Editor's Note

November 15, 2023

The experience of authentic gratitude may seem elusive to us. This, amidst the season leading to our Thanksgiving feast, amidst our lives punctuated each sabbath by Eucharistic thanks, amidst a life of a faith centered on the all-loving God offering Himself entirely for us. How is it that the giving of thanks, the sense of thankfulness, can become a kind of fabricated chore, grudgingly taken up as if by “the elder son,” more resentful than grateful, more entitled than blessed? Our articles this week all tend to cut against that grain, calling us to remembrance, to mercy, to the source and summit of gratitude. The theme of gratitude was one that I often heard from Dom Ambrose Wolverton, beloved of this community who departed this life in 2016. He is the only person whose last words to me I remember distinctly, spoken to me in the sanctuary of the Abbey church, when I inquired if he was okay as I noticed him stricken, by the illness that would shortly take his life. His response: “Yes, Blake – thank you… for everything.” There was a finality in his voice that was unmistakable. And an expression of gratitude that was familiar, and yet profoundly sincere. I remember these words, and the spirit of gratitude Dom Ambrose conveyed, embodied, lived. It was rooted in humility, in the abandonment of entitlement, in the experience of true grace. It was a gratitude for which I myself remain grateful, an evangelization, a witness of eucharist.

Peace,
Blake Billings

November 8, 2023

As an alumnus of the School, one deeply impacted by the teaching and witness of the monastic community at Portsmouth, the November days of remembrance take on an added weight for me here. Walking through the monastic cemetery here, I not only take notice of a Sargent or a Diman, or those who had departed this house or this world before I set foot on the grounds. I encounter my own teachers and mentors, those who were involved in my own formation as a follower of Christ. It becomes a stroll down memory lane and sketches an outline of much of my own personal history. In this issue, Fr. Gregory’s notes the impact of a quotation from Pope St. Paul VI, who was pope throughout my high school years, concerning the effective teacher as “witness.” It is indeed such witnesses that I remember in my cemetery strolls. Witnesses to the commandment Fr. Edward examines in his homily. Witnesses in the tradition continued by Br. Sixtus, who recounts some of his encounters with vocations this past week. Witnesses who challenge me, as teacher and as disciple of Christ, to persevere in taking up that vocation of witnessing – where teaching is not simply a packaging and passing on of content, not simply a matter of doing, but of being.

Peace,
Blake Billings

November 3, 2023

The mission of the School founded by this monastery includes the basic goal of “growing in knowledge and grace.” This past week’s celebration of all of the saints, of the vast communion of heaven, opens the great treasury of authentic knowledge and grace. It is one of my favorite feasts – how could it not be, with all those who in heaven continuing to direct us to this beatitude. As St. Thérèse of Lisieux famously expressed it, “I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth” – what hope, to consider the heavenly host all engaged to that end. Fr. Philip’s reflection calls us to think of, and to pray for, all “those who have gone before us.” And, rooted in our hope of sanctity, we trust that the holy ones who have preceded us do the same for us, and to great effect. Abbot Michael calls us to this great communion and this great hope in his homily for All Saints Day. And our relationship to this greater communion is also reflected in our connection to our extended community in the diocese and to the church universal, as we see expressed in our report of the visit to Bishop Henning and his own hopes for the pastoral care of this diocese. Let us all hope that we can discover and discern our own share in that beatitude of “knowledge and grace,” as we move more deeply into this month of commemoration and celebration.

Peace,
Blake Billings

October 23, 2023

I remember Dom Peter Sidler from my three separate periods of time at the Abbey. First, as a student in the 1970’s, I remember him simply as one of a vibrant community of monks active in the running of the School. When I returned from 1987-1990 to teach, I remember seeing him driving the pickup truck around campus routinely, picking up fallen branches, tending to the landscape, exercising stewardship both to the physical plant as well as to its finances. My present period at Portsmouth began in the fall of 1996, when I again returned to teach, about a year before his death in late 1997. At one point during that time, I happened to attend a daily morning Mass at our local parish, in their small side chapel, with just a handful of parishioners in attendance. It happened that Dom Peter was helping out there and was the celebrant for this Mass. This provided the occasion for the only sermon I ever heard him deliver. I remember him as a soft-spoken man, and not one to speak often or at great length. I do not remember the specific content of the sermon, though at the time it struck me as greatly insightful. But I clearly remember the reflective quality of the preacher, the thoughtfulness of his words, the prayerfulness, which was to me then a revelation, from this man I had more seen than heard. And, of course, we gratefully encounter much of the reflection of his spirit is his works of art and in the beauty of our grounds. Requiescat in pace.

Peace,
Blake Billings