Message of Abbot Paul - Saturday 16th July

Today the Church keeps the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a feast that goes back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the founding of the Carmelite Order. It is a feast and devotion that reminds us constantly of our shared contemplative vocation to union with Jesus in whom we encounter God and learn to love him. We pray for our brother and sister Carmelites throughout the world and for the souls in Purgatory. It was on this day in 1981, while studying Spanish in Cochabamba, Bolivia, that Frs Luke, David and I visited the Carmelite nuns in their ancient monastery there and celebrated Mass with them. I feel they would welcome our prayers today, as would our dear sisters at Dolgellau in Wales. Our General Chapter continues to work hard and today is no exception. Thank God tomorrow we have a rest day.

Our short Gospel reading comes from Matthew, (Mt 12: 14-21), and is mostly a quotation from the Prophet Isaiah. Our evangelist sets out by warning us that the Pharisees have set out to plot against Jesus and are discussing how to destroy him. Why do they hate him so and are so afraid of his popularity? I suspect they fear that the Roman authorities will come down heavily on any national religious figure who looks likely to rock the the boat of civil order and submission to the state, yet it would take a couple of centuries for Christians to pose a threat and become a powerful political and religious presence in the Roman Empire. In fact, Jesus, realising what the Pharisees have in mind, withdraws from the district. Not only that, but he warns those who follow him and are cured by him not to make him known. He is not a political Messiah, as even his disciples seemed to think at times. Consider the two on the road to Emmaus.

It is in this context that Jesus quotes from Isaiah 42: 1-4. Here are just a few lines: “Here is my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved. I will endow him with my Spirit and he will proclaim true faith to the nations. In his name the nations will put their hope.” Today, Jesus proclaims hope and true faith to the nations through each one of us, his disciples and his people. This is the shared vocation of all Christians, the vocation that you and I share. May we fulfill it with joyful hope in the coming of God’s kingdom.