Transcript of Abbot Clement’s Talk on November 29, 2006

Because Advent and the Christmas season is a focus on the Incarnation, I want to talk a little bit about the practical side of that, namely, its virtue that is the dynamic element in the spiritual life. Virtue is the place where we incarnate the mystery of Christ in our life. So it= s a very important question because for us those virtues that we are to incarnate especially is obedience, silence and humility.

The problem is that when we look at the virtue seriously we really realize how demanding they are and really kind of asking for full commitment. The result is that we can easily be discouraged. So we= re not much different than the apostles when Jesus revealed the mystery of the Eucharist and many of them said: "This is a hard saying, who can listen to it?", and they left. Jesus turns to Peter and says, "Will you leave too?" And Peter says, "To whom can we turn? You alone have the words of eternal life!" So when we apply this to looking at Christ in terms of the virtues it= s easy for us to say it= s impossible to put these into practice and therefore why bother to try to attain them.

Well the problem with that is that we= re already looking at the virtues as something we have to do under our own power. That= s really not the case. So it= s very important that we hear what our Catholic teaching is about living the spiritual life. First of all we= re living in the Spirit and as Paul says in Gelatins if we live in the Spirit then we are also going to work with the Spirit. So it means that we have a certain sense that we are members of the mystical body that Jesus is the head. That Jesus is the actor. That Jesus is the agent. That Jesus is the master of our acts and our life. Therefore we are empowered by him.

So this is the kind of deepening of faith we need if we are going to enter the mystery of the Incarnation and profit from the Advent season. So the difficulty I think that we have here is again to see who Christ is. God became man. Jesus is preeminent virtue. He= s the perfection of virtue and so Jesus isn’t just humble, he= s humility. Jesus isn’t just poor, he= s poverty. Jesus just isn’t obedient, he= s obedience. And as the head he wants to have his sanctity in our life to make our life holy and in the power of his Spirit to act in us. So this preeminence of Jesus is very important to see as St. Paul tells us this in 1 Corinthians, A that it= s God who made you into Christ and who in turn made Christ your justice, your justification, your sanctification, and your freedom, your virtue and holiness, depends on how you translate those words but they get the point, that it= s Christ life that we’ve been given so much so that Paul ends that little phrase with the statement A if you glory, glory in the Lord.@ In other words your realize, that it= s all a gift from God. It= s not your own doing. But there= s another dimension of Jesus’ virtues and that is they= re redeeming. Jesus is the Son of God, he= s holy, he doesn’t need to be purified and sanctified. He is one whole reality in his Incarnation and so his virtues, the practice of virtues in his life is redeeming. They are all done for us to win salvation for us. So as head of the mystical body then he= s empowered us to also have a capacity not only to become good and holy but to become sanctifying. We have power to win grace for others in the mystical body. Not just by our prayer but our very practice of virtues. We’ve can empower people with grace because of Christ. In one of the Church documents there= s the statement that the church is not only holy but it= s sanctifying. The church is not only saved but saving.

So let= s take it from another angle so you can drive home the point. Already in the Old Testament the people realized that when they made sacrifice there was a flow of grace between God and them. So they had sacred banquets. At the banquet they were participating in the blessings of the Lord. When we, as Christians gather around the altar, we receive the body and blood of Jesus, his soul and divinity we are receiving that perfect holy body, that most pure body and his blood. The church has always taught that if you have sorrow for venial sins or imperfections Jesus wipes them away. So you are empowered with the life of Christ so the Eucharist really is food indeed and drink indeed. So you are to really carry the mystery of Christ into the world. You= re empowered to be sent.