The 21st of August this year, the feast of St. Pius X, marked the 50th anniversary of first monastic vows of our own Fr. Giles.
The event was marked by a fine and well attended celebration in our Abbey Church. Many friends joined members of Fr. Giles' family and the monastic community in giving thanks to God for this notable milestone.
Fr. Abbot Anselm presided at the Mass, and preached.
Among other noteworthy guests for the occasion were our Bishop Hugh, and Prior Bede and Br. Louis of Kristo Buase Monastery in Ghana, and Br. Isidore of Petersham, Massachusetts. Some 16 guest Priests concelebrated the Mass.
After the Mass the crowd adjourned to enjoy a fine buffet lunch, blessed with warm sunshine for those choosing to sit out.
Fr. Giles currently serves the community as Prior and guestmaster.
Ad multos annos!
HOMILY FOR FR GILES GOLDEN JUBILEE 21ST AUGUST 2023
We blow the trumpet for Fr Giles today. It is his golden jubilee. In the book of Leviticus it is prescribed that after counting off ‘seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall be to you forty-nine years, then you shall send abroad the loud trumpet … you shall send abroad the trumpet throughout all your land, and you shall sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all who dwell therein. It shall be a jubilee for you.’ (Lev 25:8-10)
The law of the jubilee laid down in Leviticus is something very beautiful. It is founded in God’s saving actions by which he freed his people from slavery in Egypt and brough them into the promised land. In the land everybody had his own allotted portion, his won tribal and family inheritance, his own place. In the course of time people might be forced to sell their land. They might fall into debt and have to sell themselves into servitude. In the fiftieth year, the jubilee, all this was to be reversed. Israelites who had gone into slavery were to be set free. The land was to be restored to its original owners. Freedom, and the economic means to live in freedom, were given back to all who had lost it. It was a great renewal of God’s original gift to his chosen people. It was the great sign of what God really wants for his people and his whole creation. This was indicated already in every sabbath when the labourer rested, and in every seventh year when the land lay fallow. In this great sabbath of sabbaths, the jubilee, there was to be total rest, freedom, joy.
In celebrating the jubilee every Israelite enjoyed his birthright, his allotted place among God’s people. When he renews the vows he made fifty years ago Fr Giles claims his allotted place.
In the jubilee celebration we look back. Fr Giles renews now what he did then. But it is not as if the intervening fifty years don’t matter. Counting the years and accounting for what happens over the years is necessary to make the jubilee happen. For the fulfilment of the law of the Old Testament there had to be a careful record of all the transactions made during the fifty years, so that land could be restored and debt remitted. And our jubilee celebration also requires an account, the record of all that Fr Giles has done over the fifty years. But who could remember it all? He served many years as Prior and Cellarer. At one time he was kitchen master. There are of course his years of service at Kristo Buase. Within our monastic Congregation he has been a liaison between the Anglophone and Francophone parts of the Congregation, a part-time activity that for some might have been a whole career.
The jubilee seen from the perspective of the law of the Old Testament is a remembrance and celebration of what God has done. There is another perspective within the Old Testament, which is that of prophecy. This is in Isaiah: ‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour. …… They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.
(Isa. 61:1-4)
The language is that of the jubilee: the proclamation of liberty and of ‘the year of the Lord’s favour’. What is described however is not just a revival of the past, but something new that God will do when he establishes his kingdom on earth.
‘They shall build up the ancient ruins.’ Some of us at our jubilees will be fairly described as ‘ancient ruins’. Not Fr Giles. He remains as youthful and fresh as ever. But we don’t need the feeling of being a spent force to make us long for the Lord to come and give new life. God’s love manifest in the prophetic promise makes us long for what is to come even in the full flow of present blessing. Our jubilee celebration is an expression of this anticipation. We ‘press on, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, toward the goal, the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.’ (Phil. 3:13-14)
God’s mercies of the past, his proven faithfulness, and the great mercy that awaits us. These are as it were two divine wings reaching out to enfold and carry us. Where the two wings meet is this present moment. The present moment is Jesus and the Gospel that he proclaims:
“He went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." (Lk. 4:16-21)
Today is the jubilee, ‘the acceptable year of the Lord’, the time of liberty and healing, made real for us by Fr Giles’ renewal of his vows and our being gathered around him by the gracious favour of the Lord.