Transcript of Abbot Clement’s Homily on July 17, 2007

The world looks to the Catholic Church for a upright conscience. Therefore, every time the Church shows any weakness it gets attacked or if it= s not understood it= s attacked. This is basically a good thing because first of all it manifests the truth that everyone is created in the image and likeness of God and therefore, everyone is searching for the truth and what they consider to be good. So it keeps the tension in the right direction.

But the fact is that the expectation of the world is accurate for more reasons than it could possibly give. Namely, the Lord saw the consequences of his first creation and even though everyone is created in the image and likeness of God it doesn’t take a genius to see that the ability to focus on the truth and to do it gets wiped out in the world. The Lord seeing this solved it first with the Ten Commandments. This gave light to people who were receptive and perused them. But it became evident to God that this was not adequate. By Jesus= passion, death, and resurrection he plunged those who believed into his own life. So the church is the manifestation of deeper truth and fullness of truth much more than the world can even expect from us.

Then even to go one step further he gave us his Spirit. If this is true of the church it= s certainly true of us as monks. That is, this is a center where people can find the direction of the spiritual life, of the deepest truths of faith and the deepest possible direction for the contact with God himself. This should be a place where the understanding and the growth in the awareness of the dynamic of unfolding of the spiritual life is alive and people cannot only talk about it but live it.

The tradition is very old and it tells us that the dynamic of the spiritual life is a question of purification, illumination, and union. Meaning that we are aware that we are sinners and that we need to be purified and that our intentions have to be purified and that our whole life has to be oriented toward God and in the process that awareness is really an

enlightenment. So we receive a lot of light here. Then it should reach to moments of real communion, of real contact with the living God, so that I know that I= m walking the journey with my Lord.

This is precisely what we saw in the history of the church when martyrdom stopped the people were inspired to become monks because they saw that the culture overlaid the truth. They wanted a life where they could pour themselves out to God just like the martyrs did. So our life is a martyrdom. It’s a life in which we are willing to die to self in order for the Lord to take over more of our life. But it should include also growing in illumination, in the awareness of who is this God that we serve? That we should have some sense of the incomprehensibleness of God doesn’t mean we= re an empty vacuums, it simply means we have a sense of the awesomeness of God that= s founded on the truth. That God is an abyss of goodness and that if we were to be placed in the abyss of that goodness at this moment we would all die because in order to stand and sustain that kind of goodness, you have to be filled with grace. That’s precisely one point of our journey, we know we cannot walk into the presence of God without being prepared.

So part of our journey is precisely to improve our growth in virtue so that we have the strength to sustain this infinite goodness when we enter the kingdom. Of course God= s infinite goodness can be described in all kind of images to stir us on. He’s an ocean of love. And it’s a fathomless ocean. He’s a torrent of perfection and goodness. There= s whole virgin territories in God that only God knows. All these things God wants to give us and offer us.

If we focus our understanding of something of God then we are motivated to really live the Christian life as we ought. The place to see it is precisely in the saints, not only in our own patrons, but others as well. For instance, St Basil was a very intelligent person and dedicated himself to all kinds of things before he really was converted. Once he realized who Christ was he totally threw himself into it and as a result not only changed himself but changed the world around him.

So it’s very important for us on this feast not only to think of Andrew and Benedict as in heaven, but what it means to be in the presence of the infinite flood and fountain of goodness that God is offering us as a result of our pursuit of him.