SS. Odo, Majolus, Odilo, and Hugo: April 29: Sermon by St. Peter Damian
What else shall I call the monastery of Cluny, but the Lord's fertile field, where the choir of so many monks living together in love is as the harvest is of the heavenly seed? That field is tilled each day with the hoe of holy preaching, and the seeds of heavenly eloquence are sown in it. There the harvest of spiritual fruit is stacked up so that it may soon be brought into the storehouse of heaven. The field of Cluny, moreover, is a kind of plain, where heaven and earth are met together, and where as in an arena, frail flesh stands forth to wrestle with the powers of the air. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual wickedness in high places. There, Jesus, not the son of Nun, but the leader of the heavenly hosts, he who is the instructor of spiritual warriors, teaches his own soldiers to trample on the necks of the five proud kings: truly they are taught how to gain the glorious victory, for day by day they restrain and discipline their bodily senses by means of strict watchfulness.
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