Message of Abbot Paul - Tuesday 27th
Message from Fr Paul for Tuesday, 27th July 2021
Yesterday was a good day in many ways. To begin with, our early morning walk was cool and fresh for a change and, on our way back, I found and ate my first ten blackberries of the year, small still, but very black, juicy and delicious. Just before we left to visit my mother for the day, the Internet connection was restored to the monastery after a break of almost 40 hours. By then, of course, it was too late to reply to any of those emails that had mounted up over that time. Because of work on the A465 between Dowlais and Hirwaun, which can cause up to an hour’s delay, I opted to go via Newport and the M4, a good choice, adding no more than ten minutes to our journey. My mother was on good form and we had a good day and delicious meals together. Toby’s walk on the beach, exhilarating though it was, rather knocked me out, and when we got back to my mother’s, I slept for two hours until she woke me up for supper. The result was that I didn’t write this message as I had planned to do. The beach was a rather different from usual as the school holidays have begun. Toby and I met a large travelling family encamped on the beach, creating what seemed like a scene from the Exodus, a large array of tents and a lot of cooking going on. Further on, we met a family of Hassidic Jews with a small tent, the men dressed in their traditional garb, sitting on the sand and studying the Torah, oblivious to what was going on around them. Jesus would have felt at home, I kept thinking, which leads us on to today’s Gospel passage from Matthew, (Mt 13: 36-43).
“Leaving the crowds, Jesus went to the house; and his disciples came to him and said, ‘Explain the parable about the darnel in the field to us.’ He said in reply, ‘The sower of the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world; the good seed is the subjects of the kingdom; the darnel, the subjects of the evil one; the enemy who sowed them, the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; the reapers are the angels. Well then, just as the darnel is gathered up and burnt in the fire, so it will be at the end of time. The Son of Man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all things that provoke offences and all who do evil, and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth. Then the virtuous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Listen, anyone who has ears!’” It’s often struck me that, if the disciples had difficulty understanding Jesus, how did the crowds manage? Yet they listened assiduously to his words and followed him round the countryside in droves. Occasionally, we find Jesus alone with his disciples and that is when they get the opportunity to ask him to explain. Here they ask for an explanation of the parable of the darnel in the field. Jesus explains that good and evil will co-exist until the end of time, when the Son of Man, Jesus himself, will separate one from the other. From this we get the Christian idea of a double judgement, that which takes place at death and that which will take place at the end of time, the Final Judgement. This is not the place to go into details. Our aim should be to be accounted among “the virtuous who will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.” Let us make that our objective and our prayer today and always. Amen.
