Message of Abbot Paul - Tuesday 31st October 2023

Today is the Vigil of All Saints, at one time a day of fasting and abstinence in preparation for the great feast. The old English word Halloween simply means the Vigil of All Saints and has nothing whatever to do with what it has been turned into commercially the world over. I hope all those lovely pumpkins don’t go to waste! Yesterday at Chapter, our postulant Robert Smith, was clothed in the habit, thus beginning his life as a novice, taking the name of Br Alban in honour of the English Reformation martyr, St Alban Roe. We congratulate him and pray for his perseverance in the monastic life.

 

Today’s short Gospel passage from Luke, (Lk 13: 18-21), presents us with two miniature parables of the Kingdom, that of the mustard seed and that of the yeast. Here they are: “Jesus said, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it with? It is like a mustard seed which a man took and threw into his garden: it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air sheltered in its branches.’

  Another thing he said, ‘What shall I compare the kingdom of God with? It is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all through.’”

 

The first sees a man throw a mustard seed into his garden. Did he do this intentionally and was it really only one seed? Insignificant questions, for from this the smallest of seeds grows, unaided by the man, a tree so large that birds can shelter in its branches. So, we focus on the extraordinary growth of the plant into a bush and then a tree. The second is similar, for the kingdom is also like a small portion of yeast with which a woman can leaven three measures of flour and so produce an enormous quantity of bread. Both parables focus on the extraordinary growth attributed to both mustard seed and yeast. Jesus takes simple examples from ordinary, everyday life to explain how the kingdom of heaven will grow and eventually take over the whole world. The disciples are not to lose heart, but rather to be encouraged by the parables of Jesus. I hope that we, too, are encouraged and so do not lose heart in the mission of the Church. It only takes one mustard seed and a teaspoonful of yeast.