Abbot Clement's talk on October 21, 2002
I suppose if you went to a hospital in the emergency room and there=s a person on the gurney and the doctor=s taking his pulse and he=s counting and the person has twenty beats in a minute you all realize that this person is in trouble. What about our spiritual pulse? How alive are we spiritually?
A famous Russian, Tolstoy didn't even wake up to the things about God and his conscience until he was about 50. Then he tried to make up for lost time but I=m not sure he made it fully, but at least he woke up. Now there are many things that could help vitalize our life. Certainly prayer is a key question. But there=s another key question, and that is our charity toward one another. Our love of the brothers. After all Jesus has called us to religious life, as a community as well, and if we understand that we are the mystical body of Christ then we are the body of Christ for the salvation of the world. It=s not for ourselves - only. And so our capacity to reach out and love each other is a sign of our vitality. And so we need to chew on this particular point and of course there are tools for good works in chapter 4 to look at, but I think there=s plenty of other things to look at as well. I think one of the difficulties that we may not really encounter and really think about is that all personal relationships are not perfect and so we=re all partly hurt by each other. And probably some people have been hurt more then others and they have never paused to look at those hurts and see if they have really forgiven those that have hurt them. Because if you don=t deal with this then basically you cannot be free in your relationship, because you are still carrying this baggage. And it shows. It shows in the way you relate. Now the Lord intends to heal us and to free us. He=s gone to all kinds of extremes to show this and in the gospel of His own life it=s real clear how he loves his enemies.
In the life of Joseph Tyrelya When he was in the concentration camps and trying to love his enemies. One time the Blessed Mother told him, Ayou are too harsh on your enemies, love them more.@ And so at that time there was a commandant, he was praying for and had resentment toward, and so when he dropped the resentment the commandant actually became a Christian. And so this is probably a very important area to think about because it means you hold yourself off from experiencing God=s forgiveness. And not to know God=s forgiveness and mercy is one reason why we find it hard to forgive others. We really see how tremendously merciful God has been to us. And we will be merciful to each other. If we don=t see it, then of course, we will be self righteous, we will be justifying ourselves, and maybe worse, be drawn in, somewhat self-centered. So obviously the aliveness question deals with really dealing with these things in such a way that we discover the tremendous mercy of God. It=s our salvation. Jesus is first and foremost and always Jesus our Savior. So for instance in the life of St. Faustina, Jesus one time stopped her and said, AI want you to know how much I love sinners, especially those who seem hopeless. I want you to pray this prayer for them, but you must do it in the sense of sorrow and contrition for them. The very simple, little prayer was: Blood and water gushing forth from the heart of Jesus, as a fountain of mercy, I trust in you.@ And scripture says a rather strong statement, in the epistle of John, Ahe who hates his brother is a murderer.@ O.K. maybe you don=t hate in the sense that you take a knife out and kill them. But your words could do that. Or your snubbing or your actions, or your mockery, etc. And on the other hand, we have the powerful statement in scripture that says: He who loves his brother has passed from death to life. He doesn't have to fear death at all, he will experience being embraced by God=s love and mercy.