On pilgrimage to a Benedictine abbey

Last week my husband and I took two busses, an airplane, two trains and a boat to reach a Benedictine convent on the Isle of Wight.

The pouring rain could not douse our excitement, for we were going to see our friends Sr. Mary Thomas, cloistered for six years, and Sr. Mechtilde, cloistered for one. Before her novitiate I had had a lot of fun with Sr. Mechtilde, so I made several semi-serious jokes to Mark about digging tunnels and stealing her away.

Our invitation to attend Sr. Mary Thomas’s solemn profession and consecration resembled a wedding invitation, and indeed the event had all the joy of a wedding without any of a wedding’s inescapable worldliness. We set off happily without wedding clothes, and arrived early enough for Vespers the evening before.