November 2009
Vol. XXX, No. 10
Dear Oblates and Friends of Portsmouth,
The liturgical year ends appropriately with a feast which celebrates the triumph of Christ at the end of time, when all that is in opposition to his message of peace and universal brotherhood is overcome, and He is enthroned in majesty at the right hand of the Father. The figure of kingship, like all the symbols which conjure up the idea of total victory over foes, is an elaborate metaphor to give us an intelligible picture of the power and glory of the Son of God, which will be His when the world as we know it comes to an end, whenever and however that will come about.
It may seem odd that Jesus, who was presented to the world in the humblest of circumstances, in a stable in Bethlehem, the child of a poor young girl married to a lowly carpenter, should ultimately be accorded the highest honor, in secular terms, that can be bestowed on anyone. Throughout His life Jesus lived in a way directly opposed to the veneration, the reverence in the way we behave to a monarch, and the way in which we now automatically regard Him. When the people sought to make Him their king on several occasions during his ministry, Jesus withdrew from them, only allowing such honour to be paid Him at His triumphal entry into Jerusalem just before his arrest, trial and execution. But this contradiction, this reversal of his deliberately chosen lowly state, only seems to be incongruous.
The nature of His kingship had to be unfolded gradually, and is most explicitly asserted when Pilate asks Him if He is a king. Jesus' reply is intended for Pilate, for the first hearers of the gospel and for all those who come after. He asserts the spirituality, the timelessness of His kingdom, that it is not of the world we know and live in. It is only in this sense that Jesus admits to kingship. We recall that when Pilate inscribed the cause or nature of Jesus' offense, he wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. When his accusers asked Pilate to change the inscription to "He called himself the King of the Jews," Pilate responded: Quod scripsi, scripsi. (What I have written, I have written.}
Ironically, Jesus is the King of the Jews, without Pilate's realizing it. His intent was to mock the Jews whom he detested, by placing what he considered an absurd inscription on a man undergoing the most ignominious death possible. (This is the kind of king they deserve.) An understanding of Jesus' kingship on the cross would only come after the disciples were able to interpret the messianic prophecies as signs of Jesus' role in what the theologians refer to as the economy of salvation. Pilate's inscription proclaiming Jesus as King of the Jews, at the very hour of his seeming defeat, underlines the true nature of his kingship, its sacrificial character, its inauguration of a new era, a new covenant relationship with God, replacing the old, exclusive dispensation of the Chosen Race with the new order now embracing all nations and peoples, extending to them the grace of salvation. In a very real sense, albeit a spiritual one, we have all become, in Saint Paul's phrase, spiritual Jews, with Jesus our true King, his death on Calvary enabling us to share in his spiritual kingdom. Like the good thief being executed with Jesus, we make his prayer ours also, asking to be remembered when He enters his kingdom and his glory (Lord, remember me when you are come into your Kingdom.).
At the end of the liturgical year, therefore, we acknowledge Jesus to be the King of the Ages and also to mark symbolically the end of time, when the transient worldly order will cease for us in order that the new order of eternity can begin. The descriptions of Jesus found in the prophetic Book of Daniel and in the allegorical Book of the Apocalypse are reminders of our final judgment and the need to be prepared for it. The icons or mosaic portrayals of Jesus in glory and splendor should not intimidate us by his awesome presence, as they were intended to do in the time of the Byzantine emperors. On the contrary, Jesus as Pantokrator (the Supremely Powerful One) is a sign of promise and hope for us that we too, when we have completed our course on earth, when the trumpet sounds its final note, summoning us to the Last Judgment, we, the humblest as well as the mightiest, the repentant sinners and the saintly, will be called to share in the kingdom that belongs to Jesus and to each one of us, since through His incarnation and the gift of His baptism, we are elevated to the truly supreme honor of becoming His brothers and sisters.
Portsmouth's 90th Anniversary: 1919 - 2009 (Dies Memorabilis)
This year Portsmouth Abbey celebrates the 90th year of its foundation as a domus religiosa, when monastic observance officially began with Dom Leonard Sargent's taking up permanent residence in the Hall Manor in 1919. The new monastery, situated on the island of Aquidneck (Indian word for peace), in Rhode Island, was purchased in November 1918 on generous terms from its owner, Mrs. Gardner Hall, a recent convert to Catholicism. Dom Leonard had been received into the Church at Downside and later professed there as a Benedictine monk, with the understanding that he would found the first monastery of the English Congregation in the United States Because of its failure to attract vocations, the priory with its property was transferred in 1926 to Fort Augustus Abbey in Scotland, which re-established Portsmouth as a dependent priory with a school headed by Dom Hugh Diman, a convert and distinguished educator. Both monastery and school thrived through the support of the mother abbey, eventually becoming a community of American monks with sufficient financial stability to enable it to gain independence. This was granted on November 21st, 1949, the feast of the Presentation of Our Lady, with the appointment of Dom Gregory Borgstedt as the first conventual superior of Saint Gregory's Priory, now officially a domus formata. On this date in 1958 ground was broken for the construction of a permanent church designed by the renowned Italian architect, Pietro Belluschi.
For the English Congregation this memorable date, celebrated each year on November 21st, marks the continuity of the post-Reformation Benedictines with the monks of the abbeys before their suppression by King Henry the Eighth.. This came about through Dom Sigebert Buckley, the last surviving monk of Westminster Abbey, restored briefly by Queen Mary and then suppressed by her Protestant sister, Queen Elizabeth, in 1560. Dom Sigebert, old, sickly and under house arrest, affiliated to the Abbey of Westminster, in 1607 on November 21st, two exiled English monks from the Cassinese congregation of St. Justina of Padua. In this way continuity was preserved with the pre-Reformation monastic houses, extending back to the 6th century, when Pope St. Gregory sent Augustine and forty monks to England as missionaries to make angels of the Angles, to quote his pun.
From the Prospectus for "A Benedictine Priory in the United States" (1916):
The Benedictine life has been synonymous with a reverent worship, with scholarship, with certain forms of missionary endeavours; but that which preeminently expresses its temper is the word so intimately associated with the Order, PAX.
-- Dom Leonard, writing from Downside.
Liturgical Calendar for November
1 ALL SAINTS DAY
2 COMMEMORATION OF ALL SOULS
5 Commemoration of Deceased Monks, Oblates
and Benefactors of Portsmouth and the E.B.C.
8 SUNDAY XXXII OF THE YEAR
9 Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
Mother Church of Christendom
10 St. Leo the Great, Pope & Doctor
11 St. Martin of Tours, Bishop
12 St. Frances Cabrini, Religious
13 All Saints of the Order of St. Benedict
15 SUNDAY XXXIII OF THE YEAR
16 St. Gertrude the Great, Religious
17 St. Margaret of Scotland, Queen
20 St. Edmund, King & Martyr
21 Presentation of Our Lady
Dies Memorabilis of the EBC
22 SOLEMNITY OF CHRIST THE KING
Oblate Day of Recollection: Dom Paschal
23 St. Clement, Pope & Martyr
29 SUNDAY I OF ADVENT (Cycle C)
30 St. Andrew, Apostle
