A group of monks has returned to the island where a monastery thrived for more than a thousand years – 500 years after they were booted out in the Reformation.
Led by Father Seraphim Aldea, a group of monks are turning a pricey bed and breakfast into a monastery on the pristine isle of Iona, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland.
Their monastery is a stunning former bed and breakfast, situated with views of the sea and rolling green hills.
The monastery was crowdfunded by Orthodox churches, mainly in North America, Father Aldea said, and cost an astounding £1,200,000.
And this winter marks the first that the monastery’s resident monks – from England, the Netherlands, North America and Romania – will spend on the remote island.
Father Aldea was ‘moved by God’ to stay in the area after learning about the island’s religious history and the lives of Celtic saints.
And locals are pleased to have the monastery back on the island, as the monks contribute to the community.
Father Aldea told The Times: ‘It is something you can’t really describe in words. There’s no electricity, there’s no heating, there’s no light [in the chapel].
‘It was like that cave where the Virgin gave birth to Christ, where the only heating would have been from their bodies and the bodies of the animals. It was simple and unpretentious — and very, very joyous.’
The isle of Iona was host to monasteries and monks for more than a thousand years, before the 16th-century Scottish Reformation led them to flee the area.
In fact, many describe Iona as the birthplace of Christianity in Scotland – after St Columba and 12 others came to the island from Ireland in 563 AD.
Thomas Clancy, a professor of Celtic at Glasgow University told the Times that may be part of the appeal for these modern day monks.
He said: ‘For monks of today, the draw to Iona is the same as it would have been for Columba. From a monastic point of view, the Hebrides are described by some of the early monks as a desert in the ocean cut off from the world and protected by the sea.’
But Father Aldea is enjoying the everyday appeal of his quaint monastery, where he even enjoys the ‘mundane’ moments.
He added: ‘There are real beautiful people here. It’s not a tourist island. In the summer it looks like a fair, but when the summer clears up it’s a fully functional island.’
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