Foundation Day at St. Mary’s Abbey, Glencairn
Today is Foundation Day for us at St. Mary’s Abbey, Glencairn. It marks the arrival, ninety-four years ago, of the first Cistercian nuns who came to establish this monastery and begin again the life of Cistercian women in Ireland.
On March 10, 1932, a small group of fifteen nuns travelled from Holy Cross Abbey in Stapehill, England, to this valley near Lismore in County Waterford. Their coming was born partly of practical need: the community in England had grown, and many of the sisters themselves were Irish or of Irish heritage. Yet it was also the fruit of prayer and hope—that Ireland might once again become a home for the contemplative Cistercian life.
In another sense, their arrival marked something remarkable. For centuries after the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII in the sixteenth century, there had been no monastery of Cistercian nuns in Ireland. When those first sisters crossed the sea in faith and settled here, they were helping to restore a contemplative presence that had been absent for nearly four hundred years.
The land at Glencairn had been found and prepared with the help of the monks of Mount Melleray Abbey, who recognized in this place a fitting home for nuns.
In 1949 sisters from our community went to the United States to found Mount St. Mary’s Abbey in Wrentham, Massachusetts, the first Cistercian monastery of nuns in that country. Later, another daughter house was established in Nigeria, showing how the seed planted here in Ireland bore fruit far beyond this valley.
For us, Foundation Day is above all a day of gratitude. We remember with affection the courage of the sisters who first came here and the fidelity of all those who have built up this community through their hidden lives of prayer. Many of them have now gone to their eternal reward, and we ask their intercession that the life begun here may continue to grow and flourish in our Cistercian heritage.
We pray, too, that many Irish women may follow their example and come to seek the Lord in this place, becoming—like those who have gone before us—images of Christ praying on the mountain.
