Transcript of Abbot Clement’s talk, Monday, June 3, 2002
When we prepare for retreat or undertake to go to a retreat, we expect to renew our spiritual life. So what does it mean to deepen our spiritual life? How do we stay in touch with life? Well it means that we have to take our Baptism seriously. Our Baptism is the seed, the beginning of our life. If we don’t take it seriously than it’s dormant. And so it’s useless. And a seed is a rather powerful image of a powerful reality, that is, the seed has life in it. And so it is made precisely to unfold. To be cultivated, to germinate. And then life moves. It moves in a direction. So when you plant a certain kind of plant of course, it sets its roots and starts coming up. If it’s an animal it takes a certain shape and unfolds and so life is a movement.
And one of our dangers is that we don’t look at spiritual life that way. We are thinking that spiritual life means a learning, a certain amount of doctrine, a certain amount of catechesis. Now surely catechesis is important. But life is deeper than catechesis. The other problem is that we focus on moral principles, which is also obviously very important. But life is deeper than moral theology. Or we think in terms of apostolic works, teaching, taking care of the poor, whatever it is. But life is deeper than that. So the first question is, "are we in touch with the life that we have been given?" Don’t have to make it, it’s already there. It’s been given to you absolutely freely. It’s a pure gift! And so the question is, "how are you in touch with it?" We can see very easily that it can be covered over and squashed and put in dormant state rather easily. Just look at the different things you read everyday in the paper one almost feels like weeping.
So we come in touch with reality when we touch the truth. No truth, no relationship, Abbot Clement One, One. I learned this from an alcoholic. It’ s a person I visited often because we dealt with a parish and different things. And he could drink a whole fifth of martini’s and absolutely no slurs, coherent conversation, etc. But I noticed that when we made a date to do something, for the parish or something, he’d never show up. He’d say, "I forgot it." But I know clearly that we made the date and he said yes to it. And began to realize that the booze was indeed taking him out of reality. Where do we pick the truth up? Well we listen to Sunday’s readings the first reading told us that in the desert they were tested to see whether they came to learn that man lives more than by bread alone, but by the word of God.
So the first question you have to ask yourself is, "what is the present word that the Lord is addressing to you?" Since you are unique and life is movement and relation, God speaks to you. What is the word He’s asking you to attend to? Secondly, the Lord gave us another hint in Sunday’s gospel he says, "that those who eat my flesh and drink my blood will have life in them as I have life from my Father." So there’s another way to look at the life that we have been given and that is, what is the movement we sense that Jesus moves us to from the Eucharist? What seems to feed us toward God, toward relationship with God especially to the Father? And so when we enter into this retreat we want to dispose ourselves to try to listen at least to those two things as a starter. There’s more to be said of course, but it’s enough to start there because where there’s truth and where I am entering the truths and I obey the truths, I am in life.