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 14, 2020
Veterans Day reminds us of service. Service reminds us of saints. On Veteran’s Day, the Mass in the Abbey church, also the feast of the soldier and saint Martin of Tours, was noticeably more fully attended. The gospel of the day spoke of the final judgment, at which those who served others are to be separated from those who did not. A Veterans Day video, compiled for the School by current faculty member and West Point graduate Bryndol Sones, included statements to students from active duty members associated in some way with the Abbey. All of them spoke, personally and powerfully, of service, encouraging and commending our students' brave efforts during this difficult term. The video named alumni who died serving the country, in a Roll Call scanning the plaque of names affixed to the wall of our church. And so we remembered that day, this week and all throughout this month, those who gave all they could possibly give, the ultimate service, the ultimate sacrifice. And we give thanks in the Ultimate Sacrifice of the Eucharist.
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
Blake Billings '77, Ph.D. is a graduate and current faculty member of Portsmouth Abbey School. He received his undergraduate education at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, then joining the Jesuit Volunteer Corps to assist in an inner-city parish in Oakland, California. From Oakland, he went to Leuven, Belgium, receiving degrees in theology and philosophy. He returned to the Abbey in 1987, teaching for three years before getting married and returning to Leuven to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy, which he was awarded in 1995. Having taught in higher education at various schools, including St. John's University, Farifield University, and Sacred Heart University, he decided his calling was at the secondary level, gratefully returning to Portsmouth in 1996, where he has resided ever since. He became an oblate of the Portsmouth community ten years ago. The youngest of his four children, all raised on campus, graduated from the school in 2020.