Message of Abbot Paul - Saturday 18th March 2023

I returned from Peru early on Friday morning. I’m most grateful to the kind parishioner who met me at Birmingham Airport and brought me back to Belmont. It was a surprise to be woken up by the loud cries of the jackdaw colony, a much larger choir of singers than that of the monks. In Peru we have a colony of “mirlos” related to the British blackbird. They belong to the thrush family. These birds accompany the monks as they sing the daylight offices and Mass. They also knock at the stained-glass windows to attract attention. However, they are much, much louder, sing amazingly well and have perfect pitch. I’ve tried to do an ordinary day’s work on my first day back, but I’m beginning to fall asleep as I write these few words. It was good to collect Toby and bring him home to Belmont. The first thing he wanted to do was pay a visit to the cemetery and tuck into the long grass among the graves, primroses and daffodils. He knows what he wants.

 

​Out Gospel passage this Saturday comes from Luke, (Lk 18: 9-14), the reaction of Jesus to those, ”who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else.” Jesus does so by means of a parable, one of his most famous and here it is:

“Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, ’I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get.’ The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ This man, I tell you, went home again at rights with God; the other did not. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the man who humbles himself will be exalted.”

 

​Poor Pharisee, he was a good man, but sadly over-conscious of his goodness and his obeying God’s commandments to the letter. There are many Christians like that, proud of their obedience to the commandments of God and of the Church. The problem with pride is that it tends to despise others, who on the surface aren’t so good. But God looks not so much on our many good works as on our humility and spirit of repentance. All the Pharisee could say to God was, “Look how good I am.” The tax-collector, on the other hand, was conscious of being a sinner and simply knelt before God and said, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” It’s hardly surprising, is it, that he went home forgiven and justified, while all the Pharisee could do was wallow in his pride.