Benedictine Monks from St Augustine’s Abbey in Chilworth enjoy the snow as it blankets their abbey. On the left is Fr Paulinus Greenwood OSB, the Abbot and on the right is fellow monk Fr John Seddon OSB.
The Benedictine Abbey, formerly a 19th century friary, is built in the gothic style, and sits on a hillside in the Surrey countryside surrounded by woodland, providing an idyllic setting for the monk’s life of ora et labora.
Coronavirus has interrupted the normal rounds of public services, retreats and visits by the public to the Abbey, but Fr John remains stoical. Perhaps inspired by the weather he said that the “threat we can often feel from a cold universe without God”. He quoted Teilhard de Chardin in a Facebook post: “On certain days, the world seems a terrifying thing, huge blind and brutal. It buffets us about, drags us along and kills us with complete indifference.
“We contrive to create a living space of warmth and light but how precarious it is! At any time the vast and horrible thing may break in through the cracks: fire, pestilence, storms, earthquakes or dark immoral forces which can swiftly sweep away in one moment what we have labouriosly built up.
“The only response is the prayer, ‘Lord, help my unbelief.’ How does the Lord respond? He says, ‘This is my Body.’ ‘It is I do not be afraid.’ When faith claims us, then all that terrifies us becomes a caress of the divine hand drawing us to the One who is love.”
Fr Jon said of his life as a monk at St Augustine’s: “I believe the best good acts I can make are those which will bring me to God. A monastery offers me those in spades, therefore I not only feel free here, I am free, content and happy.”
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