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Advent (from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming” or “arrival”) is a period of preparation for celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, who, as the incarnate Word, is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of universal history. The first part of the season focuses on the second coming of Jesus as the hour of great liberation for humanity and the cosmos. As the Nicene Creed puts it, “the one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, […] will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”

In the Middle Ages, this event was often interpreted as a dies irae, a day of punishment and wrath. However, in the early tradition of the Church, it was understood primarily as the culmination of the redemption that Jesus Christ had accomplished through his Paschal mystery. Indeed, the Parousia, or second coming of Christ, is the moment when the wounds of history will be finally healed. At his return, Jesus, appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead (cf. Acts 10:42), will embrace the world with divine love – a love that unites mercy and justice in complete harmony. On that day, every wrong will be made right, every injustice will be resolved, and all creation will be renewed in the peace of God’s redeeming truth.

This culmination of God’s saving purpose is portrayed in the Book of Revelation as the establishment of a new heaven and a new earth, and as the descent from heaven of the holy city, the new Jerusalem, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (cf. Rev 21:1-2). Then a loud voice declares from the throne of God: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with humankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any longer, for the former things have passed away” (Rev 21:3-4).

During Advent, the Church voices her deep longing for the fulfilment of this promise crying out, “Maranatha! Our Lord, come!” This is the prayer of a people deeply committed to the renewal of the world. It is the heartfelt entreaty of those who know that they will not see the full realisation of God’s kingdom at the end of time unless they labour to establish it here and now, unless they strive to make God’s justice, peace and love a reality in the midst of human history. That is why Saint Paul reminds the Corinthians – and all believers across the ages – to live out their ethical responsibility, saying: “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Cor 5:10). At times, such a prospect may seem too daunting for anyone to face it with confidence. Yet we will be judged by one of our own flesh and blood – the One who called all believers his own family (Mt 12:49-50) and who said, after his resurrection: “Do not be afraid” (Mt 28:10) and “Peace be with you” (Jn 20:19, 21, 26).

One might wonder why, in the first and longer part of Advent, the Church directs her gaze to the Parousia, turning only in the final days – from December 17 to 24 – toward Jesus’ first coming in Bethlehem. It is because only in the light of the end can we fully understand the beginning. The child whose birth we await is the same Lord who will come again in glory to bring creation to its fulfilment. By contemplating his return, we see more clearly the meaning of his first coming: the Redeemer born in humility is also the judge and king who will make all things new. This vision stirs our hope and calls us to conversion, to vigilance, and to an openness of heart, so that we may welcome Christ not only as he once came in history, and not only as he will come in glory, but also as he comes to us now – quietly and yet powerfully – through faith, love and mercy.

Lino Moreira OSB

In 1969 Pope Paul VI visited Uganda and made a plea in Kampala for Africans to become Missionaries in and for the Church themselves. The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria established the National Missionary Seminary of St Paul in September 1976 and invited Kiltegan priests of St Patrick Society in Ireland to assist in the formation programme. Around the same time, inspired by the same call from Pope Paul VI, monks from our monastery at Glenstal Abbey in Ireland founded a Benedictine community at Ewu, also in Nigeria.

I taught philosophy and theology for three years from 1992 to 1995 at Gwagwalada, where the MSP have their headquarters and their seminary near the capital of Nigeria, Abuja, One of the classes I taught were celebrating their silver jubilee of ordination in October this year and they invited me back to preside at their Jubilee mass and conduct the retreat which preceded this happy occasion. Abbot Christopher Dillon who had served in Ewu as prior and novice master from 1990 to 1992, and who has visited there on a yearly basis until they became independent in 2006, is now helping them to finance the building of a new church due to open in 2026. We decided to go together from the 9^th to the 26^th of October this year. Christopher went directly to Benin while I remained in Abuja with the MSP, following on later to join him at our daughter house in Ewu.

Pope Paul’s initiative has come to fruition. Both these enterprises are now thriving: MSP has almost 400 missionary priests all over the world [including fourteen of their members working in parishes in Ireland]; while the monastery at Ewu has a community of 62 members and have foundations in Calabar and in Angola.

Whereas Saint Patrick’s Society in Kiltegan have no longer any vocations in Ireland and have moved their central organisation to Nairobi in Kenya, their onetime thriving motherhouse at Kiltegan is now a retirement home for returned missionaries. This means that Africa has become a focal point for global Catholicism and the expansion in Nigeria, both in its contemplative and missionary wings, is in full flight. Nigeria has become a beacon of light for the Catholic Church as a whole.

Mark Patrick Hederman OSB

Among the students of Glenstal Abbey School going home for the Christmas holidays in 1990 was sixteen-years old Peter, who carried with him in a black plastic sack a sapling walnut tree, five feet high, complete with root ball, and pruned to a few short branches.

Naturally, he was subjected to ribbing by his companions on the train – jealous really at his being favoured, but he could forget that when his mother exclaimed her delight on meeting him with his tree at the station in Dublin. She was skilfully developing the landscaped grounds of their property, acquired some years previously, and decided at once that there would be a suitable place beside a stream flowing through the centre of the grounds for this gift from Glenstal.

She knew that during the term Peter had been a steadfast and strong volunteer working with Fr Brian Murphy OSB and myself in the Terrace Garden, in our endeavours to rescue it from its very overgrown state. Fr Brian had taken a cutting from a walnut tree in the vicinity of the garden, rooted it expertly and had it develop into a sapling, which he presented to the surprised Peter.

Thirty-five years later it remains prominent in the family’s tastefully developed parkland, a very big, magnificently shaped, tree yielding annually a bounteous harvest of walnuts – truly ‘a tree planted by flowing waters with fruit that never fails’ (Ps 1.3).

For Peter it is an appropriate reminder of happy and fruitful days in the school, and it is also a testimony to thelate Fr Brian, who continued ever afterwards to work in the garden up to the day before his sudden death in 2022.

Fintan Lyons OSB

The monastic community is pleased to announce the upcoming publication of a book by Br Emmaus O’Herlihy OSB.

Paintings will be published on 15th December 2025 and features Br Emmaus’ artwork alongside theological reflections animated by the early Christian conviction that “the flesh is the hinge of salvation.”

This 150-page coffee-table book brings theology and art into vivid conversation, exploring the implications of the Word made flesh and the role of the human body in Christian faith.

It emphasises physicality, vulnerability, and the human form’s openness to grace. Paintings aim to expand the visual imagination of faith and invite fresh insight into the Gospel’s call to life.

Available to pre-order in our online shop!

Extract from the Annals of Glenstal Priory for 18^th and 19^thDecember, 1927:

‘He [Father Superior, Dom Gérard François] came back [from Belgium] during the night before December 18^th. The next day, it being a Sunday, the six members of the new foundation being assembled in Sir Charles Barrington’s former smoking-room, at the bottom of the main staircase, Dom Gérard declared that the Lord Abbot of Maredsous and the Lord Abbot President of the Belgian Congregation had delegated him to erect canonically the new priory. Consequently, the regular community-life was to start this afternoon.

From the next morning onwards, Matins were said in choir at 5.20 in the morning – one hour later than in Belgium. In that first community conference, Father Prior pointed out that our work was going to be a long an arduous one; and that we were not likely to reap ourselves the full fruit of the seeds we were sowing…’

• 18^th December 1927 – Glenstal Castle erected as a Simple Priory.
• 19^th December 1927 – Conventual life begins with the recitation of Matins.
• December 2027 marks 100 years of sowing the seed of monastic life at Glenstal.

CHRISTMAS LITURGY TIMES/OPENING HOURS

Wednesday 24^th December (Christmas Eve)

6 pm – Vespers I

11.20 pm – Vigil followed by Midnight Mass

Thursday 25^th December (Christmas Day)

8 am – Solemn Lauds

10 am – Morning Mass (no music)

12 noon – Solemn Conventual Mass

5 pm – Vespers II

Friday 26^th December (Feast of Saint Stephen)

7 am – Matins and Lauds

12.10  pm – Mass

6 pm – Vespers

Saturday 27^th December (Feast of Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist)

7 am – Matins and Lauds

12.10 pm – Mass

6 pm – Vespers I of the Holy Family

8.35 pm – Vigil

Sunday 28^th December (Feast of the Holy Family)

7 am – Lauds

10 am – Mass

12.35 pm – Sext

6 pm – Vespers II

8.35 pm – Compline

Monday 29^th December (5^th Day in the Octave of Christmas)

7 am – Matins and Lauds

12.10 pm – Mass

6 pm – Vespers

8.35 pm – Compline

Tuesday 30^th December (6^th Day in the Octave of Christmas)

7 am – Matins and Lauds

12.10 pm – Mass

6 pm – Vespers

8.35 pm – Compline

Wednesday 31^st December (7^th Day in the Octave of Christmas/New Year’s Eve)

7 am – Matins and Lauds

12.10  pm – Mass

6 pm – Vespers

8.10 pm – Vigil

Thursday 1^st January 2026 (Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God)

7 am – Lauds

12.10 pm – Mass

6 pm – Vespers

8.35 pm – Compline

The normal liturgical time resumes from Friday 2^nd January 2026.

Confessions

A priest will be available on Christmas Eve from 2pm – 5pm in the Abbey Church.

Guesthouse

Closes on Sunday 21st December and reopens to guests on Monday 29th December.

Monastery Reception and Shop

The following are the opening hours of the reception and monastery shop from Monday 22^nd December to New Year’s Day.

Monday 22^nd – Wednesday 24^th December: 10am – 2pm

25^th, 26^th, 27^th, 28^th December: CLOSED

Monday 29^th – Wednesday 31^st December: 11am – 4pm

Thursday 1^st January: CLOSED

Friday 2^nd January return to normal working hours of 9am – 5pm.

The Winter 2025 edition of the Glenstal Abbey Chronicle has been published, and is now available to read on the website here.

Fr Henry O’Shea:

Abroad the royal banners fly,
now shines the Cross’s mystery:
upon it Life did death endure,
and yet by death did life procure. 

These lines are taken from one of the most beautiful hymns of the liturgy, the Vexilla Regis or The Banners of the King. This hymn is sung during the monks’ evening prayer in the last two weeks of Lent. Sung in Latin to a plaintive, haunting, melody, the hymn reaches a dramatic climax in the lines, 

Hail Cross, of hopes the most sublime, Now and in the end of time…

The monks kneel in their places for these lines.

The fact that the hymn is sung in the run-up to the three days of Easter underlines the reality that Easter is the main feast of Christ the King, the great feast from which all others flow, the great feast from which all others get their meaning.

Why then, do we celebrate another feast of Christ the King as the Church’s year enters its last week?

When we think about it at all, we probably consider monarchy a thing of the past. Here in Europe, the surviving monarchies – with the exception of the Vatican – are constitutional monarchies, essentially ceremonial and toothless. But the reality of monarchy remains, and not only in the absolute or quasi-absolute monarchies of which there still are several in the world. Actual, effective monarchy, even if not officially so designated, flourishes in what are and have ever been the predatory empires that have always existed and are, once more, unblushingly, showing their teeth and their grasping winner-takes-all claws. 

Nor do contemporary empires always have to be official states. Global corporations are frequently limitless in their resources and untrammelled in their exploitative, imperialistic, greed and ruthlessness. 

It is true that from at least the fourth century, it was usual to refer to Christ as King/Rex and even Emperor/Imperator. But today’s feast of Christ the King is a very modern feast. To understand its origin, we need to cast our minds back to 1925. In that year, it seemed to the Pope of the time, Pius XI, that in the face of three ideologies or political and economic systems, it was necessary to remind the world of where true and ultimate power lay, of where true and ultimate power lies. 

Remember that in 1925, the Fascist regime in Italy, though only three years in power, was revealing its true colours. Hitler’s perfection of the fascist model was still eight years in the future. In 1925, it looked as if uncontrolled capitalism of the American variety with its adoration of the golden calf of individual greed and socially irresponsible accumulation was going to sweep all before it – at least outside the Soviet Union. 

This was only four years before the crash of 1929 caused the sobering cold shower of the Great Depression. In 1925, the Soviet Union was getting into its godless stride. To some naive commentators in the West and elsewhere, it was the future that was already working. Think of George Bernard Shaw. In the end, the Soviet vision of a humanly perfectible humanity would lead, until its collapse in 1989, to the death of an estimated 65 million individual human beings in that empire alone. And this is a conservative estimate.

Even if Pius XI was still bound by the language of monarchy and proposed Christ as the King of the Universe, his insight into the potential and ultimately realized disasters of the three ideologies we have just mentioned was prophetic. And, since at least the 1980s, but more obviously since 2000, it has become clear that not only has history not ended, but nothing has really changed. Force, violence, greed and disregard for human life and human rights are once more centre-stage. Just turn on the news.  

The preface of today’s Mass sums up what this feast is all about. It expresses concisely what kind of kingdom Pius XI had in mind: a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace. It is distinctly possible, even likely, that these ideals of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love and peace will always remain that, ideals, but they will always be ideals worth striving for. 

Today’s readings talk about the one who makes belief in these ideals possible, who helps us to make these ideal realizable, who promises us that these ideals will eventually triumph.

The Jesus we hear about in today’s readings has none of the attributes we associate with kingship, either inherited or elected. He has none of the refined splendour of contemporary and mostly politically emasculated constitutional monarchs. Nor has he the smug air of entitlement or vulgar brashness of the elected or unelected monarchs of our powerful republics. 

What he does have in common with certain hereditary monarchs is lineage. 

The first reading tells us that Jesus is of the house of David. David, the anointed king of Israel, who despite his many human flaws, united all the tribes of Israel. The tribes said to him, ‘Look. We are your own flesh and blood…to whom the Lord has said, “You are the man who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you shall be the leader of Israel.”’ It is this Jesus who is the leader of the new Israel, that is, of the whole of redeemed humanity. It is he who has made us his own flesh and blood, made us members of himself and, with that, members of each other. 

In the second reading from the letter to the Colossians, St Paul describes what God has done for us in Jesus Christ: ‘..he has taken us out of the power of darkness and created a place for us in the kingdom of the Son that he loves, and in him we gain our freedom, the forgiveness of our sins.’ St Paul then goes on to give a marvellously poetic and theological description of who and what Jesus Christ was and is: ‘…before anything was created he existed, and he holds all things in unity. Now the Church is his body, he is its head.’ Through Baptism, we belong to that body and belong to one another. He is our head – a monarch, perhaps yes, but of a kingdom where all are equal, a kingdom without any claim to confer nobility except that of being part of Jesus. 

There is nothing at all regal about the gospel reading, this year from the evangelist Luke. Stripped and crucified, Jesus on the Cross is exposed to the ridicule of the powerful and of their hangers-on, exposed to the despair and disappointment of those who loved and believed in him, or in what they imagined him to be. And also present are the perplexed, if even still grimly and dimly hopeful, family and few disciples who cling to what remains of him. And then there comes in the very final sentence of today’s gospel, one of the most kingly, most majestic, most power-filled and simple statements of Jesus, ‘today you will be with me in paradise.’ 

Many monarchs can promise this, but only one can make it real. Only this monarch can relativize all earthly power and make the cross a throne.

That which the prophet-king of old
hath in mysterious verse foretold,
is now accomplished, whilst we see
God rule the nations from a Tree.

Hail Cross, of hopes the most sublime!
Now and in the end of time; 
grant to the just increase of grace,
and every sinner’s crimes efface.

Fr. Mark Patrick Hederman: We have to be careful not to create a wrong impression on a day like today. Some interpretations of the Gospel might suggest that Poverty is good and wealth is bad. Nothing could be further from the truth. Riches are not evil and being poor is not a blessing. Poverty is one of the greatest blemishes on our common duty to create a liveable home for all 8.2 billion people on this planet at this time. There is nothing whatever to recommend poverty in itself as a way of life. Poverty in itself is actually a disgrace. It has become one of the most urgent challenges of our time. Today, almost 700 million people, that is 8.5 percent of the global population,live in extreme poverty. This should not be the case. The United Nations Summit in New York in 2015 vowed to end extreme poverty altogether by the year 2030, that is five years from now. There is certainly enough wealth being generated to make this happen. But it is not going to happen. Why not? Because of the age old struggle between basic needs and excessive consumption. Global hunger isn’t about a lack of food. Right now, the world produces enough food to nourish every human being alive. But the sad fact is that one-fifth of all the food produced is lost or wasted. We throw away, according to statistical analysis, at least a billion meals every day.

People who are poor have every right to expect more from the rest of us. Extreme poverty is not a blessing, it is an entirely remediable blemish. 

What Jesus Christ has said about poverty is this: ‘Blessed are the poor in Spirit.’ This is quite a different reality. There is nothing wrong or evil about being rich. It is how you use those riches that makes them good or bad. ‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” [Mark 10:25]. Why is this so? Because of the cancer of greed. Greed, as the root of all evil, is what we all suffer from in one way or another. Every one of us knows the symptoms: We can never have enough, we always want more.  

Two days before Christmas, on the 23rd December, 1849, one of the greatest writers of all time, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who was in his late twenties, stood against a wall in Saint Petersburg in Russia. It was early morning and he was awaiting execution by firing squad. He had been condemned to death for subversive activity. He was counting the buttons on one of the soldier’s uniforms as that soldier raised his rifle. Suddenly a horse gallops into the yard; the rider is carrying a last minute reprieve from the Czar. The young man falls to his knees and vows to live every moment of the rest of his life with the same fullness and intensity of those final seconds before he was shot. That was the beginning of what later became known as ‘Existentialism.’Living every moment of your life as though it might be your last. When you get up in the morning and put your two feet out on the floor, are you aware that every move you make, every breath you take, is a gift from elsewhere. It’s not your doing. You are nothing, and you can do nothing on your own. Everything you are, and everything you have, come from elsewhere. You are a nobody, a pauper, a beggar. Those two feet that touch the ground are the only two you’ve got. No matter how much you yearn for the most fashionable shoes on the market, you can only put one shoe on each foot at a time. That’s the way we are, the way we were built, and we just have to get on with it. Being ‘poor in spirit’ is knowing the facts of life, recognizing our existential poverty and accepting this as a foregone conclusion, a done deal. Greed is refusal to accept such poverty. Mahatma Ghandi spoke for all of us when he said: ‘the world has enough resources for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.’ If current trends continue, 8.9 per cent of the world’s population will still live in extreme poverty by the time we reach 2030. Imelda Marcos, when forced to flee The Philippines with her husband in 1986, left behind her, in the presidential palace, 2,700 pairs of shoes. 

One-Day Advent Retreat: Saturday 29th November 2025