Ireland’s sole Benedictine monastery, at Glenstal Abbey, Co. Limerick, is bucking the bleak vocations pattern with the recruitment this autumn of three new novices. Prior Fr Brendan Coffey said this is the largest number of new recruits his order has had in recent years. The three young men are Simon Burns and Eamon O’Herlihy from Dublin and Alex Zaragosa from Austria.
The trio will now enter their novitiate year following which they will take temporary vows for three further years.
Fr Coffey said their arrival was “quite a lot” for the 40-strong Glenstal community and “gives everybody a boost. For a monastic community, it’s good every now and again to have people come in,” he remarked.
He said that monastic life was “less affected by the general trend of society” while conceding it was “not for everybody. We’re not a teaching or nursing order, monastic life is about the life,” he remarked.
Glenstal monks, he said, did all sorts of things, looking after the school, the gift shop and the farm but “it’s not about the job that you do, it’s about the life that is lived.”
Fr Coffey said that for his three new recruits, the novitiate year would be about learning about monastic life and life in the community.
“Learning about life in this community is about experiencing it and living it.”
“In the mornings, they will have classes in Latin, scripture, the psalms, theology, liturgy, monastic fathers, spirituality and very importantly, the rule of St Benedict. In the afternoons, they do work in the garden, the farm or the guesthouse to get a flavour of life here - there is not just one job that we have.”
SIC: CIN/IE