Message of Abbot Paul - Thursday 9th February 2023
Abbot Paul • February 8, 2023
Today at Belmont we keep the feast of St Teilo, one of the most important of Welsh saints and patron of the City of Cardiff as well as of many towns and villages in Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. He was born at Penally, Pembrokeshire, where my Welsh grandmother was born, in the year 500 and died at Llandeilo Fawr in 560. He rose to become Bishop of Llandaff. He was educated by St Dyfrig and St Paulinus of Wales and was a friend and contemporary of St David. In 540 he moved to Brittany with a group of monks. You can still see the apple orchards planted by Tello and his fellow monks in Brittany, where there is great devotion to him. You can venerate his skull at Llandaff Cathedral, although Llandeilo and Penally also claim to have his body and his tomb. You can see a beautiful stained-glass window of him in the former St David’s Chapel at Belmont. He is depicted as a handsome young man, carrying juicy red apples as in his right hand and a crozier in his left. May he pray for us today and for the people of the countries he served.
It was very moving indeed to see President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visit King Charles and Westminster Hall, where he addressed both House of Parliament. I hope and pray that that the West will now give him the help he needed almost a year ago when his country was first invaded. Soon it will be the anniversary of what amounted to a declaration of war against the Ukrainian people and of the free world. Unless we put an end to this war very soon, I fear it will drag on for ever and not stop at Ukraine.
Our Gospel today comes from Mark, (Mk 7: 24-30), and sees Jesus in the territory of Tyre, an area with a large pagan population. He was staying in a house, but didn’t want people to know he was there. Was he resting, perhaps? But even here, Jesus is recognised. “A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him straightaway and came and fell at his feet. Now the woman was a pagan, by birth a Syrophoenician, and she begged him to cast the devil out of her daughter. And he said to her, ‘The children should be fed first, because it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house-dogs.’ But she spoke up: ‘Ah yes, sir,’ she replied ‘but the house-dogs under the table can eat the children’s scraps.’ And he said to her, ‘For saying this, you may go home happy: the devil has gone out of your daughter.’ So she went off to her home and found the child lying on the bed and the devil gone.”
What a lovely story this is, which sees Jesus breaking through the boundaries of faith and respectability of his day, for the woman who falls at his feet, as well as being a woman is also a pagan. Not only does she fall at his feet, but she begs him to heal her little daughter who has an unclean spirit. Although Jesus at first appears to reject her, when she stands up for herself, accepting Jesus’ comparison of her and her daughter to house-dogs, he recognises her faith and assures her that her daughter will be well. So strong is her belief in Jesus, that on returning home she finds her daughter healed and well again. Let us pray for a faith like hers. Jesus will never reject or abandon us.
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