Message of Abbot Paul - Friday 21st July 2023

As you know, each day I get lots of exercise and fresh air in the company of faithful companion Toby, the perfect monastic dog. Rather like St Benedict in his old age, he is thinking of writing a little rule for monks, but making it inclusive of canine monastics. I imagine he has some quite interesting insights into the vows, obedience in particular, the observance of the monastic timetable and the living out of monastic values, such as the art of silent contemplation. Animals, both wild and tame, have much to teach us and we would do well to heed their example.

 

​Today we accompany Jesus on a walk with his disciples. Matthew, (Mt 12: 1-8), describes what happened. “Jesus took a walk one sabbath day through the cornfields. His disciples were hungry and began to pick ears of corn and eat them.”

It’s a lovely scene and we can easily imagine it, I am reminded of when I was a boy and with my friends we would stop playing football and eat the ears of wild grasses. How sweet they were! But it’s the sabbath and the religious police are out on duty, eyeing the disciples. The Pharisees miss nothing and complain to Jesus. “The Pharisees noticed it and said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing something that is forbidden on the sabbath.’” Jesus replies with two examples from the Old Testament: King David and the Temple priests, who are both recorded as having broken the Law. “Jesus said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his followers were hungry – how he went into the house of God and how they ate the loaves of offering which neither he nor his followers were allowed to eat, but which were for the priests alone? Or again, have you not read in the Law that on the sabbath day the Temple priests break the sabbath without being blamed for it? Now here, I tell you, is something greater than the Temple.”

 

​Jesus is angered by the attitude and inflexibility of the Pharisees and quotes from the prophet Hoses, (Ho 6:6). “What I want is mercy, not sacrifice.” It’s as though the Pharisees had never read of God’s mercy, let alone experienced it. Jesus says, “And if you had understood the meaning of the words: What I want is mercy, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the blameless. For the Son of Man is master of the sabbath.” It is not the sabbath that is holy, but the Son of man and, indeed, God the Father himself, who make the sabbath holy. God’s children and their health and happiness come before the Law that was made to help and support them.