Message of Abbot Paul - Friday 30th September 2022

I’m on my way back to Belmont. I’ve survived the hair raising car trip to the airport, the somewhat chaotic check in, security and immigration hurdles and I’m now sitting in a relatively quiet area, waiting for the lounge to open after fumigation, so I can write this message and say Vespers before boarding the flight to Paris. Everyone is wearing masks, as in all public places in Peru, including churches and supermarkets. All things considered, it’s been dead easy so far and I enjoyed the drive close up to the Pacific Ocean. It’s a bright sunny day, only the second since Spring began on 23rd September. This was written yesterday afternoon about 4 o’clock Peruvian time.

Today we keep the feast of that great ascetic, scholar and translator of the Bible, St Jerome. We remember our own Abbot Jerome, founder of the monastery in Peru, a man of scholarship and prayer. Our Gospel reading comes from Luke, (Lk 10: 13-16), in which Jesus laments for two towns that would not open their hearts to his teaching, or even to his miracles. “Alas for you, Chorazin! Alas for you, Bethsaida!” Had such things been said and done in Tyre and Sidon, their inhabitants would have believed and been converted. The same goes for Capernaum, another town of unrepentant sinners! He says to his disciples, “Anyone who listens to you listens to me; anyone who rejects you rejects me, and those who reject me reject the one who sent me.” We pray that we may never reject Jesus or his heavenly Father who sent him to us as our Lord and Saviour, Brother and Friend.