Limerick, across the Shannon looking toward King John's Castle
To say “I love Limerick” in Ireland is akin to saying “I love Newark” to a New Yorker — a serious crime problem in Limerick has made it unappealing to the Irish themselves. But to an American (me) living there for a semester in 2008, it was a very small, homey city with friendly neighbors, historic architecture, a vibrant immigrant community, and a startlingly good Farmer’s Market (Mario Batali would be happy shopping there! — and I suspect Newark is a wonderful place to live, too). Limerick will always feel like a second home to me now. So I stopped by to visit my Limerick friends, and bring my Edmund journey to an end.
Glenstal Abbey, Murroe, outside of Limerick
One place I did not get to visit while in Limerick was Glenstal Abbey, a Benedictine monastery about 12 miles outside the city. (I came down with a raging cold, alas.) But for Iona visitors to Ireland, it would make an excellent last stop on the journey.
St. Columba
Here’s why: the monastic strain is strong in the Brothers. Ireland went through four great flowerings of monks and the monastic life. In the first phase (500-900 or so) St. Columba and other great monks founded monasteries all over Ireland and beyond — including Iona itself. (Enter Vikings.) The next medieval phase (approx. 1100-1600) saw Benedictine, Cistercian, and Carthusian houses raised across the four provinces. (Enter the Reformation and Cromwell.) The third phase, arguably, belonged to Edmund, Nano Nagle, and other founders. At that point, all the great medieval foundations had been destroyed, and there were no monasteries in Ireland. But the holy founders were inspired by the monastic inheritance of faith, and adopted many of the same disciplines, building their community houses as “monasteries” and calling themselves “monks.” At the dedication of the O’Connell School in North Richmond Street in 1828, Daniel O’Connell called Edmund “the Patriarch of the Monks of the West.”
Cows grazing at Glenstal Farm
Finally, the fourth and current phase began after Land Reform in the 1920s — most of the British Landlords sold their great Irish estates (20,000 acres and up), and some friendly to the Catholics sold or gave land to religious orders. And that is how the Benedictines of Glenstal Abbey got started– in 1926, as a Belgian transplant, in an old manor house with 500 acres donated by a departing landlord. Today 40 Irish-born monks live in community and run a boys’ boarding school (and part of their land is given over to a dairy farm — Irish cows!). They trace their spiritual lineage all the way back to St. Columba, St. Kevin, and the other early Irish monks. It is a pleasure to stay at their guesthouse (as I did in 2008), go for long walks, attend their prayer-services (Gregorian chant, most in English, although Vespers is in Latin), and enjoy the peace of the monastery. Time and space are sanctified here as they were on the Isle of Iona and as they were at Mount Sion in Waterford. Even though it’s in a slightly different key, both St. Columba and Blessed Edmund would recognize the Abbey as home.
