Message of Abbot Paul - Thursday - 1st February 2024

Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of driving up to Leominster, as I do several times a week, to celebrate Mass in the church there dedicated to St Ethelbert. It’s a very prayerful church in which to celebrate Mass and the congregation is very devout. Then I had the joy of welcoming a close friend to advise me on how best to adapt the presbytery for my use when I move there at the beginning of May on my retirement as abbot, a date I now look forward to with a joyful and loving heart. God has been so good to me in so many ways, true friendship being one of his greatest gifts. I wonder if you know that old English proverb: A true friend is one soul in two bodies.

 

​Today’s Gospel passage from Mark, (Mk 6: 7-13), tells of the first time that Jesus sent the Twelve to preach the Good News and heal the sick. “Jesus made a tour round the villages, teaching. Then he summoned the Twelve and began to send them out in pairs giving them authority over the unclean spirits.” So great were the needs that Jesus decided that the time had come for the Twelve, his chosen Apostles, to share in his ministry. He didn’t send them alone but in pairs, so that they could give each other support and encouragement. He gives them authority, the authority that he himself had received from his heavenly Father. Before they set off, he gives them strict instructions as to how they should behave. “And he instructed them to take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bread, no haversack, no coppers for their purses. They were to wear sandals but, he added, ‘Do not take a spare tunic.’ And he said to them, ‘If you enter a house anywhere, stay there until you leave the district. And if any place does not welcome you and people refuse to listen to you, as you walk away shake off the dust from under your feet as a sign to them.’” These regulations are strict indeed. I can’t imagine missionaries today accepting such stringent rules, but these were other times: life was much harder and people expected to put up with hardship. He is teaching them to rely on Divine Providence and to trust in God to provide for their needs through the generosity hospitality of the people they would preach to and heal.

 

​Mark’s final comment is interesting. “So, they set off to preach repentance; and they cast out many devils, and anointed many sick people with oil and cured them.” It’s not the Good News they preach but repentance, yet, when you think of it, surely that is the Good News. We repent so that God might forgive us in Christ. That is precisely what the Gospel and the Christian faith are all about, repentance and forgiveness. Interesting, too, is the separation between casting out devils and healing the sick. Rather, the Apostles use oil, which is the sign of God’s mercy and love. This is the origin of the Sacrament of Anointing. Perhaps we would do well to receive this holy anointing more frequently. When I lived in Peru, our ministry to the sick included a monthly service of Anointing, when the sick would be brought to church by family members to be anointed. I remember one dear lady, who said to me one day, “Father, you’ve kept me alive so for long with your anointing, it’s time now for me to die and be with my parents. Just bless me with holy water.” I obeyed her command. That very afternoon she died. May she rest in peace. Her name was Doña Eufemia Torres, a great lady.