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The Humility of the Nativity
December 24, 2020
The Nativity is an encounter of heaven and earth. The lowly shepherds meet the angelic hosts. The wise and respected of the East meet the unknown infant in the stable. The eternal Creator God takes on frail and vulnerable human flesh. The awesomeness of this encounter, its terribleness, cannot be overstated. Feeling rather earthbound of late, it occurred to me to try to consider what heaven may actually be like, should I ever attain to it. Perhaps such a contemplation might motivate me and uplift my spirit, I thought. But I then began to revisit my heavenly expectations. The glory of heaven: I began imagine a heaven saturated with humility. This led me back to Chapter 7 of Benedict’s Rule: the extended discourse on humility. Benedict explains where all that humility leads:
“After ascending all these steps of humility, the monk will quickly reach that perfect love of God which casts out fear: And all that he once performed with dread, he will now begin to observe without effort, as though naturally, from habit. Not anymore for fear of hell, but out of love for Christ, good habit and a delight in virtue. These are the fruits that, in his worker now cleansed of vice and sin, the Lord will graciously manifest by the Holy Spirit.”
God’s own “ascent” into human flesh is the supreme act of humility. It is one reason we bow at the “Glory Be.” This is a tip of the hat to those who cannot even believe such a humility is possible. It is a humility announced by John the Baptist, who says, “I am not worthy to remove his sandals.” It is a reiterated in Peter, who says, “You should not wash my feet.” It is summed up in Mary, who says, “I am the servant of the Lord.” Mary, cleansed of vice and sin, expresses humility “without effort, as though naturally, from habit.” In doing so, she is created in the image of God. This all led me to try to formulate again my sense of heaven. Humility is the lowest of the earthly and the highest of the heavenly. Humility is where heaven and earth meet. Humility is the essence of love, and most fundamentally God’s for us. This transcendent Love becomes incarnate in a child, who will later offer everything for us: washing our feet, suffering a cross, so to cleanse us of our vice and sin.
Pax,
Blake Billings
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The Nativity Window, Monastery Library
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Advent Peace
December 12, 2020
With the arrival of Advent, our school community arrived, returning from Thanksgiving break this past week, though it was hard to tell. To reduce travel risk, as well as the necessity for repeated quarantining, classes are remote into the third week of January. The Advent season remains notably quiet on the monastery grounds. This, while the national battlegrounds of politics and pandemic continue to provoke anxiety. It has set me to thinking about the great Christmas theme, echoed in the Benedictine motto: peace. It has been noted by many that peace is not to be equated with the absence of war. Nor is peace the immediate companion of quietude. Is it just me, or has it been particularly difficult these days to feel a sense of peace? I seem to recall that I once was capable of that: trusting that all will be well, resting in a sense of grace. Not so much these days, not so much. This welled up within me as a prayer, as I took up the eBreviary for Vespers on the vigil of Sunday II of Advent, rain and high winds battering my house. And the prayers of the Office complied: “May the God of peace make you perfect in holiness,” Paul told us in the reading (1 Thess 5:23). “Come to us, Lord, and may your presence be our peace,” said the Magnificat antiphon. I am still beginning to learn that peace and quietude are two distinct experiences. So, what is it, “Christmas Peace”? And is there such a thing, for the moment, as “Advent Peace”? I think of Catherine of Siena: All the way to heaven is heaven, as Jesus said “I am the Way.” Would this mean, then, that all the way to Christmas is Christmas? If I can rediscover my lost ability to trust, which is the essential and intrinsic substance of faith, then yes, all the way is Christmas, and the peace of Christmas is the trusting peace of Advent.
Pax,
Blake Billings
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To Be Healed
December 5, 2020
On Monday, we completed the month of November with its special prayer for the deceased. Divine Adoration that preceding Friday was the final opportunity to attend with the monstrance standing behind the small silver “casket” placed on the altar, holding the names of the deceased. It is difficult not to think of the deceased these days, with their ever-increasing numbers, thousands succumbing each day in this global wave of mortality. But that Friday, Our Lord seemed to be keeping vigil there on the altar, behind the casket. The arms of the monstrance suggested his own cross, but they seemed also to offer an embrace to his blessed dead. For these, and for us the dying, he offers his own death. And how seamlessly the passing of this month of remembrance leads us into Advent, and its new Hope. If only we turn to Him, he says, and be healed. As we now move into what for our world is such a dark season, may we glimpse that light – mirrored in the candles of our Advent wreaths, the lights of our holiday decorations, and in the illumination of wisdom the Spirit brings to our prayers. This passage, one of Scripture’s most beautiful, I found at Divine Adoration last Friday: “What we utter is God’s wisdom: a mysterious, a hidden wisdom. ...‘Eye has not seen, ear has not heard nor has it so much as dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love him.’ Yet God has revealed this wisdom to us through the Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 2). May we again discern this Advent Wisdom, and prepare for what God has prepared.
Pax,
Blake Billings
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On Being an Oblate
November 29, 2020
The topic of “oblation” in “The Current” this week prompts me to reflect on how I came to make a promise of oblation here at Portsmouth. This is not an easy question. I will try to sort it out. And to share some of those thoughts, to post this personal experience, that is even harder. But I can see that to share it is, at root, to evangelize. I remember Saint Peter’s direction here: always be ready to give account for your life, your hope; to witness to the gospel. And the promise of the oblate is a witness to the gospel. Our own Fr. Julian Stead has noted that Benedict’s Rule is essentially an articulation of Christ’s gospel, a way to live it out. The promise of the oblate says “yes” to that insight. This “yes” echoes Mary’s: be it done to me according to your will. My first encounter with Christ, the faint illumination of His will that I then began to discern dimly as in a mirror, coincided with my encounter with this monastic community. What led me to that first encounter? Was it the monastery’s shared dedication to prayer; was it the commitment to intellectual curiosity; was it the steady and persistent practice of faith? These did resonate within, compelling me to listen with “the ear of the heart.” This initiated a trajectory of seeking that has passed through decades now, embodied over generations.One monk now remains in residence from the community here at beginnings of my own search, a new generation partnering with the Saint Louis house now moving forward into our uncertain future. But the Rule is the same, and I have gradually come to grasp more of its enduring appeal. The stability of place, the obedience of listening and living in community, the ongoing conversion this brings about: these have proven to be the cornerstones of that witness. They are the cornerstones of all Benedictine life, the fundamental parameters marked out by its vows, echoed in the promises of an oblate. Now, beginning my sixth decade of residence in this extended monastic community, having moved from little brother to Abbey student, from young faculty member to Abbey parent of graduates, so many points of my life have been woven into the life of this monastery. I have slowly learned over that quickly passing time more of what this gospel witness is about, whether in regret and repentance, or in reconciliation and rejoicing. And if “the new evangelization” is best expressed not as a “proselytizing” but as an “accompanying,” this community has surely accompanied me through much. Perhaps my promise then, is little more than a response of gratitude.
Pax,
Blake Billings
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Blake Billings '77, Ph.D. is a graduate and current faculty member of Portsmouth Abbey School. He received his undergraduate education at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, then joining the Jesuit Volunteer Corps to assist in an inner-city parish in Oakland, California. From Oakland, he went to Leuven, Belgium, receiving degrees in theology and philosophy. He returned to the Abbey in 1987, teaching for three years before getting married and returning to Leuven to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy, which he was awarded in 1995. Having taught in higher education at various schools, including St. John's University, Farifield University, and Sacred Heart University, he decided his calling was at the secondary level, gratefully returning to Portsmouth in 1996, where he has resided ever since. He became an oblate of the Portsmouth community ten years ago. His four children were all raised on campus and graduated from the school, the youngest in 2020.
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