The Current

From the Editor

November 21, 2020

We have been saying farewell to a Fall Term like none other this past week. With day students moving to remote learning at the beginning of the week, and boarders moving out in stages as the break approached, the monastery grounds have been noticeably quieter and the church services even more openly spaced, a prelude to the Thanksgiving holiday which is to be followed by weeks of distance learning and the Christmas break, with boarding students set to return with the new year. These transitions seem to have accentuated the parallels to our liturgical cycle, which has been speaking much of late of the echaton, the end times, and of the approaching Advent of the Christ. And, for now, we return, perhaps wizened, to the inward journey of a community at a distance, with increasing health restrictions in place. A Thanksgiving like none other. When we first encountered these limitations this spring, people began to write of the monastic flavor of the experience, saying things like, “we are all monks now.” If this is so, may we make the most of it, and recall that for Saint Benedict withdrawal into the enclosure of the monastery is entry into a “workshop,” in which the Holy Spirit may transform us as individuals and as a community. Let us renew our dedication to pray for each other, for our needs, for our nation and world. We see in so many ways how in need of prayer it remains. Do we offer those prayers? What an opportunity, then, now lies before us. 

Pax,
Blake Billings

November 8, 2020

Anger is one of the seven deadly sins. It manifests itself in so many ways. The fires of rage, the embers of resentment. It loves to take up the cloak of righteousness, which it believes fits it so well. This distinguishes it from the others: greed, lust, envy, gluttony, or sloth. These tend to make excuses for themselves, rationalizing, minimizing the offense. Anger embraces it. Anger resembles in this its close cousin pride, as it revels in self-justification and fans its flame with the deepest sense of entitlement. Has anger been the predominant modality of sin in this country in recent years? Maybe - although the others may simply have allowed it more space so as to hide more comfortably in its shadow. I think such thoughts as I ponder the state of society, trying to come to terms with our political life. Look at the news, if you still can bear it.

But then I remember something. Something recalls to me a teaching about a speck and a log. Something reminds me that I have to direct my pondering elsewhere - within - to see what my own ego hides. Or what it embraces, perhaps quietly, perhaps in everything I do and say. This, I have come to believe, is the entire intent of the Rule of St. Benedict. For it is the fundamental teaching of Christ. I need to repent - of no one’s sins but my own. To change from sin. To return to God. What is it that separates me from God - for this I must scour my soul; toward this I must, sorrowfully, turn my gaze. The seven deadly choices others make, these I must forgive - should I still be able to discern them, once healed after my own eye surgery.

What amazes me the most is how this realization is accompanied by joy, and gratitude. This remembrance, such a core aspect of the remembrance we make at the altar in each Mass, makes just such a transformation. Because contained in it is the seed of the forgiveness, not that I must give, but which I am offered. And this alone is the anger antidote.

Pax,
Blake Billings

November 1, 2020

“Brothers and sisters : You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God...” We heard this beautiful passage for the feast of Simon and Jude this week, and it points us in hope towards the great Feast of All Saints. But -- “fellow citizens”? This is not a concept that Americans may be warming to in this election cycle. It sounds like a bizarre non-sequitur. “Fellow” sounds so close, simpatico, shared, communal. “Citizen” sounds so legal, formal, obligatory. Those exercising this week one of their fundamental roles as a citizen in this democracy, to place their vote, seem not likely to call those casting a vote another way their “fellows.” The calling of the Christian, according to the letter to the Ephesians, is therefore not only doubly striking, but exponentially so. For it calls us not only “fellow citizens” with each other, but with the saints, within the home of God Himself. What then can this mean, to be a “fellow citizen”? The term “citizen” carries varied historical connotation: Paul claimed citizenship of the Roman Empire. The term gained new and different currency with the rights and requirements of the French Revolution. The term in Ephesians (sympolitai) connotes an ancient Greek “polis,” a cozier, more familial city-state. What does the Letter mean, employing such a term to express our communion with each other and with the saints? And how is it that our present election cycle, in which we most visibly manifest our citizenry, leaves us feeling so little fellowship? Perhaps we need to allow ourselves again to be challenged by this vision of Ephesians. Perhaps it is inspirational, and aspirational, rather than descriptive for our present worldly condition. Indeed, 1 Peter says we are still strangers and sojourners… in this world! (1 Peter 2:11) Perhaps our election cycle retains a gravity pulling us too much toward this worldly citizenship, where we still remain, “separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.” (Eph 2:12) Well, I am grateful for the Feast of All Saints, which also comes each early November, perhaps just in time to remind us of, and to call us to, what our citizenry is truly about. May we hasten to that fellowship of holy ones, in the household of God!

Pax,
Blake Billings


More from the Editor: 
September 2020
October 2020