Message of Abbot Paul - Friday 18th August 2023

As ever, it was a great joy to visit my mother yesterday and to have the opportunity of a walk on the beach with Toby. Although the carparks were full and there were long queues waiting patiently for ice cream, there were very few people actually on the beach, apart from dogwalkers. It was warm but windy and the sea as far out as it can go, so we had the vast expanse of sand to ourselves, which is what both of us prefer. It was lovely being with my mum, enjoying good food, admiring the hundreds of birds that come to feed in her garden and talking about everything that comes to mind, yesterday mostly remembering Michael Parkinson. I wish I had my mother’s acute memory and eye for detail.

 

​Today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, (Mt19: 3-12), is about marriage and divorce and I have commented on it a number of times since I began writing these daily messages, so I won’t repeat myself. Instead, I will speak of something else, something more personal. It was five years’ ago that Fr Nicholas, then Prior and Parish Priest of Belmont, was appointed Prior Administrator of Downside Abbey, only be elected Abbot of Downside two years’ later. At the time I had no one to appoint as his replacement on the parish, so I became “caretaker parish priest”. Now that the time has come to hand over this care to someone else, Fr Augustine, who has been my righthand man from the beginning of Covid onwards, I would like to thank all those, lay and monastic, who have made these five years of additional service possible for me. It’s never been a burden, but always a source of great joy and fulfilment. On 1st September, Fr Augustine will become Parish Priest of Belmont, not a caretaker in any way, and I will step down. However, in a way, it will be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire, as from 9th September, with the help of the monastic community, I will take on pastoral oversight for the parishes of Leominster and Bromyard. While I am still Abbot of Belmont, this will have to be on a parttime basis, but when I retire as abbot after twenty-four years’ service next Spring, I hope to move to Leominster at the request of the Archbishop and take on the duties fulltime. This is not what I planned or had hoped to do, so it must be God’s will. Please could I ask for your prayers?