Transcript of Abbot Clement’s Homely on Sunday, May 21, 2006

It’s very important that we celebrate the achievements of four years of education because it’s the first serious step to adulthood and contributing of the gift of your life in the further plans that simply have begun to unfold certainly these are God’s plans. Hopefully in these four years you have learned a few things. I think you have learned something of the gifts God has given you and being able to receive the acknowledgment of those gifts in your friends and the rest of the students and faculty at the school so that they are affirmed and you begin to have a sense that your life has a direction. All those things contribute to the mystery of the plan that God has for each of you.

I think most of the homilies that I have read in preparing for this opportunity to talk to you, say basically look it; the real core of Christian life is to love. Now get with it and start loving. So you beat yourself to see how poorly you love and then you walk away kind of defeated. If you listen to those texts you’ll find out some very powerful things. First of all the first text is from the Acts of the Apostles and Cornelius with his whole family and relatives and friends are accepted into the church. A church that’s now young, Jewish, master of the rest of the world to be brought into God’s love. Now not is he only a Roman, a gentile, he’s a soldier, he’s the enemy. As Peter begins to talk to the group the Holy Spirit comes on them like Pentecost. So Peter says: "I get it Lord, I hear the message we’re to bring them in." Already we have proclaimed in the very first reading that the God we believe in is a God of unconditional love. It means, I don’t care who you are, how young you are, how rich you are, how poor you are, how messed up you are, how bad you are, God loves you unconditionally! Not just now in high school but has been doing that from the beginning and will do so till the end.

If you don’t get the message in that reading, then in the second reading John tells the community basically that God is the one who loves us first and sent his Son to die on the cross to redeem us. So again, God is taking the active initiative to embrace us and give us a share of divine resurrected life. Not just way back then when he died on the cross and rose but for all time.

Then the gospel says that there’s not greater love than this then to lay down one’s life for ones friends. What did Jesus do? He laid down his life for us. Then he says: "You didn’t choose me, I chose you!" We, who believe, are a people that are embraced by a God of unconditional love. But you don’t believe it! That’s the problem. Insofar that you don’t believe it then your capacity to receive that love is diminished.

In 1977, Cardinal Sunnens, who was the Cardinal in the Netherlands, was invited to speak of all places Oxford. There was no Catholic speaking on the pulpits in Oxford since the Reformation. And he was going to speak in the very church that was raised by the last Catholic Cardinal in England. Being a rather generous and loving person, and also kind of shrewd, he met with the students in between the times of the talks. And the whole church, Christ Church, a very famous place in Oxford, was so crowded there was only standing room every night for the whole week. At the end of the week the students just jumped up and they clapped and cheered and burst into song singing a very beautiful hymn Come, Divine Spirit. They all did it together.

What was he talking about? He was talking about my God and yours. He began to talk about how the Father had touched his life. How Jesus was in his life. How the Holy Spirit guided. Not just in good times but in bad as well. The fact that the students jumped up and praised him and thanked him and sang tells us what he did. When a person meets the Lord in his unconditional love that’s not one has to praise. You know as well as I do if you found out in a letter you won the lottery you’d have a hard time keeping quiet about it especially if you could validate it.

Cardinal Sunnens experienced the presence of God in his goodness and was able to articulate it so that the whole community that he was speaking to could identify with his experience and say yes, that’s true.

Belief in this kind of God is very important especially for you that are graduates because besides developing my talents there comes a time in my life when I must take a stand on what’s right. What’s the real meaning of my life? And only when we take a stance toward truth, goodness, beauty and love that we really center ourselves in going toward God. It could be in a lot of different ways. There’s no one simple way. So I’m going to give a negative but real event that gives you this idea.

William Seward a candidate for the Republican presidency at the time of Lincoln. All the republican candidates were for getting rid of slavery. He had just finished being Governor of New York state. A drastic tragedy happened in his town of Auburn, Virginia. Mr. William Freeman, a black man, got out of jail after five years, of which he was not guilty. He came into town and murdered Seward’s friend, John Nest. He not only murdered him but he murdered his wife who was pregnant, another child, and the mother of John’s wife. Of course at that time the solution to that crime was lynching. Fortunately they got him into jail soon enough. He admitted he did it. There was a whole town meeting in Auburn and the judge said: "Who’s going to represent William Freeman?" Dead silence. Seward stood up and said: "I will defend him until his death!" He began investigating the case and he found out that while he was in jail William was beat up so often that he became deaf and disoriented. He found out that there was insanity in the family. When he began to defend William all the papers in the United States were printing what was said in the courts. Then Seward was not simply a defending lawyer for Mr. Freeman, he was the defender of a fundamental truth, every person has divine dignity. He didn’t hesitate to call William Freeman a brother, our brother. His defense statements were so well argued that they were published all over the place, even a pamphlet was made just of those talks alone. He didn’t win the case. He pleaded that he should at least be given life and live a normal life the rest of his years in this action it can be said that God touched Seward’s life.

Every time we stand up for truth, goodness, our faith will be touched by the presence of God in our life. That doesn’t happen only when you pray. That doesn’t happen when you do a good deed that you think of how to get a pat on the back for. Every time you take a stand for what’s right and what promotes the good in your community, it’s rooted in the truth that God is unconditional love in each of us our whole life. And that he is pursuing us.

St. Catherine of Sienna was a young saint in Italy. Because of her sickness she died early but she had a lot of followers. One young man was complaining about things and she just took it for granted and said: "Don’t you realize that God is chasing you, running after you, day and night to bring you into his kingdom?" Our problem is that it’s not enough for us to know that God is an unconditional loving presence but he is moving us and touching us to promote not only our life but the good of the community and the whole world.

Do you live by faith? If you live by faith you begin to pray. As you pray you begin to realize this is no accident, this happens, that happens. Only God can do this. I remember one time praying very hard about a Physics class. I got a little nervous because I knew only God and I knew this yet it turned out rather well, so I thought I better be careful what I ask.

What we need to take with us out of these texts is take one of those sentences and chew on it until it becomes a question with you on how you are relating to God. There’s so many. The first one is good enough from the gospel,