Transcript of Abbot Clement’s Talk on February 3, 2003
I want to address the issue of growing in hope. After all, hope has to grow as well as faith and charity and hope is really an anchor. It’s a security, rooted, really in the fact that God fulfills His promises. So if we look at the patriarchs we have a good example. Abraham was given some precious promises. That he would be the father of many nations, that he would receive land, and that he would have a son for the covenant. But these promises didn’t take place immediately. And so the reality of them was for Abraham a question of accepting this and finding a kind of peace and joy even by simply focusing on God’s promises. Now it’s quite clear that Abraham really had a deep commitment to this because he didn’t hesitate to offer Isaac as an offering and even Isaac was linked to these promises. So what’s involved of course is that it’s not his human nature that gave him this. It was his faith and his strong vigorous hope. And that hope was based on the fact that God is faithful. Therefore promises are a reality. Because God is always faithful. And so they’re real.
The promises that you and I have received are fantastic! We have all kinds of promises the Lord gave us. If we receive the Eucharist we have eternal life. Jesus promised that He would pray and obtain for us the gift of the Spirit. And that the Spirit himself would come and enlighten us in all things. We have all kinds of powerful promises that we are not only called children of God but we are children of God. So if we’re children of God that means that God the Father is gazing on us. Out of love. And that’s not just happening once in a while like lighting hitting the clouds, it’s consistent. And if the Spirit is with us always then we have a great connection with God. Intimacy. That’s quite profound. And so if we focus on this properly then we have to connect it with our daily life. And our daily life involves struggles, difficulties and normal ordinary times as well. But sometimes the feeling of the absence of God, sometimes the feeling of darkness.
It’s precisely at this point that we need to increase our hope. God’s logic is not our logic. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. And so He allows us then to have these moments of struggle and difficulty and darkness to really stretch us to open our hearts up and open our souls up so that we can receive more life. And so the logic of God is not our logic. So the realities, the deepest reality is not the struggles and difficulties, if anything, they’re almost a lie. The real truths are God’s fidelity to His promises. They’re more real than our problems and difficulties. And so they are not quite the same. However, the truth is we have to face and stand in both of them. And to stand in hope means that we can walk through difficulties with a certain amount of peace and a certain amount of joy and a certain amount of confidence. And of course there’s a connection that we know. We know that connection because when Brother John selected a text from John’s gospel, Chapter 12 verse 24, Jesus told us, " if a grain of wheat falls to the ground and doesn’t die, remains alone. But if it dies, it bears fruit." So the connection is that the difficulties, struggles, the darkness’s and the absence of God are the way to make the promises fruitful. The two are inseparable. The fact is that as we open ourselves up to the promises, as we receive them, then we are rooted deeply in what is already immortal and definitely will come about because God is faithful.