Transcript of Abbot Clement=s Talk on Monday, May 10, 2004
Can we see God? In the Old Testament when Jacob crosses the river Jabbak, he fights with an angel all night, wrestles with it and desires to know the angel=s name, but he doesn=t get an answer. But the angel gets his name. He is called now Israel. Someone who struggles with God and man. Which means all of us. Yet the text says that he saw God and didn=t die.
In the life of Moses, especially as he=s goes to Mt. Sinai, to renew the tablets, he asked the Lord to see him and to see his glory. The Lord allows him to see him as the Lord passes and he=s the crevice of a rock. Perhaps an indication that we can see God in Christ, the Rock.
Then certainly in the Apostles once they began to realize that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and Life, they don=t hesitate to ask, AShow us the Father.@ Jesus has to remind them, AI=ve been with you all this time, don=t you know that you who see me, see the Father?@
We learn from these examples and other examples in the Scriptures that the first place and the invariable place that we find and see God is in our own life. In our own struggle to grow into fullness, into freedom and love. Yet this is one of our difficulties. It is precisely that we are limited freedoms and that we grow into more freedom precisely by an act of love greater than we have made up to this point. So that=s the place where we discover God and see him.
But how can we do this if we don=t take seriously the gift that God has given us especially in this Easter season of the Spirit? He=s already given us this capacity, this reality, to love. That means we need to have a real relationship to the Holy Spirit. It=s in the Spirit that we live.
So it is precisely this question that we must ask is what exactly is our relationship to the Holy Spirit? How much to we attend to, worship, and call upon the Spirit in our life? This can be said in another way as we heard in today=s gospel that if we love Jesus he said he said he will reveal himself to us.
So have we come to know Jesus? That tells us how much we love Jesus. It=s in the power of the Spirit that we love Jesus. If Jesus reveals himself to us then what follows as was told to the apostles is also true, he who sees me sees the Father. If our spiritual life is really alive and vibrant means we are getting to know the Father and the Son more specifically and significantly in our daily life.