Transcript of Abbot Clement= s Talk on Monday, June 26, 2006

Our catechism tells us that the works of God are creation, redemption, and justification. In practice what does that mean? Well, science says that the creation is 13.7 billion years old give or take a hundred million. That means our earth was in the making for over 9 billion years and in either case God didn’t ask you or me whether he should create. It was a pure act of his goodness to create the universe and our solar system and then down to you and me. That goodness went one step further, he didn’t ask you or me whether he would redeem us. He chose to do it even though he knew that it meant sending his Son and that Jesus would die on the cross and go through such suffering.

So God is constantly acting on us in the spiritual life and what does he do at this period? He’s trying to sanctify us. Meaning he is giving us opportunities in our life to be able to become made in the image and likeness of God that our faith teaches us. Jesus is the perfect image and likeness of God so in our life we are be purged by the Spirit to conform ourselves to Jesus.

In our culture there’s a totally different urge. The culture urges us to self satisfaction, to pleasure, to easy life, to anything that would promote my selfish self. And original sin kind of goes along with the world. So it’s easy for us to slip into a selfish mode of life where the real goal and the outcomes of my daily life are more focused on what’s in it for me than for others or for God. Nevertheless the Lord is the Lord and so he pursues us and urges us to wake up to where we need to open our hearts to God.

From the negative point of view that would mean that we avoid sin and we hear the urgency of the Spirit to practice some particular virtue. From the positive point of view it means we are falling in love with God and so that we become like Jesus and try to please the Father instead of ourselves or anyone else that would in any way would make the obstacle in the way of pleasing the Father.

There are degrees and intensities in the question of imitating Jesus. At first people just begin to take Jesus seriously and start doing something about some areas of their life where they are sinful. But as time goes on there should be a falling in love with Jesus and become more and more putting on his agenda, which means to see how he looks at the Father and to begin to fall in love with the Father and be like Jesus to start pleasing the Father in our daily life. In this we discover even something further, we become to see Jesus as the Father sees him and we have more light in our life.