promise made to god concerning some good which is possible and better than on top of it
so you can take about the least perfect about of comfort
the definition every word as is has been tested and tried and argued over
now notice is meant to got a vow is a promise spent you gotta promise maybe to somebody else or it may be to god or could a video so none are two problems first of all can you really make about can you make a permanent now though and the light of the way life is and secondly do you make those to go
it to the human community the second question has already been answered by the definition hasn't really but the question has arisen again today so he starts out by giving you the the wind is blowing against permanent commitment which is what he calls a contemporary sense of impermanence
a lot of people who that any during the marital or even just as humanly impossible and therefore an incomprehensible
i'm an understanding of the nature of man and world beyond our district such and really humanly i i think a permanent commitment is impossible that is by merely human resources and that's true of marriage as well as a monastic life for it is just like that it's only human being
durant probably on think it would be possible but because something else and because another dimension another depth and another strengths as about which is the strength of god and the fidelity of therefore it is possible and that's what marriage is a sacrament to take it from one angle and if monastic like religious no not a sacrament
it's a quasi sacrament
it rests in the same way upon the fidelity of god
okay this this notion of humanity has been dynamic you know for a long time our conceptions of humanity and the world and of a church were basically static an eternal and during sex
and certainly until the lord comes again everything was so i pretty much to remain the same very much like the idea you to get from matthew's gospel
and now we we haven't a such of evolution and we have a sense of human progress we have a sense of a kind of transformation of the world and we also have essentially to human being as somebody who has continually moving is continually growing and changing and continually unfolding his potential
and therefore he's not just what he was at an earlier point
it becomes a real problem also when you when you see for instance people were married very young and then twenty and thirty years later they don't seem to know their partner that they seem to be two different people who don't i do it on something like that and i wonder can a person really at a very early point make come in
that binds them from like when they're not even going to be the same person later on i'm exaggerating deliver they should sure is a problem you see it could be the divorce rate man as one who was always undergoing predictions so that's stating complaint from
and then his response to that risk your a kind of conception of the human being as being defined by relation to cause i started page hundred and thirteen following what makes man truly human as the called to share and divine
man and god or religion and then texas language can help related an inevitable dialogue
the radically divine actors to come to call for radically human actors to reach out to spot
so if you commit yourself to the search for god that because you're in a dynamic relationship with because than god confound your commitment just as god bases gifts energy to god creates your searches since god is in your search and therefore since god is
a strong and and facebook thank god can support that
summoned to hear god's word spoken throughout his whole life until it makes sense to amount of religious faith to bind himself for a lifetime to attentive listening and response to god's revealing president
it is this understanding of man which underlies the assumption that man can seek car best by primary commitment
ah i don't think the argument quite entirely clinches and i don't take any argument can entirely clench because this is a matter of faith and it as a mystery and is something which is only answered from when within the heart of the individual person okay that is the conviction that is given to your interior
the which is like to conviction of a person who is going to get married and who is able to make about fidelity because they sent somehow maybe obscurely and the depth of their love the district for keeps just as something permanent this is something that transcends a human change
so that's a matter of something that is a switch that has thrown a door that has open a word that has spoken or event deeply with any one person individually on person so it's very hard to to solve that with arguments from outside well you can do it is what we just say strengthen the likelihood or show the possibility of something like that and
in the perspective of a certain way of looking into human being to start by looking at and the old days there wasn't a problem in photos photo got his face for him and thought of these things as as necessarily be from the change was in a way unthinkable a change which would invalidate the basic commitment was unthinkable
that's not so much because the dynamic perspective is really prevailed for a
and can away rightly so because we for one time we needed that and emergence of a dynamic way of looking at things and i think probably that the monk an agent as much as anybody else or maybe more the dynamic perspective so we have to be able to justify and validate the
monastic amendment making that i was making a permanent commitment to god if your life on this dynamic point of view
it's not a question which has answered his question which we have to answer
you can you can do that in the various degrees of no abstraction for instance if you think of that call up god as being so dynamic that it necessarily transcends any other commitment and then take of the monastic and and that as a commitment basically to open us to freedom to the availability to cut
which that implies because god is superior to and more monastic clinton a structure and more dynamic than any structure therefore to be free for this parameter you got to be free for the holy spirit would be the foundation of them as dickman and i think that's true that's easy enough to comprehend in the light of a son yoshi institution institution if you
going to be a some cashier you're going to be something like that it's harder to get charted to put it together to well the argument together and you're talking about a certain institution more particular institution but that's what a monastic institutions should should do is to is to give you to protect the
kind of freedom with which you can respond to that dynamic caught the kemal dervis thing has a particular opening towards that because it has a solitary vocation to because it has that as that the door and the side of the institution of the communal the collective institutions cent of medical institution which is solitude and solitude
is the symbol and embodiment for that kind of freedom a challenged mentally but if you have that symbol that embodiment of openness that space for solitude for free and then conceivably you can also have in another way to you and that's the meaning i think of that movement towards the mission remember he
yep angelina partner in and said i'm nearly commandments she there was a spiritual freedom medic respond to to the most extreme cause effect it head in some way to respond to the most extreme costs those were the ones that that would appeal to those were the ones that that belonged to him and so the quota modicum will be that kind of
cook and doesn't sound anything like solitude but it's got the same absolutely sure about
so somehow the dynamism itself should be the same i think which gives which makes them aspect of make sense but that demands on that your idea of the commitment to the has life hasn't somebody transcended whitaker institution
okay so ah
and then for each person is going to express itself a different way and also at different times and our library expresses itself differently so there is a transition for instance from community to soliton there may also be a transition from sounded community
where i'm still otherwise
which is a challenge for the community challenge for the institution as much for the children to be open to their country
but remember that monasticism starts in the desert starts in the wilderness that is it starts on a vast open space where there's nothing there with you and god and god's call i be you know maybe if any kind
got that don't want to know
don't want sound to unconfined about definitely
okay then
a long section i'm vowing to god and getting more into this issue of that particular and the problem is the he says decryption the scandal is the assertion that such a commitment which is sort of made probable can be intelligibly and justifiably take a particular for a binding oneself for life to continuing the listening and the response with
a definite context such as marriage to a particular person or the framework of monastic vows it wouldn't be too hard to find yourself to the gospel for life but if it were just that and other words if you if you made about of listening to the gospel and following the gospel from the rest of your life i think that would not have this of drag about it for some people that would
because i'd say well why jesus is to particularly now i wanna be really free not of if we also have that but for a christian has got that commitment belt tensioner got somehow that christ cor inside their person that's not a problem
it's a problem of equating the gospel them with this particular community has particular structure that has a nice particular responsibilities or with this particular person and marriage which is equally or more limiting
but somehow human life is that way that jesus and someone when he incarnated himself member philippians two he emptied himself for the empty himself resulting also to confine himself business to be born of these particular parents to live in this little town and to even to experience that terrific narrowing of his life to year and is passionate and trial and
death
all the time letting himself be confined by these external things and a narrower an hour narrower way to turn it to the dies on the cross
so that scandal of particularity it is already in it's built into christianity which built into the new testament
as well as the old testament in fact that jesus was a jew
these myths of jesus being in tibet and so on when he was thirteen years and years old sure isn't the himalayas and rishi cash
in an ashram com
those are attempts to overcome that the embarrassing particularity of jesus and being and and what seems like an arrow culture and enclosed even within a narrow and very dualistic mentality but that's the fact of it
an event was where i like as well
we too are confined within another particular we pretend not to be even
and then he talks about his business of infidelity to a word undergirding everything society which is trip catastrophe of forgetfulness to of this nowadays we live in a time of transition and you get you get the idea after work anything is up for granted those if if there's a word perfect six point one just gonna
be a world six point want to that you're gonna be a note holder blog and next year if there's a windows ninety five kept me in the take that can be a world and humanity ninety six it's gonna be hold the software and so all the old commitments and everything i'll just be invalidated
you have to pay for the update
a time of transition from don't know that times everything seems to be up for grabs this is probably not true where you're setting that has joined an novitiate but that you can catch that when least you can smell it's it's fragments at other times
i'm sure
so i need is mostly to you too i just want to follow the general lines of his argument
now he answers his question about to whom do you make the bows and and religious or monastic vows kosher promises made to the living god
who has been the first to promise innovation on himself faithful from are accepted by the church and his name is shot on thirty two the person who vows is not alone or doesn't rely on as on fidelity is takes us vote on the faithfulness of god
his vocation is god's gift and therefore the vows or more truly understood as the acceptance of a gift than as the undertaking of obligations
what truly understood as the acceptance of the gift and as the undertaking of obligations and the acceptance of a gift as if you're accepting a bribe requires a commitment to particularly if you put certain limitations on your life you're accepting this is one person goddess made this one person radiant for you to promise seemingly the fulfillment of your life
religious vocation monastic vocation that binds you to fidelity that person but it also binds you to a whole framework some like the pretty soon you're gonna have to embark on a commitment to a kind of what we say structure of particularity or understood
if you have children so much the more you'll be tied into that
and then this issue of whether god can later withdraw his gift
but he gets on one thirty two and a top of the next page you consider this question of the possibility of somebody being called out as they were called in
the root of meaning and monastic vows are making over of the human person to god and love
norman is is looked down in the community profession that or maybe exceptions
a special call from god or a special need may involve separation for the community and the community or even for a monastic life without breaking the engagement to go so the engagement to god as irreversible the engagement to the particularity to the particular community and on a particular way of life even is contingent but
very strong it has the benefit of the devil on those vows are made it has the benefit of the doubt the the contrary has to prove itself for its time has done very good arguments to be able to justify its up as an exception
professionally maintained for a real risk of faith
smith and human life deals with it
human live feeds on risks in some way read the scripture the old testament already see that from abraham them to jesus himself and the apostles
the other side of it is that the side of does an ironic other side to this risk of monastic profession and that is the protective environment and which one is installed by monastic profession because we don't go out into the desert and we are how scorpions under our bed and we don't have to
eat wild honey or whatever way john the baptist or but eat locusts you have to be august
now we have we could have three meals a day so with this risk that there's a danger of of our romanticizing of dramatizing this thing because as there's an enormous protection and we have to fight in the sense the security of that protected on below which is around us we have
not to be careful not to be swallowed by the great mother again
not to be swallowed my mother monastery of mother church so that or initiative in the spark of the terrorism as is tap hundred out
otherwise the thing just becomes a kind of romantic fiction romantic dream the home and estrich exploit
and then a year talks further about this issue of the particular and the institution and the mystery of incarnation of faith monastic vows or a lifetime commitment to a search for god not in the aspect but in the midst of human history and the concrete realities of life therefore we
you have to you have to create a structure for our life just as we would no matter what we do
it's only that we make us stronger commitment to the structure and monastic life and you usually would and the structure itself is it may be monumentally a strong and tough and even original and post
now he gets to this issue of idolatry and alienation the fact that to think can wake you up or it can put you to sleep it can bring to life where condemn yeah it can be easy context in which you're really engage in the struggle with god where the context in which you go back to sleep
but more securely because a lot of your worries are taken away from him
this is on tap on thirty foot and maintaining those institutions that were an institution already has a huh
showed a terrible ring about it which originally supported consciousness of the christian often loses contact with the primordial experience of persons things and events in which god's presence was first and has told me know so this is the importance of this this book this kind of treatment is that it brings up here
very real issues which a lot of the a lot of the books will just skip over because machine to be outside of the because i really am confronted they have gone through the second layer so a book which is dealing with the second layer as well as the first one and that it's comparable to mertens contemplation in a world of action martin's first layer book a seven storey mountain
where it gets emanation center of the world and where the monastic life in the absolute peak and management there's no doubt about that is an anemone fish the second layer book is gonna placement of the action it's not the only one but that's where it looks at the critically of monasticism and the sorted things out and after a long experience of the shadow of the majestic
that's what you're doing here
often a very sacred symbols which ought to reveal god obscure his presence now
i realized that this is is not only to code is not exactly the many other floor inhibition and yeah you're not going to be them probably likely to be confronting these things now and fact they may even offend your your feelings they may seem somehow
unworthy of equality of
grace which you field and yet they have to be confronted general generally could you come up the rear their heads in a very true
so they may not be what you're experiencing them but when you get to that layer your water the packet and see what other people a pattern
and of course we have a whole history of vision and a sense that was a bunch of reformation and what was the motivation i was the zeal behind that destruction of monasteries and chance lot of the same feelings
maybe not expressed quite so precisely such a nuanced way but these issues are gonna come up and so you need to know where to find some help coming
the maintenance of these forms may be a vehicle for the awareness of god or it may serve as a tranquilizer or an installation against the risk of faith
and then he talked about two terms the ancient term idolatry the contemporary term alienation alienation from automatic existence and he relate the to idolatry was absolute dicing something else so you really took it for god gave to that what was owed to go
now this can also be a structure can be a way of life it can be an experience you can also be a person or a self image or something like that and we're always dealing with partial idolatry zednik
you can say that addiction is a form of idolatry and the addiction extends itself too many things
religious man today frequently so to be very preservation of certain institutions can have the effect of alienating and from a search for god's presence
and here we have to remember once again administrations have begun to going out into the wilderness and the monastic renewals like that of st romeo and the tenth and eleventh century is going back into the wilderness and to the weather than some solitude basically in order to get away from the decadent
the alienation the idolatry of monasticism which itself had gotten away from its carriage okay my monasticism get too fat and prosperous person begins consorting with in the upper crust you know that the barons and me and the adventure riding around on their horses they're right horses
then it's time for another exit is entire wilderness and somebody will do it just as paul just an annotated run the sixteenth century run same time as a reformation when they come out listening was was too fat for him
so it happens all the time it happened at least important and ages and there's another john the baptist to stretch and rolling again and goes out to find it to a rope once you got
so i'm talking about maybe an external corruption and decadence on the part of monasticism it is also just the in turn are going to sleep which can happen without all that corruption perfectly good institutions can as you can get in the way and people faithfully following but somehow the institute
in the structure the rule can be can be taken for got the absolute test i ever have believing that if you if you followed everything that you were told that he would be transformed okay that if you if you did with your at all if you gave yourself with your whole heart and hope will all a good well yeah have you had a lot of an attempt time and only n
energy of your youth to the institution that you would be transformed realized as the as the ancient stands for but don't think that's true
what kind of five anger and other than that because you get a lot of people who've been doing that before years now have gotten very far and after whether the certain sagging in their faces too because they're living a life of resignation or something like that and somehow to their the ship has never come in so it takes more than that
that it takes that searching in your own heart and in your online and that dealing with your own desires some so that you desire in your life remains it alive so that your harvey late july that's why i like markets how much is because he did that
he he may have had the same romantic dream when he was young but he didn't give up and he went through the second layer and he didn't live long enough to walk into paradise tell us about it
he didn't go to sleep
then he talks about the pull towards institutionalism which generates alienation that word alienation i didn't understand it for a long time and i understand it now
alienation has he is like doing something and after why you discover you're not there at all
that you're only doing it on the outside and and your heart and your real deep consciousness have gone out to lunch maybe they've been out for a long time maybe they're on a sabbatical you know the way you like it on agree are you just doing this thing the factory routine is typically aren't in secular institutional pena
on the outside of could sit product computer about economic iraq and jockey numbers around on the screen and after well where'd you go jolla where i there's nobody at home
you can live a whole life you know there's nothing to do it for you are mertens a mess drunk with a gift of sarcasm
the underlying errors the failure to recognize the relative character everything and structures man's search for got to the stable commitment of our life they made to god transcends the commitment to a particular set of institutional arrangements see all of this country about a country of not very little of this critical thinking about monasticism there
there may have been a lot of feeling inside a lot of suppressed resentment i'm a building darkness when much before that content so this is enormously important
this woven into the second layer to be able to say these things him out in the oven and go through them and rediscover the to core has just as of monastic life
to be able to say this and to be able to sort of hold the whole institutional issue in your hands and look at all sides of it way it and then wedge yourself to him talking about the beginning of the monastic life
about stability and is the ultimate paradox for the contemporary man or woman who understands the problems of idolatry religious alienation and institutionalism tying yourself to one
but together institutional framework
and he just keeps going back and back and back to that thing that god is beyond his all and that the particular community is is relative relativise to particular rule or other devised
it's not god and yet you've gotta have one in some way and in some way got validate your commitment to it just as god validates the call and a commitment to marriage union with another person
so the two questions or the turn out to be to problems after one reality the question do you have promised to get and i think he answered one of those questions right in the beginning but he kept holding it up tracker like a damage for the rest of the chapter and hundred together mechanized version of
a meet the other question do you make your promise to the community or to god and can you really make a permanent problems and so the two questions or respond to one another on the same answer that it's god that you make the promise to much gods reality god's promise god's grace which stands the promise and the vow
what makes it possible exit a possible thing
none low conclusion there goes a little further
on this
any questions about half for move onto can reset your mouth
ha
the of minority for yes a very sacred symbols which offers you know about his presence
is that why the sacred a simple thing like the mass
for instance out
i'm not what goes on a mass is more important than god's presence in the mass i would yeah no certain way i look at the liturgy can you come and idolatry to now that's a that's a very tender point a very tender nerve because the liturgy is very sacred thing okay but to liturgy especially if performed in certain
ways with a lot of maybe a lot of solemnity or the way they do it and in certain churches now with all kinds of artificial pouch and i was projected videos and my dancers and an instrumental music know all of this all of these things going on that
can that can get in the way actually of the simple meeting with god which would again with one another we should occur in the or crushed okay
i'd rather take a more marginal example
french touch the well take the the salam the solemn vesture as for instance with which mass was celebrated the holidays are kind pontifical mass and song which at one point a really splendid mediation of god and really splendid kind of almost realization of god's kingdom
on earth you know and nowadays it it tends to have the opposite effect and people realize it to that somehow is that's keeping people from god and sunlight goes not in all my stuff god not again in those busking singers or less brocades and things and holiday instance of people somehow are feasting
on that and they're really not in touch with gotten on are feasting on
or if you have very ornate music for instance in another you a certain moment awakens you said makes you feel just about a divine president but then you get into the music then you start listening to it after a while instead of attending to the divine present target that's another exam president mozart masses are probably maybe two beautiful you know to allow
wow you're really to to separate
simply be absorbed in the match to simply enter into into it on a deeper level but those are those are examples that you'd given take and there maybe a slight excess fine but the general effect is positive but sometimes the sometimes the blocking can become almost
almost at for instance in latin america sometimes a particular view of the church really gets under way of god the church viewed the power of the church okay and the imposing dignity of the church the the best years of the bishop and shine okay can fortify
the regimes which close out the justice of god came because that's right arm in arm was like a dictatorial regime or a military regime or an oligarchy which is exploiting the people and murdering the indigenous peoples and chong okay so the the a
episcopal dignity and all of those best years and things just go on with digits parliament and the church seems arm-in-arm with that thing and and shutting out gut
it's shutting i got not directly so much in love of a bit of worship and reverence been on this other girl seen by making god's church look like another sub of power
okay by making god's kingdom look like an earthly kingdom and honorific kingdom is a dictatorial impressive
kingdom and exploited to regime
so what's it doing and saying that power is god
so that really really should check got serious with
but there are a lot of other examples which is an opera pharisees and scribes in jesus as he had a lot of the base of god see the logic the pleasure of not exactly it's a very good example
if you do these prescriptions okay the trillion it don't forget about it because your venue or one with garbage not one gonna show you everything you just have begun
but from that they put you in a place for maybe you can relate to god but they don't do it for you because that's an interior and and more completing so that's what jesus does when it comes along he pushes those particular structures over and said look this is ago
guys inside your guns in the neighbor
okay
contraception more now my first reference for this isn't that rb nineteen eighties chapter on profession and it's from page four fifty nine through
for sixty three and i thought of giving you a xerox accept it but i thought it my depression
what that's about it actually is the scholarly inquiry into what it's about what they've put the phrase means
i don't know
exactly how to think of that but that for hundreds and hundreds of years people didn't know it the expression men
and it didn't matter a whole lot why didn't matter a hollow because basically it
the you're talking about profession as the whole of a self commitment to god and religion minds what you're going to do you know you're committing herself to the rule so things are spelled out and this phrase wrote of dissolves and so congress much you want dissolves itself into the fullness of that observance that you're committing yourself to
so one phrase doesn't make that much difference if it gets obscured of blotted out for is lost
and also the interpretation of it as conversion of by isn't too far or what ever that i was supposed to mean them and beginning let me first of all know she the writers who write about this the either follow the old way and just talk about conversion or they'll take some arbitrary write a chapter about him
from demoralise arbitrary perspective on the whole monastic life because the that doesn't mean something in particular means everything so how do you write a chapter on everything
different ones will do what a different way robertson and trappist book i talked about politician but what is monastic code and then the basic observances for instance and he is separation into five categories withdraw from society and life of prayer and majority of life and common life percent of bites and then work and
the framework of monastic like almost like an inventory of monastic life according to those fire departments but that's one way of looking at does it kind of cataloging way of saying what this is about consider your girl don't let in terms of conversion and for biblical conversion conversion that a very strong biblical room
metanoia
something else and heroes you pay for a black shirt return to god
now this let me do this little thing in the army nineteen eighty just to give you the picture of the question itself
the most controverted of three elements of three thousand is a concept of congress accio more of zorro
it's a grammatically difficult praise because it overlaps it says the same thing twice
and
he says probably quit and st benedict's time but then it was soon it was not understood and the copyists who made the manuscripts or the rule would change it to converse you're a moron which makes more sense conversion of your ways conversion of by makes perfect sense so on and on nineteen twelve was the correct waiting room
story of congress such accio more
i'm not inside that called discussion so i don't know whether that's no
as absolute as they put it here
everyone has been undisputed sense then that the correct reading is not conversion omar which would be simple conversion of life and of your ways of living but congress such yeah so then we're stuck with the with the puzzle
was it mean and he goes into three different ways of looking at us
three schools of thought
neither you say that it's equivalent to converge you
that's the first approach the second approach is that a lotta and martin talks about a morons got a fairly long chapter on contraception i'm warmed by the way in the
the monastic journey know that book because it's got a bunch of chapters about different aspects of monastic like is a fairly long chapter and know about which you might be interested in me he's wrestling it's a kind of a tussle is his wrestling now environment with the question of what it means especially in terms of of about impairment in remember the solitary things very important for him so
what lotta and says is that each of the three thousand the rule of st benedict specifies the life in terms of those for kinds of monks that he talked about okay in the beginning so the key gerald of the geographic's are ruled out by stability right you'd want to play she'd had a wandering
one place the sarah weights ruled out by obedience right because you don't do what you think is best you are one hundred the rule and a superior
and so do you know the hermit he says would be ruled out by congress accio morrow which refers to the santa medical intervention okay so mercantile tussles tussles with it and it doesn't have enough
doesn't have enough substance is probably not true
it's it's neat but it doesn't change of each trip so we get to father brasilia steinem who was my hat
monastic professor in rome and who carried an alarm clock and his pocket i have always loved him for that big alarm clock and he had a bad habit i guess i'm going to make a big alarm clock with legs on and bells on the top okay and he would pull it out of his pocket at the beginning with the lecture put it
i do not love him only because the lectures ended on time but because of the parliament's
the spirit that was in is karen that big alarm clock graphics package
he had a sense of humor
so it's the philological explanation for once the guts and i who says this is a genitive of identity of web or app exegetical janitor which i think they use that biblical exegesis common and lola that's where we have your lowland and then the rb so
two now just anonymous so congress accio and moral means the same thing that is the the the way of life congress ah show is the same as your your morals you might shave not so much morals or thinkers as ways of living you're just your way and like what we made an english
translation and hamastan you kind of masaccio would be way of life basically a matter of life and conversion over the bird now conversion was conversion right but see we're moving away from converge you were saying that the word is really kind of research ya not conversion and that just not really of not directly
equivalent to converge you are either it doesn't have that sense of of turning it as the sense of a way of life and so congress at your warm is simply doubling at saying at toys nowhere to your way of life it doesn't say directly changing your way of life so a conversion but it means it because you've got the monastic life is different from like before so it really
i need it but it's implicit to expensive so this is the english translation for the whole thing that they have you his about his manner of life and moral conduct issue now those two are just about the same except moral conduct sounds a little more interior but i suspected more as moon
doesn't have quite the same meaning as moral conduct in our language
for about his manner of life that is to say his moral conduct
neither one has specifically monastic meaning and a job but they refer to the monastic way of life because that's richard commenting and shall be true
hence it is a general promise to live the lives that the rule and the average specify and that particular monastery
four or five pages
i'm just gonna mention the several treatments of this that i looked out during this last week one of the estate of harvey nineteen ninety which is merely trading trying to arrive at a real meaning of it that's what you call historical critical work to visit historical critical approach applied not to the scripture but children to the rule and in this case it's quite a
it doesnt when you've got a phrase like you need that can you did that philological or disagreeable is it may seem
i looked at robert's we've got two different editions in his book and this book center that christ which i guess i didn't mention at first this is the second edition which are burning question of the whole thing was about professional the term a travel i do much damage to from a trappist point of view show but it's a it's solid serious thing
sometimes it's quite deepest row when i had a class before we used the first edition and patriots have done in terms of proletarian of a way of life picking up a way of life for praxis the expression from the desert fathers and then those basic monastic observances and then you're committing a to the whole thing the
consider your call treated in terms of conversion in other words they
they somewhat fossil this this issue of what the media has by going right back to conversion again which is surprising in that protection and yet it it is all right and way i mean it belongs and the there is a certain equivalents but it's not precise
now
you could say that the conversion is the interior component of congress socio and the congress shots you're actually refers more to the extra it refers to your behavior your way of life like politics and greek the conversion would be more interior and conversion of heart
be the core of them
and also expresses the dynamic aspect that it is it's an unceasing thing it's not something you various up to and then you're locked into it and forget it a ride along with there's something has to be renewed all the time an interior spirit of drive towards the goal of monastic like
simulate combination to yeah petra and neither is enough have to i consider why i'm not that's right see if if it were just as drive he wouldn't have to make about congress such you somewhere because noticed that a vow is always about something that can be verified
it has to be external them for about always has to have an external reference in canada otherwise there's no way of telling whether you're living according to the vow or not if it were merely an interior disposition what can happen the church legislate for that how can you make laws about an interior disposition you may not even know what you broken
was you so it has to have an externalized but and this about the bearing on the show from the latin phrase is more external
when we want to get to the interior that and we need to know about something like conversion and this consider your cog goes from conversion than two sentences and then asceticism is coming back and becoming nearly equivalent to gun research here but not quite
because asceticism is like one sector of the kind of research here about roberts says the life of prayer as part of it and community is part of that's not all extensions
is the true to the asceticism can be very exterior and puncture oem and you can do all the exterior of i have trying to nudge me so what he does actually recess to give you the exterior in terms of a citizen the interior transit conversion and conversion also giving it a broader that are difficult age
for a new testament fish
the chapter the monastic journey
which i wrote an on-topic on just returned to him now it is clear to me down what is wrestling with
if he had the ninety the early nineteen eighty behind him he would have had to tussle someone with that the issues in here and he really as it does have a concern about of i in harmon
and wanting to keep the benedict and commitment which he has also opened to the herman which is is rose was next so he has to deal with with lanterns thesis that this is to explore these the herman
location
he's got about three successive definitions over what if kind of of such your mom is about
and he's always eloquent
we might summarize all this by saying that about because it conversion or is he so he hasn't is still behind the settling of that issue
despite the fact that
butler wrote about it i was nineteen twelve and start another product is of renunciation and pennants about to abandon the world and its ways in order to seek out and the solitary diseases obedience prayer poverty and labour's of a monastic right
it is the vow to respond totally and integrally to the word of christ come follow me
and then he goes up by renouncing all the in piedmont
so i wouldn't recommend this for the clarity of the same reddit that rounds out the the issue
especially in terms of his solitary life for that's unnecessary really much set pieces of a of has been dealt with
okay that's all that i ever the spring next time i expect will be a little warm packed if we try to is oliver she's so i urge you to read that section before i'll try to get a xerox to read it before him so that we won't have to do it too much of that during the hour that we
i'll be frightened