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Jesus carefully prepared his followers for this moment. We think of all the meals he shared and all the parables he told about banquets. We think of all those with whom he sat at table, including sinners, prostitutes and even tax collectors like Matthew and Zacchaeus. We think of the parable of the wedding banquet and its different categories of guest: those guests who refuse to come to the banquet when invited, those who arrive but are not wearing their wedding garment and those unsuspecting guests who are ushered into the wedding hall from the street. All of it leads to this moment. 

The day before Palm Sunday, in St John’s Gospel, Jesus is found once more at table, this time in Bethany with his friends Martha, Mary and Lazarus. At some point during that meal, Mary anointed the feet of Jesus and the house was “filled with the fragrance of the ointment”. Judas objected, complaining of the waste of money, but Jesus saw it as an act of love. Up to this point, Jesus had always been the guest at meals, but at the Last Supper he is the host and it is as host that he washes the feet of his disciples. Foot washing was to be expected at a meal, but normally it was done by a servant or a slave as the guests arrived. Jesus waits until they are all seated at the table before he does anything. When he does wash feet, it takes place in silence until, on this occasion, Peter objects. “Never,” says Peter. Once again, this act of love is misunderstood.  

Jesus doesn’t perform this foot washing as a slave would have done. He does it in freedom and from a position of strength. He removed his outer garment, washed their feet and then put his garment back on again. What St John actually says is that Jesus laid down his garment and afterwards took it up again. This is how he refers to the laying down and taking up of his life, and to the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. Shepherd and foot washer are one and the same and his action places a challenge before the apostles. This is the fragrance that filled the upper room on this holy night.

As guests at this Eucharist we are also challenged, as was Peter, to accept Jesus Christ as he is and not the way we want him to be. To accept ourselves as we are and not as the brave heroes we imagine ourselves to be. Delusion has no place around the altar of God. When Zacchaeus climbed the tree, before Jesus invited himself to his house for supper, what was he hoping to see? I don’t think he was hoping to see anything, I think he wanted to know how Jesus would look at him. 

This evening we need to ask the Lord to look at us with the same kindly eyes with which St Luke tells us he looked at Peter across the courtyard on this very night, so that we too might be converted. “For after the cock crowed Jesus turned and looked straight at Peter and Peter went outside and wept bitterly.” What did Peter see in those eyes? He saw what Mary of Magdala, Matthew, Zacchaeus, Mary of Bethany and many others saw. He saw what St Benedict would centuries later put in his Rule – “that we should never despair of God’s mercy” and that we should in turn be merciful ourselves. This is the challenge of the Eucharist; this is what it means to wash feet.

Abbot Brendan Coffey OSB

Br. Cyprian Love OSB plays J S Bach’s Chorale Prelude BWV 622 ‘O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Sünde groß’, a reflection on the Passion of Jesus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9h1LGmTc4s&list=PLAopdU4tiXlcm9l7K-DqXQ4CCoqgnoeB_&index=1

Unfortunately it’s not possible to gather together for the Easter Vigil due to the current lockdown restrictions. However, Father Henry offers a ‘mini Vigil’ which can be celebrated by a small community so that this holy night and the history of God’s saving deeds might be remembered and celebrated. Download here:

In this video Father Simon prepares us for the Scripture readings which will be proclaimed during Holy Week and Easter 📖✝️ https://youtu.be/QjPd8QP_MKM

Walk with Christ on the journey to Calvary this Holy Week with these terracotta Stations of the Cross in our Abbey Church, crafted by the late Br. Benedict Tutty OSB (1924-1996) 👣✝️ https://youtu.be/uIKnGW8UPpA

As we begin this Holy Week – a special time to meditate on Christ’s Passion – pray the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary in this slow and reflective video with Fr. Henry O’Shea OSB 📿✝️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJNy5s3LPQ0

The final talk in our Lenten series – ‘Benedictine Prayer’ with Fr. Columba McCann OSB – is now available to watch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwdLMMf5enU&feature=youtu.be) or listen again (https://soundcloud.com/glenstalabbey/blessed-is-he-who-comes-in-the-name-of-the-lord-benedictine-prayer-with-columba-mccann-osb)

Annunciation of the Lord 

Glenstal Thursday 25^th March 2021 

Isaiah 7:10-14.8:10; Heb 10:4-10; Lk 1:26-38

Very often, the reality of a mystery we celebrate can be summed up in a few pregnant phrases. The mystery we are celebrating today, the Annunciation, is summed up in the Gospel acclamation we have just heard:

The Word was made flesh,

He lived among us,

And we saw his glory.

At various times in the history of the people of Israel, the Lord hints, as it were, that this people should be enquiring a little more about what exactly they think they are waiting for. A Messiah, yes, but what kind of Messiah? They have the Law, yes, but what does the observance of its many rules, ritual sacrifices and directions governing everyday trivia, actually achieve? What does this observance make real? What does this observance expect beyond the simple keeping of the rules? Not without some frustration, not without some impatience, the Prophet Isaiah cuts through Ahaz’s effective complacency, his apparent satisfaction with things as they are, and tells him that the Lord himself will burst into this situation and give a mind- and world-changing sign: “the maiden is with child and will soon give birth to a son whom she will call Emmanuel, a name which means, ‘God-is-with-us’”.

At one level – that is, as a piece of literature – the Gospel-account of how God gave this promised sign is almost like a tale one might read to a child. Such tales when read to the right audience – that is, to one with the right dispositions of mind and heart – are completely convincing, completely true, even if what they describe might be considered by the learned and informed, as pure fiction, scientifically or physiologically impossible.

But it is precisely in this shattering of the boundaries of what we might regard as possible, or even potentially true, that God fulfils the promise foretold by Isaiah. It is in the very domesticity of the Annunciation scene that God chooses to situate the fulcrum of history. One might even say that God chooses to change the universe in a kitchen.

And what a change. The people of the Old Covenant were constantly aware that their worship, even if prescribed by the Law, was always provisional. Even if some made the Law and its observances in the matter of animal sacrifices a thing in itself and if some saw, first the Tent of Meeting and later, the Temple of Jerusalem, as actual dwelling-places of God, the expectation, the waiting for a fulfilment in and by something or someone more real, never evaporated. Views, expectations of what that something or someone might be or mean varied over the centuries. For some it would even be a conquering hero ruling over a militarily successful territory, indeed an empire. 

We humans long for the concrete, the touchable, the visible. We want to be in time but also to go beyond time. We suspect, we know, or at least we long for ourselves to be made for eternity.

And today’s second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that we have got just that. It understands the yearnings, of the Law and the reasons for its sacrifices and rules, – it even understands the Law’s desire to obey the will of God – but states quite clearly that these sacrifices and rules have now been replaced by another sacrifice and another way of obeying God’s will.

Obeying God’s will: the acute listener will have recognised the echo of the second reading in the gospel-passage. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews has Christ saying, ‘God, here I am! I am coming to obey your will.’ Christ’s presence, readiness to obey and to become the new sacrifice, the new Temple, the new and definitive way of human relationship with God…

And Mary made all this possible, by echoing her Son’s words, in time indeed, but with a time-shattering affirmative: ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let what you have said be done to me.’  

The Word was made flesh,

He lived among us,

And we saw his glory.

Fr Henry O’Shea OSB

We often take our breathing for granted, but what can it tell us? Fr Simon takes a look in this week’s episode of the Mindful Monk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l-qEbjShwU&feature=youtu.be

Jeremiah 31:31-34, Hebrews 5:7-9, John 12:20-33

The great feast of Passover was about to start, and Jerusalem was packed with pilgrims from all over the Mediterranean world and beyond. Jesus was among them, together with his disciples, and knowing that he was about to be sacrificed as the true Paschal Lamb, he announced his imminent death to the crowd who surrounded him: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified (Jn 12:23) – he said – And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jn 12:32).

It is typical of Saint John´s gospel to emphasise that the glorification of Jesus took place at the much anticipated “hour” of his death, and that by being raised upon the cross the Son of Man became the King of the Universe. But what did Jesus actually mean when he declared that he would draw all people to himself (cf. Jn 12:32)?  This question is further complicated by the fact that according to the Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, Jesus is reported to have said: Et ego si exaltatus fuero a terra omnia traham ad me ipsum. – And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself (Jn 12:32).

Clearly the intricacies of biblical exegesis are best left to Scripture scholars and other experts, but I think we might gain some insight into this most extraordinary statement if we compare it with the following verse in chapter 11 of Saint John’s gospel: Jesus was to die for the nation – and not for the nation only, but also to gather together into one the scattered children of God (Jn 11:51-52). The nation is the Jewish people, and the children of God are all those who believe in Jesus as the Messiah, according to what is stated in the Prologue to Saint John’s gospel: to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believed in his name (Jn 1:12). So if we bring all these elements together, we may infer that when Jesus declared that by his death on the cross he would draw all people to himself, he meant that he would unite both Jews and Gentiles alike into one and the same family of children of God, a family of believers in Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah sent by God, so that there would be only one flock and one shepherd (Jn 10:16).

But we have seen that in the Latin translation of Saint John’s gospel Jesus declares that he will attract all things to himself – and not just all people. Therefore the question now is: can these two different versions be reconciled with each other? 

I would argue that the Latin version simply emphasises the cosmic dimensions of a promise made to all children of God. To put it another way, in the Greek text Jesus says that by his death on the cross he will gather to himself all who believe in him, but in the Latin translation he states that in fact all beings – that is to say, even the material world – will be drawn to him together with those who believe in his name. And this is very much of a piece with what Saint Paul says in the Letter to the Romans – namely, that creation itself will be set free from its slavery to corruption and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Rom 8:21).

So the restoration and renewal of the entire cosmos was irreversibly set in motion by virtue of the sacrifice of reconciliation that Jesus offered on our behalf. And this ought to make us more keenly aware of the fact that we believe in Christ and obey his commandments not simply to save ourselves individually, or to help others achieve salvation, but rather to gradually bring the whole of God’s creation to that point at the end of time when all evils will be wiped out for ever, giving way to incorruptibility and perfect freedom. To follow Christ, therefore, means to assume full responsibility for the care of creation, and also to believe and proclaim that despite all appearances to the contrary, the final destiny of the universe is to be renewed by Christ and in Christ, who was handed over to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification (Rm 4:25).

Fr Lino Moreira OSB