Transcript of Abbot Clement’s Talk on Monday, September 8, 2003

            On this feast on the birth of the Blessed Mother it’s clear that’s it’s not a question of having cakes and candles and ice cream and saying, "Happy Birthday". It really is a focus of seeing more deeply two directions of what God is planning to do and does, and how it unfolds.

            The feast really calls us forth to a lot of praise. Praise is the amazement of God. It’s very easy for us to see this if we would just pause and reflect. Just spend one day going out of your way to the person that most harms you. Then you have some idea of the way God has been dealing with the human race for centuries and plans even greater things which comes to a point at creating the Blessed Mother, which of course, He already had in His mind.

            God’s self-giving is just unbelievable! To celebrate the birth of the Blessed Mother is to celebrate this great admiration for God’s tremendous, endless, intelligent, wise and wild love for us. Which is hard for us to believe. We really can’t believe that God really cares about each of us and all of us this way. So our faith is weak.

            It was beautiful to be at the shrine on Saturday and to see sixty chapels in the Basilica that itself is dedicated to the Immaculate Conception. All these different chapels of different aspects of how God has continued to support and guide the Blessed Mother and how she cooperated and became the Mother of nations. It would be worth while to just spend more time at the chapels and reflect on how the Lord used the Blessed Mother to touch these people and how Mary embraced these people. That she identifies with us and our struggles and walks with us and obtains graces for us. It would be a worthwhile thing. I tried to do it for a while but I was interrupted so much with taking pictures and stuff I had to go outside and pray so no one would bother me. If the Basilica is our Basilica then Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception, is the title that we most honor her as our Mother, then we ought to reflect more deeply on this title because the title is first of all manifestation of the plan of God and the power of God. After all, reading the book of Genesis that Satan is the one that caused the beginning of sin in the world and that Mary would crush his head. So already Mary has the power over all our enemies. It didn’t take long before the saints in the church began to see that because of that she also dismisses and wipes out all false teachings.

            To have devotion to the Immaculate Conception is already to place yourself in a powerful position. If you really take the Immaculate Conception seriously then you have to become pure yourself and grow in purity, purity of conscience. As you do that you allow yourself to be touched by the Spirit and have Jesus formed in you. That was the condition for Mary to be the Mother of God in terms of forming Christ in her.

            What’s the purpose of having Jesus in you? Not to have a Jesus in me spirituality but to give Jesus away. Everybody around us especially those who don’t believe, need Jesus. We have to give Jesus to everyone. We have to companion people so that they come to know Jesus through us so that they can have the victory over evil. Negative way of saying it. The positive way of saying it, becoming fully alive in Christ. That means that we begin to share the victory and then the glory of Mary who’s already victorious in her Assumption.

            At a time now in the church in which the church is being attacked, and anybody who doesn’t see this is blind, we need to draw closer to Mary as our patroness of our United States, especially under the title of the Immaculate Conception because that’s precisely where the area is being attacked most in the United States. It’s the sexual teaching of the church and purity and what it means to really live in committed, loving life.

            I did ask you and you responded, that we consecrated the Abbey to the Blessed Mother. I ask you to reflect upon "Where do you stand in being consecrated to the Blessed Mother?" To be placed in the hands of the Blessed Mother is to allow the Blessed Mother to shape Christ in you with the power of the Spirit because that’s their job. It’s the Spirit that shapes Jesus in us. It was the Spirit that overshadowed Mary for Christ’s coming. It was the Spirit that overshadowed the church Pentecost to form Christ in the church. So our long tradition of having a devotion to the Blessed Mother is a tradition that’s solidly grounded in the truth of scripture and in our life.