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The Pope is conservationist in the eyes of the progressives and progressive in the eyes of the conservationists, which happens to be the uncomfortable situation we find ourselves in, yet we need to protect ourselves from the mistakes of the past. How do we do what is right and just? Good question. The road which leads to life is a straight one and the only way to follow it is through this love of which we are humanly incapable and can only receive from Heaven in our quest for the Kingdom. This love which chases out fear, which believes despite everything, hopes despite everything. This love which is considered too much in the eyes of the world when faced with those who are 'impure' and the least amiable. We have no other choice than to hand ourselves over to love, to the Holy Spirit. The Community of the Beatitudes is certainly more tempted toward conservatism. Yet experience shows that we go from one extreme to the other, and being caught-out by excess piety we are heading toward humanism; from Christ, the Supreme Judge, to Man's best friend, Man himself******* We will remain true to our vocation of we live our name intensely: The Beatitudes.

The Beatitudes: the Anawa*****

Jesus shows us the way in his Sermon on the Mount, whose main theme is the Beatitudes. This way is hidden from those who consider themselves to be just but it is obvious to those who are little. It is poverty according to the Spirit. The Hebrew word for this is 'anawa'. There is no word for it in Greek. This word can only be translated through revelation, like the word 'agape' was used to distinguish the word 'love' in Greek. Anawa signifies poor, gentle, humble and afflicted. Several terms employed in the Beatitudes can be recognized here but the original version in Luke only contains four words of happiness. Evangelical poverty has very little to do with poverty in the usual meaning of the term. It is primarily a divine attribute. God is the first among the poor and the Messiah reveals the Father in showing us His poverty, through His birth and His Passion where He is the suffering servant, the afflicted one who remains gentle and humble; insulted yet not repaying insult for insult. His cloak is taken from Him and He offers His skin as clothing, loving to the point of death. In Jesus Christ, God is poor. He says to us: "Learn from me because I am anaw," translated as gentle and humble of heart. The disciple must resemble his master and he must learn this anawa from his master's school.

The Old Testament shows us that Moses is the most anawa, meaning the most gentle, humble, and afflicted of men. The Prophets are also anawim, Our Lord's poor. The prophetic element is in being seized by the Holy Spirit who strips man of himself and exposes him to persecution, which is accepted in gentleness and humility as a witness to and way of sanctifying the Divine Name.

In the New Testament, the Virgin Mary replies in this anawa on behalf of Mankind before God. She calls herself anawa in the Magnificat: "He has looked on His humble servant, from now on all ages will call me blessed." She anticipates the Sermon on the Mount by linking the happiness of this world and the world to come with anawa. If it was only a question of humility, the Virgin Mary would have lost the virtue in attributing it to herself. The anaw of Assisi had completely understood this when he calls Mary her Poverella, his little poor one. She is the all-humble, all-gentle one, the one stripped of herself by the Holy Spirit and found crying at the foot of the Cross. The Virgin Mary must be our guide, our teacher of anawa in front of Christ, who teaches gentleness as opposed to bitterness, harshness and rigidity; humility as opposed to spiritual pride, and poverty which is the opposite of self-sufficiency and condescendence. The Virgin Mary has never been condescending. She appears at the age of sixteen or eighteen, young and frail. How can we call her mother, especially at my age? How can we believe that she can helps us so effectively and has what it takes to crush the powers of evil under her heel. We need conversion, a metanoia if we are to consider ourselves children of such a young and frail girl. To go to the Virgin Mary is to go to the best of schools.

Furthermore, in studying the vocabulary of the Bible, there is no distinction between the poor in spirit, those stripped of their ego by divine fire, and the sufferings of those who have been born poor, handicapped or afflicted or made so by life. The Bible makes no distinction between the affliction of the people under the whip of the Egyptians and the transfiguration of Moses in the Horeb reduced to a poor, gentle and humble state under the terrible hand of God. Not only is there no distinction made, but the Bible affirms, through Jesus, that the poor are the closest to the Kingdom of God. In the footsteps of the Poverello of Assisi, the Community's Book of Life affirms our belief that the poor are our Lords. It is not just a stylish formula but a spiritual reality. It is so obvious that we should be highly aware of it by welcoming the poorest of the poor in our houses, considering them as veritable sacraments of the presence of God in our midst. Let us always remember that our final examination will be decided on the way in which we welcomed Christ, naked, hungry, humiliated, imprisoned and sick. Who wouldn't dream of knowing the exam questions before sitting-down to the exam? As for us, we know the questions so we have no excuse if we haven't worked on loving the most marginalized those people whose lives depend on our attention. Perfect love comes from nawa because it is only in humility and in tears that we can recognize ourselves as being poor and thus become receivers of merciful love.

Community Pride

We know that we are being called to face up to the subject of Community pride. If there is an area where the Community has truly sinned it is the area of pride, a sin that radically separates us from God. All other sins can lead to repentance, and tears that soften the heart, rendering it humble and gentle. But pride leads to hardness of heart and prevents us from welcoming the Kingdom of Heaven. I have often questioned candidates to monastic life on what it means to be a monk. More often than not, the reply was: He who does the most, prays the most, gives himself the most, consecrates himself the most, he who takes the most advantage of the means at his disposal. I invariably returned to the definition given by Eastern Christianity: A monk is a person who cries over his sins. It's like a Christian living the Beatitudes: before being able to shed tears of fire over the world like a Pentecost, we need to learn how to cry because we do not love enough the One who loved us to the extreme. Those who do not love their enemies cannot consider themselves as Christian, starting with those closest to us, because love of our enemies is infused in a tearful song, in the tenderness God gives us for the whole world when we experience His mercy.

Pride also consists in thinking for God! Thereby putting oneself in His place. Saint Silvane says that the consequence of pride is despair, that is, the crumbling of the scaffolding we have erected, whereas humility and a deep sense of hope go hand-in-hand. Our future is filled with glorious hope if we renounce our pride, accepting to cry over our sins, in deciding to seek out the last place, in deciding not to be brilliant in the eyes of the world or even in the eyes of what is worldly in religious life Brothers and sisters, I am not imposing anything on you, but I would like to ask you to consecrate this year to the meditation of the Sermon on the Mount, particularly the beatitudes, so that we may live our name. I have spoken about identity problems: Community of the Beatitudes, who are we and what should the different states of life be living? The answer is there. Let us discover what we are called to be in Christ rather than making claims for our particular state of life or for ourselves or for the Community.

An Adult Community in Christ

We have spoken about adolescent crisis. I believe that we grow during times of crisis, as we can see in the development of each personality. Crises in growing, adolescence, faithfulness, identity, all of these are normal and indicate a good state of health. Crises must not make us frightened, on the contrary, they show us that we are well on the way to becoming adult. And since it is good to know where we are going so as to go in the right direction, I would like to say what it means to be adult in Christ. It is to reach the state of perfection, not in the moral sense of he word, but rather in the biological sense; having 'arrived at the end of the growth period.' This perfection is in Christ who tells us, in the Sermon on the Mount, that we must be perfect just as the Father is perfect, that is, being merciful just as the Father is merciful. It has nothing to do with being perfect in His divinity, but in being perfect in His love. Someone who asks for nothing for himself, who believes all, hopes all, who doesn't suspect wrong motives, who endlessly gives and forgives. Someone who allows himself to hear the voice of those who groan and hope for deliverance.

Spiritually adult means being fully responsible, accepting the things which happen to us without blaming others, our parents, the institution, those close to us or anything else. An adult community must reply for itself, taking responsibility for its errors and failings without bitterness or revolt. An immature attitude blames others for suffering being suffered, and insists on a perfection from others which is not there in ourselves. This is how we leave the Church and the Community, for the same reason: we have been wounded by a particular attitude we encountered in someone who is a representative. We have not been sufficiently listened-to or taken notice of. This is a purely human reaction to the humanity of the Church and the Community, rather than reacting as a responsible adult who is co-responsible for what happens, and not seeing the situation in the light of the mystery which undertakes and transcends our humanity and its weaknesses. To be adult means to find fulfillment in God: God alone suffices for the person who is adult in Christ, who doesn't seek from man or from institutions that which only life in God can give. We urgently need to become psychologically and spiritually adult, it's an urgency in the name of love for our neighbors. Saint Theresa of Lisieux has shown us the way. At the age of 24, she had already been psychologically and spiritually adult for a long time. Ever since the 'Grace of Christmas' she came out of herself and her extreme sensitivity, seeking only to please God and those around her. Despite the difficulty of her community life, in a family experiencing many hardships, she was able to survive and her illumination has not yet finished enlightening us. Our Shepherds are no stricter than Mother Mary de Gonzague, as far as I know, and your moral and spiritual trials are not always as difficult as hers. Even still, she never complained about anyone, she who died suffocated in her Carmel, entrusting herself to the God alone, and finishing her Little Way so as to help countless numbers of people, as she had hoped. Being adult also means being autonomous, someone for God alone suffices and is in need of no-one or nothing else so as to freely choose to give himself and enter into an interdependence for the good of all. Without this autonomy to which we must aspire, relationships become a game of debts and having to do something for someone, where each person finds his account or feels cheated. We are far from the free-giving which we find in Divine Love which is completely unselfish.

Nuptial Mysticism

Little Theresa came to a point of seeing no-one else but herself together with her Spouse, in whom she had placed all her trust. She had placed all her hope, not in Man, in this case her sisters, but in the Lord who exceeded her expectations. The Carmelite School, this French spirituality, has taught us and increased our understanding of nuptial mysticism. The desire we expressed in entering The Beatitudes is to be united to God. Our fundamental vocation is and will always be contemplation. We also affirm that our works can only be an overflowing of our contemplation. It appears, however, that this is not always the case and our activities sometimes spill-over into our interior prayer life. I use the word 'interior' because we can lead a life of prayers in the plural, without knowing interiority. Since organizing the schools of prayer, I am amazed at how many professed nuns have told me that they are frightened of interiority. How can we meet our Spouse if we don't go into the nuptial chamber? "Lovers need solitude, a heart to heart which lasts night and day," says St. Theresa. The Community began with great fervor, during a period when the charismatic graces made this heart to heart easy. But the engagement period only lasts a certain time. The time with God lasts for the rest of our lives. It is obvious and cannot be denied that we need to return to prayer techniques and methods of meditation which have already been tried and tested by those who have preceded us if we want to remain faithful to our call. We must consecrate time to learn how to pray not only during the Novitiate but also during the Annual Retreat, just as John Paul II has asked us, clearly pointing out that one learns how to pray. The Community must shine out this grace and become a center where people can learn how to pray, it is another service that we owe the Church.