Transcript of Abbot Clement=s Talk on Monday, January 24, 2005

        What blocks the shining of God through us? It would take us at least five years to finish this statement but I just picked one from our culture. It=s interesting that even Freud picked up that there is a category of approach to life that he calls narcissistic. Narcissus is the Greek mythology story who was a rather handsome young man who, when he looked in a pond of water and saw his own reflection he fell in love with himself.

        The real issue is that he is only oriented toward his own self preoccupation. This can be rather subtle and strong because the culture tells us that you ought to develop yourself, you out to pursue excellence, and you ought to move up and to make sure you have access to all possible material comfort. Some of these things are good within reason and need but if they become part of this narcissistic tendency then the person begins to orient everything in their life relative to themselves and there is no possibility of transcendence. That has a tremendous amount of consequences. We have seen it for years in our culture, men who have become famous and soon their job becomes more important than their families and very soon the family breaks up because of it. Now women are in the career mode, women are doing it. So now women take their career over other priorities. So the culture has a strong tendency of narcissistic stances.

        Nevertheless, God is still God. So it is a stance, God still stands before us as the one who wants to pour out his gifts and goodness upon us. We have to remove this obstacle. Part of the problem is the reason why we fill ourselves with ourselves is we have a sense of our poverty. We try to fill that poverty on our own. Yet, we ought to do just the opposite. We ought to take that poverty to the Lord and let him fill it. Little Flower once wrote to one of her sisters, I think it was Sr. Maria of the Sacred Heart of Jesus I=m not sure, but she mentioned this statement. She said, AWhen I have no desires and no virtue I turn to the Lord and he pours out his love into me.@ In other words, she was aware of the fact of her poverty and instead of filling it with other things, she went directly to the Lord and asked the Lord to come to her assistance. Then the Lord just poured out his love into her. This is our stance.

        It=s interesting that Sunday=s communion verse which touched me. It=s supposed to be taken from psalm 34 verse 6 where it says: Look up with gladness to the Lord and smile and you will not be ashamed. It means we don=t look at God and turn toward him in gladness with a smile if we are preoccupied with ourselves. Therefore we don=t really receive the tremendous love and goodness that God has for us. Remember that verse from the psalm 81 where the text says: Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. God stands before us as one who wants to pour his goodness, his love, and his power into our emptiness. It=s up to us to exercise our faith and trust. Come to the Lord as we are with our poverty and discover that God=s goodness is available to us so that we too can stand with that statement of psalm 34: Look up to the Lord with gladness and smile and you will not be ashamed.