Tuesday, 04.09.2007: Mother Nectaria

Mother Nectaria is an Orthodox nun from Moscow who has attended several of our Orthodox pilgrimages in recent years

 

Caldey Island

 

            Men and women are not only mind and spirit, but also flesh and blood, and we need physical contact with holiness. Orthodox Christians have always known this and include the body in prayer by making the sign of the Cross, bows and prostrations; through the use of icons, incense, music, the veneration of relics, and above all, by physically partaking of the Body and Blood of the Lord in Holy Communion, where our very flesh, as well as our soul, is sanctified. Another long-used means by which this meeting of the physical and spiritual takes place is pilgrimage. For two millennia, Christians have traveled to holy places to fulfill vows and give thanks, to repent of their sins, to renew their spiritual life, to petition God for the healing of soul and body, and to glorify Him by venerating the relics of His saints. In each instance the intent is to touch that otherworldliness that exists in physical space, in time as well as in eternity.

            Thanks to the Trappist (Cistercian) monks who sacrificed to purchase this site in the 1920’s, Caldey Island is once again a monastic enclave. Escaping the fate of so many other European pilgrimage places that were subdivided into farm lots or holiday homes, the monks have preserved Caldey as a “holy island,” dedicated to God, to their own monastic practice, and to the welfare of the pilgrims who visit. Both St. Petroc and St. Samson, honored widely throughout Cornwall, Wales and Brittany, lived on this island, and a portion of St. Samson’s relics remain, faithfully watched over by the monks.

            One of the most fascinating things about real sanctity is that it is enduring. Hundreds of years after the repose of a saint, an almost tangible impression of peace and sanctity can remain in a place he once inhabited. One’s leisurely arrival on Caldey Island by boat, as St. Samson and St. Petroc would have approached it, sets the measure of pilgrimage and provides time for the prayerful anticipation that prepares one to enter a sacred space. Caldey Island has changed little since the time of St. Samson and St. Petroc, and it is in such simple acts as walking around the island and praying in its ancient churches that contemporary Christians sense the sanctity of the early monks who struggled here over a millennium ago.

Glory be to God in His saints!        

 

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