No return to Melleray for monks
Sermons at Mount Melleray Abbey were never a performance, but a serious attempt to say something worthwhile and solid.
Hopes the Melleray monks would come back were dashed by the recent Cistercian announcement. The Our Lady of Silence community, comprising monks from Melleray, Roscrea and Mellifont, have spent the past 13 or 14 months together in Roscrea discerning their future. They’ve decided to relocate to Mellifont, Cullen, in Co. Louth, and near the Cistercian ruins of Old Mellifont, founded nearly 900 years ago.
Though I wasn’t a very regular visitor or guest, I have stayed for retreats and found the simple routine of rising early for morning prayer and Mass (I never braved the 4.30am prayers, too snug under the blankets!), sinking into the slower pace of the liturgy, free from pressure of parish expectation of a ‘quick Mass’.
The old-style ringing of the large bell, which sent vibrations through the guesthouse and calling out over the farmland, robed monks and guests making their way to the draughty but peaceful choir chapel, was a call to live to the beat of a different drum. Food was unfancy, but wholesome, other guests, an unusual combination of personalities and backgrounds. Finance was never the focus, a guideline donation was a suggestion, not a charge. Addiction, more than affluence, was the backdrop for some guests. Always down to earth, there were no pretences but an open acknowledgement of our need of God and others.
Sermons were never a performance, but a serious attempt to say something worthwhile and solid. Men like Fr Francis, the unofficial ‘welcomer’ and ‘greeter’ of visitors with a treasure trove of jokes and witty tales conveying a deep understanding and acceptance of our human foibles, or Portlaw’s Fr Kevin Fogarty, who shared a mystical experience while praying – the only one in a long life of meditation and worship. Kevin, to me, a tiny, frail old man full of wisdom and warmth, focused to the core of being a good monk. He also gave me a friend’s anonymous reflection on the life of a monk, a breathtaking personal insight into a very different way of life, contemplating on the heart of human living and praying for the world.
One monk, a few days ago, said, "I left Melleray 90% sure that Melleray would be chosen as our permanent location, but this is where we are now. Not easy for Melleray or Roscrea people but it’s not the end of the world. We are not without hope."
In 1832 Bishop Abraham, from Clonea Power, laid the foundation stone in Melleray. Now the monastery is left for another purpose, a fresh beginning, while in the next year or two the monks make their way to Mellifont.
