December 2008
Vol. XXIX, No. 12
Dear Oblates and Friends of
Portsmouth,
With the season of Advent we begin the new liturgical year, focusing on the mystery of our redemption, foreshadowed in the daily scriptural readings of Old Testament figures, kings, prophets, and holy men and women, each one clarifying some aspect of the messianic promise: a means of preparing us for the coming of the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Word made flesh. In this short period before Christmas the Church reinterprets for us the long ages which preceded the birth of Jesus. The Chosen People symbolize humanity's struggle during the vicissitudes of life - enjoying brief periods of prosperity and then encountering sharp reversals of fortune, emphasizing the need for dependence on God for mercy and rescue. The Book of Psalms treats this eloquently in its appeals for God's succor and in its praise and thanksgiving for deliverance through His intervention. This faith and hope in God as Providential Father is much like our own recognition of His concern for us, with this difference: that our redemption has become a fact through the birth and death of Jesus, with the proclamation of the Gospel reaching beyond the Chosen People to include all mankind. The Kingdom of Promise, too, is a spiritual reality, not to be mistaken for a temporal, this worldly and perishable kingdom. The destruction of the Temple, the glory and wonder of its time, forced the Jews to give up the primitive ritual of animal sacrifice in their form of worship, with the emphasis placed on purification of heart and soul, thereby worshiping God in spirit and in truth, which the prophets urged and which Jesus taught to the Samaritan woman in John's Gospel.
The Christian hope, however, differed radically from the expectation of the ancient world, both pagan and Jewish. Their messianic, golden age of the future was a utopian dream world in which war and hunger, toil and poverty, death and disease, had no place. Even the creatures of nature would be at peace, wolves and lambs lying down together, lions eating hay rather than devouring other animals, and an absence of natural and man-made disasters. The Pax Christi would replace the peace imposed by the imperial armies of Caesar. (Rome made a desert and called it peace.) The early Christians believed that the realization of this peace was at hand, since they expected that Jesus' return would happen in their own time; hence, the urgency of conversion and the necessity of preparedness since he would come as a thief in the night. Gradually, when the Parousia did not take place, the people realized that they were making the same mistake as the pagans and the Jews, who looked for a kingdom in the present order, one that was tangible, visible, readily comprehensible and attainable. They now understood that the power and glory belonged to a spiritual, not a temporal, kingdom.
Advent is the season of hope, and this should be the virtue on which our attention must be fixed. In what does this hope consist for each one of us; how do we go about deepening it in us and realizing it; as a grace, it is a gift wholly dependent on God's will. But the preparation for its reception is up to us. Effort, disposition, inclination - all are required if we are to benefit from this annual coming of Jesus into our lives in a special way, so that we are renewed, restored and reborn in Him when his birth in Bethlehem is symbolically reenacted.
Liturgical Calendar for December
Cycle of Prayer for Advent: Openness to the Word of God
Migrants and Refugees; Expectant Mothers)
3 St. Francis Xavier, Religious
4
St. John Damascene, Doctor
6 St. Nicholas, Bishop of
Myra
7 SUNDAY II OF ADVENT
8 IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
12 Our Lady of Guadalupe
13 St. Lucy, Martyr
14 SUNDAY III OF ADVENT
Gaudete Sunday
21 SUNDAY IV OF ADVENT
25 NATIVITY OF THE LORD
(Masses at Abbey:
Midnight
8am, 9:30am on Christmas Day)
26 St. Stephen, Protomartyr
27
St. John, Apostle, Evangelist
28 SUNDAY: HOLY FAMILY
29
St. Thomas Becket, Martyr Ade Bethune (1914 - 2002)
January 4: Sunday of EPIPHANY
(Oblate Day of Recollection: Dom Abbot Caedmon Holmes)
Georges Rouault, 1871 - 1958
To mark the fiftieth year of his death, Boston College has brought to its art gallery 180 works of Georges Rouault in the first retrospective of this major artist in many years. An expressionist painter, whose works are reminiscent of the religious works of the early twentieth century artists, Nolde and Ensor, Rouault's idiosyncratic style, nevertheless, distinguished him from these and every other modern painter...;first, by the bold, forceful outlines in his engravings or paintings, a mannerism which he gained from his experience from working as an apprentice in a stained glass atelier. This characteristic made his art instantly recognizable, since he retained it throughout his life. Because he never deviated from his subjects and unique style, he was criticized by some for being repetitive and lacking in originality. Secondly, Rouault drastically limited his choice of subject. Deeply moved by the horror of war and the miserable conditions of the poor, he devoted his early work to a sympathetic portrayal of social outcasts or to those who intentionally put themselves outside the mainstream of society. Clowns became a symbol, as they had done for Picasso, of modern man's loneliness and alienation, masking their unhappiness under the comic, fantastic guise of the harlequin. For prostitutes he had a mixture of horror and compassion, looking on them as victims abused by a people indifferent to the debased condition to which they had been reduced. The viewer recoils at the ugly, tawdry women Rouault painted in the lurid colors and harsh strokes that betrayed their profession, and this is exactly the effect he intended. If we are revolted by what he himself referred to as grotesques, we should not tolerate such an evil, and have a moral obligation to do what we can to eradicate it.
The Great War of 1914 - 1918 and the subsequent Second World War, however, became the chief influences on the direction of his work. The misery and pain that war causes became the motivating force for his use of the Passion of Jesus as an allegory of the human condition. Unlike Goya who expressed his anti-war feelings in his Capricios in graphic, realistic detail, evoking in the viewer the pity and terror felt in tragedy, Rouault saw in the agony of Christ in his passion the sufferings of modern man, afflicted by the inescapable tide of war and the consequent social upheaval. His magnum opus, composed of 58 engravings called the Miserere (the first word in Latin of the 51st Psalm), mainly composed between 1918 and 1926, was not published in Paris until 1948, with an American edition brought out by New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1952, the plates printed in France under the personal supervision of Rouault. Portsmouth is fortunate in owning an original print from this collection called "Our Lady of the Land's End." Four other prints in our collection depict scenes in the life of Jesus.
At the beginning of his professional career, Rouault made a prolonged visit to the Benedictine monastery of Liguge, where he experienced the call to dedicate his life as an artist to expressing the spiritual in the human condition. Friends like Jacques Maritain and Leon Blois supported his intent, and he never swerved from his purpose to portray the Christ that he saw in every person, no matter what his or her station or status in society. Significantly, Liguge Abbey, where he determined the direction of his art, is dedicated to St. Martin, a pagan soldier stationed at Amiens, who, seeing a naked beggar shivering in the cold, dismounted from his horse, cut his cloak in half with his sword, and gave it to him. That night he had a vision of Jesus who revealed that he was the beggar, calling on Martin to follow him. Shortly thereafter, Martin was baptized, founded the monastery of Marmoutier, and eventually became Bishop of Tours. Like Martin, Rouault was able to see the Christ in anyone, no matter how outwardly repellent the person might be. It was this spiritual insight that pervades the content and form of all of his oeuvre.
Monastery News
Dom Mark Serna has been named titular Abbot of the medieval abbey of Athelney in Somerset, Mass. It was founded by King Alfred in 988 in thanksgiving for his victory over the Danes. After its dissolution by King Henry VIII, it was allowed to fall into ruin, leaving no visible remains, with the site now in private ownership.
Dom Julian and Dom Damianattended a reception at
Salve
Regina University in
Newport honoring Mrs. Noreen Stonor Drexel for her generous benefactions over the course of many years. Two wings of a renovated Admissions Hall have been named for her. She has also been a great friend of Portsmouth, especially in her efforts on behalf of the church restoration. Her family home in Oxfordshire, England, Stonor, was a place of refuge for Saint Edmund Campion during the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics. An underground printing press at Stonor enabled him to publish his defense of the old faith and the family chapel served as a place for saying mass for his fellow recusants. Shortly after his departure, Campion was betrayed by an informer and he was executed as a traitor.
Prayers are requested for Daniel Seitz, who was an oblate and for many years served on the Board of Consultants as well as the Board of Regents. Dom Ambrose, his classmate at Exeter and Harvard, attended his funeral in New Jersey.
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