Our Lady of Glastonbury Dom Bede Rowe, Rector of the Shrine, on a living Benedictine tradition in the West Country

It is night. The tabernacle lamp glows softly as the shrouded figures begin to illuminate the Church - first through the glow of choir candles, then a harsher light. The shadows of the sanctuary are dispelled. The rest of the Church lies in darkness. Flickering votive flames cast the long shades of the saints onto her walls. The town sleeps.

The men don their garments - black on black. The books are laid out. The lights are lit. They stand in silence. Waiting for the time, for the clock to reach its appointed moment. The hands creep to half past four. The hour has come. The praise of God is to begin. They bow, and move with gracious solemnity to their work, to the task allotted them by God.

The sons of Saint Benedict enter into the House of God, and bend the knee before the One who made them. They kneel to recollect who they are and what it is they do. At a sign, they stand and trace upon themselves the mark of their Lord, the Holy Cross of Christ, their means of salvation. The ancient third psalm begins: “Dómine, quid multiplicáti sunt qui tríbulant me?” - recited at St Benedict’s command…

At any point for almost a thousand years, from the Holy Rule being adopted by the monks of Glastonbury, to the destruction of the Abbey by the King’s forces at the time of the so-called reformation, this description of the Night Office would have been more or less accurate. In this most holy place, the oldest shrine of Our Lady in our country, and possibly the oldest north of the Alps, the praises of God have been sung by monks, and for most of that time by the monks of St Benedict. The very ground and monastic ruins are infused with prayer.

But the description given above is not just history - it is what happens now. It happens every day in the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Glastonbury. In August 2019, Bishop Declan Lang, Bishop of Clifton, canonically promulgated the statutes of the Community of Our Lady of Glastonbury as a private clerical association, living under the Rule of Our Holy Father St Benedict. From that day, our community existed and the monastic Office was again taken up in Glastonbury. We were ordained as Diocesan secular priests, but over many years we asked the Bishop for permission to live a common life under the rule of St Benedict. Eventually, after much prayer, he granted us permission to form a rule of life and live in common. We took up the Rule of Our Holy Father St Benedict, and put it into practice for our day, and in our time. We have just put forward our constitutions to become a Public Association. Pope Francis limited the power of Diocesan Bishops to approve new communities, so this is the highest level we can currently reach under the authority of the Bishop. We are ‘Diocesan Benedictines’.

Diocesan Benedictines is a fairly new idea, though of course in the 19th century Abbé Guéranger, the founder of the Abbey of Solesmes, and Abbé Muard, the founder of the monastery of La Pierre-qui-Vire, had both been Diocesan Priests. It means that we are not part of a Benedictine Congregation, such as the Subiaco Congregation or the English Benedictine Congregation. Rather, we are founded by the Diocesan Bishop, and it is his responsibility to ‘visit’ us, to make sure that we are living according to our Rule. As with anything, of course there are strengths and weaknesses in this system, but it suits us at this time, so that we can pursue our work, and sing our prayers in the way we want.

These two elements are essential in the life of any monastery, ‘ora et labora’ - work and prayer. Our ‘work’ is to serve the parishes which the Bishop gives us. We are the Parish Priests of four parishes: Our Lady in Glastonbury, St Michael in Shepton Mallet, Ss Joseph and Teresa in Wells, and Our Lady Queen of Apostles in Cheddar, and our monastery is the presbytery at Glastonbury. This is what gives us our name, the Community of Our Lady of Glastonbury, and it is also our link with those generations of monks and their ruined Abbey.

The parishes are normal diocesan parishes in which we offer the New Rites of Mass and the Sacraments as correctly and with as much dignity as possible.

Our ‘prayer’ is the heart of our community. Our conventual life is according to the ancient cursus of Psalms and is sung in Latin. We sing the entire traditional Benedictine Office from the Breviarium Monasticum, and the daily Conventual Mass is in the Extraordinary Form. Our Office books were printed in 1934, and we have not changed the order of Psalms which St Benedict gave us. We have begun to sing more and more of the Office to the Gregorian chants and tones. The only Office still sung predominantly on one single tone (recto tono) is Matins at 4.30am, but even then, who could resist an ancient setting of the Te Deum from Gloucester? But after an hour of singing you’ve warmed up!

We are often asked why we are not connected to the other monasteries. This is a bit complicated. Not only are Benedictines not like other ‘orders’ as each house is independent, to a greater or lesser extent, but we found ourselves in an interesting situation. The more liturgically traditional monasteries in our country (Farnborough, Quarr, Prinknash) do not run parishes, while the more active (more or less the English Benedictines) are not overly traditional. If you add the fact that monasteries are either shrinking, moving, closing, or, if they are thriving, then they are just not founding new communities… well, you see our position.

Being Diocesan Benedictines allows us the freedom to sing our Office and offer our Conventual Mass in the traditional form, while working within the Diocesan parish structure. Most of the new communities of Benedictines (Silverstream, the Monastère Saint-Benoît in the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, France, and Notre Dame Priory in Tasmania) are founded under the authority of the Diocesan Bishop.

We are privileged to be under the protection of Our Lady of Glastonbury. Legend says that St Joseph of Arimathea built a wattle church when he came to these shores. Whether or not this is true, it is an historical fact that Glastonbury was the site of a very ancient Christian settlement. When the Saxons arrived in Glastonbury in 658AD, there was already a church here, which was known as the ‘Old Church’. This church, whose beginnings were already lost in the mists of time by the seventh century, was dedicated to Our Lady. King Ina’s Charter, issued around 694ad, granted land in Glastonbury, and referred to the ‘wooden basilica’ as Ecclesia Vetusta Beatissimæ Virginis - the Old Church of the Most Blessed Virgin. This document went further and described this Church as ‘the foremost Church in Britain, the fount and source of all religion’.

We know that at any point, if the dead rose from the desecrated Abbey, which is just over the road from our church, and they entered in solemn procession the present Shrine of Our Lady, then they would sit with us, and their voices would blend with ours and they would sing the prayers that St Benedict commanded, in the age-old language of the Church. They would assist at the august sacrifice of the Mass, with the texts they knew, and the ritual actions which sustained their lives and for which they gave their lives. It is our joy to pick up this tradition of the old monks of Glastonbury. No matter where we are, or what we become, we will wear this most ancient title of Our Lady.

We pray that others will come and join us. Men, do you have a vocation to this life? Is God calling you to become a Benedictine monk? Will you join the black robed army who give their lives to sing the praises of God, through stability and obedience in the ‘School of the Lord’s Service’?

And what of those old, long-dead monks? We stand with them, we sing with them, and we kneel with them in adoration of the God who made us. We are brothers of the cloister, men for God, St Benedict’s sons.

glastonburymonastery.co.uk glastonbury.community@cliftondiocese. com