Monastery, church, and upper campus (1985)

Among his many roles in the monastery and School, including serving as the prior, Fr. Damian Kearney served for many years as Director of Oblates and the editor of the monastery Newsletter. He wrote this reflection forty years ago, for a 1985 Lenten issue of the Newsletter.

Dear Oblates and Friends of Portsmouth,

Desert – wasteland – forty days – Satan – wild beasts – angelic ministers – a time of trial – the Spirit; in two short verses at the beginning of his version of the gospel, Mark puts before us some of the chief elements of the season of Lent, which we are now involved in – a time when we re-examine our spiritual life, identify what is wrong with it, and try, with the help of God, to put it back into order. Like Dante at the outset of his spiritual journey in the Divine Comedy, we find ourselves in a dark forest, having gone astray from the true path and in need of a guide. For his pilgrimage, Dante required the services of Virgil (human reason) and Beatrice (divine wisdom), who could lead him to a better understanding of himself, his darker side symbolized by his descent into hell, his need for absolution and regeneration by his ascent of the mountain of purgatory, and his perception of the privacy of God in His creation to which all things tend in a perfect display of unity and order through his contemplation of the heavenly spheres with God as the center in the Paradiso.
Fr. Damian in the hockey rink (1980s)A re-reading of the Divine Comedy would be an excellent preparation for Easter, but we have at hand in the liturgical readings for Lent the ideal guides who can put us on the way of reformation and lead us to transfiguration in Christ; each Sunday during Lent in the present cycle (B) [in 2025 we are in cycle C] a figure from the Old Testament is presented as a type of the Messiah: Noah, whose ark saves mankind from waters which effect a purification through corporal death, a type of Jesus whose baptismal water enables us to gain spiritual life. Later, Abraham, who passes the supreme test of his faith and is rewarded by becoming the father of the people without a number, like Noah a new founder of a race but this time one specially chosen by God from which the Messiah would emerge; Moses, whose decalogue would be completed and fulfilled in the Sermon on the Mount; then Cyrus, the counterpart of Pharaoh, who releases the Jews from their captivity and exile in Babylon, acting as an instrument of God albeit a Gentile; and finally, the great prophets, Jeremiah and Isaiah, who present the true, spiritual character of the Messiah is a Suffering Servant whose kingdom is a sign of contradiction, its standards a paradox, its conditions folly.
School Yearbook 1985, with silhouette
of “Saint David” bell and churchEach Sunday we have in the scripture readings special insights into the Paschal Mystery, providing us with the means of deepening our awareness of the presence of God in this world and the nature of His kingdom, as well as encouraging us to follow the path to the end, persevering when we encounter the frequent and inevitable obstacles, knowing that we have as our guide, not Virgil or Beatrice or even the mystical St. Bernard, but the Incarnate Word, the Lux Mundi who leads and illuminates all those willing to follow in His footsteps.

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