Message of Abbot Paul - Monday 5th December 2022

My dear friends, today I will be travelling from Belmont to the west of Ireland, where I’ll be accompanying a community of Benedictine nuns during their retreat. I should be returning to Belmont on 13th. I’m not quite sure if I will have access to the internet, so I won’t promise a daily message until I see what facilities there are. I beg your understanding and forgiveness should it be necessary to have a brief hiatus in communication. Also yesterday was such a busy day, that I had no spare time to sit down and write a few lines about today’s Gospel, that wonderful episode from Luke chapter 5, where Jesus heals a paralysed man who is lowered by his friends through an opening in the roof of the house, where Jesus was teaching a large crowd of followers. Here is the Gospel passage. What strikes you most? What does it challenge us to do?

 

​“Jesus was teaching one day, and among the audience there were Pharisees and doctors of the Law who had come from every village in Galilee, from Judaea and from Jerusalem. And the Power of the Lord was behind his works of healing. Then some men appeared, carrying on a bed a paralysed man whom they were trying to bring in and lay down in front of him. But as the crowd made it impossible to find a way of getting him in, they went up on to the flat roof and lowered him and his stretcher down through the tiles into the middle of the gathering, in front of Jesus. Seeing their faith he said, ‘My friend, your sins are forgiven you.’ The scribes and the Pharisees began to think this over. ‘Who is this man talking blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ But Jesus, aware of their thoughts, made them this reply, ‘What are these thoughts you have in your hearts? Which of these is easier: to say, “Your sins are forgiven you” or to say, “Get up and walk”? But to prove to you that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,’ – he said to the paralysed man – ‘I order you: get up, and pick up your stretcher and go home.’ And immediately before their very eyes he got up, picked up what he had been lying on and went home praising God.

  They were all astounded and praised God, and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen strange things today.’”

 

​Let us remember that without Christ we are truly paralysed.