Message of Abbot Paul - Monday 17th October 2022
Abbot Paul • October 17, 2022
When I was a boy, Autumn was the season of Michaelmas daisies. You could see them in every garden and in flower arrangements in all churches, cemeteries and homes. There was something comforting about them as the nights drew in, the days got colder and we looked forward to Christmas and the end of the long, long Michaelmas Term in school. It struck me yesterday that this is no longer the case. It was seeing two small and rather sad looking clumps of these lovely flowers yesterday afternoon in one of the small Belmont estates that brought this home to me.
So it is that I pray for the revival of the fortunes of the Michaelmas daisy in Britain.
Today we keep the feast of one of the most attractive saints in the Church’s calendar, St Ignatius of Antioch, the 2nd century bishop and martyr, who wrote a series of letters to various churches as he journeyed through Asia Minor towards Greece and Rome, where he was martyred for his faith. He is an important link between the age of the Apostles and the Early Church. The contents of his letters cannot be underestimated nor his importance as a witness to subapostolic Church life and belief. He is also a saint that all Christians recognise and accept to be a Father of the Faith.
Our Gospel reading today comes from Luke, (Lk 12: 13-21, and presents us with the views and teaching of Jesus on wealth and money. It all begins when a man in the crowd says to Jesus, “Master, tell my brother to give me a share of our inheritance.” To this Jesus replies, “My friend, who appointed me your judge, or the arbitrator of your claims”’ He then goes on to say to his disciples and to others listening to him, “Watch, and be on your guard against avarice of any kind, for a man’s life is not made secure by what he owns, even when he has more than he needs.” There is no doubt that Jesus sees the love of and attachment to wealth and money to be highly dangerous for the soul and for the good of men and women. How easily we sell our souls to possessions. Now this vice or sin can affect the poor as well as the rich. We can become possessed by what we possess, and that needn’t be much!
He then tells them a parable, one that is easy to understand. “There was once a rich man who, having had a good harvest from his land, thought to himself, ‘What am I to do? I have not enough room to store my crops.’ Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and my goods in them, and I will say to my soul: My soul, you have plenty of good things laid by for many years to come; take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul; and this hoard of yours, whose will it be then?’ So it is when a man stores up treasure for himself in place of making himself rich in the sight of God.” This parable leads us to examine our own way of life and our motives for managing wealth and security. Am I storing up treasure in heaven, a store of goodness and virtue in the sight of God, or am I obsessed with material wealth and wellbeing? Worse still, am I a slave to material things, or do I simply use them as and when necessary for the common good, rather than for my ego? A lot to think about today!
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