Candlemas 2021

For this month’s look into “Liturgy,” we move from the sublime to the mundane (and hopefully not the ridiculous). Br. Sixtus offers us a brief look “behind the curtain” at the procurement of some of the material needs of our liturgies. Altar wine, hosts, candles, albs...: while they may be created by our God ex nihilo, they do not materialize in the sacristy out of nowhere. Brother Sixtus and others have received many curious questions about where “all that stuff” comes from. For starters, it is not all delivered on our doorstep by Amazon.com. Shipments of some items are indeed gladly received here at the Abbey from some of the various liturgical suppliers in this business. But some items are a little more complicated to obtain. Brother Sixtus, for example, recently made a trip to Hartford for liturgical wine. We hear more from him about “stuff” like that. 

A review in The New York Times this week of a new Broadway play (“Is This a Room” at the Lyceum Theater) began with this first sentence: “Short of grocery lists, raw transcripts may be the most boring things ever written.” It got me to thinking about lists but not transcripts, and shopping lists but not grocery lists. We monks live in a house of sorts, just like other people. We say things like, “Currently there are nine men living in this house,” or we may share with guests what might be called the “house rules.”  And even people who live in apartments or condos, while not literally in a house, may be said to be members of a household. All of these people have needs, they need things, hence the lowly household grocery list, one of “the most boring things ever written.”  

One of my jobs in the monastery has been to attend to items on our own “household list,” particularly those we need to use in “God’s house.” The monks who work in our sacristy all keep track of that shopping list, not so much for the personal needs of the monks, but for the liturgical needs and supplies which are required for the various activities in the church and around campus. We stock a lot of the staples, the basics. Regardless of whether a Mass is celebrated in the Abbey Church, in one of the commons rooms of the eight boarding houses on campus, at the Lourdes Grotto al fresco at sunset, or under the massive commencement tent on the Holy Lawn, the critical needs can be reduced to a simple few. Hosts of various sizes and special altar wines are needed for the daily miracle of transubstantiation, and beeswax candles, while once needed merely for simple illumination around the altar, now serve a mostly aesthetic purpose.  

Our main supplier for these liturgical needs is Tally’s Religious Gifts and Church Supplies, a fifth-generation company now located in nearby Cranston. Tally’s is in fact New England’s oldest family-owned church supply business and has managed to continue servicing the needs of their many customers uninterrupted throughout the travails of Covid-19 shutdowns and reductions. Their website notes that they outgrew their original site in Providence ten years ago, and their “modern facility allowed for growth in our Cathedral Candle Co., Cavanagh host, and Lux Mundi oil candle offerings. Our showroom is stocked with Slabbinck and Solivari vestments, Toomey shirts, Barton Cotton stationery, Demetz Art Studio statuary, PEMA crucifixes, and Molina sacred vessels.”  

As Tally’s notes, they represent the Cathedral Candle Company, another family-owned and operated firm founded in 1897 in Syracuse, New York, as well as the Cavanagh Company, both of whom are important to our own liturgical supply chain. The Cavanagh Company is a well-known Rhode Island business, making hosts in several sizes, including gluten-free or low-gluten for those with special needs. Its website notes: “Since the 1940's, Cavanagh Company has met the needs of clients searching for the best quality Eucharist wafers and church bread. Produced in the United States, all breads have a carefully molded sealed edge, which prevents crumbs. They are baked of only whole wheat flour and water, and are made strictly without additives. All Cavanagh altar breads are superior in substance and sign value. The breads are sealed minutes after baking and are untouched by human hands.” As for candles, the shapes and sizes are many. The Blessed Sacrament side altar and the Blessed Virgin Mary altar across the sanctuary call for tall narrow candles lit daily by the congregants and some monks for special intentions. Their lifespan is several hours and they are replenished as necessary. Also on the BVM side, mounted on iron holders set into the mortar between the stones of the wall, are what are referred to as “hoopla” candles, lit on special occasions, especially Masses commemorating one of the many titles of Mary. The altar candles are the tallest and thickest of all and may last for several months. Although there are six on the main altar, rarely are all of them lit at the same time. During the week, two are lit for a ferial day while four would be lit for a feast. 

Hosts and wine for Mass

Special seasons, both penitential and festal, require special candles. The passing of the darkening and mysterious days of Advent are marked and lighted by the Advent wreath, originally a home-based tradition which has found its way into churches and schools.  The wreath holds four candles: three are violet and the fourth is rose or pink.  Christmas candlelight services call for handheld tapers in plastic or paper wind protectors and these reappear at the Easter Vigil as the principal celebrant proclaims the joyful refrain of “Christ, the Light of the World” as he processes through the church. Prominent at the Easter Vigil, too, is the tall Paschal Candle which the priest inscribes with the numerals of the year and the Greeks letters, alpha and omega, while also adding five wax spikes, indicative of incense honoring the five mortal wounds of Jesus.  Monasteries and convents often maintain the practice of having their Paschal Candle designed and decorated in-house rather than buying a pre-decorated candle, which Tally’s certainly offers.  At Portsmouth, we shall purchase a tall plain beeswax “blank” candle as the season draws closer. It will be beautifully transformed by our Novice, Br. Basil, with the able assistance of his confreres. 

About that trip to Hartford.  It was actually Southington, a suburb south of the capital, home to Patrick Baker & Sons. An emporium similar to Tally’s, it is our supplier for Mont La Salle Altar Wine, “pure California” as the labels on the one-gallon glass jugs proclaim, approved for sacramental use, and a golden honey color. Of the various Covid-19 restrictions that were put into place in March 2020 by bishops and pastors, as well as by state and local officials, one of the most immediate to take effect was the banning of communicants from receiving the Precious Blood at the Mass from a communal chalice.  This reduced drastically the volume of wine needed at each Mass when only the priests at the altar were allowed to consume a small portion.  This has lightened the need for more regular trips to Southington. 

Some concluding notes on the monastic haberdasher. Although Br. Sixtus and Br. Benedict wore their habits while making the journey to Southington, some monks traveling farther afield outside of the monastery, especially on long trips, prefer to wear long-sleeved or short-sleeved black cleric shirts for ease through security checks. These are supplied by Tally’s, who also sells vestments, albs, cassocks and surplices, etc., but in a monastery which has existed for 102 years, there are plenty of those already at hand. And to top it off, with an abbatial election scheduled here for January 2022, there will also be a need for an abbatial miter or two. In fact, while none existing from past abbacies have surfaced in any storage areas thus far, we were recently gifted three miters designed and handmade by Bob Trump, a liturgical vestment maker in St. Louis.  You will be reading more about Bob and his exquisite work in a future installment of the series, The Artists of the Abbey. So although miters have not yet officially made it onto our sacristy shopping list, the need would have arisen sooner or later, and we are doubly, or triply, grateful for Bob’s beneficence. 

So, we hope our readers will not find this grocery list one of “the most boring things ever written,” but instructive of some of the “visible signs” of the “invisible grace” we believe to be present in our liturgical life.