July 2010
Vol. XXXI, No. 7
Dear Oblates and Friends of Portsmouth,
The practice of hospitality is a custom to which Saint Benedict attaches the highest importance, giving it a special chapter in his Rule because it combines the twofold commandment of love of God and love of neighbor by honoring God in the guest. For centuries monasteries provided travelers and pilgrims the only shelter to be found in the absence of inns. In biblical times and throughout the ancient world, the practice of hospitality was a sacred duty, a responsibility that embodied for pagans as well as Jews the virtues of piety, goodness and friendship, a way of showing one's neighborliness in the observance of a divinely sanctioned precept In Homer's Odyssey, the Phaeacians were noted for the way they treated all strangers; the daughter of the king, when encountering the shipwrecked Odysseus, advised her companions not to fear this man in distress, but to befriend and care for him since the gods were wont to visit mortals in disguise.
Two memorable examples of hospitality can be found in the Old and the New Testaments in the accounts of Abraham ministering to three angels who appeared to him in the guise of strangers as a sign of God's favor. Without realizing who they were, Abraham instantly served them a banquet on a bounteous scale, killing a fatted calf and offering them freshly baked loaves, meat and bread being iconic symbols of welcome. (In the New Testament Jesus would offer the hungry multitude loaves and fishes in a spectacular miracle.) The angelic mission to Abraham was to reveal to him that in a year's time he would beget a child despite his wife Sarah's barrenness and their advanced age. Through this child he would become the father of a people too many to be numbered, a prophecy fulfilled in his being the physical ancestor of the Jews and the Arabs and the spiritual ancestor of all Christians. In this way he would begin the plan of salvation, that was to culminate in the birth of Jesus, his descendant. Later, the church fathers were to find in this incident a foreshadowing of the Trinity, which could only be revealed by Jesus near the end of His ministry to his apostles, but finally proclaimed by Paul as a mystery to be shared by all who would become disciples of Jesus. This scene of the three angels has been immortalized by Andrei Rublev, Russia's most celebrated iconographer, in his icon, The Trinity.
In the New Testament there is a parallel scene in which humans act as hosts to Divinity in the person of Jesus, the incident in which Martha, Mary and Lazarus extend hospitality to Jesus, with the powerful lesson brought out in the necessity of observing the correct notion of priorities. The practical Martha has bustled about, preparing the meal to be served their honored guest, while Mary chooses to listen to the Words that Jesus utters to the others gathered in the house. Martha was doing exactly what custom and good manners dictated as she observed the ritual of hospitality, while, to her way of thinking, Mary was negligent and should be reprimanded by Jesus for shirking her duty, allowing her, Martha, to do all the preparation. Jesus' response is terse and profound in his pronouncement of the unum necessarium: "Only one thing is necessary, and Mary has chosen the better part," the classic text for illustrating the two ways of serving God, through the active and the contemplative lives. Both ways are necessary, but there is an order of importance. Vocation, the call of God through grace, not personal choice, determines which way is suited to an individual. Elsewhere, Jesus had occasion to warn his disciples, "Seek you first the kingdom of God, and all things will be added to you."
The words on the front door of the Abbey Church are intended to remind those who enter of the high status conferred on all who call themselves Christians. The text is not only a welcome, but a lesson taken from St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians in which he teaches that we are each important parts of the structure of the Church, not the building but the mystical Body of Christ, in which we have a particular part to play, a role determined by God but which is up to us to accept or to reject in our exercise of free will.
This passage translates:
You are no longer aliens or foreign visitors: you are citizens like all the saints, and part of God's household. You are part of a building that has the apostles and prophets for its foundations, and Christ Jesus himself for its main cornerstone.
This is what is inscribed on the copper doors, but the part which immediately follows in the Epistle helps further clarify the meaning:
As every structure is aligned on Him, all grow into one holy temple in the Lord, and you too, in Him, are being built into a house where God lives, in the Spirit.
It is up to us, in our response to the grace God extends to each of us, to make ourselves worthy of this high calling, not as strangers or guests, but as citizens and members of the household of God, and through our relationship to Jesus, as his brothers and sisters, children of God and, therefore, heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven.
LITURGICAL CALENDAR FOR JULY
3 St. Thomas, Apostle
5 SUNDAY XIV OF THE YEAR
(omit St. Benedict, Abbot, Patron of Europe)
11 SUNDAY XV OF THE YEAR
14 Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks
15 St. Bonaventure, Bishop & Doctor
18 SUNDAY XVI OF THE YEAR
22 St. Mary Magdalen
23 St. Bridget of Sweden, Abbess
Patron of Europe
(Omit St. James the Greater, Apostle)
25 SUNDAY XVII OF THE YEAR
26 SS Joachim and Anne, parents of Our Lady
29 SS Martha, Mary & Lazarus, Friends of Jesus
30 St. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop, Doctor
31 St. Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of Jesuits
MONASTERY NOTES
Three students were received into the church at the Easter Vigil mass at which Abbot Caedmon presided. Large congregations attended each of the four Easter masses, an indication that Catholicism is in a healthier state than the secular press would have us believe.
A member of the faculty, Kevin Morrissey, an Army reservist, has been called to duty in Afghanistan, and is in frequent touch with the Abbey. He is stationed in Kabul and acts in a training and mentoring capacity. The dangers to which all who serve there was graphically illustrated recently when a member of his command, a sergeant from Fall River, was killed by a suicide bomber, an all too frequent occurrence in Afghanistan, but given national attention in the United States. The conditions in this war-torn country are primitive beyond belief, with the people suffering from years of political corruption coupled with continuous attacks by the Taliban extremists, with a largely illiterate population and a government that can do little to improve the situation. To help address the lack of basic education, Mr. Morrissey and his group of soldiers have adopted a school and have organized a program to help the children to live a more normal life through providing them with text books, basic supplies and sports articles. The students at Portsmouth are contributing generously to this endeavor, realizing that in this way they can make a difference and become part of the war effort in a peaceful way.
KING JAMES I of ENGLAND
and The Authorized Version of The Bible
This year begins a year-long celebration of the 500th anniversary of the publication of The King James Bible in 1611. King James, who authorized the translation of what has become the most influential book in the English language, has never been adequately appreciated for some of the genuine achievements of his reign. Welcomed at first as a fresh, new monarch after the death of the aged and no longer popular Queen Elizabeth, James quickly reversed his auspicious beginning through a variety of factors. First, there were his ungainly physical appearance and his distrust of the masses; then, his tendency to rely on favorites, especially on the horde of hungry Scots in his train, eager to taste the fruits of the Promised Land. The son of the beautiful, tragic but imprudent Mary Queen of Scots and the handsome, temperamental Lord Darnley, he was always regarded as a foreigner, unwilling to court the popularity that benefited Elizabeth, whose many portraits flattered her and kept her young and virginal till the very end. James lived in constant fear for his safety, partly owing to the violent deaths of both his parents and an attempt to overthrow him by the unruly earls in Scotland. Placed on the throne as an infant by the forced abdication of his mother, James was brought up a Presbyterian by his Regents, but learned, after assuming kingship, to deal with the factions dominating the government with considerable success, but fostering in him his unfortunate philosophy of kingship, which he expounded in a book, the Basilikon Doron. This book insisted on the notion of the "divine right of kings," involving him in disputes with Parliament, even eliciting a rebuttal from the redoubtable Catholic scholar, Cardinal Bellarmine. An intellectual, James was fluent in Latin and French, well versed in theology, and an author on topical subjects such as Demonology treating of witchcraft and the evils of tobacco, recently imported from the New World. The conversion of his Queen to Catholicism, while an embarrassment, caused him at first to be lenient to Catholics and gave them hope for toleration. This, however, quickly evaporated in the wake of the ill-conceived Gunpowder Plot of 1605, the abortive attempt by a band of impatient Catholic gentry to blow up the Houses of Parliament at the opening session when the King and Queen would be present. James began his reign by bringing about the end of the long, costly war with Spain. But most of his political decisions were ill considered, leading ultimately to the execution of his son and successor, Charles I. King Henry IV of France summed up the anomalies in James character by referring to him as "the wisest fool in Christendom." But his greatest and most enduring achievement was in the realm of the written word through his responsibility for a new translation of the Bible by the leading scholars of his day and his recognition of William Shakespeare's dramatic genius even before coming to England as worthy of his generous support. It was mostly during the reign of King James I and largely through his patronage that England enjoyed its golden age of literature.
