2020 Jan Reflections
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homilies and reflections
January 1-11
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The Current provides another window into the weekly spiritual journey of our community by offering summaries of the homilies from our daily conventual Masses, as well as additional reflections from the monastic community.
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gregory of nyssa
Father Edward Mazuski(Homily of January 10)
Eight days ago, we celebrated the memorials of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen: two important doctors of the Church from the area known as Cappadocia, in modern-day Turkey. Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Basil’s brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa, the third saint who makes up the group known as the Cappadocian Fathers. They lived during one of the most Theologically chaotic, as well as Theologically vibrant periods in the history of the Church: the late fourth century. Even though Arianism had been condemned at the council of Nicea in 325, there continued to be many Arians and Semi-Arians who denied Christ’s divinity. In addition, there was a group known as the Pneumatomachi, which means combators against the Spirit, who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Further, there were those who followed Apollinaris of Laodicea, who denied the full humanity of Christ. In short, regarding Christology and the Trinity, just about every heresy possible was being taught. Although he had a reputation for being more softly-spoken than his brother, St. Gregory joined him in arguing for the Orthodox faith, using both the rhetorical skills and learning he had developed in pagan schools, as well as a deep life of prayer that gave him insight into the mysteries of God. As St. John tells us that Jesus Christ is testified to by the water, the Blood and the Spirit, so St. Gregory was able to increase in knowledge of the mysteries of Jesus Christ through pagan philosophical knowledge, theological knowledge studied through the Scripture, and enlightenment through prayer. The Orthodox teaching this lead him and the other Cappadocian Fathers to about Christology and the Trinity is cemented in the Nicene Creed we proclaim every Sunday: a Creed that was mostly finalized at the Council of Constantinople in 381, which St. Gregory attended. So, it is fitting that we celebrate all three of the Cappadocian Fathers during the season of Christmas, as we celebrate the revelation to us of the Holy Trinity: three persons, and one God, and the central mystery of Christology: the incarnation of Christ, the God-man.
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divine love, human love
Father Gregory Havill(Homily of January 9, 2020)
We learn to love by being loved. The first words of the letter that is our reading today (1 John 4:19-5:4), that we love God because He loved us first, are a theological fact. There is a quite direct psychological fact that we learn to love only by being loved. The two powers of the soul, the will and the intellect, are quite different. The fundamental power of the intellect is human perception. The fundamental power of the will is human love. We do not learn to think by being thought about. We don’t learn to perceive by being perceived. This shows a profound difference between these two powers of the soul. Of the many things that we can think about – a human level of mercy and a divine level of mercy, a human level of justice and a divine level of justice, a human level of hope and a divine level of hope – all of these reflect different expressions of the same thing. Human mercy always has to do with feeding someone, in some way or some form; divine mercy always has to do with the forgiveness of sin, in some form or some way. These are rather different but the same. In the case of love, they are absolutely parallel. We love God because He loved us first. We learn to love by being loved. They are absolutely parallel, I think, which very much points out that while faith, hope, and love are the virtues, love is the one that will last. We have already experienced this when we love, even for selfish reasons. It really doesn’t behoove us, as John says in the last sentences of our first reading to not love others – if we cannot love our brother we cannot say that we love God. In order to make this text show us how to love we need to purge ourselves and our human love of those little bits of selfishness that have affected all of our lives, each day just a little bit more.
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the prayer of our lord
Father Paschal Scotti(Homily of January 8)
There is something quite striking in today’s Gospel. Not the cowardice and cluelessness of the apostles - that’s a given. It is the fact that Jesus went off into the mountain to pray. He, who is the son of God made man, who has been anointed in the power of the Spirit, goes off to pray, to be with his father. That’s a good thing for us to be aware of. You never lose time, you never miss out in giving time to prayer. The more you pray, the more insight, the more joy, the more energy, the more profundity of experiences. You waste a lot less time: you learn what’s important and what’s not important. For our Lord Jesus Christ it was important for him to go off to the mountain to pray. It is not the only time he does this. It is an indication that we too should give serious time, significant time, to prayer, and gain the same power, insight, and energy, the communion with the father, as he did.
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the multiplication
Abbot Matthew Stark(Homily of January 7)
The multiplication of the loaves and fishes is a foretelling as it were of the mystery of the Eucharist, of the presence of our Lord multiplied throughout the world, so to speak. This is what Saint John Chrysostom the great father of the church says: “We must reverence God everywhere; we must not contradict him even if what he says seems contrary to our reason and intelligence. This ought to be our behavior at the Eucharistic mysteries too. We must not confine our attention to what the senses can experience but hold fast to his word, for his word [“This is my Body; this is the cup of My blood”] cannot deceive.” Pope Saint Leo XIII says somewhere: “There I no doubt that in the mystery of the Eucharist alone all supernatural reality is contained in a unique way.” May we ourselves be open to that reality today, and throughout our lives.
following christ: elizabeth ann seton
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Father Edward Mazuski
(Homily of January 4, 2020)
Our gospel (John 1:35-42) today tells us a story from early on in Jesus’ ministry, when John the Baptist points him out to his disciples and says, “Behold the Lamb of God,” and they follow him. From his early followers we see Andrew and Peter. And so what does it mean for them to follow Christ? Well, that’s answered from the first reading (1 John 3:7-10): to act in righteousness, just as God is righteous, because as Saint John tells us, whoever sins belongs to the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning. So our life must be spent in being begotten by God, and being begotten by Him who cannot commit sin. A model of this life of following Christ in true faith, with burning zeal and living in righteousness, is Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, who we celebrate today. She is the first truly American Saint, born in the United States of America. She had a burning zeal for Christ. After she became a widow, she converted to Catholicism, despite the hardships that that involved, and founded the first religious order in the United States, the Sisters of Charity, and founded the first American Catholic school in Maryland. So let us follow her model and inspiration.
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the truth of forgiveness
Father Gregory Havill(Homily of January 3, 2020)
Among the things that John the Baptist says in our reading (John 1:29-34) is that Jesus takes away sins. I think that is a much more vast mystery and more joyful thing then we can possibly imagine. It bears thinking about how the forgiveness of sins isn’t just God saying: well it really wasn’t all that bad – it was that bad. Well, it really wasn’t your fault – well it was my fault. It is not about turning and looking the other way from our sins. It is not God covering our sins over as if they really didn’t happen. It literally means the taking away of our sins, the removal of our sins. We are re-created in the sacrament of penance, in baptism, in the forgiveness of sins. We are re-created anew, completely. Many theologians, from the church fathers down to the moderns have said that the forgiveness of sins is the re-creation of our souls. It is in fact a greater mystery than the original creation from nothing. It is a much more mysterious and profound thing then we can possibly imagine. I think it bears great witness during the season that we take advantage of the sacrament of confession and take that opportunity for the grace of forgiveness.
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grievance and grace
Abbot Christopher Jamison
January 11Abbot Christopher Jamison, Abbot President of the English Benedictine Congregation, recently completed his quadrennial Visitation to the monastery. He offered this homily at conventual Mass on Saturday morning, January 11.
He must increase, I must decrease. What is there about the Lord that must increase? What is there about me that must decrease? The desert fathers were clear about what must decrease in monks: negative thoughts must decrease, because negative thoughts lead to negative actions. There are different lists of these thoughts, from different desert fathers. I would like to add one of my own to the list. Grievance.A sense of grievance can become a common feature of conversation in any society, be at lay or monastic. It is worth checking how much of my thinking and speaking is given over to grievances - about neighbors, about society, about the government. Grievance can easily become the standard currency of conversation in a monastic community, or a faculty common room, or a faculty canteen. This currency of grievance is corrosive of Christian living. That call, “I must decrease,” includes, “I must decrease grievance.” He must increase. The Christian tradition here of what must increase is grace. What is the sign of grace? The sign of grace is gratitude, the opposite of grievance. Gratitude has the fundamental element of conversation, of that which fills my thoughts, morning, noon, and night. Gratitude drives out grievance. Yet, how will I deal with meeting an injustice? An injustice means that I need grace to overcome it, not opportunities to express a grievance. Injustice is when a person’s well-being is threatened, even their own life at risk. This is not the same as a personal grievance, although sometimes grievance can be dressed up as injustice, to mask what it is – a personal slight or a disagreement. So, we ask that the Lord‘s grace might increase, to enable us to be filled with gratitude, to know when we are see an injustice and to act to challenge it. Grace is needed to make that discernment. But sometimes we need to recognize that in fact the grace is to turn personal upset into an opportunity for conversion. More often than not, grievance is about my being slighted, ignored, undervalued. Pride and vanity are the two deadliest of the thoughts in the desert tradition. Are they the deadly sin of today’s first reading? Perhaps. So we pray that we might be saved from pride or vanity, and ask that they may be replaced by a deep sense of gratitude for the grace that the Lord gives us day in and day out. I must decrease grievance, he must increase grace. Every day our monastic prayer begins, “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise.“ Let us in this give thanks for the grace of faith, and the grace of monastic vocation, and ask that our mouths may always be filled with praise and gratitude to the Lord. That way, the Lord will surely increase and I will surely decrease.
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HILARY OF POITIERS
Abbot Matthew Stark(Homily of January 13)
Today is the feast of Saint Hilary of Poitiers, who was born in what we now call France. He belonged to a well off pagan family. He was a highly cultivated man, and he, of course, became a Christian. At the age of about 35, with his wife being still living, he was elected bishop of his native city of Poitiers. Hilary was an outstanding opponent of Arianism in the West. Arianism was the heresy that the second person of the Trinity did not share in the Father’s substance, that he, Christ, was a creature, through whom all other creatures were created. Though coming to the controversy only in his middle ages, Hilary pursued it with an unswerving vigor. In 356, he was banished to Phrygia by the Arian emperor Constantius II, but he continued his studies, making a deep study of Greek theological thought, And in 360, the Arians sent him back to Gaul as a mischief maker who was a nuisance to them in the east. The victory of orthodoxy over Arianism had become the bishop’s one goal in life, and he fought for it as long as he lived. He was the Athanasius of the West. He wrote a famous treatise on the Trinity, other works as well, and he wrote hymns like Saint Ambrose in order to teach Christian doctrine to the people. Though he dealt with things that were controversial, he seemed to have been a sympathetic and friendly man. Among those who came under his influence was Saint Martin of Tours. Saint Hilary was proclaimed a Doctor of Church in 1851.
Maurus and Placid: Models of Obedience
Abbot Matthew Stark(Homily of January 15, 2020)
Maurus and Placid were young boys offered to the monastery of Saint Benedict, offered as oblates, to live in the monastery, to be educated, and probably to stay there for the rest of their lives, which they did. They are examples of obedience. So, the story of the young Placid, walking down to the river and drowning, and Maurus is told by Saint Benedict to go save him. Maurus does this with exemplary obedience, walking on the water to save the boy, and Benedict praises him for his obedience. Saint Benedict makes obedience one of the duties, one of the virtues, of the monastic life. His argument is that Jesus, our Lord, was obedient throughout his life to the will of the Father. This is summed up particularly when he cries out, “Not my will but yours be done!” to his Father. And today’s gospel (Mark 1:29-39) is an example of obedience, where everyone with Simon wants Jesus to do something, but Jesus must do something else because it is the reason why he has come, i.e., to bring the Father’s will into the world. Samuel (in today’s reading; 1 Samuel 3) also is an example of obedience. He is called, and thinking it is his boss, Eli the priest, he goes to him, as his immediate reaction is obedience. But it is God who is calling him. An interesting little fact is that the rabbis say that in the Old Testament, when God really loves someone especially, he calls them by their name twice, as in “Abraham, Abraham.” In this case, “Samuel, Samuel.” “Isaac, Isaac.” But it is interesting to note that Jesus has the same habit. “Simon, Simon,” “Martha, Martha,” “Saul, Saul.” Let us pray that we may obey God, because our Lord tells us that to keep the commandments is to love God.
St Antony of Egypt
Father Paschal Scotti( Homily of January 17)
A young man, around 18 or 20, in third century Egypt, in the countryside along the Nile, enters a church. He has many thoughts, and many troubles. His parents have died recently, he has inherited a big chunk of land, a very large family farm, many worries many thoughts, many concerns. And the Gospel of the day that he hears when he enters is the Gospel we have heard this morning (Mt 19): “What should I do to gain eternal life?” This young man asks, “What should I do to gain eternal life?” You have heard the Lord’s reply. He takes that passage that we have heard in the Gospel as his own personal message, and he does exactly that. He sells all of his property and gives it away to the poor, he puts his younger sister into the hands of (others)... He goes into the great desert he fight demons and he conquers inner demons, And he becomes the Anthony the Great, a wonderworker, a prophet , a spiritual guide, a spiritual messenger. He would have died a local figure, a local hero, a local saint, but for a book. How sometimes a book can change world history! Athanasius of Alexandria, the great patron of Nicea writes a biography of Anthony. And this book is a sensation, a best seller, and we see the influence of this book when we read the Confessions of Saint Augustine, and the power of this book as an example for his life, and in the lives of many many others who were baptized. It was a sensation. It has been described more like Raiders of the Lost Ark than your standard biography. There is a great deal of truth to that... You’d be surprised at what can happen in the spiritual life when you work at it. That message received that day by Anthony – What should I do to gain eternal life? – was also received by Augustine, and it so impressed him, it so tormented him: that illiterate peasants were storming heaven, while educated, sophisticated people like him were stuck, stuck in their sins. What should I do to gain eternal life? That question is our question today, especially for each of us: what should each of us do, this day and every day, to gain eternal life?
mother maria skobtsova
Abbot Matthew Stark(Homily of January 18)
A recent Eastern Orthodox Saint, Mother Maria Skobtsova, lived in Paris, among the refugees from Russia. She ran a kind of house of hospitality for the poor and downtrodden. Because she helped Jews during the Nazi occupation of France, she was eventually sent to a Nazi concentration camp, where she died [in the gas chamber, on Holy Saturday, 1945] This is what she says in one place about Our Lady: “First and foremost, we see Christ’s humanity, the Church of Christ, the Body of Christ, of which the Mother of God is also the Mother. And this expression is not merely a sort of pious lyricism; it corresponds precisely to the understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ. And if so, then what she felt in relation to her son is as eternally alive in relation to the Church. As the Mother of the Godmanhood – the church – she is pierced even now by the suffering of this Body of Christ, the suffering of each member of this Body. In other words, the countless crosses that mankind takes on its shoulders to follow Christ also become countless swords eternally piercing her maternal heart. She continues to co-participate, co-feel, co-suffer with each human soul, as then on Golgatha. That is for most. And in this sense she always walks with us on our way of the cross, she is always there beside us, each of our crosses is a sword for her.” May Holy Mary, Mother of the Church, intercede for us.
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he Law and our Salvation
Father Gregory Havill(Homily of January 21)
Fr. Gregory spoke of how, in the Gospel (Mk 2:23-28), with the story of the disciples simply wanting to eat the heads of the grain, we find a situation that would be laughable: where religious experts are telling God about the Law. “How on earth did it come to this? When the Lord made his covenant with Abraham, his descendants were meant to live in a covenantal relationship with God. But by the time of the end of their experience in Egypt, the people of God had become opposed to God. They simply had no relationship with God if they could possibly help it. In the wilderness, God’s attitude towards them had not changed one little bit. He was trying to lead these people to salvation – so he renewed the covenant, not as it had been, but within the Law. He gave them the Law to re-enter into that relationship and to find salvation. The requirements of the Law were given on Mount Sinai. …Over the centuries, endless commentaries on the Law were produced, whereby the Law eventually permeated every detail of life. If you did not abide by all those rules you were cursed. How people like Mary and Joseph kept their sanity in such a situation is hard to imagine.” The situation became a “time of deep and great perversion, where obedience to the Law was seen as equal to salvation. God had meant for the Law to be the way for his people to return to him so that he might take possession of them. What happened was they took possession of the Law, and turned it into something with rules of life and demands and rites and things like that… This is exactly what Jesus is talking about today when he is saying to the Pharisees, ‘The Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath’ (Mk 2:28): they have turned the thing completely around. Of course, they did not understand that. This is the attitude of Jesus in today’s gospel, and in many other instances in the gospels. The problem would be laughable if it were not so hideous. This reversal has become such a fixed thing in people’s minds. “We run into it every day. We see it in our own culture and in our own thoughts. We tell God what is going to be the Law. We don’t listen to God. We must be careful as children of the new covenant not to become in trapped again in these illusions of the children of the old covenant.”
protection of the unborn
Abbot Matthew Stark( Homily of January 22)
On Wednesday, January 22, the conventual Mass was offered in conjunction with the national Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children. Abbot Matthew’s homily noted three quotations from Mother Teresa of Calcutta, on the subject of life and abortion:
“The life of every human being is sacred as the creation of God, and is of infinite value because He created each person including the
unborn child… The image of God is on that unborn child…
“For me… life is the most beautiful gift of God to mankind, therefore people and nations who destroy life by abortion and euthanasia are the poorest – for they have not got food for one more child, home for one old person. So they must add one more cruel murder into this world…
“It is very painful to accept what is happening in Western countries: a child is destroyed by the fear of having too many children and having to feed it or educate it. I think they are the poorest people in the world, who do an act like that. A child is a gift of God.” (Mother Teresa)
focusing on jesus of nazareth
Father Gregory Havill(Homily of January 24)
In today’s gospel (Mk 3:13-19), we hear the account of Jesus choosing his twelve apostles, the disciples that would follow him. Traditionally we see the church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Apostolic means that it is a church grounded on the twelve apostles, who were privileged to be in Jesus’ most intimate company. The apostles were those who stayed with Jesus, heard how he spoke, saw how he reacted, and took in (his teaching). Christianity is not a philosophy and it’s not a universal mysticism. It is a relationship first and foremost with Jesus of Nazareth. That is why it is important to look into the faith of those apostles who knew him best and (learned) his ways. As John says in his gospel somewhere, “The Word of God… we have touched with our own hands and seen with our own eyes.” I think that we, in (our practice) in the Catholic church, we can feed the hungry, we can clothe the naked, we can do all of these things, but if our hearts are not enflamed, truly filled with an ardent love for Jesus Christ, then we are basically not following the example of the apostles, not seeing Christ in our fellow man, not personally, and fundamentally wasting our time. If this is a fact in our life, it is something worth praying for constantly, that our hearts be lifted to Jesus Christ first and foremost in our spiritual life.
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following christ
Father Michael Brunner O.S.B.January 26, 2019
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
School Evening Mass
In today’s Gospel we hear about Jesus just beginning his public ministry. Not to give anything away, but this Gospel is a set up for next week’s, when Jesus will begin his Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes. But that is next week.
In the Gospel today, Jesus hears that Herod has arrested John the Baptist, The voice in the desert calling people to “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Although Herod has silenced John, by locking him away in a prison cell now it is Jesus’ voice that proclaims, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Jesus, once a student and follower of John, has come into his own. The Evangelist Matthew quotes Isaiah, “The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light.”
Although John might be in prison, you can’t imprison the Word of God which brings light to the “land of gloom.” Even though Jesus is now in great danger from Herod, He doesn’t run and hide. He takes his message right to Galilee, which was ruled by Herod. Galilee, in Jesus time, was an obscure place for the Jews. It was the way I used to feel about West Virginia when I lived in New York City, a place where people spoke with an accent that grated on you, where people seemed less than civilized; fishermen like Peter and John were definitely less than civilized. A lot of Greeks and Gentiles – pagans – lived in Galilee, and their presence rubbed off on the Jews there. The only place worse than Galilee was Samaria, which was right next door. The real center of things, the New York City of the day, was in Jerusalem, so Jesus was going nowhere when he went there. But Jesus did make it big in Galilee. He preached the same message as John, which was as we would put it: Change the way you are living; God is beginning to take charge of the world.
But Jesus did more than talk and warn people of what was coming. Jesus acted, and showed what things were like with God in charge. Jesus healed the sick, he forgave sins…and he still does. But as Jesus begins his public ministry to his people, he needs helpers and, as we would say, he needs a succession plan. So Jesus, a carpenter from the hills, calls four fishermen to follow him. Peter and Andrew were in the process of fishing, and the Gospel says they dropped what they were doing and immediately followed Jesus. We know from other places in scripture that Peter had a mother-in-law, which meant that he also had a wife. How did she feel when Peter up and left with Jesus? The other two, James and John were with their father repairing their nets. They too dropped what they were doing, abandoned their father, and followed Jesus. How did Zebedee feel when his sons without any warning left him alone in the boat with his nets still torn? We have heard Jesus’ invitation before: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men, of people.” We might even think to ourselves, “This doesn’t apply to me, I’m already a Christian and one of Jesus’ followers.” But it does indeed apply to each of us, just as does that message of John the Baptist: Change the way you are living; God is beginning to take charge of the world.
Jesus did not call Saints to follow him. There aren’t very many of those anyway. He called very flawed sinners, who took a good while to develop, and they never did become perfect. Jesus’ call is to us because we are sinners. Following him is not a once-for-all decision. It has to be renewed at each stage of our lives. Even daily: we may choose today to cheat a little at work or tell a lie to cover ourselves. We may ignore the neighbor in need; close our ears to someone asking for help; not speak or act out of our commitment to Jesus etc. Jesus’ call is not an echo from the past, from 2000 years ago, rather it is very much for today. We must repent from what is delaying our response to get up and follow Jesus again and again. The choice before us again today is to put aside the past and its attachments, to leave our workshop, our boats and nets and follow Jesus. Or…to stay stuck where we are, with no growth and our lives going in circles as our energy ebbs away.
Now Jesus learned his trade as a carpenter at home. Undoubtedly Peter, Andrew, James and John learned their fishing skills at home in their village. We also know from the scriptures that when Jesus left the carpenter business and became a homeless, itinerant preacher Mary and Jesus’ relatives were also not too happy. The fact is human beings eventually come into their own and go out into the world on their own and make for themselves decisions about their future. It is a serious matter. Every adult here has made such decisions. Every child here will. Whatever direction we go in life, we take with us what our families have taught us, what we have learned in our past. It is part of who we are.
Although they chose to follow Jesus, Peter, Andrew, James and John went back to fishing more than a few times. And after Jesus’ resurrection they apparently went back to their boats on the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus met them again right where he first called them. They went back to fishing but they could not escape their destiny by returning permanently to their old way of living. And so with us, whatever we do, as men and women, our fathers are there beside us and inside us. Whatever we do, as women, our mothers are there beside us and inside us. It was even so with Jesus and his Divine Father. Struggle as we might, and we do struggle, we turn out much like our parents. This has never impressed me more than since my father’s death.
So the fundamental values and things we learn from our families are the most important. One of these things is faith. We are all here because our parents or some spiritual parent had faith and handed that on to us, all the way back to Peter, Andrew, James and John who first handed on the faith to others. We live in an age that is somewhat embarrassed by faith. People don’t like to talk of it or display it for others to see. But it is faith that gets you through life, because you have to have faith in order to love selflessly. To be a father is to love selflessly; to be a mother is to love selflessly; to be a good fisherman is to love selflessly; to be a really good human being is to love selflessly.
I thank God every day that when God called me out of my fishing boat and away from my family and friends and hotels that he gave me the Portsmouth Abbey family. So if we love as Jesus taught us, as this week of prayer for Christian Unity ends, we must take Saint Paul very seriously when he says: that all of us agree in what we say, and that there be no divisions among us, but that we be united in the same mind and in the same purpose. In this way we may all be one, as Jesus prayed for us to be. And in this way God may be all in all, which is why He created the universe.
timothy and titus
Abbot Matthew Stark O.S.B.( Homily of January 27)
Saints Timothy and Titus were disciples, and assistants of the apostle Paul. Timothy came to have a charge of the church at Ephesus, and Titus of the church at Crete. The letters written to them are called the “Pastoral Epistles,” for they contain excellent admonitions for the instruction of both pastors and the laity. The letter of Titus appears every year in the second mass of Christmas day, the Aurora mass. The extract from that letter, written by Saint Paul, is this way: “ When the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy, He saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:4-7) May Saints Timothy and Titus pray for us, that we may be true followers of Christ and of the teachings of Saint Paul.
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