WORDS

Dear Oblates & Friends of Portsmouth Abbey,

In the office which I inherited to carry out my work for the monastery and school. there stands a floor-to-ceiling bookcase which takes up an entire wall.  It is, as you might suspect, filled with books.  Many are decades-old antiphonales, graduales, breviaries and prayer books used in years past by monks in their choir stalls or elsewhere for their private meditations.  Some monks have inscribed their names inside the covers in the impeccable cursive penmanship of a bygone era preceded by the Latin phrase, ad usum, meaning ‘[for] the use of.” 

Chapter 33 of The Rule of St. Benedict, ‘Monks and Private Ownership,’ warns that “no one may presume to…retain anything as his own, nothing at all – not a book, writing tablets or stylus – in short, not a single item, especially since monks may not have the free disposal even of their own bodies…”  Though medieval wax or clay tablets have been replaced by Samsung Galaxy Tablets, they are still considered ad usum.

Sounds harsh, right?  But it’s what we signed on for.  I have come across books ‘belonging’ to and used by Bishop Ansgar Nelson OSB, Fr. Luke Childs OSB, and many others of blessed memory who have actually read the words which I am able to look at.  For me, a relative newcomer to Portsmouth, these books and words provide a visceral, that is, an emotional, connection to the men who walked these halls and grounds in the past. 

I have always loved books, and acquired an early appreciation for words from my mother who taught me long ago to solve crossword puzzles, an activity now thought to stave off the onset of Alzheimer’s. It didn’t work for her; I pray it works for me.  She taught me the noun ‘ort’ which appeared regularly in the puzzles published in the pages of The Plain Speaker in Hazleton, Pa. (An ‘ort’ is a scrap or remainder of food from a meal.  In a family of four boys, I don’t recall many orts.)  I still look forward to a bit of private time every weekend working the N.Y. Times Sunday crossword puzzle in which ‘ort’ still pops up on occasion.

The title of the particular book which led to this reflection on words is Cruden’s Complete Concordance to the Old and New Testaments.  First published in 1736, ‘my’ copy (ad usum) is a 1961 reprint from London inscribed not by a monk but by “Sr. Maria Joseph / Profession Anniversary / 1962.”  The dust jacket proclaims that it contains 225,000 references to Holy Scripture.  The first sentence of the preface boasts that “‘Cruden’s Concordance’ has been a household word wherever the English language is spoken and the English Bible read.”  There are hundreds of references alone which cite word, word of God, his word, my word, this word, thy word.  And the total expands exponentially when one considers the plural forms of those words.  A concordance is an invaluable tool for research and study, and not just by biblical exegetes.  It is useful for seminarians, priests, homilists, the casual reader, and for anyone, really, who is interested in words, small ‘w.’

Throughout the year, we hear many Scripture-based stories at Mass in the various readings, the Gospels, the responsorial Psalms, the Eucharistic Prayers and elsewhere.  Vatican II allowed for a 3-year rotating cycle in the Sunday readings giving us a deeper and profoundly richer experience of Scripture.  At the end of each reading at Mass, the lector actually tells us that this has been, “The word of the Lord” to which we gratefully respond, “Thanks be to God.”  As well, the first half of the Mass is called the Liturgy of the Word which begins with the Collect, while the second half is the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

At Portsmouth Abbey and elsewhere, part of the morning prayers (Matins/Lauds) consists of the Office of the Word, and Vespers in the evening includes a few Scriptural verses.  A few weeks ago, we heard a section of the Letter of James.  At the close of Chapter 1 he exhorts us to “[h]umbly welcome the Word which has been planted in you and can save your souls.  But you must do what the Word tells you and not just listen to it and deceive yourselves.  Anyone who listens to the Word and takes no action is like someone who looks at his own features in a mirror and, once he has seen what he looks like, goes off and immediately forgets it.” (Jm 1:21-24, NJB). 

When capitalized in this way, Word may refer to Jesus Christ while the Word of God is Scripture, the law of God.  On September 30 of this year, the Memorial of St. Jerome, the Vatican released the Apostolic Letter of Pope Francis given at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome titled, Scripturae Sacrae Affectus, or Devotion to the Sacred Scripture.  As is the tradition, the title comes from the first words of the document.  This coincided with the 1600^th anniversary of the death of St. Jerome in Bethlehem.  One of the four great Latin Fathers, he is remembered for translating the Bible from the Greek and Hebrew into Latin, the book known as the Vulgate.

The word vulgate is pretty close to the word vulgar, in case you were wondering, and refers to the speech or language of common people.  Perhaps this is a good midway point to segue from the sublime to the ridiculous for a moment.  Anyone who has spent even a short amount of time among monks knows that they don’t sit in their cells all day reading concordances or apostolic letters, not even during the quarantine of a pandemic.  Several nights ago at recreation, after supper and before the Night Office of Compline, the topic of memes came up in the calefactory.  The best way to describe a meme is to say that it is something that spreads from person to person within a culture, is not a virus, but is rather an idea, behavior, style or usage.  An older and well-respected member of the community hadn’t the slightest idea what we were talking about (he has no phone or computer).

Each of us tried to elucidate the word for him by describing examples, but in this instance, one picture (of a meme) would have been worth our one-thousand words.  I mentioned a recent birthday meme which I received of a photo of the nerdy character Dwight Schrute of The Office, a TV show set in Scranton, Pa., about 30 miles from Hazleton.  Superimposed on the photo was the phrase, ‘Age is just a number’ obviously meant to assuage.  Below it was Dwight’s rebuttal: ‘FALSE: Age is a word.’  Though familiar with Scranton, our esteemed confrere had never heard of The Office.

Let’s return to the sublime and agree that words are important, in whatever language we know and understand them.  There are many Portsmouth Abbey School and St. Louis Priory School families in which two or more languages are spoken interchangeably at home, either because the students are international or because the families are immigrants.  Regardless of the language spoken, words can be either harmful or comforting. 

With the proliferation and use of tweets and other forms of social media platforms, disturbing occasions of inappropriate behavior and language using hurtful words have come to light over the summer.  I am a member of a new committee at PAS attempting to resolve issues of diversity, equity and inclusion.  We are not simply checking off the boxes or trying to stick band-aids on the hurts.  I’m certain that our work will have long-term beneficial ramifications and results.

St. Benedict has a lot to say about the restraint of speech in his Chapter 6 and interestingly suggests putting a guard on one’s mouth.  He quotes the Prophet in the Psalms: “I was silent and was humbled, and I refrained even from good words.”  And I think we all know by now how harshly he chastises those monks who murmur. 

In his homily at School Masses in mid-September, Fr. Michael spoke of the shooting of ten young Amish girls inside their one-room schoolhouse in West Nickel Mines, Pa., in 2006.  Five of the girls died, as did the gunman.  In the weeks that followed, the Amish community had nothing but “words of sympathy” for the young widow of the shooter.  She remembered being at her parents’ house mere hours after the massacre when the Amish community arrived with their arms extended in peace.  In the emotion of the moment, the widow could not hear the words, but their concern and support were clearly evident.

This story of the Amish always brings to mind a quote commonly attributed to St. Francis but whether he said it or not is unimportant.  “Preach the Gospel at all times and, if necessary, use words.”  This might be good advice to heed for all of us heading into these final months of 2020 with little or no indication of what lies ahead in 2021.  To close, I leave you the two words with which my mother always ended her letters after I was away at college and beyond.  They were written in her impeccable cursive handwriting of a bygone era.  I never thought to ask her if she remembered them from her schoolgirl Latin, or from a crossword puzzle:  Tempus fugit.

Much love & in Christ,
Br. Sixtus OSB

“One day we will wake up and discover we are family.”  South African Bishop Desmond Tutu