November 2008
Vol. XXIX, No. 11

Dear Oblates and Friends of Portsmouth,

As the liturgical year closes, the Church focuses on the After-Life,  purgatory and heaven, famously celebrated in literature by Dante in his Comedia, and by the Church in the feasts of All Saints, the state of glory for the saved, and All Souls, the condition of  being purified before being worthy of entering fully into the Kingdom of Heaven.  Since time and space are absent after death, it is impossible to conceive of this state of being without recourse to analogy and the imagination. Artists and writers have never ceased supplying us with a rich variety of images and descriptions of paradise and purgatory, with an even greater degree of fantasy bestowed on horrifying portrayals of eternal damnation in hell.  Nihil in intellectu, nisi in sensu is the Thomistic justification for indulging in such a way of providing us with a vision of human destiny.

This year All Souls Day falls on a Sunday, and, as always, follows the feast of All Saints on the preceding day.  Although there have always been local commemorations of  the dead, it was owing to the great Benedictine monastery of Cluny under one of  its greatest abbots, Saint Odilo, that a feast on a particular day was instituted  for all its numerous houses throughout Europe.  Hence, an easy transition for its eventual observance by the whole church.  In their break with Rome, among the first steps the Protestant reformers took was to suppress this feast and eliminate the concept of purgatory from their theology.  In England it became a criminal offense to remember the dead in public, since it smacked of Roman Catholicism, adherence to which constituted treason.  And yet, there must have been many who continued to pray for their dead in private, despite being told that one was either saved and in heaven or damned and in hell.  Prayer for the deceased is a means of affording comfort to the bereaved, a way of showing respect and affection for the departed even after death in addition to its being a way of aiding them in their temporary separation from God, in which their suffering consists.

The Feast of All Souls is inseparable from the Feast of All Saints, since it is the prologue to the glory of the saved who share in the Beatific Vision. We pray to God through the saints, whereas we pray to God for those who are in transition, who have not yet attained the glory that comes with perfection.  These two states of being are referred to as the Church Triumphant and the Church Suffering, while we, who are still on earth working out our salvation, are the Church Militant.

Hope is the virtue that especially characterizes these feasts.  For the one, it is the certain expectation of forever being in the presence of God and his saints.  For those who are counted worthy and have achieved the state of perfection to which they have been called, theirs is hope fulfilled, and their reward is the glory shared with the risen Christ in the vast company of those who have been redeemed by power of the Cross.  The virtue of love, the object of our faith, is the  motive force of hope, and once love is realized in its completeness through union with the triune God, faith and hope are no longer necessary and have no place in the state of glory we call paradise or heaven.  The passage from the Book of Job prophetically hints at the three theological virtues and resurrection from the dead, when Job asserts: I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust, whom I myself shall see; my own eyes, not another's, shall behold him, And from my flesh I shall see God; my inmost being is consumed with longing.

Likewise, Paul speaks of our transformation, at the last Judgment, when the trumpet will sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed...;when the corruptible frame takes on incorruptibility and the mortal immortality, then will the saying of Scripture be fulfilled: "Death is swallowed up in victory," "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting."

Our faith in Jesus gives us the means to salvation; it is our hope in Him that enables us to go through life without falling into doubt and despair when faced with overwhelming misfortune through loss of friends, material goods or health or through whatever in life causes distress.  The love of God is there to give us the assurance of a life of everlasting happiness when we have completed our course on earth.  God is our heavenly Father who wills eternal life for all who look upon his Son and believe in Him.  The natural fear of death is taken away by the supernatural confidence given us through the God whose concern for us is absolute and whose love for us is unbounded. 

Portsmouth's Dies Memorabilis: November 21, 1918    

In 19l8, visiting Dr. Horatio Storer in Newport, I was advised to look at a property of seventy acres of land on Narragansett  Bay, at Portsmouth, known as Hall Manor (owned by the widow of the recently deceased Mr. Gardner Hall).  The very day of my visit the transfer of ownership was practically settled and all the belongings of house and out-buildings accompanied the transfer. Father Hugh Pope once asked me, "However did you get such a place?"

     "Dropped a medal of Saint Benedict into a field as we drove in, to be sure."
      "The same old superstition!" he said, "but it always succeeds."

There were other coincidences to defend this "superstition." The medal was deposited just after we turned in from the lane (Cory's Lane) that continues Hedley Road, and this road is eight miles from Newport.  One of the most distinguished English Benedictines of our times was Bishop Hedley of Newport and Menevia...

So Hall Manor became the Priory, and we, monks of Portsmouth.  My old friend, Bishop Harkins (of Providence), had long dreamed of a monastery overlooking Narragansett Bay.  Shortly before the Portsmouth property was acquired, I spent twenty-four hours with him and he told me he had been "saving up" for us in our absence from America.  His gift, unconditioned by place except that he "hoped" that the place might be in his diocese, meant the "saving" of five thousand dollars.  When the property was conveyed to us I went to tell the Bishop the good news: we looked at one another and said, "This, surely, is Providence." And in the diocese of Providence, with Prudence Island over the bay in full  view  -  prudence that is so akin to the old  monastic virtue of "discretion" -  is Portsmouth Priory, where each day the soul of that beloved  friend is remembered in Holy Mass.  The Bishop's successor has shown us that we can count him also as a friend, and has expressed approbation of our aims. 
                               --  From the memoirs of Dom Leonard Sargent, Pictures and Persons.                    

  
Liturgical Calendar for November

1     Saturday:  ALL SAINTS DAY
2     Sunday: COMMEMORATION OF ALL SOULS
4       St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop
5       Commemoration of Deceased Relatives, Oblates
              & Friends of the English Benedictine Congregation
9     Sunday:  Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome 
              Mother Church of Christendom
10     St. Leo the Great, Pope
11     St. Martin of Tours, Bishop
13     All Saints of the Order of St. Benedict
15     St. Albertus Magnus, Bishop & Doctor
16   SUNDAY XXXIII OF THE YEAR
17     St. Margaret, Queen, Patron of Scotland
18   Dedication of the Basilicas of SS Peter and Paul
20     St. Edmund, King & Martyr
21   Presentation of Our Lady (Dies Memorabilis)
           Ninetieth Anniversary of Acquisition of Hall Manor in 1918
22     St. Cecilia, Martyr
23   Sunday:  CHRIST THE KING
              Oblate Day of Recollection: Dom Paschal Scotti
30     SUNDAY I OF ADVENT (Cycle B)

                                                          
Monastery News

Dom Caedmon has returned from a two-week trip to Rome, where he has been attending the quadriennial Congress of Abbots, at which 250 abbots were present from all over the world.  Pope Benedict received them in audience at his summer retreat, Castelgandolfo. The Abbot Primate, Dom Notker Wolf, former archabbot of St. Ottilien in Bavaria, was reelected to a further four-year term of office as primate, in which he has already served eight years. He has agreed to visit Portsmouth next May in order to deliver the commencement address.

On October 8 the fiftieth anniversary of Dom Christopher's ordination to the priesthood was observed as well as the sixtieth anniversary of Dom Philip's monastic profession. 

A celebratory mass followed by a dinner under a tent was held on September 20 to mark the successful completion of the first phase of the Capital Campaign.  During the past four years Portsmouth has raised $22 million to cover the cost of the Church restoration, increase the endowment by establishing two faculty chairs and provide additional funds for student scholarships, and construct Saint Brigid's House, a dormitory for girls with provision for four faculty apartments.  The Drive will now enter a second phase to provide for other goals of the Strategic Plan:  namely, a science complex, a dormitory for boys similar to St. Brigid's, additional faculty houses and the completion of the costs of establishing faculty chairs.

                       
A Prayer for the Presidential Election

O God Almighty Father, King of kings and Lord of all rulers, grant that the hearts and minds of all who go out as leaders before us, the statesmen, the judges, the men of learning and the men of wealth, may be so filled with the love of Thy  laws and of that which is righteous and  life-giving, that they may serve as a wholesome salt unto thy earth, and be worthy stewards of Thy good and perfect gifts, through Jesus Christ the Lord.    
                                                                                                                                                               -- A Knight's Prayer (c. XVI century)

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