Transcript of Abbot Clement’s Talk on Monday, 5 August 2002
First of all I want to thank you for faithfully visiting Broth Alfred. One of the things he did say is that he finds it difficult even to pray because he doesn’t feel like doing anything. So maybe sometimes when you’re with him offer to pray with him. But please offer it, don’t impose on him. Poor guy. But I did that Sunday because the conversation was kind of dying so I asked him "well do you want to pray something?" So he said, "ok, then let’s pray the Divine Chaplet." So it helps him then to pray.
Since we are the people who pray before the Lord, we want to make sure we are heard. And the condition for being heard, of course, is that we are humble. God hears the lowly. The cry of the lowly pierces the clouds says the verse in Proverbs, I think. We all know that humility is, at least one of its major characteristics is, that we acknowledge and in fact live in total dependence on God. And after listening to the priests this afternoon and their comments it’s clear that the present situation has put the church in the position of being totally dependent on God. But we can be totally dependent on God in a lot of ways; we can be discouraged, we can be despondent, we could feel like quitting, or we could have confidence. The long tradition has always been that true humility is a humility, a dependence on God, that is confident, filled with hope. So we see in the Old Testament the Anaweem, these are the people who are poor, and so they acknowledge their dependence on God but they’re also very confident because they are a people conscious of the covenant of God’s fidelity and it’s not just the question of an idea it’s an experience and so they are the ones in which God finds pleasure. And of course the prophets predict that the Messiah is going to be a humble servant of the Lord and Jesus fulfills that prophecy. What do we see? We see that the Son of God, the second person of Trinity takes on human flesh. Second person of the Trinity takes on bread in the Eucharist. Second person of the Trinity dies on the cross. Each of those are mysteries. They are profound dependency of the humanity of Jesus on God. And Jesus also taught and did these things. He said, "learn from Me for I am meek and humble of heart." And at the Last Supper he took the towel and washed the feet of the disciples. Then he gave us an example. Well, he says, " you want to know what it’s really like?" He takes a little child and says, "become like children." So why did Jesus do this? Why did He show us this kind of life? Because He was revealing His relationship to the Father. He’s revealing the love that goes on in the Trinity. That each person empties themselves for the other. So Jesus, when He came on earth, He poured out trinitarian love by emptying Himself. And in that process, of course, lifted the human race because He placed Himself last. So we become truly humble when we imitate Jesus. When we make ourselves nothing for the other then Jesus can act in us. Of course, that means that when we cry out, "Abba, Father" it will arise from the spirit in us and therefore it will be heard. This is what the epistle to the Hebrews says, " Jesus while on earth, made prayers and petitions and loud cries to the one who could save Him from death and He was heard because of His reverence." That is Jesus emptied Himself, made Himself totally obedient to the Father and in that process He was heard. So this is the prayer that pierces the clouds, that appears before the throne of God, that touches the heart of God and gets answered. So if we are going to be effective in praying for vocations, if we are going to be effective in our mission then our prayer has to have the element of humility. The kind of humility that Jesus shows us.