Message of Abbot Paul - Sunday 23rd January
Message from Fr Paul for Sunday, 23rd January 2022
We were deeply saddened yesterday by the sudden and unexpected death of our beloved Fr Alexander, who had come to Belmont from Downside. He underwent complicated surgery last year and was in intensive care for a number of weeks, his condition being quite precarious, but he survived and recovered gradually, although never fully. His state of health was fragile, but he never lost his fighting spirit, extensive knowledge of so many things and sharp sense of humour and observation. He had not been well the past two days and was preparing to go into A+E, when Br Dunstan, our monastic infirmarian, found that he had quietly passed away in his cell. May his faithful and lovely soul rest in peace. Amen.
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Today the Catholic Church celebrates Sunday of the Word, a Sunday set apart at the beginning of the year to thank God especially for his word revealed to us in the Bible, the Sacred Scriptures. Our Gospel reading today is from Luke, (Lk 1: 1-4; 4: 14-21), two passages, in fact. The first is the introduction or prologue to his Gospel, the other, Luke’s account of Jesus return to Galilee after his baptism and the temptations in the desert, to begin his earthly ministry in his home town. The introduction is addressed to Theophilus, who might well have been a Roman official, but the Greek word means Friend of God and all those who read the Gospel are surely friends of God. At the Last Supper, Jesus called his disciples friends. The Church is the community of the friends of Jesus, chosen and loved. Luke also tells us that all his information has come from “eyewitnesses and ministers of the word.” Our faith should lead us to become just that, for the Spirit will make us eyewitnesses of the events we read about and ministers of the word, proclaimers of the Gospel of Jesus.
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Jesus returns to Galilee “with the power of the Spirit in him,” as a result of which his reputation grows and spreads and he is invited to teach in many synagogues in the district. At Nazareth “where he had been brought up” he goes to synagogue as he always does on the Sabbath. “He stood up to read and they handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll. he found the place where it is written:
The spirit of the Lord has been given to me,
for he has anointed me.
He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor,
to proclaim liberty to captives
and to the blind new sight,
to set the downtrodden free,
to proclaim the Lord’s year of favour.
He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the assistant and sat down. And all eyes in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to speak to them, ‘This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen.’”
The text which Jesus reads is Isaiah chapter 61, verses 1 and 2 and when the people whose eyes are fixed on him wait to hear a word of life from his lips, the word he gives goes way beyond their expectancies and hopes, for he tells them that these words are being fulfilled in their sight that day, fulfilled in him as the Anointed, the Christ of God. These words are beyond their wildest dreams, but even so it will cost them dearly to understand them in the way that Jesus does. Their hopes are for a political Messiah, a national Saviour, but that is not why Jesus has come among them, that is not why God has sent his Son. And so the ministry and the Gospel of Jesus begin.
