Celebration, Prayer & Worship

For the Benedictine monks of Prinknash Abbey, Christmas is also a time to push the boat out

- Katie Jarvis

For the community of 10 Benedictine monks at Prinknash Abbey, Christmas is a time of celebration: of prayer and worship, as always; and of sitting down to a turkey dinner with all the trimmings: “We push the boat out at Christmas,” says Father Abbot Martin McLaughlin.

The community lives, works and worships together in a monastery building that dates back to the 1520s; there has been a chapel on the site since 1339.

The monks also welcome all members of the public to share in the peacefulness of the estate – whether a dog-walk, a homemade lunch in the café using herbs from the garden, a time of prayerfulness in the chapel, or on day-retreat.

For while monks live a very different sort of life, they also understand and experience the same emotions as the visitors they warmly welcome. And they encourage people on retreat to use that safe environment to explore feelings human beings are good at avoiding.

“People are afraid of not being busy, and we’re a counter-culture to that,” Father Martin says. “We also know loneliness but we’re not afraid of that, either. We’ve seen the value of it, and we believe that God fills that loneliness.”

Where do you live and why?

At Prinknash Abbey – for a very simple reason. When I was young, my family lived a mile from a medieval monastery called Pluscarden, near Elgin in Scotland. I worked with the monks there for two years, mainly in the garden, and got to know them well. At the age of 19, I thought: I want to be like them. It was an unusual but good life, and it spoke to whatever was going on inside me. The monks gave me a picture of Prinknash and recommended I come here. There was a connection: a community from Prinknash had re-founded Pluscarden [in 1948] when it lay in partial ruins. The thing that struck me was the greenery of the Prinknash estate: a different kind of beauty from the Highlands.