The month of November, opening with the great Solemnity of All Saints, carries on the theme of earth and heaven, of death and eternal life, reflected in the days of commemoration for the dead that punctuate these weeks. For our archives this year, we have been looking back into earlier editions of the monastery’s “Newsletter.” For our November selection, we have uncovered an issue that included a reflection from Fr. Philip Wilson, O.S.B., (1925-2017). Fr. Philip was professed as a monk of Portsmouth in 1948, 75 years ago, passing from this world just over 5 years ago. Fr. Philip’s haunting rumination here on those who passed their lives on this property before us remains timely. The more recent creation of the golf course has made more visible some of the history and provides reminders of our predecessors whose traces had been less accessible when he wrote his piece. The course has added signposts for Hessians’ Hole and Bloody Run, and also has added markers identifying several of the family cemeteries scattered over these grounds. For our November archives, we reprint Dom Philip’s reflection on “Those Who Have Gone Before Us.”

1983 Yearbook Dedication to Dom Damian Kearney

The issue of the Newsletter from which the piece is taken was put together by Dom Damian Kearney, in 1989. Prompted by the arrival of the November commemorations, Dom Damian offered nearly thirty-five years ago a theological reflection in that issue as preface to the somber and moving piece Dom Philip had composed for All Souls Day. Fr. Damian writes: “As we approach November, which marks the end of the liturgical year and prepares us for the end of the seasonal year, the church offers us a timely reminder of our own physical end. And this she does in the twin feasts of All Saints and All Souls. Life after death has a perennial fascination for us; it has been the subject of literature from the very start of civilization, and it holds a prominent part in Scripture, especially in the Book of the Apocalypse. All Saints deals with the life of glory, the final and everlasting state of the just as they share in the beatific vision. Such a state is hard, indeed impossible, to describe save through analogy, … although it has inspired some of the greatest art...”