A most successful and well-attended Summer retreat took place at the Abbey from 2nd to 5th August this year 2025 (a month later than last to catch the higher temperatures!)
Sister Tamsin Geach OP gave the Retreat---three talks over two days bracketed by the arrivals day and departures day-- and Storm Floris!
This year's response to our Monastic Experience Weekend invitation was most encouraging. Those invited had to be single Catholic men, below the age of 40, practising their faith, and at least open to the idea of a possible monastic vocation. Over 30 young men applied: probably more than we have ever had before, for a single event of this sort.
I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!
In the plan of St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, travelling with determination towards his Passion, Death and Resurrection. The first incident in that journey recounted by St. Luke is an unhappy attempt to enter a Samaritan village. There James and John ask if they should call down fire from heaven to burn these people up (cf. Gn 19:24). But Jesus rebukes them (Lk 9:54).
Our summer this year has been marked by scarcely broken hot sunshine. Actually for many of us the weather has been too hot, and too dry. But on Monday 4th August this tranquil calm was rudely interrupted. “Storm Floris”, as it has been named, was an unseasonable cyclone sweeping in from the Atlantic
First as a deacon and now as a priest, I have always found the various secret prayers prescribed by the rubrics very consoling – the obligatory ones, which should be said during the liturgy, as well as some of those no longer strictly required. For example, as you prepare the chalice on the altar at the Offertory, you are meant to say: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity”.
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