Transcript of Abbot Clement’s talk of, 7 October 2002

        Last time we talked about what the Lord wants of us with humility. If we’re going to grow in humility, it means we have to be willing to want correct judgement about ourselves. It’s not easy for us human beings, we don’t like too much truth. So we see for instance, in the life of David, when he had intercourse with the Bethsheba and then had her husband murdered, it was Nathan that the Lord sent and tells the nice parable of the rich man living next to a poor man and when a visitor comes to the rich man the rich man takes the ewe, the only pet lamb the poor man has, and has it killed and served for the guest. And as David is listening to this he gets all excited and says, "give it to him, he’s wrong." And Nathan says, "it’s you." That’s judgement. And David repents and then is blessed, even to the point that Solomon came from Bethsheba. So the growth of the spiritual life here in this community is going to be rooted in the capacity of us to be able to make those kinds of awarenesses and to respond to them. But we resist them, that’s the problem. So we need to see how Jesus does this and therefore not be so frightened or not willing to be generous and admit that it’s me.

        If we look at Sunday’s gospel, we have an example of Jesus confronting the elders and leaders of the community. Now remember Jesus is totally fearless. He knows that these people are going to kill him. Does He back away? Does He run? Does He talk in a fast pitch and condemn them? No. He’s loving them. He loves them so much that He’ll do anything to prevent them from sinning. Not only that, He knows when He dies, He will die for them. So that they would repent at least afterwards. So the first thing we learn about Jesus is that He pursues us. We say our goal is to seek God and the truth is God is seeking you and me. But do we pay attention? And do we understand the intensity and the delicacy and the knowledge and the love that’s going on between God and you all the time? Do you really believe that? I don’t think so. Something else we learn about Jesus when we look at that gospel: that Jesus does good to us, He looks out for our good even when we’re sinning. And for Him, you know, He can’t be deceived. Therefore the good that He seeks for us is really good. It really will work if we let it in. But sad to say, the encounter between Jesus and the elders - they made the right judgement -Jesus asked them, "well, what do you think is going to happen when the owner of the vineyard catches up with these crooks?" "They’re going to get it! And he’s going to do this." And they make the right judgement. But they don’t apply it to themselves and repent. So this is one of our difficulties. Certainly the Lord wants us to love Him, purely, that is, not mixed. Not mixed with selfishness, not being a monk and having a collar as a priest and acting totally different. Not looking for an easy life.

        Jesus certainly wants us to be firm, committed. He doesn’t want us to say, "well, I seek you today but if things get rough then bye, bye Jesus." It means that He wants us to totally trust Him, that He finally got us to the monastery, He finally got us some what committed to follow Him, will we now give Him a chance to transform us? Now we have tremendous amount of graces to make this happen. We are steeped in the Word of God by coming to Office throughout the day, we have spiritual reading, also, and more importantly in terms of gifts is the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, because here Jesus gives His body, blood and soul and divinity to us, His self. What does this mean? It means He’s trying to fuse our heart with His heart, our soul with His soul, etc. So we are not doing this on our own power. We are getting tremendous graces to make this possible. So notice we’re back to the question then of listening. You can’t embrace the truth if you don’t hear it. Yet it’s the truth that will set you free. Someone just told me a story of a person who when he was young the father used to take him out of the house and at Christmas would throw him in the snow and say, "if it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t have all these things." So the person doesn’t realize it but every time in his adult life, any time some nice party comes up, he always spoils it. He doesn’t realize that he simply living out, repeating what his father did to him.