The Current 

  

From the Editor

October 24, 2020

We live, it is said often and experienced always, in an age of great division. As the American election approaches, such division seems to place us on a precipice of extremes of tension and of violence. We see division manifest again and again, even within the Church. The parables and teachings of Christ often point to divided groups or types. We saw this again this week in Christ’s teaching in Luke that he comes to bring division; division with households, within families, between family members. Not peace, he says, but division (Luke 11). I have often read these divisions as pertaining, perhaps primarily, to what is going on within myself. I am a house divided. I am both the prodigal and the elder sons. I am the disciple and the Pharisee. I am the rocky soil, the soil by the path, and maybe, somewhere, a little good soil. I identify both sides, even multiple sides – within, present in my own heart. Mine is a double-minded heart, generous and selfish, repentant and resentful, faithful and faithless. Why should division between groups or within families surprise me, when I am already divided within myself? Saint Paul speaks clearly of this, lamenting the self-contradictory “miserable man that I am” (Rm 7:24). Saint Augustine encounters this same sad reality of his own double-mindedness, “this great strife of my inner dwelling” (Confessions VIII, 8-9). So, I am compelled by a world divided to recognize and confess my own double-mindedness. And perhaps that would be the place to start to negotiate these divided times. Perhaps begin with the confession at the center of the Mass: “I am not worthy to have you come under my roof” – the roof of an inner household divided against itself, which cannot stand. But maybe, with such a confession, I can also begin to discern that saintliness is the journey to becoming single-minded, and that the path of holiness is the journey to communion. Perhaps here I will find the path, the narrow path, to the healing of a self, and of a world, so wounded by division. 

Pax,
Blake Billings

October 17, 2020

We have read at Mass, a couple of times over the past weeks, this striking passage: “While Jesus was speaking, a woman from the crowd called out and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.’ He replied, ‘Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.’” (Luke 11: 27-28) Catholics have often felt a need to defend Mary from this passage. While this may seem understandable, the sense of the passage is not against her at all. Rather, it is a lesson in what it means to be blessed. Our faith has always understood blessedness to say more about God then about us. And Christ teaches repeatedly that blessedness is not about the world nor its standards. We may recall how he cautions his disciples against expecting him to rule over any sort of worldly kingdom. Listening to God, observing His word: this is how the tradition has always understood sanctity. This is how Scripture has depicted it, from Abraham to David, and down to Mary. Does not Luke himself recognize this blessedness in Mary? It is Luke who tells us, repeatedly: “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Luke himself tells us that she is full of grace. This treasuring in the heart, this fullness of grace – these are precisely the recipe for blessedness that Christ offers in this passage: listening obediently to the word of God. In fact, rather than address Mary, Christ’s retort to the woman tells us much more about Himself, and about us. About Himself: it is a profound statement of humility. Blessedness is not about me, He tells her, it is about the will of the Father. About us: Christ shows us how simple it is to access blessedness, how direct. John Vianney said that the saints are simply those who listen to the Holy Spirit. What does it mean to be blessed? We need only listen for the encounter with God, attend to His word, and allow it to resonate fully within us, within our lives. Nothing more… and nothing less. 

Pax,
Blake Billings

October 10, 2020

Pope Francis, in his recently released encyclical, “Fratelli tutti,” draws our attention in Chapter Two’s extended reflection to the parable of the Good Samaritan. We have heard the parable many times – yet need to rehear it many more. My own renewed reflection on this challenging teaching led me back to JFK’s famous inaugural exhortation: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!” There have been mild accusations he stole this from his Choate headmaster, who was known for annually making the same exhortation – substitute “Choate” for “your country.” If so, might we then accuse the headmaster of stealing the phrase from this parable? I discern in it the same teaching, as Jesus explains the commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “And who is my neighbor?” the lawyer famously asks. He is not provided with the type of answer he is looking for. The response is the story of the priest and Levite who pass by a man in distress on the other side of the road, while the Samaritan attends excessively to his needs. “Who was neighbor to the man?” Note the important modification to the lawyer’s question. It is no longer, “Who is their neighbor?” – but “Who was neighbor for the other?” In fact, rather than providing the scribe with a list of legal criteria for neighborhood, our Lord gives him a commandment: “Go and do.”  In effect: “Ask not who is neighbor to you, ask to whom you must be a neighbor.” This calls to mind the well-known rabbinic exhortation: “If not me, then who?” And in light of “Fratelli tutti,” if we ask who our brother or sister may be, we may then ask : for whom are we acting as brothers and sisters? And then we may recall Jesus’ concluding exhortation: Go and do the same. 

Pax,
Blake Billings

October 3, 2020

I love the medieval statue of Mary with the infant Jesus that quietly emerges from the stone wall in the sanctuary of the Abbey church. I have often pondered that if you were to remove that simple crown, Mary would appear to be just any young mother with her child. She wears that crown almost unknowingly – as if it weren’t even there. Perhaps this is an expression of her humility – a quiet presence of the gospels; a quiet presence in the early theology of the church, coming to full recognition only after centuries of devotion. She even has to share a kind of second billing as patroness here, alongside Gregory the Great. I must admit, it took me some time to discover her in my own faith. “Late have I loved thee, beauty so old and so new.” Augustine famously confesses this to God, though as we draw closer to the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary (October 7), I am led to relate this Augustinian experience to my relationship with Mary. I made my first pilgrimage to Lourdes in 2008, a year shy of my fiftieth birthday. I was drawn there primarily out of curiosity, through reports I had heard about it, rather than by any devotion to Our Lady. My early Christian life had been, in a way, more “Protestant,” I suppose – bible-based and Christocentric. Mary was for me, as she presents herself in the gospels, a largely unnoticed presence. Still, looking back, I had turned to her in some of the darker moments in my life. And the pilgrimage to Lourdes indeed injected into my religious life a spiritual sense of her significance, an awareness of her spiritual companionship – a companionship that, for me, cut through what Dorothy Day perhaps meant by “the Long Loneliness,” offering a profound strengthening of faith. This kindled in me a devotion to the rosary that has accompanied me ever since. The rosary is itself a little pilgrimage, and in its repetitive circularity one stumbles upon, on occasion, redemption. It is an offering of patience, which in an Aristotelian sense, itself teaches patience, if one may acquire virtue through habitual practice. And patience has for me become the essence of prayer. 

As we celebrate Our Lady of the Rosary, may we find strength for the journey.

Pax,
Blake Billings '77


More from the Editor: 
September 2020