Easter-Summer-Fall-Christmas

The monks of St. Gregory's Abbey have been publishing their small magazine under the name "Abbey Letter" since 1969, having changed to that name from "Benedicite" at the same time that English replaced Latin as the language of worship in the abbey church. The four issues of the Abbey Letter published in the course of a year were labeled "Spring," "Summer," "Fall," and "Winter," an easy, sensible scheme. However, the Abbey Letters mailed out in December 1973 said "Christmas 1973" on the cover. The following issue read "Easter 1974." But there was no change in the first part of the date on the next two issues; they remained "Summer" and "Fall." And the yearly sequence is still Easter-Summer-Fall- Christmas, not quite logical, a bit odd.
   I had joined the community in December of 1971, and I don't remember that there was any discussion in 1973 about changing "winter" to "Christmas" and "spring" to "Easter." Although I don't know why the dating scheme was changed, it seems to me that it was a good idea. Besides adding a note of mild eccentricity, a traditional monastic trait, the sequence expresses something about the relationship of time and eternity, about God's time and our time. That is, two historical (datable, in principle) events crucial to us Christians and, we believe, to all creation, receive mention in the titling of two of the four issues of the year, coexisting with two expressions of repetitious cyclical time in the names of two seasons of the year.
   Right now we are occupied with the Easter Abbey Letter, concerned about getting it to our readers before Easter, but not too long before. Even though Easter's date moves from year to year with the wandering moon, it has a definite place in earth's own calendar. Sometimes it wanders too far for convenience; there was one year when the Abbey Letter mailed in spring said "Eastertide" because we could not manage to get it out by that year's early Easter. The summer and fall issues are easier to schedule we allow ourselves a couple of weeks leeway in getting those into the mail.
   I come across the opinion here and there that the Resurrection took place "out of time" and should not be thought of as a historical event. Certainly God's own metatemporal eternity was involved, but his "Time" touched and invaded our earthly time most wonderfully. The Resurrection is a real event in our earth's history, an event which overarches all our days, past, present, and future. Jesus' resurrection culminates the earthly life which began with the day for which our Christmas Abbey Letter is named. I haven't heard anyone suggest that our Lord's birth did not take place within time. We would not insist on December 25, but we are certain that Jesus does have an earth- time birthday.
   Something that did not take place in time, though, was God's first gift to us, that gift without which other gifts could have no being: Creation. It didn't take place in time; it was the beginning of time. For the time of this earth the daily round of light and dark, the changing phases of the moon, the procession of the seasons is inherent in God's creation of the world, and was established from the beginning. So we don't have an anniversary on which to celebrate creation. But God's act of creation must not be forgotten nor our thanks for it omitted. For God's creative love is the basis of our being, here and now, the power by which you and I exist. For that love we give him glory.
   We monks have an advantage here; early every Sunday at Lauds we offer in praise the great hymn of Creation Benedicite omnia opera Domini (see page 88 in the Book of Common Prayer). Both the Daily Office in the Book of Common Prayer and the seven-fold monastic office that we pray here at St. Gregory's are offered in response to God's gift of being, both to ourselves and to the whole creation. The returning day by day, even hour by hour, to the praise of God the Creator is an imitation of God's own constancy and faithfulness in providing the arena where his saving work rains blessings on his creatures. We can't say when this first gift began to be, but we do know that wonderful things have have taken place there within the passage of created time.
   Having been born into a Christian family, I had known from my earliest days that God is the maker of heaven and earth. But that fact did not become real to me until St. Francis de Sales told me, in his "Introduction to the Devout Life" I must have been in my early 20s at the time "Consider that a certain number of years ago you were not yet in the world and that your being was a mere nothing. Where were we, O my soul, at that time?...God has drawn you out of this nothing to make you what you now are..." I have not yet come fully to realize the implications of my having been "drawn out of nothing" by the Creator and held in existence by him. But I often consider my dependent state and God's power and love in bringing me and everyone and everything out of nothing. And especially do I ponder it at Easter, when we see that power and love acting in a new and previously unheard of way in the Resurrection. God's ingenuity was not exhausted in that first material creation. There is more to come. More has come! In Christ the First Fruits there is the new, improved humanity, the continuation of creation, the ultimate result (so far as we are concerned, I suppose) of the big bang. We can't put a date on the first appearance of matter out of nothing, but we can put a date on the beginning of matter's glorious transformation in our resurrected Lord.
   And we can't place a date at the other end of time, at least not yet. It will indeed be on a date within our earthly scheme of time when our Lord Jesus Christ comes in glory to finish this present phase of creation's being and to perfect the new one. So with the Abbey Letter dating, we name the two great events of Christmas and Easter, which have anniversaries to celebrate on dates that at least reflect historical reality. And with them we use vague temporal names of the year's seasons to remember two equally stupendous undatable realities that ought to have a place somewhere in our brain and our heart at every moment of every day, even if they have no special place in the Church's liturgical year.
---Fr. Jude