Pluscarden Retreat

This today from Dom Augustine. I warmly recommend this retreat at Pluscarden.

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Pluscarden Monastic experience retreat 2008
Live the monastic life for six days

The Benedictine monks of Pluscarden Abbey are organising a Monastic Experience Retreat for single Catholic men aged 18-40 to be held at the Abbey on 1st – 6th September 2008. The format will be the same as the successful retreat held last year and those who attend will live the same life as the monks and follow the monastic timetable. They will be in choir with the monks, do some lectio divina (spiritual reading) and prayer as we do, eat in the monastic refectory, do some manual work with the brethren each afternoon etc. There will also be a few talks and discussions on things such as the meaning of monastic life, monastic prayer and the Divine Office, and Gregorian Chant, as well as a tour of the Abbey some periods of recreation and a chance to speak with the brethren.

This is an opportunity for men who are considering a monastic vocation to experience our life ‘on the inside’ as well as for any men in the age group to share the riches of monastic spirituality. Those who came on previous retreats have ended up as monks, seminarians, diocesan priests, members of other religious orders and secular institutes as well as in various other ways of life.

Pluscarden Abbey was founded in 1230. The monastic community died out after the Reformation in 1560 but Benedictine monks from England returned to the medieval buildings in 1948 and resumed the monastic round of prayer and work. Over the years the buildings have been restored and at present the cloister is being completed. The community now consists of 30 monks, some of whom live in a daughter house at Petersham, USA and in a new monastic foundation in Ghana, West Africa. The monks live the classical Benedictine life of prayer and work centred on Holy Mass and the Divine Office celebrated according to the traditional schema of St Benedict, all of which is sung in Latin with Gregorian Chant. For more information on our way of life see the Pluscarden Abbey website

For further information on the retreat, contact Fr Augustine by email or by post at:
Pluscarden Abbey
Elgin
IV30 8UA