Transcript of Abbot Clement=s Talk on Monday, August 1, 2005
One way to reflect on our growth in the spiritual life is to look at our prayer life, assuming that you do more than just the liturgy and the Mass, like pray about an hour a day and do Lectio. One of the things that should be happening is that you have no doubt that God loves you. That
=s a real growth in the spiritual life.For example in the life of Cardinal VanTwan, who was a bishop at the time, was put in prison in Viet Nam in solitary confinement. He was very discouraged because he couldn
=t help his people. He managed to sneak in wine and bread and said Mass. While he was praying Mass it came to him that God wanted him not his works. When he began to realize that God loved him and he didn=t doubt it, then actually he did more. He was able to sneak out messages to his people. Little passages about a couple sentences or so. During the whole time he was in solitary confinement and then he began to convert his guards. Even the Buddhist were going to the Buddhist Temple to pray for him he was so effective. He was convinced that God loved him and didn=t doubt it.Another area of growth if our prayer life is consistent is that we get beyond feeling the absence of God as supreme, that is, we begin to really believe what Jesus said:
A I am with you always.@ So it=s not based on how we feel. This too is a growth question because again another bishop, a bishop in China, Bishop Tang was in prison for about 22 years and they asked him when he got out to witness. At that time he was in Rome. He simply got up and said, AJesus never abandons us.@ He knew it from experience.The third area is something that
=s even in the Rule. Benedict tells us that when we begin any good work we should pray for God=s help and grace. Not to do anything without the Lord. I think if you look at Scripture itself, Paul when he was thrown in prison in Rome, everybody abandoned him. He knew that this is what God wanted. So he asked the Lord for strength and sure enough the Lord strengthened him while he was in prison.The last one is the one area we grow most in but still needs to be stated as a sign of growth in the spiritual life and our prayer life and that is what the Rule says not to prefer anything before Jesus, before Christ. Because as taken from the quote of one of the Fathers and the next sentence is because Christ never put anything before you even his suffering. So what this amounts to is as St. John of the Cross would say is that the wounds of the lover is in the beloved. How the beloved is so is the lover. So we can see how our concerns and the loves of Jesus as ours. To the degree that we do growing if we are taking on the interest, the pains and joys of Jesus then we know that we are growing in the spiritual life and deepening.