Message of Abbot Paul - Wednesday 19th July 2023
Abbot Paul • July 18, 2023
Today I will be visiting the parish of Our Lady and St Michael at Abergavenny to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the parish school together with pupils, parents and staff, led by Fr Matthew, the parish priest. It’s a very important landmark in the history of Catholic education in Wales, so as we give thanks for a century and a half of unstinting service to children and young people, I ask you to pray for the school in the years ahead. I wonder what the celebrations of the 300th anniversary will be like when the time comes, as we hope it will.
Our Gospel passage today is brief, just three short verses, (Mt 11: 25-27), in which Jesus addresses his heavenly Father. This is what he exclaims. “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” It’s a short prayer of thanksgiving in which Jesus blesses his Father, “Lord of heaven and earth”, hiding the mysteries of the kingdom from the learned and the wise, at least from those who consider themselves to be learned and wise, such as the scribes and Pharisees, while he reveals them to the simple, to mere children in learning and knowledge, his disciples. Jesus realises that this is the Father’s will. Everything that has been entrusted to him by the Father, Jesus will share with his disciples and, through them, with us, his followers in the world today. Jesus has called us to be his friends and disciples and for that, like Jesus, we give thanks to God our Father.
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