2019 September From the Editor

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Welcome to "The Current." But proceed with caution.

The pointed Mass readings from Matthew we were presented with this past month, particularly the list of “Woes” in chapter 23, are always a slap in the face. And once we catch our breath, we remember that a slap from the Righteous One is a blessing. As I was in the process of creating this newsletter, I was excited to consider how we might present to our readers the life of our community. Nice pictures, happy headlines... what a great place... Slap! Whitewashed walls! Clean cups! We have met the Pharisee, and it is us. I am reminded in a most harrowing way that I need a reality check here. If we live in an age of Fake News, mine is the Most Fake. This, it seems to me, is what I am warned about in these teachings, a warning echoed by the saint on whose feastday I write this – Augustine, architect of Original Sin – and resonating throughout the long Benedictine tradition. Benedict writes: Why don’t you try to actually be holy, before you worry about people calling you holy!

Lest you be misled by our upbeat articles to think we are in some sort of paradise here - we are no less Pharisaic than the next guy. Because this to me is an essential requirement in interpreting all of these “Woes” of Matthew’s gospel: the enemy is us. The call to conversion is ours. The need for mercy and repentance is our very own. So perhaps I have it all wrong here in this newsletter – perhaps I should be highlighting cautionary tales and calling readers to change their sinful ways. This may well be true. But also true is that the call to holiness, while catalyzed by our own compunction, is also inspired by Example. Pray for our community, that we may exhibit in some way this call. Pray that we may truly evangelize with our lives. Pray that this newsletter and website initiative plant good seed in fertile ground.

Pax – B. Billings,
September 8, 2019

I have had the privilege of joining the monastic schola for some years now, singing at Mass and Vespers. When first taking up the weighty Graduale, the monastic hymnbook of sorts, and seeing the various antiphons dating from centuries such as “XI” or “XII,” one feels a kind of universal connection  to the church eternal. One feels in taking up this book a physical relationship to prayers that have happened for millennia. But this past week, on Labor Day, my attention was drawn to a certain fluidity in that stasis of eternity.

Opening to the “Proprium de Sanctis,” “The Proper of the Saints,” which provides details for the saint of the day, I was struck by a remarkable Talmudic quality in my book. In the margins outside the printed text were a series of handwritten annotations. Some of these were Benedictine saints of yesteryear, though included in them was Teresa of Calcutta. And as I glanced at the page, Brother Joseph was scrambling to adjust the hymn board to reflect a feast of Saint Joseph – a votive Mass that defers to our secular calendar, commemorating Joseph the Worker on our American Labor Day. Our calendar remains ever open to new saints, and ever adjusting to the moment. This even drew me to the gospel we read on Labor Day – the proclamation of the good news in the synagogue at Nazareth. “Now,” Jesus says, is the prophecy of Isaiah fulfilled. “This very day”: surely on that momentous occasion in Nazareth – but surely in the now of this day which is ours – is the Holy Spirit at work, proclaiming in us this good news.

Pax – B. Billings,
September 15, 2019

We see around the grounds a sprouting of tents – a seasonal growth here typically associated with graduations or reunions, but now additionally evidence of something more. A tent on the Holy Lawn, for the Holy Mass of our centenary. The Mass program presents an image, standing before “Hall Manor,” of the lone figure of Leonard Sargent, harbinger of a community that even one of its very first brethren expected to be quite short-lived. We absorb this image as we sit under a glorious tent situated in the center of a campus and monastic grounds rivalling the beauty of any that one can find. Evidence of stability, success, blessing. And, simultaneously, we look to the future with its challenges: to preserve and to nurture, to take up the task Fr. Leonard started, facing many of the same questions he faced. But for me it calls to mind a theme I have heard echoed here, particularly over the half of this monastery’s century that Fr. Ambrose Wolverton was a presence with us: gratitude.  And I realize again that gratitude goes, temporally, in two directions – drawn from the past in what has been provided, and to the future in the opportunities, albeit with struggle and uncertainty, that lie ahead.

Pax – B. Billings,
September 22, 2019

My own journey of this week led me to Washington, D.C., and a dedication service for a new memorial stone in Arlington National Cemetery. This stone commemorates the USS Thresher, then the lead ship of a new class of nuclear submarines. Thresher went down on April 10, 1963, with the loss of all 129 men on board. One of those men was my father, LCDR J. Hilary Billings. This memorial dedication, happening in the week of our centennial celebration at Portsmouth, led me to a longer term reflection on life, my father’s and my own. My father’s life of faith may well have shaped my own, as he was a devout daily communicant. His sacrifice definitely led me to Portsmouth, as it was through scholarships connected to Thresher that I was able to attend, following my brother Hilary ‘71 to the school. Any visit to Arlington is moving, and one feels personally drawn into the history of this country, which intangibly comes alive amidst the cemetery markers. St. Benedict, whose name was given to me by my father at my baptism, tells us to keep death daily before our eyes. My father’s death I surely do, a daily awareness underscored on this day. At Arlington Cemetery, thinking of fifty six years of living with the loss of the Thresher, and of the one hundred years of a Portsmouth faith community, I was led again to this interconnection of dying and living, and regained a sense of a greater purpose.
 
Pax - B. Benedict Billings
September 29, 2019