Message of Abbot Paul - Saturday 27th August

Message from Fr Paul for Saturday, 27th August 2022

 It was a great joy to welcome to the Abbey for Mass and Vespers no less than forty pilgrims walking from Swansea to Hereford on the St Thomas Way with the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton Ecumenical Walking Pilgrimages. They set out from Swansea on 13th August and end in Hereford today. All along the route they pray for the people they meet and the churches they visit and for families and friends at home. This pilgrimage was to have taken place two years’ ago to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the canonisation of St Thomas Cantilupe, St Thomas of Hereford. I’m always amazed how each day the Lord gifts us people to inspire and teach us, people we remember with thanksgiving.

 Today we come to our last weekday reading from Matthew for this year, (Mt 25: 14-30), with the Parable of the Talents. Incidentally, it’s also the feast of St Monica, the mother of St Augustine of Hippo. She was instrumental in his conversion to the Christian faith, through her prayer and example. Let us thank God for our own mothers and grandmothers, whose greatest gift to us, together with the gift of life itself, was the gift of faith.

 We all know the Parable of the Talents like the back of our hand, so I won’t repeat it, but I would say that the very first words of Jesus sum it up. “The kingdom of Heaven is like a man….” Who is that man but Jesus, the Son and Word of God, through whom all that is came to be and in whom all things are reconciled to the Father and filled with the Holy Spirit. Where Jesus, the Risen Christ and Saviour is, there is the kingdom, which is not a place but a Person, God himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is in our Risen Lord and the power of his Spirit that we are united to our heavenly Father through faith and baptism. Even so, with all that has been gifted us by God, the talents, much is expected of us as we respond lovingly to God’s love and the gift of life and salvation. Let us pray today and always for the grace to respond fully to all that God has given us in Christ and to do so in the joy of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father and for the good of our neighbour and the world in which we live.