Message of Abbot Paul - Wednesday 22nd March 2023

It’s good to get back to Lent for three days before we keep another solemnity on Saturday, that of the Annunciation, one of the most important days in the Church’s calendar. I can’t quite remember the exact day on which I began writing these daily messages way back in March 2020. I shall have to look it up. I began writing them to keep in touch with parishioners, oblates and friends of Belmont as England went into its very first lockdown, meaning that all places of worship, except the human heart, had to close and, sadly, Belmont was among them. Looking back, it’s hard to believe what we’ve been through, in many ways the lost years. Yet, we still have parishioners coming down with Covid, so it’s with us as a permanent visitor.

 

​Although the weather is unsettled and we never quite know what’s going to happen next, nevertheless our Spring flowers are beginning to transform Belmont into an earthly paradise. I particularly love the cemetery with countless primroses of many shades, daffodils of all shapes and colours, some of them highly perfumed, trees in blossom and countless other flowers adorning our woods and gardens. Toby could spend hours sniffing and reading the recent history of Belmont with his nose. Yesterday he visited a most wonderful Catalan vet called Paco, sadly a locum, and was diagnosed with arthritis, so has now begun taking medication to alleviate the pain. Like his best friend, he too is growing old and has begun to slow down.

 

​Our Gospel passage for today comes from John, (Jn 5: 17-30), not a short passage and one that needs time and close scrutiny, something each of us can only do at home and in an atmosphere of quiet prayerfulness. It begins with a powerful reaction against Jesus on behalf of the religious authorities. These are the people John is referring to when he talks about “the Jews”. “Jesus said to the Jews, ‘My Father goes on working, and so do I.’ But that only made them even more intent on killing him, because, not content with breaking the sabbath, he spoke of God as his own Father, and so made himself God’s equal.” This is what the Gospel is all about, revealing the true identity of Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God and equal of God. In fact, Jesus goes on to say and to repeat several times.

  ​“The Son can do nothing by himself;

he can do only what he sees the Father doing:

and whatever the Father does the Son does too.

For the Father loves the Son

and shows him everything he does himself,

and he will show him even greater things than these,

works that will astonish you.

Thus, as the Father raises the dead and gives them life,

so the Son gives life to anyone he chooses;

for the Father judges no one;

he has entrusted all judgement to the Son,

so that all may honour the Son

as they honour the Father.”

As Jesus begins, so he continues. This is known as high Christology, which is the mark of John’s Gospel. We pray that all people will come to recognise Jesus as Son of God and come to know him as equal to the Father.