Transcript of Abbot Clement=s Homily on Thursday, May 20, 2004
The Jesus seminar people want to tell us that if you want to know the real Jesus you have to know the historical Jesus. Which obviously means basically lead us at best to know something about Jesus. So there is a double fallacy in this approach. First of all their research is terrible and secondly, and even if it is very good it can only tell us about Jesus.
Our faith is based on the resurrection of Jesus. We believe that Jesus rose from the dead and not only that, we believe that this resurrection is not simply a resuscitation to this world, living in this world, but participating in the divine life with his whole human nature.
Today is the manifestation that is the celebration of that fact that he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He participates in the divine life that sustains the whole universe and has the plan of saving all of mankind. This is the Lord we believe in. What the text of today
=s celebration focused on from that point of view, is that we will be empowered from on high by the gift of the Spirit. If you listen to the texts of the Masses we have been celebrating you hear the different aspects of the Spirit that we have been given.Let
=s just take the fact that the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. That means we have as we journey in this world the presence of light on our minds to enlighten our path, all the time. The Spirit is given totally all the time. It also means that we have love, because the Spirit is love, shining upon us all the time. It also means that the Spirit speaks to us. If you come to my office and tell me that the Holy Spirit told me this, this morning, fine, I will listen. But then I will tell you what he told me to, so... But he does speak. So we don=t need visions and we don=t need to hear sounds but we do need to know our faith. That we have power from on high to live the Christ-life in a rather powerful way.The real question is do we really take out time to ask, to be receptive of the Spirit that
=s given each of us, all of us, all the time. I know for myself it took me time to realize that the Holy Spirit is a person, not in the sense, in the head I knew it of course, but I mean in terms of living that reality. Being conscious of it and beginning to open myself up to this. So what are the obstacles that block us from such a tremendous incomprehensible gift? The answer has to be that we don=t exercise our faith and if we do we don=t practice self denial.You can fast, you can work real hard, you can do all kinds of things in the ministry, but you may not be giving yourself away. You may be just building your comfortable world and your little zone of happiness. But you don
=t give yourself away. So you can have all kind of knowledge, you can have all kind of fun, and because you don=t give yourself away you=re not open to the Spirit that=s always giving himself away. Always!So we need a certain kind of, what I call healthy seriousness, not that too damn serious, that makes us dead, and makes us arguing all the time. We need that kind of monastic gravity that is aware of the great power we have been given, beginning especially with the mystery of the Ascension where Christ is now Lord of Lords and King of Kings, master of the universe and guide of our life through his Spirit. It is in this response to the Spirit that we are sanctified, that we fulfill what God has destined for each and all of us.