On Sunday 16 August 2020, the transferred Feast of the Assumption, Dom Martin Birrell joyfully celebrated the Silver Jubilee of his monastic vows.
Especially in view of his role as Oblate Master, there were numerous oblates and friends of the community who wished to be there for the occasion. Restrictive regulations connected with Covid-19 made this difficult, but great efforts were made to accommodate as many as possible who asked and were able to come.
Fr. Martin himself celebrated our 8 o’clock Sunday Mass, held these days in our Transepts. In the circumstances, in spite of its rather diminished form, this Mass also acquired something of the nature of a Jubilee celebration.
Then at 11.00 a.m. the Community’s Conventual Mass followed, with Fr. Abbot presiding, vested in the beautiful Fernham St. Benedict Chasuble. Between the two Masses, all the Chairs in the Transepts were carefully cleaned, to allow for their safe re-use. The central doors of the Sanctuary were opened, so as to join, as far as possible, both parts of our Church, as we normally do for the annual Diocesan Pilgrimage. Careful calculation then allowed for the seating of 49 people, distributed in every available space. This number, providentially and happily, falls below the maximum number of 50 permitted by current emergency law.
Warm and bright sunshine smiled down on this festive, if socially distanced and necessarily masked, gathering. At the Offertory of the Mass, after Fr. Abbot’s homily, Fr. Martin came forward to renew his vows.
“I renew the vows I made twenty five years ago, and I promise my stability, conversion of life and obedience, according to the Rule of our holy Father St. Benedict, in this monastery of Our Lady and St. John the Baptist in the valley of St. Andrew at Pluscarden, in the presence of the Right Reverend Dom Anselm Atkinson, who is now Abbot of this monastery; with gratitude and joy for the past, with humble confidence for the future, relying on the mercy of God and the prayers of my brothers.”
This most beautiful Mass, to which the Psalms of the Office of Sext were attached, lasted only slightly under two hours; but surely no one present noticed the passing of so much time. After the Mass Mrs. Pamela Coate, who was present at our Opening Ceremony on 8 September 1948, expressed on behalf of all our oblates and friends congratulations, best wishes and prayers. Her speech was warmly received.
After Solemn Vespers of the Assumption the Te Deum was sung before the exposed Blessed Sacrament. Fr. Martin stood in the centre for that, holding a lit candle, to express his Jubilee gratitude, and ever continued commitment to this life, in faith and in hope.
In the evening the community watched a Film, published in 2019, about the Cistercians of Mount St. Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire. Called “Outside the City”, it was directed by Nick Hamer. All agreed it was an outstanding piece of film, most moving and inspiring, and encouraging all of us to persevere in our vocation, with ever more generosity and gratitude.
Homily for Fr Martin’s Silver Jubilee (Fr. Abbot)
Fr Martin is a rare kind of monk. St Benedict says there are four kinds of monks. You will not find among them Fr Martin’s kind. St Benedict is cautious about admitting persons of this kind into the monastery, and he avoids classifying them. He wants any distinctive collective identity such persons might have to be submerged in the community. One refers of course to priests.
However, monastic history sometimes defies monastic tradition. The great figures of the modern Benedictine revival were often secular priests who became monks. These were men of bold imagination and initiative, without whom the monastic world now would be much the poorer: Proper Guéranger, founder of Solesmes, the Wolter brothers who founded Beuron, Père Muard, founder of La Pire qui Vire, later Blessed Columba Marmion. And Fr Martin.
These were great priests, who made enormous contributions to the monastic life because they were great priests, and we remember them with gratitude and veneration. If the monastic tradition expresses reluctance to accept priests into the ranks of monks, it isn’t out of lack of love and respect for the priesthood and priests. On the contrary. It is out of respect, a recognition that the priesthood is a vocation complete in itself, containing a complete programme for a man’s life to which he gives his whole person. Why then should a priest become a monk? One might say also of a monk who goes on to to be a priest, why, since the monastic vocation also is complete in itself? I don’t intend to answer those questions. We have before us the evidence that it can and does happen.
When a man is both a priest and a monk, does this mean he has two vocations? That would seem strange, like saying of a married person that he or she has two vocations, to be a spouse, and to be a parent. Surely it is one vocation, realized in a diversity of relationships. Vocation is not a job to be done or a role to be filled. It is a call from the Lord that gives direction to the entirety of one’s life, to which the response is total commitment of one’s self, not a balancing act.
The vocation of a monk-priest is one vocation. There are different ways in which it is arrived at. Most often, a man is a monk first. The later acceptance of priesthood is a development of his monastic vocation. The possibility that a monk might become a priest says something about the monastic vocation: the prayer for the Church and world; the pastoral dimension that can extend outside.
The possibility of a priest becoming a monk says something about the priesthood. A priest’s pastoral care is not confined to the time he spends with his people or his physical proximity to them. Retired priests have not really retired. They are completing their ministry to all who have been part of their flock, through their prayer and especially their daily offering of the Mass.
Once a priest, like the Good Shepherd, has taken one of the flock onto his shoulders, as it were, he doesn’t put them down, he carries them wherever he goes. When he moves on to a new place he takes with him all those he has cared for, in the spirit.
Fr Martin, following the example of Our Lord Jesus Christ, is relentless in pursuit of every member of his flock, and having found a sheep he never lets it go. For him being a monk has not meant leaving the flock. It has given him a wider vision so he can keep them all in view, and can go to them, in the spirit, in whatever crevise they might have fallen into or on any isolated ledge or peak where they might have stranded themselves.
Most suitably his years of monastic profession are framed by the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Good Shepherd, having taken to himself flesh from the Blessed Virgin, never let go of that flesh, never abandoned it to the power of death, but carried it to the throne of God, where she shares already in the fullness of his resurrection, in anticipation of the resurrection from the dead of all who have fallen asleep in Christ. May she who has kept Fr Martine all these years continue to protect him and keep him faithful to his vocation in the years to come.