Dom Dunstan Robertson Returns Home

Finally, in early September 2026, our very own Fr. Dunstan Robertson has returned to Pluscarden!

Fr. Dunstan was professed in 1991, and ordained in 2009.

He has been absent from the community, always under obedience and in its service, for quite a proportion of his monastic life.

He spent around four and a half years in Rome, working there at the General Curia of our Benedictine Congregation.

Then he spent around thirteen years living at our daughter house of St. Mary's Monastery in Petersham, Massachusetts, USA.

While there he unfortunately developed various quite inconvenient health issues. A team of American doctors have worked on his case. Transferring back from them to the U.K. NHS has not been not particularly straightforward!

The Pluscarden community is anyway delighted to have him back at last. Without doubt, once he has recovered from jet lag, he will have much to contribute!

Homily for the 8 o’clock Mass, 23 August 2026, Sunday 21A: Matthew 16:13-20

Who do you say that I am?

Really none of the disciples at Caesarea Philippi needed advanced qualifications in rocket science to answer this question. For them, and for readers of St. Matthew’s Gospel, the answer must be stark staring obvious. That is, unless you believe with the Pharisees that Jesus is a blaspheming imposter, or else possibly a raving madman: in either case he would have to be acting with the power of all the demons of hell.

Homily for the Assumption, Sunday 16 August 2026

A couple of months ago I spoke at Mass here about the Holy Eucharist, based on a book I’d recently read by an American scholar called Brant Petre. That book was called “Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist”.

Summer Oblate Residential Retreat 31st July - 3rd August 2026

This year the Summer Oblate Residential Retreat was preached by the Very Reverend Ann Catherine Swailes OP, Prioress of the Dominican Convent in Cambridge.
Sr. Ann's title was ‘Learn to love and leave all other: some Medieval (-ish) musings on the Great Commandment’.