Pruning trees at the monastery

We often hear a phrase around the monastery which is attributed to Aristotle. Although it is an idea based in physics, it also describes what can happen in life when a group of people, like monks, live together. Someone will have cleared out a storage room, a desk drawer, a cluttered bookshelf perhaps, only to find out the next day that another someone has usurped the clean empty space, filled it with something else, and mutters to himself, “Well, nature abhors a vacuum!” The same thing happens with time, with our calendar. What looks at first glance like a carefree summer schedule from the vantage point of, say, April or May, suddenly becomes an extension of the relentlessly busy academic year. Looking backwards through the summer, here is some news of what kept us active and alert. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

On August 28, the monks hosted the 2024 Opening-of-School Picnic in the Monastic Garden for our faculty and staff and their families. It was an opportunity to share what is normally a cloistered, or private, garden with the wider community. Between the work of our campus landscaping staff and the green thumb of our Prior, Br. Joseph, plus an abundance of recent rains, the garden at this time of the summer calls for an all-out picnic event. With a set of new wood benches in place crafted by Luis Raposo and Pete Lambert, it also marked the first “public” appearance of Sodexho’s new Head Chef at Portsmouth, Mr. Coleman Hanover, who manned the pasta bar.

Br. Sixtus Roslevich and Abbot Michael with Brendan Ryan for his Promise of Oblation

The Oblates of Portsmouth gathered on August 25, for a late-summer Day of Recollection. The date marks the Feast of St. Louis, significant to us monks who originally made vows of stability to the St. Louis Abbey. Falling on a Sunday this year, the celebration was superseded by the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time. Our prayers included mention of the loss of two oblates this summer, Jean L. Revil on July 16 and Dr. Jack Hand on August 20. Following Mass, Br. Benedict Maria, ordained a transitional deacon by Bishop Richard Henning on May 3, was the main speaker, treating the topic of “Service and the Diaconate.” It has been a joy and a blessing to have him back in the house over the summer, to hear his homilies and his infectious laugh, and his talk gave us a further opportunity to share him with a wider audience. Brendan Ryan of Cumberland, Rhode Island made his first Promise of Oblation to Abbot Michael after being a frequent guest here for several years. Ryan and his wife, Katherine, are the proud parents of three children, Jack, Reagan and Sadie Marie.

On August 23, the faculty of Pius V School in Providence returned to Portsmouth for the second of their annual one-day retreats to be held here. Led by Sister Mary Amata Mueller, the teachers participated in a morning Mass celebrated by Abbot Michael, heard inspiring talks, shared Lectio Divina together, and prayed Midday Prayers with the monks, all of which was balanced with time for private prayer and refection, afternoon Eucharistic Adoration in the abbey church, and confessions. As if that week could not have been busier, Br. Benedict hosted a gathering of children in the Stillman Dining Hall, all of whom took part in his summer rosary-making workshop, a follow-up on his previous workshop on mosaics. On the afternoon of August 22, the Feast of the Queenship of Mary, they had an opportunity to share the fruits of their labor and to have them blessed by Abbot Michael. The beads were then put on display for family and friends to admire and, to close out the day, they prayed the rosary together as a finale in the Abbey Church.

Br. Benedict with Maureen Magnuson

at rosary workshop

Closer to home, I will travel to Washington, D.C. on September 15 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of St. Anselm’s Abbey, one of the three American houses of the EBC. On a personal note, following our Buckfast meetings, it was a blessing for me to visit several good friends in England, including Fr. John Tabor at his parish in Cranford; my godson Dr. Stephen Bullivant and his cleric friends who invited me to a pub lunch at Oxford; and a special couple in London with EBC connections, Joanna and Nicolas Barker, who invited me to dinner at their 1840 residence in Notting Hill, along with author Christopher de Hamel. I also visted two Benedictines from my days at Sant’ Anselmo: author Fr. Daniel McCarthy of St. Benedict’s Abbey in Atchison, Kansas, and Abbot Cuthbert Brogan at St. Michael’s Abbey in Farnborough. My London visit was complete with a day at the Victoria and Albert Museum, immersed in their collections of medieval English oak linenfold furniture and architectural details.

Looking over the summer activities outlined here reminds me of a line in my final summer book, The Voices of Morebath by Eamon Duffy, 2001. “Routine leaves few records, even though most of what is fundamental to ordinary existence is a matter of routine – undocumented, invisible and, as a consequence, far too easily discounted by the historian seeking to touch the texture of the life of the past.” Let the record show that these activities and the many visitors to Portsmouth Abbey this summer and throughout the year, though “routine”, were and are fundamental to the lives of the monks. We wouldn’t have it any other way.