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Good morning. This year the Roman Catholic Church in the UK has been celebrating an upturn in the number of women exploring their vocation to the religious life as nuns. It seems to be part of a renewed interest in monasticism in Western Europe, and it’s finding expression in lots of different forms.

So today there’ll be a special celebration for St Columba’s day in the monastery the saint founded on the island of Iona. Its medieval abbey had long been in ruins when, in the mid 20th century, a Church of Scotland minister, George MacCleod,  decided to rebuild it.  He founded a  renewed  community dispersed across the world, committed to work for justice, peace and the integrity of creation. 

That happens in a rather different way in the Diocese of Llandaff, where we’re encouraged to plan our church life on the lines of the dedicated spaces of a monastery. So we ensure that we make space for private prayer and shared worship, for study and productive work, for hospitality, time spent with others and shared decision-making ‘seven sacred spaces’ give balance and rhythm to our lives: time for self, for others and for God.

These quite distinctive versions of monasticism all share one thing in common: a sense of their members coming away from the world in order to better serve the world.  They’re bound together by a ‘rule’, a pattern of life which is rooted in their experience of God, and which they seek to weave into the life of the world.   They seek to live out the words of Jesus who spoke of his followers being in the world but not of it. Their gaze is turned heavenward- but their feet are planted firmly on the ground.

Eternal God, we long to discover the time and the place, the word and the work in which you make yourself known. Help us to grow together in love for you and in service of one another, that all the world may reflect your glory. Amen