Editor's Note

March 25, 2023

As the time of Lent winds down, on the eve of Passiontide, we arrive this year at the First Joyful Mystery. Unpacking the message and the mystery of God’s saving presence and of our call to repent and believe that Gospel is the focus of Lent, in brief. And all of that message and mystery is distilled in Mary’s vocational moment. God finds in her, our Marian theology teaches us, one worthy of that call. And we who say, with every celebration of the eucharist, that we are not worthy to receive Him, seek her intercession. The Annunciation marks for me an exclamation point of hope: hope that God, who finds Mary worthy, will through His grace find something worthy in me. This thread of hopefulness winds its way through our articles this week, in the project of monastic formation Fr. Edward works to develop, in the unshakeable love of God that Fr. Gregory highlights in his homily, in the Summer Symposium’s themes of cultivation and toil. May this hope guide your own journey, as we pass through Passiontide this year, making our way from the First Joyful Mystery to the First Glorious Mystery.

Pax,
Blake Billings

March 18, 2023

Our issue this week, produced amidst our Lenten journeys, arrives as the weekend brings us to Laetare Sunday and on to special celebrations for St. Joseph and St. Benedict. These serve as happy reminders of a gospel of life, joy, and salvation. These direct us toward the hope that inspires our penitential practice. Our articles this week also reveal some of that message of good news, expressing our Sunday antiphon’s call to “rejoice and be glad.” We see this in looking back to those whose faith has been inspirational, as Br. Sixtus does in recounting some of the story of his great-uncle. We find in Fr. Edward’s homily a reflection on the presence of God, already powerfully manifest to us in our Lenten gospel reading of the Transfiguration, as in the Eucharist itself. And our archives highlight some of the gifts God provided to the first founders of this monastery in their arrival at this place, with an awareness of Providence for our founder, echoed in the very name of our diocese. Our ascetic practices of Lent seem to only make us more aware of the grace of God. May the week be for us one of rejoicing in that mysterious and gracious mercy – a week which culminates in the very feast of the incarnation, of God’s angel addressing to Our Lady the promise of salvation.

Pax,
Blake Billings

March 10, 2023

I looked over an editor’s note I wrote two years ago at about this time: “This week and this season seem to represent for me an ongoing ‘reality check.’ This year, in particular, we know well the discontent of our winter. In the ongoing rigors of Lent, we face the realities of our sin. In this week in the Transitus, we confront the approach of death. … And yet, despite the depths of our Lent, we find a stubborn insistence on hope: a Sunday of Rejoicing; a feast for Saint Joseph; the approaching remembrance of the Annunciation of our salvation. With all of this, it still feels like there is little peace in the quietude of our spring pause. While there is much anxiety in the quiet isolations of our long pandemic, we persevere, remembering a call to take up a cross. And while perhaps asking, ‘When will I come to the end of my pilgrimage?’ – we March on.” As we approach these same landmarks in 2023, much has changed, while much remains the same. We see a world struggling with war, with natural disaster, with political instability. But we also must learn and relearn the perseverance and the patient trust expressed by those saints whose feasts we commemorate, and the hope that inspires our entire Lenten journey and still gently demands that we keep Marching.

Pax,
Blake Billings

March 3, 2023

Abbot Michael’s brief and moving remarks about Ignacio Eguiguren and how beautifully he bore his cross, mentions the crosses uniquely fit to our own backs. The Stations of the Cross have long been a central element in the Good Friday program at Portsmouth. The commemoration has drawn many to Cross Hill over the years, for the devotion led in recent years by Br. Joseph Byron, previously by Fr. Edmund Adams, and others. The practice made a memorable impact on me in my Sixth Form year, particularly when the former cross at the top of the hill, fabricated from valuable copper, was stolen. The scandal of the theft, and the sudden visible absence of the cross on the hill, shocked the community. Some of my classmates sought to address the injustice of this affront by constructing a make-shift wooden cross, which we carried to the top of the hill in our devotion of the Stations that Good Friday. That provisional cross remained in place for some time, now replaced by our more permanent cross of iron. Whether of copper, wood, or iron, the cross of our devotion has remained constant and we hope that our perseverance in the prayer it inspires bears fruit in our lives. May your own unique Lenten devotion, whatever it may be, bear the fruit of that same tree.

Pax,
Blake Billings