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Battles Spiritual and Temporal
January 14, 2025
My daughter’s attendance at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania provided numerous occasions for me to visit the battlefield of that crucial engagement of the American Civil War. I was stunned to view the memorial marker for the 20th Maine on Little Round Top, and to read the names of those killed. It read like an attendance roster from my elementary school, listing the family names of many of my Maine hometown neighbors. And the first name on the list: Billings. Most likely not a direct relative, but the impression left on my heart could not have been more direct. I was pierced by a spiritual blade, painless, bloodless, unlike those held by those who had engaged on that hill in vicious hand-to-hand combat, yet tethered somehow to their weapons of temporal battle. I felt the pull of this same invisible bond in considering those who fought and died on these very grounds, whose day in August of 1778 was so different from my luxuriant strolls of late summer, enjoying the vistas they afford along the Narragansett Bay. We are bound to our predecessors, to our predeceased, to their battles, spiritual and temporal. We see this in the teachings outlined by Fr. Gregory Havill in this issue, which unveil our bond to Thomas Aquinas, to John of Damascus, to the people of Ancient Israel. A continuity in our taking up our mortality, in our incessant search for the Eternal, across centuries and millennia. As I age, such spans of time telescope down, often down to a single moment, this moment. And most stunning, such moments, even in grief, become moments of gift and gratitude.
Pax,
Blake Billings
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An Ordinary JubileeJanuary 7, 2025
Our entry into 2025 marks a quarter century in a new millennium, at least that is one way of looking at it. Or, around here, you could see it as the year before the School’s centennial. Or the 17th year of formal visits from members of Manquehue in Chile. Or the seventh year of the transference of stability of monks of St. Louis to Portsmouth. Or you can pick your personal preference for landmarks in your own history, in your own life. For the Church, it marks an “ordinary” Jubilee year – “ordinary” in the sense that the year has some objective basis in calendar, commencing with the 25th year of this century (and millennium). An ordinary jubilee is thus not a non-sequitur. Indeed, perhaps we should see it as a way of life. As we return to “Ordinary Time” we do not return to the same old, same old. We return to the Gospel. Our articles this week illuminate some of what that might mean. Br. Sixtus recounts for us some of the message and meaning of Christmas, in monastic retreating and in Christmas reflections, as in traveling to the dynamic SEEK experience or in welcoming our youthful and inspiring Manquehue guests. Abbot Michael calls us to remember the mystery of the Incarnation, and of the call to peace. And we see in our artist, John Kerr, an oblate whose artistry was shaped by his faith. Our jubilee is not without its contrasts: of anxiety and of hope, of concern and of promise, of conflict and of peace. But we are prompted by our calendar to hold to the faith that amidst all and in all, at this variously marked moment in time, there is much to celebrate, infinitely much.
Pax,
Blake Billings
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About
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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, Fairfield 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. His four children were all raised on campus and graduated from the school, the youngest in 2020.
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