EP 14 - Et Unum Sint
00:00 No, no, peace don't mean a dominé. No, no, peace don't mean it.
00:13 They don't mean it, they don't mean it. You don't have a dominé. I want to talk to you now about some of the most profound truths of our faith.
00:38 And I want to begin by telling you about a pilgrimage that I made to the Holy Land in 1882. I've written about it in my book, Wisdom from the Christian Mystics, how I spent the whole night within the Holy Sepulchre, and I was the only one there.
01:02 Before the midnight office, I was at Calvary. Afterwards, I was in the inner tool. …but the Pilgrimage finally ended in the place where the first mass was celebrated by Jesus Christ our Lord Himself, or at least as close to that place as humanly possible.
01:36 4. The mass was said by a priest of the Caldean light, in union with Rome, but the mass was said in Aramaic.
01:50 And at the end of that mass, just before the blessing in broken English, he said to osor. It was here that Christ himself prayed, Not just for the apostles, but after praying kangan, al printur den.
02:16 • 97 5 presentations in order that they may be 1 5 – I am in the Father As our father is in me, May they be so perfectly one that the world may believe that it was you who send with." El包iroi He was praying that we may be drawn up into the sublime tritaterian spirituality that replicated and mirrored
03:07 ear on earth, the mystery of the divine, loving in heaven. Remember their father, thy kingdom come on earth, they pray, plus it is in heaven.
03:28 We are made in the image and likeness of God. Yes, but not the God who dwelt from all eternity in light inaccessible, but in the image and likeness of the God who was made flesh and blood in Jesus Christ our Lord.
03:49 Remember the words of St. Paul? Christ lives in me. I no longer live. And in Him then, just as in Christ there is the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, so in St.
04:11 Paul. Baird Weld, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, whom, as he had promised at the last supper, had made his home within him.
04:26 Now, the love generated by this indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the early believers Seat to the outside world, a quality of loving that they never conceive, never mind seen before, and it was this loving that completely transformed them in such a way that they wanted to become Christian's, they wanted
05:02 to be in this profound Trinitarian unity to participate in replicating and mirroring, reflecting here on earth the Trinitarian life of the three in one in heaven into a profound unity.
05:26 Now, this wasn't a panthenistic unity. Later, mystics in both East and West, of course, would be accused of pantheism. In other words, they became, they were to become so perfectly one in Christ …that they would lose their own identity.
05:47 Not so for Christians, why? …Because the means by which they would be united together …would be love. …And love, of its very nature, …differenciates, …makes people different.
06:10 la love of God makes creation different. Makes each one of us totally unique human beings love differentiates.
06:28 Selfishness makes us all the same. Now I'm not an expert gardener, but if you could imagine in my hands 100 different seeds.
06:43 They'd all look more or less the same way, because they were all turned in upon themselves. But remember, as the gospel said, give them good soil.
06:58 Water them. Expose them to the vibrant rays of the sun and gradually each one of them grows …and becomes a full plan to full flower, blossoms, blooms, and in doing this each one of them becomes a unique and unrepeatable masterpiece of God's creation.
07:23 Love different emceates, makes things different, selfishness makes everything all the same, and everyone all the same.
07:35 …but love differentiates. It is exactly the same in your own experience of love. If you have been loved, if you have loved and been loved, …and experienced being loved by another human being, You know that you grow and become your true selves from the ruins of self-centeredness had made you at the beginning
08:13 of the journey. Love differentiates. It makes you become your real self so that we are now in a state of becoming and the more we open ourselves to receive God's love through Jesus Christ our Lord, the more we are drawn up into Him to become our true selves, then the more we become a different.
08:40 We are in a continual state of becoming more and more like our true selves, the true selves, the Christ had conceived us to become From the very beginning, and that will go on and on to all eternity.
08:59 No, it doesn't lead to pantheism. It leads to making us all totally unique, totally different, totally unique, unrepeatable.
09:17 Masterpieces of God's creation. b final. production All it takes you to pensions …and that is in fact your greatest strength, turned to God radically opened yourself to his love in the way we're describing in these talks, and you will become your true selves from the ruins, yes, that selfishness and
10:09 self-centeredness has made of you before, to become a unique, unripeetable art of God's creation every one of us. This is what Saint Paul said, was it not when we called into the mystery of the mystical body of Christ, each one of us becoming different to display, to become resplended with the love and
10:42 the life of God in such a way but we display the love, the beauty, the God goodness and the glory of God to all who we meet.
11:00 So that they encounter the three in one, in us, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The question is how do we go about or continue to open ourselves and to radically open ourselves to the love of God poured out by Jesus Christ on that first pentecost day, in …a room where we celebrated mass on
11:35 the last day of our pilgrimage. How do we go about it? In recent years, it has been summed up perfectly by our lady, in but three words that I will repeat again and again and again to repent to pray to sacrifice, to give up time, quality space and time in which to radically expose ourselves to the love
12:11 of God which we find made flesh and blood in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, a very famous Benedictine Abbott, called William Asanteere, said, you will never know anybody.
12:34 You'll never love anybody rather unless first you learn to come to know them. but he said, you will never know them, and less you love them, and so it is with God.
12:57 And that is why in the early Church, a new means and Method of Prayer called Meditation became absolutely central for those who had not seen Christ themselves as the 1st Apostles as the first disciples have done.
13:15 Remember the last words in St. John's Gospel, blessed are they who have not seen and yet who have learned to believe.
13:25 Why? Because now through meditating upon the mystery of God's love embodied in Jesus Christ our Lord, as he was on earth, they come to know him, then to love him and through love, the love that emanated from him to be drawn into his mystical body, into his mystical being, to share in his mystical contemplation
13:55 of the Father, to receive and return the pleroma as the Greek fathers, demons of каждina.
14:13 Eh oh my god! My mind is that the The God's glory would shine out onto that ancient world.
14:40 The percentage of saints in the early church was higher than at any time in subsequent centuries. Why?
14:58 Because everybody found and became themselves their true cells in the love of Jesus Christ, in his contemplation of the Father that enabled the three in want to dwell in them in such a way ― ― ― ― could experience.
16:02 The love that Jesus prayed would be theirs at the last supper, that they may be one, with me in them.
16:16 As I am in you Father, and as you are in me, this was the love that transformed an H and Pagan World into a Christian world and meditation, the meditation on the love of Christ that led onwards into contemplation was the essence of everything, the heart, the centre of everything.
16:51 …and then came, oh calamity of calamities, and then came that terrible heresy that we've mentioned before. I'm talking about the heresy of alienism.
17:03 It was not enough front again, just enough front again, God. It was that. And again, Christ Himself. But what did it do to the Christian in Community it completely broke them up.
17:15 Why? Because if Christ is not God as the Aryans maintained, if He was not divine, if His love for the Holy Spirit was not divine, what was the purpose of meditation?
17:33 The meditation that should lead them to contemplation was null and void. It was purposeless, Christian spirituality was destroyed from the inside by Aryanism, 90% were told of early Christians.
17:57 era arian, and it smashed the inner spiritual life of early grisities. And it received a further shot in the arm from iconoclasm.
18:13 You probably, when I mentioned the word iconoclasm, you probably think of poddistan's in the 16th century, Spashing statues, defacing them, pulling down tapestres and ripping them to pieces from the walls of the Great Cathedrals, breaking stained glass windows, etc.
18:34 Yes, they did, but they also did it, Catholic iconoclasts, with a misunderstanding of the second of the Great Commandments, way back in the 5th and 6th century.
18:48 We must make, have no images of God, all of the mysteries of our faith and our walls. In our cathedrals, in our homes, nor even in our minds, and so meditation again came under attack.
19:09 A further shot in the arm that destroyed meditating on the love of God embodied in Jesus Christ. The prayer above all prayers that neezers on into contemplation from where we receive all that we need, all the virtues, all the gifts that make us into perfect living in bodyments of Jesus Christ our Lord
19:46 and then alongside Aryanism something else happened secularism invaded Christianity in the year I think it was 391 Then Catholicism became the official religion of a Roman Empire.
20:18 Hara, we made it. The Church came out of the Categums. Well, I suppose it had already done this after the victories of Constantine and so forth, and the Council of Nysia.
20:32 But now they came out into the open. They weren't afraid to become. S-isn't it not just the words of great to become Christians.
20:43 In a Christian world if you wanted to become, I wanted to get to make money. If you wanted to make it in that world, you became a Christian and also vonJugius converts came forth.
20:59 Positions of rank were held by, by the Pope. Had consular rank by bishops who had seditorial rank, priest positions of privilege.
21:13 The orderly laity now could make their way in the world and become rich. You cannot serve God and Maman, and by Maman they meant money, profeerm & rank, property, but now the laity.
21:38 Forgot their origins. And they died they laid money and lands to the to the paper state. …to ease their way through purgatory to have them in the next life.
21:57 And so now the church became wealthy. This was the origin of what later came to be called the papal state.
22:08 And now the church made its way into the dark ages, quite a different… a different creature from the spirituality that I have been outlining in the early days of Christianity.
22:36 With Christ at its centre, pouring out his spirit to draw everyone up into his life to become their true selves, all that a God, Christ is God, Christ is God, yes, remember, though the doxy, prevailed, but now God was up in his heaven at the top of the pyramid of power as it were.
23:11 And we were at the bottom trying to make our way up by our own endeavor and so Pelagionism comes in as I explained and in the previous talk, what hope was there now for humanity, or rather sorry for Christianity?
23:33 All seemed to be lost, and then in the year 1096, or rather 1095 to be more precise.
23:50 After the Council of the Church held in France, Pope Urban II called a crusade.
24:11 Terrible things have been going on in the whole of that now for many, many decades and † background music † Whemah beinifiliir abamnie bomubine seen a' su chose a' Zaarite.
24:24 Christians' were accused of involvement with Rosalix. Parents— sickness, death, tortured— A institution that allowedmaschineurio to be pushed forward to a feナir?ам, so a holy father basically called Aykeud.
24:45 …and the emperor, the kings and princes of Europe went out to the Holy Land … …and in a matter of only four or five years Jerusalem was taken … …the Holy Land was back in Christian hands.
25:02 Now I'm not here to talk about the pros and cons of the crusade. I merely want to make this point.
25:10 Er was this that massive pilgrimages now began to take place from all over Europe, of ordinary people, men, women and children to go back to the Holy Land.
25:30 And when they went there, they saw where Mary had conceived Christ in Nazareth. They saw where he'd been born in Bethlehem, where he had grown up, where he had taught, where he had preached.
25:50 They'd seen where he had died on the cross, where he had risen from the dead, and they came back again absolutely thrilled with what they had seen to tell those they had left behind.
26:04 and to sing about it, this now became the pop songs of the day, sung by the Troubadors. It was about the Holy Land and about the humanity, their beloved Christ, who had been discovered again and now became the heart and soul of Christian spirituality.
26:29 Thanks to St. Bernard of Clevo. Hymn was the one that put the humanity of Christ back now in the centre of Christian spirituality.
26:43 Brought back therefore Christian mystical theology. In his book, see behind me, the history of Christian spirituality by Poulinard, ற Mainlyezons and the 100 pages British meant to show how he laid the foundation's of Christianity in Europe to the present day and what he did for academia almost eight
27:16 Francis Huc России,enh whereas he did a aurend people. He also went to the Holy Land. He built a crib so that all could see what he had seen at a Bethlehem.
27:32 He received the stigmata, the first one to receive the stigmata, to show what he had experienced at the place where Christ suffered and died, …and it was the only stigmata in which the nails, the pierced, the flesh of Christ, pierced the flesh of Francis, and even curled over into a little circle on
28:04 the other side of his hands and his feet in such a way that he couldn't even walk until Saint Claire made special, ― ― ― ― jomusus, jomususus,ði atstikmitu.
28:27 Lossemitu, veraullájd aðskábev Mostenj arðum. Aðjæð áillájd k ógnInaudible ang湔os participation rindu Bark Dig it buðnt jigi aðskrægne haplna en방无 ammunition, həkl co hvoð hður kjá Prosemitu che hyp ma words he heard, it is not by suffering but by love that you are united with me.
29:00 And this became the center and the soul of the spirituality that now began to prevail in Western Europe, based on the humanity of Jesus Christ.
29:16 And so back to the humanity de Juzel's Christ back to meditating upon that humanity and what happened, of course, back to contemplation, back to be drawn up into the contemplation of Christ.
29:32 And so once again, the spirituality long since forgotten in those dark ages was brought back into bold relief again.
29:47 …and it was spread by the Dominicans by the Augustinians, by the Carmelites, as well as the Franciscans, and as well as the sisterships.
30:04 …and the most particular, but I'm by the Benedictines of Obibio in Northern Italy, who spread it all over Italy, and all over Spain, reaching its high point at Montserrat.
30:22 But I digress, I'm in danger, here, of drifting into giving a history lesson. †The point that I want to make is that it was back to the spirituality of those first early ages again, and they reached a high point, as I've indicated in an earlier lecture †After the Council of Trent, and those hundred years
30:44 also, after the Council of Trent, …when the pure, perfect, self-sacrificial, contemplative spirituality, first lived by Jesus Christ, then lived by the early church, returned to Christianity, and according to a whole list of specialists, theologians who I quoted you before, they reached a high point
31:15 in the 100 ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― a dos, mith després partis whisk mik mith desc ah n mo ah ah to turn away from distractions, if they come, they come, if they entertain, then they entertain you.
32:02 And as we can see you have mentioned before, Mollinot was indicted of over 40 cases of gross sexual misconduct. He and his followers, for which he was given life imprisonment in our monastery, but the horror of quietism was such and the terrible thought that it could return meant that all that had happened
32:29 between St. Bernard and quietism, all the great mystics and the greatest mystical writers you the church had ever known, ought to be found in that period of 400 years or so, they disappeared, they evaporated, why?
32:48 Because contemplation, mystical theology was dangerous and the meditation that leads there therefore must be dangerous too. Sadly, into this gap came a plethora …of home made spiritualities.
33:14 As children choose their own favorite goodies … …from the Pick and Mix counter at the supermarket … …so Christians now, Catholics begin to choose their own … …favorite forms of spirituality … …their own favorite devotional practices.
33:34 Their own chosen liturgies, or salted and peppered with an interest in personal, private, mystical, revelations.
33:53 …so that each individual Catholic became utterly different from another Catholic. It used to be said before that Protestant who were their own texts, from their own chosen bibles in their hand, with their old pokes, and so Protestant was split as und that enters into a thousands of different sects, but
34:27 the same began to happen in a sense to Catholics through their self-chosen spiritualities. Inge individual Catholic was not so much united as divided by their self-chosen spiritualities, their own devotional practices, their own preferred liturgies.
34:53 It has been said that at the present day it has come to be called a Catholic cafeteria spirituality, because everyone can choose it for themselves from a seemingly endless list of spiritual goodies.
35:15 So now a spirituality that once united in the early church, once united again after St. Bernard and bonded Christendom together for four, five hundred years as it had been bonded together in those early centuries was now split as under.
35:37 Take any individual Catholic today and get them to write down their personal spirituality and I'll tell you this, they will all differ from one another, they do not unite, they separate, …and yet, I'm not suggesting for one moment … …but they are necessarily wrong in themselves … …they are wrong because
36:06 … …because they are eccentric in the literal meaning of the word. In short, they are away from the center, from the central spirituality, the central God-given spirituality that Jesus Christ our Lord Himself first lived here on earth, practiced, unto death, …and then introduced into the early church
36:45 that God-given spirituality, that God-given contemplative spirituality, …so they are not necessarily take them individually, this private devotion, this spirituality, this preferred liturgy.
37:19 Those intiseders in this vapamokas, they are not necessarily bad themselves, they are bad in the sense they are eccentric, they take us away from the centre.
37:35 Do find the great sense of turning to previous aims那就 follow them and to follow their spirituality, valiti, to follow their private revelations.
37:50 Of course you don't. And yet today people spend all too much time bickering and berating one another, each trying to prove that this all that revelation is true or bogus.
38:06 Under their chosen mystic is Orthodox in the process, displaying an unacceptable and often totally on edifying lack of Christian charity.
38:22 If only the time that were misspent following these private devotions, or remember, private revelations or the private revelations, Instead of going into a private consultant, they're very much for the person for whom they are prescribed.
38:43 There have been hundreds of them, many bogus, but many true. But they are personal, and what is often personal for one person can be dangerous and wrong for another.
38:54 Please let us start this. And unite together in trying to understand and practice the public revelation. 1. The Christ first lived before introducing to the early church, to join together in him in his mystical body, so that we become possessed by the life of the three in one, bonding us as one together
39:25 in Christ, so that that prayer of Christ may be fulfilled. …remember that they may be one as I, Father, I mean you and you in me may be so perfectly one …so that the world may believe Lest m'est shown the damage done by farce forwarding to a young and idealistic priest, who in the middle of the 20th
40:11 century wanted to become a priest. In a whole environment, spiritual environment that was shocked, threw in, threw with the aftermath of queergism.
40:36 That person was me. When I entered into my first year of theology, in the, to study theology in the late 50s and early 60s, I was given a massive book, B-A-C, in Latin, 155 IBM, 1450 IBM 1450 IBM 1450 di bilade 205 THEALITY 285 100,000 259,000 buckets per dagani – just now mais, buonira, almaster which
41:32 is still present was aikka based on reading examples which, spoilt, was limited many times but still probablyانноша 74.
41:54 And the newss were so which cover Doctors Hmens. He was writer at school with a betterow in the scriptural art.
42:03 I was taught there. Then, when he changed the students he showed phases of the church did not exist. It wasn't a subject.
42:15 It wasn't even a minor subject. We could not go backstage with Saint John Henry Newman …nokega – ong gallu – Ceaere제ĵi nijoej Scriptureto, … …koaarjima健стoudʰa.
42:38 Scorkega – дenzaayUgplageiK… … Universecell – semerajie tneapla deyarniak tneapla …it did not exist as a subject.
43:10 …and what is spiritual theology then? Zilch, nothing at all. Nothing at all. It didn't exist as a subject. Prayer, contemplation.
43:23 It was not dealt with at all. This is why I went talking to you earlier and I told you about the time when I was the director of the diocesan retreat and conference centre from 1969 to 1981.
43:48 I thought I was unique. ―I mentioned that of Franciscan ― ―did I know to spend his whole time ― ―in the formation ― ―without anybody talking to him ― ―or telling him ― ―or leading or guiding him in prayer ― ―well, that Franciscan was me ― ―and it was because I was so horrified ― ―that I started to audit
44:16 every priest ― ―and every religious who came to the centre ― in those 10 years, and I found their experience was exactly the same as my experience and the experience that I have just shared with you.
44:32 Yes, there was the Divine Office that was said every day, but remember the Divine Office is the external expression of the personal a relationship of love that we have with God and without that it soon becomes what I'm afraid our students would often call not the Opus Day but the Onus Day because it
45:03 was just a big onus that you had to get through before you got on with the important job of studying to become a priest, all predominantly intellectual.
45:17 These people worshipping with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. It produced all too many chipboard priests and religious, covered with a thin veneer of religiosity, there was no death.
45:37 …and remember St. Thomas Aquinas said that when we don't get any pleasure from God any more than we seek it from, we seek it elsewhere.
45:48 And we've seen how this happened. I have seen how it happened on a massive industrial scale and how it has gone on happening in the church.
46:02 My theology was preceded by personal having to try to learn Latin and Greek to study Aristotelian philosophy to two years.
46:13 Why to understand the scholastic theology so as to understand the gospel message that was originally so simple, far too simple, I'm afraid, for the worldly wise because it was taught in the simplest language of all Aramaic.
46:34 It was a simple teaching of love and how to receive it. It became a massive gap between intellectual knowledge and experiential knowledge of God.
46:53 You could know every article of the Creed. te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te, te wasn't actually full of evil men, trying to destroy our faith.
47:43 They were shepherds, but they themselves had lost their way. I'm referring to our professors, our superiors. In England and in Rome, they'd lost their way since quietism, completely lost their way, and they didn't even know that they'd lost their way.
48:02 $- slim—اذ was the sadness of it all just as order Ricality anti-mystical, anti-contemplation, anti-prayer tradition that have grown up since quietism.
48:40 When I say anti-prayer, I don't mean people, but against prayer in general, but more specifically, the prayer that leads to mystical contemplation, that takes us into the mystical contemplation of ,to receive the fruits of a contemplation.
49:00 So there was a complete dislocation between the heart and the mind, between the heart and between the mind.
49:13 And we've seen the terrible consequences for without love you have no power to do anything. But since those days, I'm afraid things have not got better.
49:28 They have got worse and worse and worse because now in the highest places of the church we have leaders who know exactly what they're doing and they're trying to destroy the tradition that I am trying to explain to you …to try to stamp out contemplation, contemplative orders, … …they must go, … …because
49:54 they want to introduce a new wisdom … …from the woe, con wants and woe, … …in which we are living today.
50:08 And there is only one thing … …therefore that we can do now. …and that is to follow the teaching of our Lady to bring everything back to utter simplicity.
50:30 Back to practising repentance, back to practising the prayer. The teaches us how to open ourselves to receive the love of God embodied in Jesus Christ so that we may be embodied in His body.
50:51 Possessed as He was possessed, by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, got's Christ prayed at the last supper.
51:08 This is the only way forward and when the new reconstruction, the new reorder begins after the new. We're a Catholic Renaissance that is about to begin.
51:25 It will be back to the God-given spirituality that Christ first himself practiced and introduced into the early church. ' shinna dhain dius— ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― a laudda i swimna.
52:15 Be prepared to radically change your life in order to do this, because you won't do it, while serving a maman, at the same time.
52:25 Was it Clint Eastwood, in The Pale Rhydu, who said, man cannot serve both. Guard and maman, and we can't, but we tried to do it.
52:35 And that's why we're all coming unstop. How many people have been for instance o Marien Pilgrimage's in recent years come away full of it telling everybody else about it what they've seen in miracles is on the moving new beginnings new starts exciting prophecies about the future but they have not lived
53:00 that in they have not lived the teaching of our lady Bailisalaimu da da da da da da baili di' impar, i'ra damnedai gajau'u' un'ta, d'usakusi'u' nu, e'ra te'e ganatani'u' un'te, d'ha'usakus ka baili'u' fengna'u, di'ra te'e ganatani'u' i'ra te'e ganatani'u' m'anatani'u' i'ra te'e ganatani'u' gi'ra te ganatani'u'
53:30 through contemplation into the mystery of Christ's loving. So that what happened in those early Christian days may happen again today.
53:43 And Christ again becomes present in us, and we can begin to reflect to the world the three divine persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
53:57 A …so let me end once more with the words of Saint Teresa of Avela. There is only one way to perfection and that is to pray.
54:46 There's only one way for our lives to be changed. There's only one way the world can be changed …and that is through prayer, our prayer that enables the love of God to possess us.
54:58 Through sacrifice, the sacrifices that we make in our daily life in order to do this, the sacrifices that, as we will shortly see, are offered up each day when we go as a community to offer ourselves up in liturgy in with and through Christ to the Father, to receive the fullness of love that we in our
55:24 turn then go out, to share with the world that Christ now wishes to transform the room us.