Message of Abbot Paul - Saturday 25th June
Abbot Paul • June 24, 2022
Message from Fr Paul for Saturday, 25th June 2022
Today is Belmont Summer Fête Day: I ask you to pray for good weather and an enjoyable afternoon for all our guests. I am deeply grateful to our organisers and to all those to have worked so hard for months to prepare for this wonderful event. I am amazed at their enterprise, dedication and ability, not to mention their physical strength and spirit of perseverance and faith. It is one of the many ways in which we can show our love for God and our neighbour. It’s all done thinking of others. May the good Lord reward you all.
On the Saturday after the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we keep the Memoria of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, quite an ancient devotion dating back to the days of St Anselm of Canterbury and St Bernard of Clairvaux, then practised by St Mechtilde, St Gertrude the Great and St Bridget of Sweden. It is based on the Infancy Narratives of Luke (chapters 1 & 2) and John’s description of Mary at the foot of the Cross, (Jn 19: 25-27). St Augustine of Hippo wrote that Mary was not merely passive at the foot of the cross; "she cooperated through charity in the work of our redemption." Pope St Leo the Great wrote that, “through faith and love she conceived her son spiritually, even before receiving him into her womb.” This is a feast with a sound scriptural basis and a long history of profound theological reflection.
Our Gospel reading today is proper to the commemoration and comes from Luke, (Lk 2: 41-51). It recounts the episode recorded of the Holy Family, when Jesus was twelve years’ old and they went down to Jerusalem on pilgrimage. It’s an account that focusses on many points, among them Mary questioning Jesus on why he had remained in Jerusalem when the pilgrims from Nazareth packed up and started going north for home. She tells him of Joseph and herself being worried when they discovered that Jesus wasn’t with them in the caravan and how they had been looking for him everywhere. She scolds him, “Why have to done this to us?” This episode reveals them to be a very normal family, yet it goes deeper and shows us Mary’s care for the prophetic utterances she had heard at his conception and birth. Luke comments: “Jesus then went down with them and came to Nazareth and lived under their authority. His mother stored up all these things in her heart.” At his birth, at his presentation in the temple and now we hear three times this phrase that Mary pondered and stored up these things in her heart, which is why the symbol of the Immaculate Heart is a heart pierced with the sword of sorrow, suffering and love. May Our Lady accompany us in our sorrows and our sufferings as well as in our joys and may she bring us all to God by her maternal intercession.
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Good Shepherd, Good Priest “I will seek the lost and bring back the strayed; I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.” Those words, spoken by the Lord God through the prophet Ezekiel, describe the heart of God, the Good Shepherd — but they also describe the life and ministry of a good monk and priest. They could well be written of Fr Stephen’s years of service as a pastor in Abergavenny, Swansea, Hereford, and Weobley. In each of those places, he shared in the Shepherd’s work: seeking out the lost, binding up the wounded, strengthening the weary, and leading God’s people with quiet faithfulness. And like Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who came close to his people, Fr Stephen did not serve from a distance. He knew his people; he was among them. He shared their sorrows and their joys, their hopes and their disappointments. He bore their burdens with prayer and patience he brought the joy of the Gospel and the grace of the Sacraments. His mission amongst us is complete. He has served God’s good purpose. So today we ask Christ the Good Shepherd to take Stephen on his sacred shoulders and carry him home to the house of the Father. Bind up his wounds, give him eternal rest and lead him at last to the green pastures and still waters of eternal life.