.
On August 15, the
Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, our Brother Thomas Aquinas Hall, O.S.B.,
will profess his solemn (final) vows. This is an especially joyous event for us
because we have celebrated solemn vows so rarely in the past decades.
The ceremony, celebrated
during mass, includes the chanting of the Litany of the Saints. I described
this in my book Downtown Monks) Last
night Fr. Luke and I spent some time working on the litany to make sure that we
were including as many appropriate saints as possible (e.g. Thomas Aquinas and
several monastic saints such as Gertrude).
This morning I opened my
missal to find that the Second Reading for Sunday, Aug 14, is from Hebrews
12:1-4. It begins “Brothers and sisters: Since we are surrounded by so great a
cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden of sin that clings to
us and persevere in running the race that lies before us…”
Many of us have watched at
least some of the Olympic Games, and have seen those images of the people in
the stands wearing their country’s colors and shouting encouragement to the
participants. This is the image that the author of Hebrews is offering to us.
He has just spent the previous chapter describing the faithfulness of many
famous figures of the Old Testament, he reassures his audience (many of whom
were undergoing persecution at the time) that all of these faithful witnesses
are cheering for them, encouraging them to persevere. (The word “persevere” occurs
twice in this brief passage and again two verses later.)
After meditating on this
image, I joined my brothers for Vigils and Lauds. As we sang and prayed the
psalms, I kept looking around the church at the cloud of witnesses praying with
us and encouraging us. In the stained glass windows across from me were St.
Anne, St. Benedict, St. Agnes, and St. Francis, and high overhead the twelve
apostles. But there were also our immediate ancestors in the faith – the monks
who prayed in this church in the past 150 years.
The concept of the “Communion of Saints” is not about a bunch of dead people: it includes all of us saints on
earth who are working at being holy. When we sing the litany on Monday, I will
be silently invoking Fr. Boniface and Fr. Mark, members of our community who have
died in the past few months and who are now cheering us on from the grandstand.
I will also be very much
aware that I, too, am one of the witnesses: the monks and the members of the congregation
will be cheering for Brother Tom as we run the race beside him, encouraging him
– and one another – to persevere to the end.
Please join us in cheering
for him. Go, Tom!
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