Centennial Mass

On Wednesday, June 25, 1919, a Communist revolt broke out in Hamburg, Germany, and elsewhere in there the 1st monoplane airliner took flight. But here in Portsmouth Rhode Island, on Cory's Lane,  this monastery, founded by Leonard Sargent, was officially inaugurated and dedicated to St. Gregory the Great. A lot has happened in the world since then. So reaching 100 years is a significant milestone for us, but 100 years in the life of a Benedictine Monastery, in a federation over 1500 years old, a member of a congregation almost 1400 years old, is just a running start. But every great enterprise has to have a start, and of the 3 EBC monasteries in the US, Portsmouth Abbey is the oldest.
 
The beginnings of Portsmouth Abbey were not easy, and the history of this Abbey is not a story of easy and smooth growth always on an upward trajectory. It is a story of real monastic life with its ups and downs. The early monks struggled to make this foundation stick.
They were real monks living their lives according to the rule of St. Benedict, living by the work of their hands and minds, serving the people of God. This was and is a school of many things, but first and foremost a school of the Lord’s service The fortuitous arrival here of Hugh Diman and the founding of the Abbey school made it stick. For 100 years the monks have been stewards of this monastery and the school, supported by loyal and generous friends.
 
The Gospel today is about stewards. It is an unusual Gospel, and perhaps its message for us hard to understand. In our day that word “steward” is usually applied to a servant of some kind. But in Jesus’ time a steward was an executive, like a general manager, someone who runs things, in a business he doesn’t own himself. Why, we may ask, is Jesus giving compliments to a dishonest steward who acted so shrewdly? When the steward was calling in those debtors and reducing their promissory notes, he wasn’t cheating his master...
he was removing his share, his commission from the amount of the notes. That’s how stewards got paid back then, not by a salary from the master. Under the circumstances, it was the smart thing to do. to give up his own profit for the moment, to make friends for his uncertain future. So Jesus is telling us to do the same: to give up some of what we could have now, so we may have a secure and happy eternal future. That in fact is exactly what St. Benedict says monks do. It is certainly what Hugh Diman did, and many others who came to join here.
 
All of us are like that steward in many ways God trusts us with our lives and lots of blessings. But we sin, like the steward did; we don’t always act or live like we should, And we know that there will be an accounting some day. God will judge who we are. What should we do
so that we don’t get judged harshly? Jesus is showing us what to do in the Gospel today (Lk 16: 1-13), because God does not want to punish us.
It says in the Gospel of John: For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. No servant can serve two masters.
 
Our second master could be our ego, our good looks, our intelligence, some talent or ability we have, our property. All these good things are entrusted to us by God, our true Master. Why? In order to serve Him, to help others and to make our way through this world to the next.
So Jesus asks: “If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your very own ?” Here Jesus is speaking about not just our gifts but our life as a whole. Our life is a loan from God. God gives it to us. And He looks to see how we will use it, how we repay it. Life is a test of sorts. Will we use our lives just to enrich our own selves, or will we use it to enrich God’s creation:
-       By raising a family and living to help our children and grandchildren?
-       By helping those who are in need or trouble?
-       By being of service to others and to our community?
-       By founding a monastery, by supporting the church?
 
If we do a good job with this life that God has loaned us, then he will entrust us with our very own share of his own eternal life in what we call heaven. The steward in the Gospel is an example for us not because of his dishonesty but because he was smart, smart enough to change what he was doing and how he was living. He knew how to adjust to reality, This is what we call conversion, and it is not a one-time event. It’s the goal of that vow of conversatio morum that monks take. It is a process all through life of becoming more and more like the person God intended us to be. The steward knew he could only really serve His true master, and not his self interest. We should do good as it is given to each of us to do in the unique circumstances of our own lives, to give God a better return on his investment in our lives.

It is significant that over the last one hundred years this monastery has invested so much in the life of the Church. It has produced scholars, educators, writers, generations of students who have made the world and many lives better for having been here. Monks have gone out from here to become: the Bishop of Stockholm, Sweden; to invigorate the new Mt. Savior Monastery in NY State; to found the monastery of Christ in the Desert in NM; and from there to found Nuestra Senora de la Soledad, San Miguel, Mexico, inspiring others to found other monasteries from there. It hurt. It cost this monastery to lose these men, but service…love of God costs in this world. But this world is not the one which lasts.

 
Community in 1940s

It is ironic that I speak here today, I who have been here just one year. Yet there is someone who has been here at Portsmouth Abbey for more than half of these one hundred years, Someone who has stayed the course through the ups and downs. Someone who was elected the first Abbot. Someone who has had to return at least twice to lead this community. Someone who in his spare time set on the straight path the great women’s abbey of Regina Laudis. Someone who still teaches us, inspires us with his dedication to prayer, monastic life, to the people of this community; someone who still inspires us with his faithfulness and unflinching good humor. I think It’s safe to say
that Portsmouth Abbey would not have made it to one hundred years without Abbot Matthew Stark. So thank you, Abbot Matthew.
 We do not know what the future holds. None of us do. But the future of Portsmouth Abbey is now for the foreseeable future tied in some way to the future of Saint Louis Abbey; We know two are stronger than one. Both Jesus and St. Benedict sent out their disciples in pairs.

Abbot Mathew & Fr. Hilary

We do not know what the future holds, But in the words of the great Thanksgiving hymn sung by monks for centuries Lord, show us your love and mercy; for we put our trust in you. In you, Lord, is our hope: and we shall never hope in vain.

Let me close with a prayer in the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, born in a troubled time and place the year before the foundation of this monastery, in the year this property was acquired, and just two weeks after the first Mass was said here. I think he speaks for us.
 
How easy, Lord, it is for me to live with you. How easy it is for me to believe in you. When my understanding is perplexed by doubts or on the point of giving up, when the most intelligent men see no further than the coming evening, and know not what they shall do tomorrow  you send me a clear assurance that you are there and that you will ensure that not all the roads of goodness are barred. From the heights of earthly fame I look back in wonder at the road that led through hopelessness to this place from where I can send mankind a reflection of your radiance. And whatever I in this life may yet reflect, that you will give me; And whatever I shall not attain, that, plainly, you have purposed for others. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.