Abbey 2015

Isaiah 52:7–10
Hebrews 1:1–6
John 1:1–18

Christmas day is traditionally filled with music, with carols whose message is one of peace and joy. We hear songs about the messiah king being born… In our first reading from Isaiah, we hear a chorus also. But first there is the soloist’s voice: a messenger is running over the hills bearing good news and singing in a loud voice announcing to Jerusalem: “Your God is King!” …In the days before telegrams, let alone email and cell phones, there were two ways to send a message back home from the battle field. The commander wrote a note to describe the outcome or he sent a trusted messenger who would verbally announce and proclaim the victory. So Isaiah sees the messenger and hears the message, Your God is King! He has won the battle. There is peace! You are saved, you are safe! The messenger Isaiah sees is bearing good news, what we call Gospel. Isaiah has many words to describe the message but only one phrase to describe the messenger: He has beautiful feet. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him bringing good news.” The feet of the messenger are beautiful because they can run over the hills toward Jerusalem, they are beautiful because of the message their master is carrying. Beautiful feet, beautiful messenger, beautiful message.

When the beautiful messenger is seen by the watchmen of Jerusalem, then chorus begins: they too shout for joy and it is as though the victory has come home and is effective already. What the watchmen see is God leading his people back from captivity and exile; he is bringing them home. Jerusalem is being restored. The ruins of the city are being transformed  And when the begins to happen the voices increase and the music gets louder. In the transformation of Jerusalem the people are comforted, they know they are redeemed: the enemy no longer controls their life. They are free again, they have a king who has fought for them.

Then Isaiah sees God baring his arm, the arm of victory. But it is not just for a restored Jerusalem. This vision of a God being King for his people, leading them and causing such joy and a wild chorus is a sight for all. What God has done for one people, God will do for all. It is not only Israel that has a king, it is the nations that have also been saved and freed. The music emanating from Jerusalem sets up a chorus around the world.

The Gospel of John read today is about a message, about a word. We hear of the journey of that Word.  That word, that message, begins with God and in God. Indeed we learn that when God spoke that Word the world came into being. God’s message was creative. Its creative power had an effect, a victory if you will. Chaos and darkness were scattered. God word produced light. The primordial victory: our God’s Word conquers darkness. The darkness tries hard to defeat the light coming from the Word but it cannot. The victory is permanent. The beauty of light lasts. So the Word God speaks creates our world. But God is not finished; his word is not something that bounces around above our world. God’s word enters our world. As gospel puts its so physically and graphically, God’s word became flesh and set up a tent among us. The glory of God that once appeared over Israel’s tent in the wilderness and journeyed with the people for years in the desert now lives in the nearby tent in flesh like ours. Or from the wisdom tradition, the wisdom who guided creation at the beginning has now found a home with humanity.

Now this Word that created and became flesh had a messenger who announced his coming. We know him as John the Baptist. While the evangelist does not say his feet are beautiful, he does say that he bears witness to the light of the Word. He will testify to what the word is all about. John is the messenger who knows his place and his place is to lead us to the Word, the truth and the light. Therein is John’s beauty. Not to be the message but to be shaped by it. John can see that the creative moment of the Word, when its light burst over darkness, is not a thing of the past but a creative work taking place now.

The evangelist says that some people did not accept the light; they did not believe that the power of God at work in the beginning has created a new wonder and Word in human flesh. Or even more strongly, that the face of the one who spoke the first word is now speaking in human flesh in his Son. But for those who can see, who believe, then love beyond all telling has been made visible before their very eyes.

The evangelist is now the messenger. His message: Someone has come from the Father’s side, his son, and he has revealed his Father. So now it is possible to see the face of God in human flesh and not only live but live as a child of God. Those who see the face of God in human flesh, now belong to God.

As the prophet saw the ruins of Jerusalem restored to glory; so now those who see the face of God in the face of the Son have seen their humanity restored to its original dignity and beauty. The darkness of humankind is not its final state; its final state is light and an intimate relationship with God.

“How beautiful are the feet of the one who bears good news”…Yes, Christmas is about beautiful feet, the sound of beautiful feet. When God’s Word comes to the end of his journey among us, he calls attention to our feet. Yes, he gets down with a bowl and washes our feet. Yes, he touches our ordinary humanity, the lowest part of ourselves. The dirty and dusty part that has walked over everything imaginable. But in his washing of our feet, he reveals their beauty. I gave you an example, so you must do to one another. Yes, Jesus brought beauty back to our feet. And how are they beautiful? Because our feet speak a message of love, love found in words, love found in the way we are with one another and love found in the deed of willing to wash each other’s feet and so restore their beauty. Out of that beauty of service rises the song of love. From beautiful feet running to wash another’s feet arises the message of Christmas: God so loved the world that he sent his only Son.

Let us check our feet. The Word has come and washed them in his love. He has made them beautiful. Now our feet carry the message of that love. How beautiful are our feet running the paths of our world announcing “Your God is love and mercy, yes, grace upon grace!”

Abbey 2014                                                           Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time – A

Isaiah 58:7–10
1 Corinthians 2:1–5
Matthew 5:13–16

 Today Jesus is all about discipleship. He is clarifying and also calling us to be present to who we are: we that are captivated by him and follow him. To make the concept of discipleship as concrete as possible and to make sure that discipleship does not remain in the ideal state or in the mind, Jesus offers us two very familiar things to get hold of discipleship: salt and light. Both are commonplace and ordinary. Salt for taste and for preservation is very easily detectable and so is a light in a dark room. You cannot miss that!

 The important thing here is that Jesus assumes that we are salt, assumes that we are already light. Jesus speaks to us in the present tense, “You are the salt…..You are the light…”  “You are the salt of the earth.” The implication is that we already have a “taste”; we already have a gift, a talent, a quality that enables us to give taste to a relationship, to a situation, to a way of living. Jesus could have come up with alternative statements about our present condition: “You are no good,” “You are a sinner,” ”You have nothing to say.” Instead Jesus begins with the positive. Your presence, your life adds something to the human story. Your being, your presence makes a difference in the community.

 When Jesus uses the metaphor “You are the salt of the earth” in referring to his disciples, he is basically saying you have a responsibility to add flavor and zest to the world. You are the one who will allow the world to taste the goodness of the Lord, as the psalmist says. The world, human society, the gathering of the disciples in the Church—all need the salt you bring. It might be a salt of love and compassion, it might be the salt of conviction in the gospel way of life, or it might be a salt that takes out the dullness that the world and society sink into. Put salt on a wound and it smarts at first, but it brings healing. You are the salt of healing to the wounded around us. You and I bring the salt of Jesus’ word that consoles and binds up. You and I bring the salt of his touch that says you are not alone, our God walks with you.

 The worse thing that can happen is that a disciple of Jesus loses his or her saltiness, loses their conviction in the gospel and what it looks like. The community and the world become less tasteful, less inviting when the disciples of Jesus renege on their saltiness. That means lose their conviction in what God is doing in the world through Christ, the crucified one. There is negative side to Jesus comparison to salt: it can lose its saltiness. That observation of Jesus is not meant to be a threat but meant to make us dig deeper into ourselves to name our own salt. Where is that salt in me that I am not using that I am not putting into the mix of my community, our world.

 Jesus also gives us another comparison for discipleship. You are the light of the world. Being light is perhaps a more familiar comparison. After all it begins with our baptism ritual when we are handed a candle lit from the Easter candle and told to keep it aflame till the end when it will join the lights of all the saints to welcome the Lord on the final morn. Two things can be said about this reference to light. The first is that Jesus relates the light to good deeds, to actions. Like salt, light does not exist for itself, it immediately interacts with another in order to be true itself. A single light in a single-room dwelling as in Jesus time would make life possible for all in the room. It would remove the cloud of darkness and bring all into the light.

 It is Isaiah today who spells out the meaning of being a light filled person. The prophet spells out what Jesus means by saying you are the light of the world. Doing the work of light is related to the basics for human life even survival: food, shelter and clothing. “Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and homeless, and clothe naked.” These three remain as the foundation of any approach to enhance human life on earth. Anyone involved in this activity is light in a dark world. Anyone involved in such good work is in fact living out the covenant or in Jesus language is living the Kingdom of God.

 This leads to the second point about “You are the light of the world.” Being light in such a way, allowing light to shine by interacting within these essential dimensions of human need is in effect a proclamation that this is where God is acting. Doing good works brings light but it also reveals who your God is. The person who is salt and light somehow points to the source of the taste, the origin of the light. Jesus says that whoever encounters you as salt and light should be able to say, “Ah, here is where God is. Here is where the Father of the world and its people is showing his love and his heart.” “Now I can see and taste God’s goodness, kindness and compassion.” This is the God who revealed himself on Mt. Sinai, this is the God who showed us his face in his Son Jesus.  Disciples who are salt and light do not draw attention to themselves. Instead, they are merely saying that the Kingdom of God is coming, in fact it is at hand.

 There is one last comparison Jesus leaves us with. You are to be like a city set on a mountain, you cannot be hidden. Is this not the community of the Church? Visible from afar, a beacon, a guide through the rough places below and a goal to be reached. The prophets constantly saw Jerusalem and the community of Israel as a light that attracts others. It is attractive because it has a word to live by and because it knows how to take care of its own members and others as well. Jesus tells us that our life as Church is to be visible and in our life other people should find a new way of living out their humanity. It is to be a way that is caring, gracious, tasty, vigorous and above all filled with a light that, no matter how dark the world is, it always remains radiant in the hope that comes from the power of the Risen Lord.

Abbey 22 September 2013                                                               25^th Ordinary Sunday – C

Amos 8:4-7
I Timothy 2:1-8
Luke 16:1-13

 Prophets were not people to be messed with. And Amos was one of those prophets you would rather not see walking in the streets of your city.  It was not because prophets were walking around predicting the future that made people uncomfortable. It had more to do with the fact that they spoke out loud what was really going on in the present. The prophets told it like it was and they didn’t mince words. Amos must have frequented the market place and the shops. He could see beyond the pleasant smiles of the sales person. He heard the conversation in the back room. He listened to business people talking about when the Sabbath and the New Moon feast will be over so that they could get on with making another dollar. It might sound like a conversation leading up to a rationalization for keeping shops open on Sunday.  It is not a mater of convenience; it is a matter of finding another way to make more money. In 8^th century BC Israel, Amos knew very well what was happening in the economic and social life of the country. And his word is directed against it. The system set out to make the landowner wealthier but at the expense of the poor and those in need. More money was to be had, at someone else’s expense. From Amos’ point of view the system in Israel developed to the point where it was not longer a reflection of the covenant that God has made with his people. The economic system had become a sin against the commandments and covenant.

 The Word today clearly makes us stick our nose into the reality of money, wealth and possessions.  The Word is concerned about how money and wealth are made, or accumulated. And the Word is equally concerned about what to do with it. Money is not something that can be avoided. It is part of human life; the exchange of goods and services is part of everyday life. But there is a value to money and wealth more than the numbers on the bills, coins and stock certificates. The value comes from the position we give it in relation to the whole of life. If we live in a society that deems having and possessing as a high value, as a reason for living and working, then all our energy will be focused on finding better ways of having, getting and possessing. Money and wealth are something to be fought for and in the struggle to acquire we slowly lose sight of the methods of how the things are gotten. If convenience and speed are objects worth pursuing, then we will invest much to make that happen. But probably we will lose sight of how it is we are able to have so much at our fingertips when we want it. Amos had a clear vision of things; he saw very well how some people in Israel were getting richer. And he saw quite clearly that it was the poor, the needy, the immigrant, the common laborer who were being taken advantage of.

 What is disturbing about the prophet Amos is that what he sees God sees or better he follows where God is looking. As a true prophet his response is really God’s response, God’s word to what he sees happening in the economic-social arrangement of the day. What is disturbing is that when God sees, then the prophet makes sure we see who and what God sees. God sees those who are affected by the business deals, namely, the poor. And in his seeing God makes it clear on whose side he stands: the side of the needy, the lowly, the poor. The final words of the oracle today should pierce our heart and consciences: Never will I forget what they have done. If our God remembers, then he remembers the victim of other people’s greed and selfishness, the exploited. He remembers if a land is raped to make someone else rich. We are called upon today to hear the Word of God through Amos so that we do not forget where our God stands. Not only does he stand with the poor, but he stands with them because they have become the victims of injustice, of an imbalance in human relationships. God sees and understands what the poor see and experience. Those living by the covenant of God, you and I, are meant to find ourselves seeing with the eyes of God and become part of restoration of the use of this world’s goods and wealth. Jesus and the Kingdom are precisely how God remembers the exploited.

 Jesus tells a parable today that is strange by all accounts. How a manager or steward who decides to reduce his master’s debts actually gets commended for his cleverness in spite of the fact that he was caught squandering the master’s property. The question inevitable arises is Jesus condoning playing around with someone else’s property? Thinking about that doesn’t get too far. But what seems certain is that both the steward and the master come to the conclusion that wealth isn’t everything, or money isn’t everything. Having more wheat and oil is not the highest value. Managing property in such a way as to squeeze the last drop or penny out of it suddenly seems to be questioned. The irony is that the steward only comes to realize this when he is about to loose his job. And the master recognizes this change too, even if it seems that it is at his expense. The point seems to be that money and acquiring goods will not necessarily earn you friends that are faithful. Relinquishing someone’s debts may make you a more welcome human being. Forgiveness will make for a stronger human bond than a demand for what is owed in material goods.

 Jesus is not above using shady characters or less than likeable people and situations to speak about God and his Kingdom. It is Jesus’ power as a story teller that he can use the most human situations, filled with ambiguity and even bad ethics, to make us sit up and take a look at how God works. The steward-manager may very well have had some leeway in dealing with the master’s property and debts. But one of Jesus’ points is that the man was in a crisis, a deeply personal crisis. He was about to be thrown out into the streets with nowhere to go. In that crisis, he suddenly realizes what he needs to do to be welcomed when his position is terminated. The crisis forces him to act for his own welfare. He created a circle of friends who would be grateful to him for relieving their debt. It is for his clever, or as the text has it, his prudential wisdom, that the rich master commends him.

 Jesus now comments: You children of light, meaning disciples, people of the covenant, you Church members, you should be just as clever when it comes to handling the precious gift of the Kingdom and its riches that have been given to you. All of us have been given something to manage, something of which we are the steward. And for most of us, it may just well be something small, something we would easily over look because it seems insignificant or just routine. But it is precisely how we manage the small thing that will lead us into the fullness of the Kingdom and its wealth. The steward in the parable was clever in this life; ours is to have a wisdom that embraces a larger vision. Jesus knows there is wealth, riches and property in this life; its acquisition may be flawed, deeply flawed. But how we handle wealth, even in its flawed state, will really show how we handle the real wealth of life, spirit and love, both human and divine.

 To be a child of light, and that is our calling and gift, does not mean to run from this world; it means to manage in this world the light, the gift, the love that has its origin in God and has been poured out for us in Christ Jesus, his son. And if it is the wealth of this world that is ours to manage, then we must do as the steward did: share the master’s wealth.

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – C

2 Samuel 12:7–10, 13
Galatians 2:16, 19-21
Luke 7:36–8:6

 The gospel story we have just heard shows us again Jesus’ preference for the marginalized, the weak, the ones we quickly call sinners. The way the story is told we cannot escape noticing and feeling where God’s favor and direction lie. In fact the story is so powerful a statement about God’s love and forgiveness that we are almost forced to find ourselves in one of the two main characters. The simple parable about the two debtors lies at the heart of the matter; we become part of the story and in the end we are forced to identify with one of the two debtors: we are either Simon the Pharisee or the woman of the city, a known sinner—though it never says exactly how she is a sinner.

 The key to identifying ourselves in the story at large and in the parable is how much we love in response to being forgiven. The issue here is not whether I love or not. The issue is not whether I am a kind, generous person, loving my neighbor. The issue is do I recognize myself as the sinner who has experienced God’s love in such a way that now I love much because God has offered me forgiveness. Am I willing to see myself as a debtor who has found someone who can release me from my debt? And in return that release has freed in me an outpouring of extravagant love toward my creditor. I have been loved by God so much that I extend to him my tears, my kiss and embrace and my ointment because he is so precious to me.

 Simon invites Jesus for a meal because he sees in Jesus a social equal, someone who is at least as zealous for observance of the law as he is. In the society of Jesus day, you only share food with equals. So the company Jesus finds himself in is an all male group reclining around a table. It is obvious that the meal was not quite a private event as it was known in the city that Simon was entertaining the Rabbi Jesus. Of course there was no doubt that one goal of the invitation was to make Simon look good in front of his peers. He assumes that Jesus is a prophet or at least thought of as one by others and so Simon is thrilled to have a prophet at his table.

 This lovely meal tableau, so well planned and organized from a social status point of view, is shattered by the unexpected, at least from Simon’s point of view.  A woman of the city and a known sinner crashes the meal, so to speak. What shocks him is that Jesus takes no offense. Simon assumes that Jesus should be offended because of the woman’s extravagance and touch—but Jesus is not offended at all. All the gestures of the woman cause Simon to question whether Jesus is really who he claims to be, namely a prophet of God, and remains firm in his conviction that the woman’s behavior is born out of her sinfulness.

 Jesus reads the woman and Simon differently. Jesus sees the woman’s gestures as a sign of something deep within her, namely a love responding to being loved in the form of forgiveness. Jesus sees the woman’s great love welling up from an overwhelming sense of knowing herself forgiven. He wonderfully allows the woman to be herself. He allows her tears, her hair, her wonderful ointment and her kisses and touch. All signs of a woman’s love. Perhaps Simon wants to read all that as womanly seduction but Jesus accepts her outpouring as a gesture of the heart. And so he affirms that her sins are forgiven. He affirms her freedom from the past; he confirms her release from debts.

 Simon has invited Jesus to his table to share a meal with him. Simon is honored and proud to host the prophet of God. But the prophet of God comes from the world of God and his kingdom. And in that kingdom those who rightfully belong at the table are those whom God has interacted with and offered release namely  sinners and those outside. These are the people who know how to give thanks; these are the people who have experienced God’s love poured over them like anointment that heals and gives dignity; these are the people whose tears God has seen and heard and has transformed those tears into a water that cleanses and renews. He has dried their tears with his consolation and acceptance.

 Simon wants to judge those who are not at his table. He wants to label them: “what kind of woman is this who dares to touch a man in public”. In turn God offers no judgment but rather acceptance. God accepts those who reach out to touch him, those who want to love him with a kiss and ointment. These are the people who will have communion at God’s table. These are the people who seem to know who Jesus really is: the one who brings forgiveness, who releases from past behavior and opens the way forward to a new and dignified life.

 Simon’s sin, as it were, is a sin against hospitality. Jesus makes that abundantly clear in his challenge to Simon. He fails to recognize who his guest is. He has labeled the visitor, like he labeled the woman, and so has failed to see Jesus for who he is. As a result Simon misses out on the hospitality that Jesus offers. God has come visiting and with his visit he calls and invites those who are most in need. The woman responds in an extravagant way with an outpouring of love for the gift being accepted at the table. Simon remains, cold, aloof almost loveless.

 The question Jesus asks is a question of love. Who will love the creditor more? The one who recognizes that Jesus is the bearer of forgiveness and love. The one who recognizes that God has come visiting his people precisely to offer them healing and reconciliation. The one will love more the more he or she recognizes that no sin, no debt can completely stand in the way between them and God’s love. The woman loved the more because the woman saw that her sin was not so large that she could not be loved by one greater than she. If we can identify with that, then ours too will be an outpouring of loving gratitude that will look extravagant, wasteful and foolish except to those who also have known that depth of being loved.

 What God leaves to those who accept his love is the same as Jesus told the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Forgiveness, salvation and peace. This is truly the food, the healing, that Jesus offers at his table. Happy and blessed are those who know that the Son of God loved them and gave himself up for them. Like the nameless woman, they will know salvation and peace, shalom. They will leave the table as a new creation.

St. Paul’s Abbey
16 June 2013

Abbey 2013                  March 21 – PASSING OF OUR HOLY FATHER  BENEDICT

Genesis: 12: 1-4a
Philippians 4:4-9
John 17: 20-26

 At first hearing the Word we have just heard doesn’t seem to have much to do with death or a passage from this world to the next. But the Word can point us in a direction that our thoughts and feelings might take on this first day after the spring equinox as we follow Benedict as he moves from one season of his life to another.

 Abraham. When we listen to his call, we think of our vocation. We reflect on the fact that none of us are living in our home town or even with our home people. We have all left the family and place we are familiar with. And following that call was not necessarily easy, just as it was not easy for Abraham. But Abraham’s call had a blessing attached to it. And it was not a blessing that he would live to see. God asks him to move but he also gives him his word and makes a promise. He will be blessed and he will become a blessing for others. The name Benedict translates as simply “One who is Blessed.”

 Benedict passes from this world to the Father today. But he has left a blessing behind him. If we count the 1500 years of his way of life, then he is surely a happy man to have so many sons and daughters who have lived in the light of his blessing. We can pause to consider the significance of that. We here on this day, from many places on earth that Benedict did not even know about, have been touched by his way of life. Surely he is a happy man for that. But we might ask ourselves, just how have I been blessed in knowing this man and in knowing his way of following the Gospel. Can each of us begin to name the blessing Benedict has bequeathed to us through his life and through his Rule. Is it a way of prayer, a way of prayer founded in God’s word? Is it perhaps the gift of balance in our lives that comes about by following the rhythm of common prayer, work, reading day in and day out? Is it the virtue of patience that has grown in us as we learned to live next to someone of different temperament or style than me? Have I come to know peace in my life because I have been faithful to all that Benedict calls us to? Listening to the call of Abraham sends me back to my roots in this way of Benedict. It asks me to recognize, to appreciate the blessing, the life, the peace that have come to me by being a disciple in Benedict’s school of the Lord’s service.

 Paul’s word to the Philippians and Benedict’s word to his followers. Paul wishes joy and peace for his community. Benedict’s invitation in this prologue is just to those people who are looking also for peace. Benedict has a word and a plan for those whose hearts are looking for wholeness and a rich life. He asks us to seek peace and pursue it. Run after this peace. Run after this blessing that God wishes to give us and does so in abundance at the resurrection of Christ.

 Paul asks his community to imitate him, do what he taught, follow his example. As Benedict passes today from this world to the Father, he also encourages us to do all the things we have learned from him and were taught by him. [We know that what he taught and what we can learn is found in the Rule. The many miracle stories Gregory gives us of Benedict are edifying. They alert us to the fact that he is a holy man. But if we are to follow him, then we best do that by following the Rule. Of course we make a vow to follow the Rule. And we listen to it each day. But all this is to say that we are to be conscious daily of what Benedict is teaching us.] Benedict may pass into the glory of his Master. But Benedict lives to the degree that we find the way to God and a way of serving the Lord Jesus in the word of the Rule. Benedict passes to the Father but leaves a gift in his Rule. We hear what he taught in the Rule. And we are encouraged to do it, to make it our own. The Rule is part of the blessing that Benedict leaves behind. When we follow it, he says we too will become blessed.

 As Paul grew in his mission, it became clearer to him, that he was the message of the Gospel. His life itself with its joys and struggles, with its conformity to Christ, his life was a living Gospel of the cross and resurrection. And we could say he had the nerve, the gall to tell people to imitate it. [But the way of Christ is enfleshed in other human beings and we do well to find such people and to imitate how they live in Christ.] But Paul goes on to say. If you do this, then you will find the God of Peace. Benedict says, if you take up this way of the Gospel as found in my Rule, then peace will be yours. In a world filled with many choices and much to imitate, it comes as a blessing to know there is a way that truly reflects the path of peace God reveals to us in Christ.

 Lastly, we hearing Jesus praying. Perhaps Jesus words are similar to the words of prayer that St. Gregory tells us were on the lips of Benedict in his dying moments. Listening to Jesus we are invited to hear in them what St. Benedict prayed for his own community. What Benedict wishes for us is a place in the great communion that flows between Father and Son. It is a communion that now includes those who believe in the Son. The communion of love that flows between the father and the Son is expanded to all those for whom the Son lived and died.

 What is at the center of St. Benedict’s Rule is Christ. And at the heart of the community is the living Christ. We come to the monastery to live in a community with Christ as the center. We come to accept what Jesus continues to offer, a relationship with him and the Father. At the heart of the community is the great blessing. It is the blessing that the Father loves Jesus and is faithful to him until the end. Jesus in his turn loves us and is faithful to us also. And we live in that love. And our living in that love becomes a blessing to the world around us. [The source of every blessing is the love of Father and Son. As a blessing it is shared with you and I.] To the degree that we live out of the blessing, to that degree do we experience peace. To that same degree do the followers of St. Benedict become a blessing wherever they may be found.

  We give thanks today for God’s Blessing, St. Benedict, who has given us a way to life in the heart of love, the source of Blessing.