January 2008
Vol. XXIX No. 1
Dear Oblates and Friends of Portsmouth,
One of the Entrance antiphons used in the liturgy during Christmastide makes use of what is known as the "accommodated sense of scripture," i.e., changing the literal sense of a passage in order to apply it to an entirely different situation because the words fit so well. The quotation is taken from the Book of Wisdom, alluding to the birth of Jesus as the Word of God coming down from a heavenly throne into the terrestrial world. When peaceful silence lay over all, and night had run half of her swift course, thy almighty Word, O Lord, leaped down from heaven, from the royal throne. What this passage actually refers to is an avenging angel sent down by God to punish Pharaoh and the Egyptians for enslaving his Chosen People and convince them to let Moses lead the Jews out of Egypt and journey to the land they had been promised. Both the tone and the meaning differ in the New Dispensation from the Old. In the Old Testament vengeance and judgment are linked to freedom from oppression. The firstborn males of the Egyptians, both man and beast, are struck down as a warning of what might happen on a grander scale if the Egyptians persist in their refusal to let God's people go.
When this quotation is applied to the birth of Jesus, there is a profound change from its literal application to a single group of people to its use as a metaphor to describe the divine intervention whereby the whole human race would be saved through the incarnation of Jesus, the Son of God. Jesus' birth, ministry and death are the means by which humanity has been saved from the captivity of the forces of evil and darkness. The Evangelist John speaks of Jesus as both Word of God which has become flesh and the Light which has come into the world to dispel this darkness and bring to all who are born of the Light the capacity to become children of the Light and heirs of the Kingdom of Promise. Much of the theology of the Redemption can be extracted from this passage from the Book of Wisdom: the necessity for man to be saved and the divine plan to effect this salvation. The Feast of the Nativity celebrated at Christmastide commemorates the beginning of Jesus' role in this plan, which continues through His ministry during which He as the Word of God communicates the Good News and which He seals by His passion, death and resurrection in the Paschal Mystery.
Throughout his Gospel Luke emphasizes the virtue of humility, beginning with the humble circumstances of Jesus' birth and ending with his ignominious crucifixion between two thieves. Luke deliberately sets the birth of the Messiah in a stable in the small, nondescript village of Bethlehem, but it is also linked with David, Jesus' ancestor through Joseph, his legal father, and prophetically, the place from which the Messiah would come, as the descendant of David. From you Bethlehem shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel. David too began his life as a humble shepherd, but shepherd also connotes God's relationship with his people; for his elect he is their Shepherd-King, as in the familiar Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
When Matthew describes the events of the Nativity, he concentrates on the opposite stratum of society. Not lowly shepherds, but wise men make a journey from a distant land, led by a special star that guides them to the place of the Messiah's birth. And they offer costly presents, after paying homage to the one they acknowledge to be king. These two accounts of Luke and Matthew are literary ways of making the point that an extraordinary event has taken place, one that has the most profound significance for the human race. For Luke, angelic choirs sing the glad tidings to representatives of the Chosen People. Appropriately, it is to shepherds of Judea that the birth of the Messiah is first revealed, whereas in Matthew's Gospel, the Magi represent the Gentiles whom the Birth of the Messiah also includes in the plan of salvation. The joy of Christmas is something to be shared by the whole of humanity, not confined to a single people or nation. Jesus has been born that all mankind might be rescued from the powers of darkness and brought into his saving light.
The alternate prayer for the Missa in Aurora provides an excellent summation of them meaning of the season of Christmastide through the birth of the long-awaited Messiah, Emmanuel, God with us.
Almighty God and Father of Light,
A child is born for us and a son is given to us.
Your eternal Word leaped down from heaven in the silent watches of the night;
And now your Church is filled with wonder at the nearness of God.
Open our hearts to receive his life,
And increase our vision with the rising of the dawn,
That our lives may be filled with his glory and his peace.
Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Liturgical Calendar for January
Cycle of Prayer: Christian Unity; the Sick and those who care for them; Students and Teachers; the Unemployed
1 Solemnity of Mary Mother of God
4 St. Elizabeth Seton, Founder
5 St. Simeon the Stylite, Hermit
6 EPIPHANY OF THE LORD
9 St. Gregory of Nyssa, Doctor
12 St. Benet Biscop, Abbot
Secondary Patron of E.B.C.
13 BAPTISM OF THE LORD
15 SS. Maurus and Placid, Monks
17 St. Anthony of Egypt, Abbot
18-25 Church Unity Octave
20 SUNDAY II OF THE YEAR (Cycle A)
21 St. Agnes, Martyr
24 St. Francis of Sales, Bishop
25 Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle
26 First Cistercian Abbots of Citeaux
27 SUNDAY III OF THE YEAR
28 St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor
February
3 SUNDAY IV OF THE YEAR
Oblate Day of Recollection: Abbot Matthew
Topic: The Passion of Saints Felicity and Perpetua
Monastery Notes
A Guide to the Abbey Church has now been published and is available at the entrance to the Church. Illustrations of significant works of art have been included to help visitors appreciate the importance of ecclesiastical art to the Benedictine heritage and how they have been integrated into the structure of the Church. Plans for the renovation of the Church next year are nearing completion, but raising the necessary funds to cover expenses remains a primary concern for the project to be a success. The Church is scheduled to close for a year beginning in June of 2008.
A bronze bust of A Vietnamese Lady by a twentieth-century Vietnamese artist, T. G. Quoi, has recently been donated to the monastery by an alumnus, William Rives, Class of 1967, in memory of his parents. He teaches at the American School in Singapore. The sculpture, a valuable contribution to our collection of Asian art, will be placed in the Cortazzo Administration Building.
The annual community retreat was given by Dom Aidan Bellenger, Abbot of Downside Abbey in England. Dom Aidan has published several books on English Benedictine history. In his conferences he stressed the importance of tradition in contributing to the identity of a monastic house, and the necessity for a community to retain its vision of the ideal monastery if it is to remain true to the spirit of The Rule of Saint Benedict.
Landscape work has begun for the restoration of the garden by the Gazebo, one of the original buildings designed by Richard Upjohn in 1864. It will be a formal rose garden, reminiscent of what it looked like in the mid-twentieth century, with many features added to enhance the area and provide a peaceful place to view the panoramic beauty of the Naragansett Bay. The garden has been given by alumni anonymously in memory of their father, for whom this site was a treasured memory.
Francis Thompson 1859 - 1907
November 13 of last year marked the centennial of the death of the poet Francis Thompson in London. He was the son of parents who were converts to Catholicism and whose practice of the faith deeply affected Francis throughout his life. At first, he felt a call to the priesthood, studying in a seminary for six years, but was judged to be an unsuitable candidate. Attempts at finding gainful employment as a student in medicine and then in the Army were frustrated by his rebellious character, and until the age of thirty, he was a drifter in London, barely able to keep himself alive by odd jobs, disowned by his conventional family, becoming addicted to opium, and living in squalor and extreme privation. At length, he was rescued from the life of a vagrant and befriended by a prostitute, who gave him care and a temporary home. Here he wrote his first poems, and after submitting some of them to a Catholic publisher, Wilfrid Meynell, his talent was recognized and the Meynell family prevailed upon him to be cured of the diseases that afflicted him and his drug addiction. After a year in a sanitarium and a prolonged stay at a monastery in Sussex, he became a dependant of the Meynells until his premature death at 47. With the Meynells, he found the order, security and encouragement, which enabled him to find an outlet for expressing his rich imagination in poetry marked by the baroque style employed by the metaphysical poets whom he so much admired.
The Hound of Heaven, an autobiographical account of Thompson's spiritual odyssey, is his most noteworthy and characteristic work, a poem justly admired for its wealth of imagery, its ability to express emotion in memorable language, and its quest for spiritual truth that gives it universal appeal. The closing lines of the poem describe the end of the poet's flight from God as he is brought to the realization that Jesus contains all that he had ever sought: All which I took from thee I did but take/ Not for thy harms,/ But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms/ All which thy child's mistake/ Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home;/ Rise, clasp My hand, and come!
###
