Message of Abbot Paul - Friday 19th August

Message from Fr Paul for Friday, 19th August 2022

 My last visit to Latin America was in February 2020 and it was to our monastery in Peru. Little did we realise then that Covid-19 would shortly be taking over our lives and our world. Before Covid, I travelled regularly throughout the Andean republics, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean as a member of the International Team of AIM (Alliance for International Monasticism), leading workshops, teaching courses, giving retreats and checking up on the many projects we helped finance at monastic foundations. I’m not sure that I have the strength or the will to do this anymore. I’ll leave it to the Lord to work that one out. Nevertheless, I will be visiting our brethren at the monastery in Lurin, where their lives and that of their neighbours continues to be badly affected by the pandemic and chronic misgovernment. If you could help the brethren and their work with the poor and needy in any way, I’d be eternally grateful.

 One of the countries I have visited many times, and dearly love, is Nicaragua, where the Church is being sorely tested and persecuted at this very moment by the government. I regularly visited and supported two communities, one Benedictine, the other Cistercian. I ask your prayers for their safety, particularly as they are communities of women. It’s best I say no more, but do look up news online of this beautiful but ruined country and pray for her poor and longsuffering people.

 Our short Gospel passage from Matthew, (Mt 22: 24-40), shows us how at this stage of his ministry both Pharisees and Sadducees were out to get him. They longed to trap him and have him put to death. We read, “When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees they got together and, to disconcert him, one of them put a question, ‘Master, which is the greatest commandment of the Law?’ Jesus said, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second resembles it: You must love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang the whole Law, and the Prophets also.’” The Pharisees always try to trick Jesus into giving unorthodox or false teaching, but how could Jesus do that? It was the Pharisees themselves who taught a wrong interpretation of the Law of God, one that allowed them to dominate the hearts and minds of their hearers. The Father sent his Son into the world not to enslave us, but to set us free to enjoy the freedom of the children of God. Let us enjoy that freedom by remaining always faithful to Jesus and the truth of the Gospel.