Transcript of Abbot Clement’s Talk on December 11, 2006

It is clear that the Advent season is to prepare us for the birth of the Lord but the fact is that the birth of the Lord has to be in us renewed every year so that there is more of Christ in us every year we celebrate Christmas.

Then there’s the other side, that God has to be born in us. We allow Christ to be in us, in our thoughts, in our words, in our hearts, in our desires. He’s living in us. When we take on Jesus’ desires, when we take on Jesus’ desire for the salvation of souls or the glory of the Father, then God dwells and is born in us. This is the rhythm of our life as people of faith.

It is the focus of the Advent season that we should make this section of our life more of our pursuit. We have difficulties. We don= t live in a God-centered culture. We live in at best a man-centered culture and I would hate to say that as you read the paper it= s more man fallen centered culture. As a result we, too, are contaminated by the outlooks, attitudes, and desires that pervade our culture. We have to take out time to pause and see how we are really making God, who is the center of the world, the center of our lives.

We have three means of accomplishing this. We have the opportunity of prayer as monks and of course that= s a very important point. But that means that when I go to prayer I actually meet God. When two people meet they influence each other and transform each other. So when we go to pray we must pause and place ourselves in the presence of God and we have to be radically honest with him so that he influences us and we are influenced by him.

Second one is our actions. The church places us before the altar everyday and in that action we place ourselves on the altar with Christ, offered to the majesty of God with a powerful intercession of Jesus the High Priest. Therefore, everything we offer is acceptable because of Jesus. So our day is placed on the altar. We need to go through the day pausing every now and then and offering the next hour or two with Jesus to the glory of God the Father. This will be our continuation of the Mass in a very simple way but it moves us to start thinking in terms of our rhythm with God.

The third one, of course, is the church is offering us always the great sacrament of confession. The sacrament is not just a question of removing our sins. It is a deep gift of God, to first and foremost to heal our pain. The deepest pain we all have is our need for fulfillment. And the deepest fulfillment we have is to love God with our whole mind, whole heart, whole soul, and all our strength. So the Lord wants to heal this in this sacrament. He also wants to heal our wounds, not only our own personal sins, but we are all subject to original sin and there are wounds in us. So the Lord wants to heal them through this sacrament. Also, he wants to give us light. If we discuss what we are doing in our life with our spiritual director or confessor, we should be moving toward a greater light. The church has in fact retouched the way to go to confession by reading a Scripture passage hopefully it will be a light that I need at that time in my life. Last but not least, the sacrament empowers us, enables us, more to love more, and therefore, to fulfill our deepest need.

So we have this wonderful opportunity of advent to really focus on a central truth of our existence, namely, that life on earth is simply a question of allowing Jesus to be born in us more deeply everyday of our life and to let ourselves be born in God a little more every day.