Message of Abbot Paul - Thursday 3rd March
Titian
Message from Fr Paul for Thursday, 3rd March 2022
It’s only the second day of Lent, but we’re already on our Lenten journey with Jesus, making for Holy Week and Easter. We had a good send off yesterday and it was encouraging to see so many fellow travellers at Mass to receive the ashes. It’s so true that we encourage one another by our presence at Mass and other services. Ash Wednesday was particularly special this year, as Pope Francis had designated it as a Day of Fasting and Prayer for Peace in Ukraine. Churches and other places of worship all over the world are co-ordinating our prayers for the Ukrainian people and for the many Russians who are against the invasion. It breaks our hearts to see the unnecessary suffering and bloodshed and the destruction of a beautiful country. If ever a sin cried to heaven for vengeance, this is it, yet an old lady said to me the other day that she was praying for Putin’s conversion, that he would see the error of his ways and ask for forgiveness. Prayer can move mountains: may it move Putin’s heart. Surely the Ukrainian people do not deserve this hell. At Belmont we will hold a twelve-hour Rosary Marathon for Ukraine, organised by the local Walsingham Association, on Monday, 7th March, from 9am to 9pm. The Rosary will be prayed continually for these twelve hours, with breaks for Monastic prayer. Please come at any time, and stay for as long as you are able. In the war against evil, the Rosary is the battering ram, said Our Lady to St Dominic. If you cannot join us, then please pray at home or wherever you happen to be. It will also be live-streamed on the website, if you would like to join us for part of it.
Our Gospel reading for today comes from Luke, (Lk 9: 22-25), where Jesus has a word, first of all, for his disciples, and then for the crowd following them. This is just before the Transfiguration.
“Jesus said to his disciples:
‘The Son of Man is destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and to be put to death, and to be raised up on the third day.’
Then to all he said:
‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, that man will save it. What gain, then, is it for a man to have won the whole world and to have lost or ruined his very self?’”
Jesus starts warning his disciples of what lies ahead. As we follow Jesus this Lent, we acknowledge that he is destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the Jewish authorities and put to death. We also know that he will rise again, and yet the joy and glory of the Resurrection does not make his Passion, Death and Burial any easier to bear. What is more, we know that we must walk in his footsteps and accept the sufferings and pain of this life in union with his own sufferings and wounded vulnerability. We will die with him in order to rise again with him. What he says to the crowd is the logical conclusion to what he said to his disciples. In order to become a disciple ourselves, we have to renounce ourselves and follow him along the way that leads to the Cross. Without the Cross there can be no Empty Tomb. In order to gain our lives, we must lose them, in order to enter eternal life, there is but one doorway, that of dying to self, giving up the false self in order to become the real self, recreated in the image and likeness of the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.
