2020 May From the Editor

What makes for holiness? This difficult question crossed my mind as I explored the life of Ansgar Nelson this week. Many have worked with the poor, many have helped to direct dioceses, many have preached, even healed – yet for only a select few do we promote the cause. Of all the brethren who have committed themselves to the consecrated life, even should we be prepared to grant the presence of sanctity in there somewhere, there seem to be those who stand out in sanctity. Even within our own lives, of all the good deeds we have done, should we be so generous as to list any, how many could we call saintly? Why, exactly? Individuals, special moments, unusual acts – how do some gain whatever it is that might lead us to speak of holiness? What is the “secret ingredient,” the “je ne sais quoi,” the strangeness – that makes for “holy”?
 
I have had strange thoughts this week – these are strange times. So these comments may just be the lockdown talking. But there was something strange in Thursday’s gospel. Jesus says: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him,” and, “Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from Him comes to me.” I have heard this before, of course, but a strangeness in it struck me. What does it mean that we are drawn to Jesus only by the Father? Why are we not drawn to Jesus directly – through His words, through his actions in their own right? May we say that to be drawn to Jesus – to his sacraments, to his eucharist, to his church – is actually to find holiness present there? Is that holiness actually the Father – God Himself? The secret ingredient? The Father who draws: is this the sanctity that is his substance; the invisible source; the God of all this is, the hidden One?
 
In my own life, I have always felt strangely drawn to the eucharist. But just what it is at the center of that attraction? I have always felt it difficult to articulate that. Maybe the core of that attraction is essentially unutterable, invisible. Maybe it is God the Father. Maybe it is His silence, speaking volumes. And whose humility is greater: the Son who will only defer to the Father, or the Father, who remains hidden? Or is the Spirit yet more humble – for we know not where it comes from, nor where it goes? The strange absence of the hidden God reminds me of a competitiveness that St Benedict encourages in his Rule: to outdo ones brother in humility, devotion, and service to the other (RB 72). Is there a kind of competition going on here between the Father and the Son, to demonstrate more fully humility before the other, more service to the other? Christ who defers; the Father who withdraws.
 
Anyway, if I may return from the ethereal air of such speculative theology... I started by wondering just what it was about Bishop Ansgar. His unique place in this community; his reputation; his presence. To say it is holiness seems bold, presumptuous, overstating. But there seems to have been this “je ne sais quoi,” a secret ingredient. Is this the attractiveness of holiness; a being drawn by the Father who is holiness? The secret ingredient still lingers, decades later, in its strangeness. But it certainly attracts.
 
 
Pax
Blake Billings
May 2, 2020

Like myself, you may perhaps be “road weary,” as we continue along our journeys of isolation. Rhode Island has begun a slight opening this weekend, even as numbers of cases rise. It has been a time of loss, and a time to recognize how much I have taken for granted. My youngest daughter and her classmates of 2020 contend with their loss of “senior spring” and its various rites of passage: prom, spring weekend, Commencement. For many families: missing first graduations, last graduations, graduations or Mother’s Days present with our older family members. These are, of course, just the tip of a deep and heavy iceberg of loss – many losses so much more serious than these. But I have also experienced gratitude for the efforts many have made that have been shaping our quarantined life, enabling us to find touchpoints of community. From the monastic community: Brother Joseph regularly sending out videos, stories, and other messages to faculty and staff. Brother Sixtus reaching out to oblates and sharing their messages and petitions. Brother Benedict tending to the website which blossoms like an online garden. Father Michael sending out notes for next year, a reminder of a future. The other brethren here: Edward, Paschal, Francis, Matthew, Gregory – continuing their dedication to the Divine Office visible online, and offering their witness in homilies at Mass. I think of the gospel this morning: “believe through the works” (John 14:11). These works continue to manifest God with us, all along the way.
 
Pax
Blake Billings
May 9, 2020

As we move forward, I note the accentuated sense of uncertainty that characterizes our existence these days. We are able to take fewer things for granted, and we realize how much of our lives has been predicated on givens that we may not necessarily assume. We need to check the local news almost daily to see where we can go, when, and how. We need to carry a mask, or consider the physical proximity we have to others down to the square footage. We need to make decisions based on variables that very really might change so as to render the decision moot, invalid, or greatly miscalculated. I also note the corollary that emotional triggers are more sensitive, more quickly exposed. Whatever the realities of our lives are that lead us to feel emotions, they seem to automatically carry with them a greater force. Can this uncertainty lead us to better grasp the experience of the early Christians, whose uncertain adventures we have been reading about these weeks in the Acts of the Apostles, as we make our way towards the Pentecost? And so, can we learn more directly from them? Paul has a dream, and suddenly he has to plan to go to Macedonia. He and his companions carry on a relentless travel schedule. Where will they stay? Who can they trust? Where next? Peter struggles to “connect the dots” and grasp the full implications of Christ’s teaching, resurrection, redeeming death, trying to shepherd the nascent church. And all along the way, the list of the persecuted and the martyred begins to grow. This Resurrection Life seems even more riven by uncertainty than the simpler life of fishermen many of the apostles knew. I don’t know; I am just talking off the top of my head here – but perhaps a lesson for now, discerned in the early Christian experience, is that uncertainty is radically transformed by grace. Faith is deepened; hope gains substance; “agapeic” love is more fully elicited. Maybe this is just the trope about “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” But when the certainties of this world crumble, with plans called into question and emotions high, perhaps we also see there cracks through which the Holy Spirit can enter.
 
Pax,
Blake Billings
May 16, 2020