Message of Abbot Paul - Thursday 26th October 2023

Today the Church in Herefordshire celebrates the feast of St Eadfrith of Leominster, a missionary Benedictine monk from Northumbria, who in the year 660 founded a small monastic community at Leominster, near the River Lugg, where he died in 675. This monastery was destroyed by the Danes and later rebuilt as an abbey for nuns, which became famous in the Anglo-Saxon period, although it was supressed just before the Conquest. In the 12th century, Henry I incorporated the lands at Leominster into the foundation of Reading Abbey and the minster was rebuilt, becoming a priory dependant on Reading until is dissolution at the Reformation. St Eadfrith, however, is considered to be the founder of Leominster and today we ask this Benedictine saint for his intercession for the people of the whole of Herefordshire.

 

Our Gospel passage from Luke, (Lk 12: 49-53), today is very short and carries on from yesterday’s reading. Jesus is speaking with his disciples, “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already! There is a baptism I must still receive, and how great is my distress till it is over!

  ‘’Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on a household of five will be divided: three against two and two against three; the father divided against the son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

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​What is this fire that Jesus talks about other than the flame of conversion and forgiveness which ultimately leads to the flame of the Holy Spirit, the flame of God’s love? And what is this division among men that he has come to bring rather than peace? God’s peace is not a human peace, which is simply the absence of chaos and disagreement, the absence of hatred and war. God’s peace is not an absence but a presence, his presence, for where God is, there is peace, there is love. The division he talks about is that caused by the decision we all must make: are we for Christ of against him? There can be no halfway house, no taking of two roads. When you come to a fork in the road of life, you can only go one way, not both. Lord, may we always choose your way, may we always choose you. Amen.