Transcript of Abbot Clement
=s Talk on Monday, May 2, 2005Our new pope in one of his books gives a good example of Easter faith. Sheila Cassidy was a doctor from Britain who decided to go to South America to do some missionary work. While she was there it wasn
=t too long before she was arrested because she helped the Revolutionaries by administering medical aid to them. They imprisoned her and tortured her. After torturing her they threw her in a cell and it so happened that a Bible was there. She opened the Bible and there was a picture of a man prostrating under a lot of lightening, clouds and hail. She immediately identified with the person because she felt totally abandoned and helpless with no one to turn to. As she looked as the picture she looked up and saw the hand God and the text from Romans which is really a strong statement of Easter faith... nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.@ So she began to pray and as she was praying she asked the Lord first to deliver her out of this mess but as she continued to pray she basically surrendered her life to the Lord and said, "Lord your will be done.@ At which point she also felt a certain kind of freedom inside of her because now she felt that she could love those who tortured her. She could see that their distress and their hatred was really their imprisonment.As time went on she was placed with other Marxist women and she had an opportunity to witness and to help the others become more interiorly free. After about eight weeks she was released but the freedom she really gained at that moment that resurrection faith and its consequences was with her. She could now sense and see Christ in her daily life. In events, in people, etc.
She learned the important mystery of Easter, I think, is one of the strong points. That in Easter we meet the real, real, that is, here is one person who is totally united with God and God and man are totally united and to come in touch with the resurrected Jesus is therefore is to be touched by his power. So to be living the Christian faith we are intended to really touch the power of God.
I think it
=s evident in another way. An Indian missionary said, "that we cannot really bring Christ to our Indian brothers and sisters because most of us in our missionary work are very active. We=re externally active and we don=t know how to pray.@ Because in the Indian culture to be able to pray you have to be able to come to the oneness, that is to come to touch God in life. So the issue of the resurrected Christ is the realization that Jesus is now more savior than ever. He is available to all of us, each of us, all of our life.So the issue for Easter faith I think is two things: One, do you encounter Jesus? And secondly, if you do then how are you following the light that comes from that encounter?
Everyone of us here has that opportunity to encounter Jesus in the sacraments especially in the Eucharist, but not only in the Eucharist, all the sacraments, in our prayer life we encounter Jesus. We encounter Jesus in each other. We encounter Jesus in events like Sheila did in this moment in her life. Just as she was, no going to courses or doing anything else, just as she was in her misery she encountered the risen Lord and surrendered. But the result is that she touched his healing power and she was liberated interiorly to become free.
Each of us encounters the risen Lord in the things I mentioned including the Liturgy of course as well. So the second question is when that encounter takes place there
=s always some enlightenment. I not thinking deep mystical experience, I=m thinking, here=s a person let=s say who=s having trouble with impurity and all of a sudden they get an insight about themselves and they decide to ignore it. Well there=s Jesus touching them. They missed the point, they missed the opportunity.So this is not vague, far away stuff, it
=s in your life and it=s in my life. If we are praying faithfully you are encountering the risen Jesus. What is the light that comes to you from that and how are you responding to it? If those two things live then you will experience also the risen Lord and his power.