2020 Apr From the Editor
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Prayers In The DESERT
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I continue to be grateful for the varied online options we have in this time of “liturgical distancing.” Our monastery’s availability of Mass and Vespers continues, and Brother Benedict has graciously, and ambitiously, a plan to make the principal Triduum services available through live broadcast. The Santa Marta Mass available through Vatican News continues to sustain me – I very highly recommend it. My own practice of late has been to advance to the homily of Pope Francis, after myself having prayed the morning’s readings. His unscripted preaching in these Masses is both intimate and universal. And the combination of these two qualities in this period of crisis is remarkable. One feels directly and personally present with him, his prayers, his gospel life. And one also feels the universality of this moment, of our suffering, and of our faith. At least I do! After the homily, I advance to the minutes of Adoration at the end of each of the Masses. This silent prayer before the Host, shared over oceans and over cyberspace, delayed and pre-recorded, nevertheless offers a profound sense of communion. May you, also, be finding ways to find spiritual sustenance amidst our present desert.
With prayers,
Pax,
Blake Billings
April 4, 2020
Below: Adoration during Santa Marta Mass
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A Note On GOOD FRIDAY
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This day brings a threefold reminder of death for me. On April 10, 1963, my father lost his life with the loss of the nuclear submarine USS Thresher. This year, in the year of our Lord 2020, the date coincides with Good Friday. And thirdly, with no reminder needed, there is the news. We know that Saint Benedict directs us to “Keep death daily before your eyes.” This day, of all days, death falls front and center. We continue to climb the statistical ascent of data charts showing COVID-related deaths, while our spiritual world this day is saturated with the death of our Lord. It is a day difficult to regroup and to put it all in perspective. It is a day where many things become more difficult. But – do I see the faint outline of grace here: it is a day, it seems to me, where inauthentic prayer is also difficult. There is indeed much grace in that. There is the grace, as Saint Benedict repeatedly emphasizes, of tears. There is the grace of repentance, the grace of being rebuked by a righteous man, the grace of having a clearer picture of who and what I really am. And we believe in the supreme grace that He shares our sufferings, “carries our burdens.” Pascal famously wrote: “Jesus will be in agony even to the end of the world. We must not sleep during that time.” And yet, the greatest grace, if we read just a little further in his Pensées: “Jesus, while His disciples slept, wrought their salvation.”
Pax
Blake Billings
April 10, 2020
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Cross of San Marcello, which has been brought to St. Peter's during the pandemic. (image: Aletaia))
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ANAPSUXIS
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“Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away, and that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment.” (Acts 3:19-20)
This verse from Thursday’s scripture touched me, in its reference to “times of refreshment” – so sorely needed in our day. Such refreshment was in fact one of the motives inspiring the piece appearing in this month’s Wisdom section, “The Wisdom of Chant.” In our School’s “distance learning” mode, the student Schola has been given primarily listening assignments, in hopes that absorbing some religious music they might yet discover the spiritually sustaining power of the songs they cannot presently sing together. The links to chant provided in “The Wisdom of Chant” have a similar intention.
But a closer study of the verse deepened its impact on me. The Greek for “refreshment” (anapsuxis) actually means “to recover breath.” This moved me doubly. First, I considered my own struggles with “spiritual communion,” and the desire to fully return to the practice and vitality of my faith, which now feels so stifled. My prayer life – dominated by video screens and distance – feels a need to be able to open its lungs more fully, and be refreshed by Christ Himself. But secondly, and more painfully, it led me to consider those thousands struggling so mightily with the disease of our pandemic, on ventilators or otherwise finding the very act of breathing so difficult. How we pray that God might grant them “anapsuxis,” that they might regain their own vitality.
Turning to God, transforming our minds, choosing the good: this is the path Peter directs us to in this scripture verse. This opens up our means of profound and eternal refreshment. “Even now, turn to Him…” (Joel 2:12). May God, in the Divine Mercy we remember this Sunday, help us to do so.
Pax
Blake Billings
April 18, 2020
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I AM WITH YOU
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“...the Lord worked with them, and confirmed the word through accompanying signs...” (Mark 16:20)
At the end of Mark’s gospel, Jesus departs, creating the greatest of social distances, that between heaven and earth. We seem to feel the gravity of that earth more heavily these days: difficulties of isolation, stresses of close family living, even to the increase in abuse, a seemingly paradoxical fatigue that accompanies doing less.
Yet on this feast of Saint Mark, we read in his gospel of our Lord “working with us,” our faith “confirmed by the accompanying signs...” And I do find that my faith is still able to be “confirmed In accompanying signs.” I see the flowering of online efforts to communicate hope, seen here in the website efforts of Brother Benedict and Brother Sixtus. I see in the Portsmouth Institute’s “virtual retreat” the call by Father Wetta to find hope through the core elements of Benedictine life, so well-suited to times like these. Even just hearing the bells of the monastery, and remembering the community’s ongoing life of prayer. And in the news, I see health care workers, social workers, so many others witnessing to hope in the way they carry on.
For me, the opportunity to encounter Pope Francis, particularly through his morning homilies, has been deeply edifying. Today, on this feast of Mark, he spoke of faith as fundamentally missionary, as a sending out, as leading us out of ourselves in service to others, as not a doctrine we hold but a gift we give. The vitality of faith is in the going forth to others. While such a going forth feels so difficult now, it is still and ever before us, and hope seeks how to express it. And the testimony of Mark: the Lord works with us. This is an explicit pledge in Matthew’s gospel: “Lo, I am with you...” (Mt 28:20)
May you be confirmed in the signs that accompany you now, trusting that He accompanies you across even the greatest of social distances.
Pax
Blake Billings
April 25, 2020
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