Transcript of Abbot Clement’s Talk on Monday, July 29, 2002

        The most important virtue for us is humility and the first degree of humility says, "That’s when a man keep’s the fear of God before his eyes and never forgets it." What does it mean to have the fear of the Lord? It means you take God seriously. What does it mean to take something seriously? Well, if you go to the doctor and he examines you and he says, "if you keep this kind of lifestyle of drinking so much and smoking so much, I give you no more than two years and that’s it." Then all of a sudden you start paying attention to your lifestyle and maybe hopefully you’ll heed it and do something about it. We live in a culture that makes us think that we don’t need anybody and don’t need God. It’s a kind of strange autonomy. But if you read Hanta Yo which is a rather fabulous book on the Indians, North Dakota Indians, the first sentence in the book says. "If it’s not of the Spirit, it’s not Indian." How did the Indians live that kind of awareness? It was because they realized how limited they were and how they were dependent on the Great Spirit and on each other. Can you imagine what it’s like to go face a grizzly bear when all you have is five little arrows in your quiver and one on your bow? It’s either you or the grizzly bear. So your heart is in your throat. How could you dare even do this, have courage to go, if you weren’t trained by the Fathers. The boy is removed from the parents at the age of five or six and he begins to live in the company of the men of the community and they begin to teach him all the things that are necessary to survive. Hunting, how to know where to shoot the arrows on the grizzly bear, how to shoot, make sure he’s accurate, how to make a good bow, every little detail. And the same thing with the women. The child is taken away from the parents at five or six and they’re taught how to handle the buffalo in all it’s aspects, how to cut patterns and how to do things and everything else to survive. So they are aware of their need of God, of the Spirit, and of each other. And out of this is the disposition that we need for this sentence, "a person who keeps the fear of the Lord before his eyes always is a person who knows that he needs God." And therefore keeps that before his eyes. Now St. Benedict says this somewhere else in the liturgy he says, "we believe, same truth, that God is everywhere, especially when we gather in Divine Office." So he’s showing that he has the same disposition. And so what I typed up for you is the translation of the prayer that we used to say when we were in statio or in the old Latin monastic breviary, if you don’t like my translation you go look it up, but I think I’m pretty accurate. I give it to you not so that you now read this and think now you have the fear of God when your in Divine Office, no, no, no, no. It’s an example of what it means to enter the disposition of keeping God before your eyes at a particular moment, in this case, the liturgy. You can have your own approach, you don’t need this, and I certainly don’t want you to do this and come and just re-rattle it off and think that you have it. So what I’m giving is a concrete expression of what it means to have the fear of the Lord when we come together and pray, so that you would formulate your own and practice the first degree of humility in this regard.