Oblates' conference in the Stillman dining hall

The oblates of Portsmouth Abbey, along with their spouses and friends, gathered in the Stillman Dining Hall for their second Day of Recollection of the year on Sunday, August 28. The group of about 35 attended the 9:30 a.m. Conventual Mass followed by a short service of the Renewal of the Promise of Oblation, led by Abbot Michael from the ambo. The group adjourned for a hearty breakfast prepared by the Dining Services staff. The conference began with a prayer and welcome by Br. Sixtus Roslevich, Director of Oblates. Adapted from a favorite which he originally heard in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, the prayer echoed his own personal call to work wherever he is needed by invoking the Holy Spirit to, “help us be totally free to follow wherever you lead us, totally generous to be good stewards of your many gifts, and totally passionate to suffer all in order to be more closely united to You.” In his welcome, he asked for continued prayers for those oblates no longer able to travel to the campus and for the returning and new students scheduled to begin classes for the new academic year on Monday, September 12.  Several prospective candidates for oblation were in attendance, some for their first visit to the campus. 

The day’s program, titled “Shining a Light on Illuminated Manuscripts in the Abbey Collections,” was inspired by the rediscovery in the summer of 2021 of a vellum page of psalms from a small Italian medieval Book of Hours.  It was given as a gift to Fr. Christopher Davis, 92, on the occasion of his priestly ordination in 1958 by Washington Atlas Burpee, Jr., of the Philadelphia family which founded the Burpee Seed Company in 1876.  It is one of several dozen individual framed pages in the Abbey collections which were originally bound in books, representing a unique style of hand-painted and handmade antiphonals, psalters and personal prayer books highly favored by art museums and collectors throughout the world.  Several historic and more modern examples were exhibited as part of the presentation, including the one gifted to Fr. Christopher, now reframed and mounted between two pieces of glass to allow viewing of both the obverse and reverse sides. 

After the talk, attendees were invited to visit the monks’ private dining room called the Linenfold Panel Room where, on a complete wall of 15^th-century English oak panels carved in the distinctive linenfold pattern, a collection of 16 illuminated pages is displayed, attached permanently to the wall. Br. Sixtus pointed out that the attachment of the frames became a necessary precaution after the 1998 theft of two pages of a 15^th-century Italian antiphonal from the monastic library. They had been donated by the mother of a 1964 PAS graduate and have sadly never been recovered. Br. Sixtus paid tribute to Roberta Stevens, longtime Director of the School and Monastery Libraries, as well as Assistant Archivist, who is taking a partial retirement this year. ‘Bobbie’ has filled in many blanks in Br. Sixtus' research into these miniature artworks and it is her keen interest which is spurring a plan to inventory, document, photograph and catalog the provenance and the current location of these pieces which decorate the walls of faculty and administration offices, areas within the monastery and elsewhere. The lecture then drew attention to a series of illuminated pages on display depicting the Magnificat prayer of Mary as given in the Gospel of St. Luke. Designed and painted under the tutelage of Br. Benedict Maria over the past summer, they are the original works of a number of faculty children living on campus or in the vicinity. Br. Sixtus ended by saying that “this type of unique art work is not only cross-cultural and multi-cultural, as we have seen, but cross-continental, and cross-geographical (if that’s even a word), but now it’s even cross-generational thanks to our young faculty students.” (see the article in this issue) The day ended with Eucharistic Adoration in the church throughout the afternoon and the opportunity for the Sacrament of Confession. 

 

 

Oblates renewing their promises