Message of Abbot Paul - Saturday 19th November 2022

I always find it sad having to come out of a retreat and get back to the normal routine. A retreat is like a spiritual holiday. We have conferences and then time in silence to think and pray about what we have heard. This year the retreat has been particularly good and gave us much to think and pray about. I hope it has a beneficial effect on our lives. There was a time I used to give a lot of retreats to religious communities of both men and women. It’s not an easy thing to do and very tiring, as it also includes seeing each retreatant privately and that takes up any spare time that might be available in the timetable. In fact, at the beginning of December I have to go over to Ireland to give a retreat to a community of Benedictine nuns. When the time comes, I’ll be asking for your prayers.

 

​Our Gospel reading today is one we read a few Sundays’ ago. It comes from Luke, (Lk 20: 27-40), and is essentially about the resurrection of the dead, something in which the Pharisees believed, but not the Sadducees. Belief in life after death took a long time coming in Hebrew religion and even at the time of Jesus the Sadducees were a major sect that did not accept the idea, as opposed to the Pharisees who did. Most early Christian converts from Judaism were, in fact, Pharisees. The question the Sadducees put to Jesus is a bit of a red herring. It’s about a widow, who marries seven brothers, as each one dies before leaving descendants. They ask which of the brothers will she be married to at the resurrection. Jesus’ reply takes them by surprise, as they can only think of this world and that heaven must be a continuation of this earthly life. Jesus says, No, it is not like that! “The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection from the dead do not marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels, and being children of the resurrection, they are sons of God. And Moses himself implies that the dead rise again, in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all men are in fact alive.” Eternal life is not simply a continuation, albeit a better one, of this life, but life on a different plane. As we will be focussed on God, we will see and love others in and through God. It will be perfect love, heavenly love, God’s love, for God will be all in all.