Message of Abbot Paul - Wednesday 23rd November 2022

Perhaps today’s Gospel from Luke, (Lk 21: 12-19), is more suited to yesterday’s feast of St Cecilia, the famous Roman virgin martyr or St Catherine of Alexandria, whom we remember this coming Friday. Today’s calendar offers us two alternatives, Pope St Clement I, the Roman martyr, and St Columban, the Irish abbot, the two of them of historic and doctrinal importance. At Belmont this year we will be keeping St Columban.

 

​As for our Gospel reading, we must not forget that it’s the last week of the Liturgical Year and so we are thinking very much about what Jesus warned would come the way of his followers: persecution for the faith and the importance for Christians to bear witness to the truth of the Gospel and the presence of God in their lives. They will be persecuted “because of my name – and that will be your opportunity to bear witness”. Jesus goes even further by telling his disciples not to prepare their defence, but rather to allow God to speak through them. “I myself shall give you an eloquence and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to resist or contradict”. As St Paul would say, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Jesus will live in their hearts through faith. It will not be they who live but Christ who lives in them. Even their families will turn against them and they will be hated and rejected by everyone, but even then, they are not to fear for “not a hair of your head will be lost. Your endurance will win you your lives.” In fact, the number of persecutions the Church has suffered in her two-thousand-year history and the intensity of those persecutions cannot be exaggerated. Even so, we are still here and still prepared to face persecution and death for the sake of Jesus, the Church he founded and the Gospel he preached.