Salvador Dali has done very strange works of art, weird and wild. But he has also done some magnificent religious subjects: the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the Madonna. A special edition of the Jerusalem Bible features his studies. His "Temptation of Saint Anthony" is powerful. The passions are depicted as enormous animals with legs three or four stories high: anger, lust, greed, pride, depicted as gross exaggeration, unnatural developments that awed Saint Anthony in his prayer. The capital sins are ugly because they are deformed human qualities.

In March, 1947, the police were called to investigate a brownstone mansion on Fifth Avenue, New York, home of the two Collyer brothers: bachelors, a retired lawyer and a retired concert pianist. The one was blind and somewhat paralyzed: the other played for him and hoped to cure his blindness by orange juice. He started saving things for his brother to read after his cure. The cure never came. The collecting never ceased. They were found dead in the midst of a house literally packed with stuff. They hauled away 120 tons of it, including 12 grand pianos and a disassembled Model-T Ford. As bizarre as any of Dali's animals. And not as rare as one would hope.

Like St. Anthony, monks know the capital sins, the passions. Indeed, it was the desert monks who first listed and described them in terms still familiar to us. We know them in temptations, certainly through a knowledge of the human heart and its potential for evil. Who has not known hints of greed and lust and pride and anger? If we are not Collyer brothers, we know what we could be. Or can we call our extravagantly salaried stars in the arts, in athletics, in business normal, healthy people? Surely there is something sick in the gathering of millions, even billions, superbly expressed by Dali and elegantly displayed by the Collyers.

Our engagement with evil is not fanciful. It is real. In this warfare we join ranks with St. Benedict under the banner of Christ. We follow a rule and a tradition. We have an abbot, we have one another, we have our customs and practices. And we know the grace of God in prayer and sacrament, in holy reading, in work, in the practice of love.

Pious people sometimes think their piety will spare them. Alas, piety may not do if the heart is not as pious as the performance. Christ today in the Reading berates those who belittle the Law. One cannot treat the usages lightly. On the other hand, He insists that what is in the heart is what matters. Mere law abiding will not suffice.

The Irish of an earlier Boston were good Catholic people who loved the Church, were generous, were faithful. but they had no use for Negroes, as they called them then. Good, pious Catholics in another century, good, pious Catholics from clergy on, had slaves and saw no problem in that. The antagonism of German Catholics to Jews in our era and in the past is not restricted to Germans, their piety not withstanding. Christopher Columbus was a good and faithful Catholic, said the Divine Office every day. His crew sang the Salve Regina each night at sea. But when he saw the gentle natives of the Caribbean, his first thought was: what beautiful slaves they'd make. And no one need remind us how staunch Protestants treated American Indians here, and Spanish Catholics the same in South America.

The call then is to constant renewal, unending reformation. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Prayer, the grace of God, religion of the heart more than of the lips, is the idea. Monastic life assuredly is not usages, nor customs, nor rule. Monks too can be control freaks, compulsive gatherers, can be anxiety-ridden.

The art of love is an arduous business. But it is the only business worth all we put into it. With the help of God's grace we can learn and know Him more clearly, follow Him more nearly, love Him more dearly. Day by day.   Amen.