Holy Coasts: Nendrum Monastic Site, County Down

Opening Announcement: BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. Sunday Worship today is the first of four special programmes which over the next few months will explore pathways and pilgrimage routes along the coastlines of the United Kingdom. The first in this series comes from Northern Ireland and takes us to Strangford Lough in County Down and the ancient monastic site of Nendrum.
Music: Christ be with me (Irish traditional arr CV Stanford) The Choir of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin from A Year at St Patrick’s Cathedral (Regent Records)
At the Shore at Nendrum
Father Martin: My name is Martin Magill, and until recently I was Parish Priest of St John’s on the Falls Road in Belfast. As you listen to this service, I am presently on sabbatical…Canon Simon: And I’m Simon Doogan, Church of Ireland rector of Ballyholme by the sea. Welcome to Sunday worship, from the ancient Christian site of Nendrum in Co Down.Father Martin: The water you hear is one of the few things that hasn’t changed since Nendrum’s glory days. We’re in a sheltered inlet of Strangford Lough, “a curving sea-arm cutting deep into the east coast of Northern Ireland blessed with many islands”. The largest is called Mahee, after a young convert of St Patrick, Mo-Choí who founded a monastery here in the fifth century. Canon Simon: Today’s route of narrow lanes and causeways, make Nendrum feel like the end of the earth. Fifteen hundred years ago it was anything but. A busy community of prayer and the seat of a bishop, this was a maritime monastery with ready sea access to coastal Ireland and northern Britain.Father Martin: So the question is, Simon, are we visiting Christians, arriving on ecclesiastical business, or are we making a pilgrimage or retreat? Maybe we’re prospective novices here to test our vocation or just wayfarers hoping for Christian hospitality?Canon Simon: Mind you, Martin, we could be blood-thirsty young Vikings on a longboat raid. After all, a Danish assault launched from this very shore in 974 saw Nendrum attacked and pretty-much destroyed. Father Martin: But there’s another possibility suggested by Nendrum’s three circular stone walls or cashels: that people came here to seek forgiveness for their sins. Picture Nendrum as a low-rise wedding cake, with three defined circular spaces situated one on top of the other.Canon Simon: As we make our way prayerfully this morning through outer, middle and inner enclosures, we will retrace the timeless pathway open to all believers that brings us closer to God, and closer to one another. We will also reflect as we go on both our Catholic and Reformed traditions and their shared roots in an earlier Jewish one.Father Martin: We begin now with a Celtic Caim prayer. Caim is Irish for ‘encompassing’. Having no beginning or end, circles pointed to God's love in eternity, which moved early Irish Christians to speak of God's protective 'circling' presence. Let us pray.
Canon Simon: Circle us, Lord.Keep love within, keep hatred out.Keep joy within, keep fear out.Keep peace within, keep worry out.Keep light within, keep darkness out.May you stand in the circle with us, today and always. Amen
Music: O the deep, deep, love of Jesus (Scottish traditional melody)Audrey Assad/ Fernardo Ortega From Inheritance (Fortunate Fall Records)
In the Outer Enclosure
Canon Simon: In early Christian Ireland, the distinction between clerics and monks and the laity could be fuzzy. Lay penitents and tenant farmers seem to have shared in monastic life to a large extent. In that spirit, it’s not just Martin and me at Nendrum this morning.Father Martin: Indeed not, Simon. Today we’re joined for our readings and prayers by…Joan Warrington from the local Church of Ireland Parish of Killinchy, Kilmood and TullynakillAnd Carrol Black from the local Catholic Parish of Newtownards and ComberFather Martin: Glad you’re both with us.Canon Simon: We’ve made our way up from the shore, into the monastery’s outer enclosure and our first reading makes sense right here. If Nendrum shines a Gospel light in a tiny western corner of the European ‘Dark Ages’, ancient Israel in its bleakest years is brought hope by the priest and prophet Ezekiel. Father Martin: To a helpless exiled people, Ezekiel’s vision is of a land restored by a just and holy God and a temple reconstructed in three distinct sections: entrance, nave and inner room…
Joan: Ezekiel 41, verses 1 to 4Then he brought me to the nave, and measured the pilasters; on each side six cubits was the width of the pilasters.The width of the entrance was ten cubits; and the side walls of the entrance were five cubits on either side. He measured the length of the nave, forty cubits, and its width, twenty cubits. Then he went into the inner room and measured the pilasters of the entrance, two cubits; and the width of the entrance, six cubits; and the side walls of the entrance, seven cubits.He measured the depth of the room, twenty cubits, and its width, twenty cubits, beyond the nave.And he said to me, This is the most holy place.
Canon Simon: Over eight chapters, Ezekiel offers a highly detailed guided tour of Solomon’s Temple. Before his exile and the temple’s destruction in 587 BC, Ezekiel probably served as priest there. Later as a prophet, he offered an oracle of hope for a people at their lowest ebb. Father Martin: A resurgence of Israel’s fortunes Ezekiel submits, will only come through a resurgence of Israel’s faith: their relationship with God must be revitalised. Other threefold temples predating Ezekiel’s, include a Canaanite example from the thirteenth century, and an eighth century temple in northern Syria.Canon Simon: But what’s way more startling, moving from the sixth century BC to the sixth century AD, is that the greatest concentration of so-called ‘concentric curvilinear’ monastic enclosures in Europe, is found in Ireland – Nendrum being one of them.Father Martin: It turns out that the Irish clerics identified so strongly with the Old Testament Levitical tradition, that they modelled their Christian communities directly on Ezekiel’s tripartite Jerusalem temple. There’s also clear evidence of an older Christian practice of Levitical-style purity regulations.Canon Simon: In this period, ‘Penitentials’ or ‘tariff books’ began to be written in Ireland for clerics, monks and the laity alike. These books listed sins and prescribed specific acts of penance and reparation – so much time fasting, so many prayers to say – all in order to get right with God.Father Martin: Modern Christian sensibilities balk at the formal, regulated holiness at times once dispensed in church history, and abuses like indulgences to which that gave rise. Certainly it was one of the driving complaints of the Protestant Reformers in the early 1500s. But in their original Irish setting, the tariff books were aiming to show that no one was beyond the healing love of God.Canon Simon: Martin, I think it’s fair to say that general confession at the start of worship and an annual focus on Advent and Lent is shared by both our traditions. Father Martin: One of the most moving parts of my ministry as a priest has been celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It is a profound privilege to witness the courage with which people bring hidden burdens into the light of God’s mercy. I am conscious that the forgiveness offered is not mine: I am there as a minister of Christ’s mercy. Again and again, I have seen people arrive burdened by guilt or regret and leave with renewed freedom and peace. That, for me, is the heart of confession: not humiliation or punishment, but reconciliation, healing and a new beginning.Canon Simon: In my Reformed tradition, many believers testify to a growing personal conviction of sin as part of our original journey to Christian commitment in the first place. That foundational experience of Christ’s forgiveness, evolves into a lifetime of sanctification where holiness is a by-product of being disciples. So we would both want to say Confession should never be a transactional encounter with the Saviour, rather a relational one: broken-heartedness on our side; loving compassion on Christ’s. Something like the prayer we’ll be led in now…
Carroll:Jesus, forgive me my sins.Forgive the sins that I can remember and also the sins I have forgotten.Forgive the wrong actions I have committed, and the right actions I have omitted.Forgive the times I have been weak in the face of temptation, and those when I have been stubborn in the face of correction.Forgive the times I have been proud of my own achievements, and those when I have failed to boast of your works.Forgive the harsh judgments I have made of others, and the leniency I have shown to myself.Forgive the lies I have told to others, and the truths I have avoided.Forgive me the pain I have caused others, and the indulgence I have shown to myself.Jesus have pity on me and make me whole. Amen
Music: Kyrie from the Mass of the Celtic Saints (Liam Lawton)From The Cloud’s Veil (GIA)
In the Middle Enclosure
Father Martin: Ezekiel’s temple in its city setting included entrance buildings for use by the priests and for storage. The self-contained rural setting of Nendrum required more basic amenities. We’ve climbed now to the Middle Enclosure, and you get a sense of what was once below us: farming and fields, cattle and crops, huts for the farmers and labourers, a kiln and even a tide-mill.Canon Simon: Alongside workshops and a bronze-smith’s hut, a stone rectangle marks the site of Nendrum’s school, which may have doubled as a Scriptorium. Iron styluses were unearthed there with flat stone trial pieces, some scratched with Christian cross designs, others with incised knot patterns illustrating the Holy Trinity.Father Martin: It’s a caricature nowadays to say that whereas Catholic places of worship are richly decorated, Protestant churches are barer and unadorned. Yet craft and creativity plainly spilled over into Nendrum’s worshipping life, as they did centuries earlier in Ezekiel’s temple in Jerusalem.
Joan: Ezekiel 41, verses 16 to 22 Facing the threshold the temple was panelled with wood all round, from the floor up to the windows (now the windows were covered), to the space above the door, even to the inner room, and on the outside.And on all the walls all round in the inner room and the nave there was a pattern.It was formed of cherubim and palm trees, a palm tree between cherub and cherub. Each cherub had two faces: a human face turned towards the palm tree on one side, and the face of a young lion turned towards the palm tree on the other side. They were carved on the whole temple all round; from the floor to the area above the door, cherubim and palm trees were carved on the wall.In front of the holy place was something resembling an altar of wood, three cubits high, two cubits long, and two cubits wide; its corners, its base, and its walls were of wood. He said to me, ‘This is the table that stands before the Lord.’ 
Canon Simon: Metal-working was one of the crafts at Nendrum. A bronze-dipped iron hand bell was found at Nendrum in the 1920s. Regularly throughout the day, the bell was rung from the top of the tower on the level above us.Father Martin: Possibly 18 metres high when intact, Nendrum’s Round Tower or Bell Tower was both a landmark for miles around and something of a monastic status symbol. The temple in Jerusalem had its treasuries; Irish monasteries had their round towers. They were safe places for relics and valuables, and for the monks themselves during attacks.Canon Simon: Everything in Nendrum points to prayer as a fundamental part of the people’s response to God’s divine initiative. A stone sundial which was also discovered in the 1920s, indicated when the bell should be rung.Father Martin: The divisions of daylight on that now reconstructed sundial, where we’re headed next, mark not the 24 hours of the clock, but the hours when the monks turned from their manual work around the site, to their work of prayer in the Church.Canon Simon: Maybe we can imagine them falling into procession, chanting as they as they walked, possibly the rising and falling of a psalm…
Music: Psalm 48 (Thomas Turle)St Thomas Choir of Men & Boys from O God my Heart is ready- Selected Hymns and Psalms (Koch International)
At the Sundial
Carroll: God of earth, sea and sky, in this place where all three touch, we pray for harmony in creation.With soaring temperatures wreaking havoc this summer, may the sirens and alarm bells sounding now around the globealert us to damage already done and the threat of worse to come.Source of all being, whose glory nature heralds:teach us, Lord, how to walk the earth more gently, treat the sea more responsibly, fly the sky more cautiouslyand follow Christ’s example of sacrifice in all we do…
Joan: God of nations, governments and communities, in this land where walls sometimes separate, we pray for an end to division.With suspicion and mistrust often ready to lash out, may the fear and resentment that turns ugly on our streetsshame the hatred that lurks in all our hearts and the hostility that sometimes boils over in others’.Source of all love, Your Son proved ally to every reject:grant us, Lord, healing among the nations,wisdom for the governments, friendship in our communitiesand the light of Christ’s truth on every situation… 
Carroll: God of family, friends and loved onesin this silence where the joy and sorrow of life still echo, we pray for those in need. With despair, loss, and worry seemingly all around us, may our ears be open to the cries of the forlornthat we may hear their pain, feel their hurt and reach out in ready response.Source of all care, Your Spirit waits to anoint every wound: stir us, Lord, from coldness to shared feeling,from self-absorption to concern for others,from indifference to practical acts of kindness,and to the comfort and hope Christ alone can bring…
Music: Pater Noste (Gregorian Chant)The Monks of Glenstal Abbey, Co Tipperary from Attende Domine (Ainm Records)
In the Inner Enclosure
Canon Simon: All religious communities have sought to obey Christ’s command to welcome the stranger. But access to the monastery’s inner or central enclosure was restricted. The round tower, the abbot’s house, the cemetery, and the church we’re standing outside now, weren’t just the monks’ inner sanctum, they were Nendrum’s spiritual and ritual core.Father Martin: In Ezekiel’s time, purity was required to enter the sanctuary. Ezekiel’s hope was that ritual cleansing by water would be accompanied by the creation of a new heart and a new spirit. The early Church included Jews who had become Christians but were still practising Jews and so they began to iron out a workable theology of ritual and spiritual purity.Canon Simon: Acts chapter 15 includes a famous letter from the Jerusalem Council written for Gentile believers at Antioch, around the year 50 AD.
Carrol: Acts 15, verses 28 to 31For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.’So they were sent off and went down to Antioch.When they gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. When its members read it, they rejoiced at the exhortation.
Father Martin: Those verses from Acts have been described as ‘A first marker of a Christian tradition of Gentile ritual purity’.Canon Simon: For the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, on the other hand, the death and resurrection of Jesus meant that the Temple of Jerusalem had been superseded. The pursuit of ritual purity, moreover, could be abandoned wholesale.
Joan: Hebrews 10:19-23Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.
Father Martin: These two strands – the demand that members of the Church live pure and holy lives, alongside the conviction that we are redeemed by God’s grace alone – will run throughout Christian history.Canon Simon: Despite opposition in the Latin West from doctrinal giants like St Jerome and St Augustine, the early Irish Church seems to have been influenced by an emphasis on purity that was more characteristic of the Christian Greek East. Which brings us back to the reason some Christians visited Nendrum in the first place: to seek forgiveness for their sins.Father Martin: The Christian heart naturally asks: who among us, having been touched by the love of God, does not long for more? We want that love to fill more and more of our hearts and lives, bringing light and warmth even to those parts of ourselves that remain wounded, fearful or closed.Canon Simon: Ezekiel understood that external purity is not enough. Again, within Reformed spirituality, holiness is a side-effect of growing closer to the God who made us, redeemed us and will finally welcome us home. It’s a lifelong journey whose trajectory is towards the holy, the holier and the holiest.
Music: Always an Immigrant (Keith Getty arr J Rea)New Irish Orchestra BBC Recording 
Inside the Church
Father Martin: We’ve stepped at last inside the open-air ruins of Nendrum’s Church. Eventually, a series of wooden structures was replaced with a stone building. To modern eyes the nave looks small, but 100 monks are thought to have squeezed in here.Canon Simon: For sure, many would describe Nendrum as a ‘thin place’, where the earthly and spiritual boundary blurs, heaven touches earth, and God feels near. It’s certainly a place where ‘prayer has been valid’: even after the earliest monastery ceased to function, Nendrum’s worship continued as a parish church until the sixteenth century.Father Martin: But its serenity today belies the spiritual striving and soul-searching built into its very stones. Which brings us to the Bible’s final temple picture in Revelation. Depicting the heavenly city, Revelation insists that the blood of Jesus grants access to the one true sanctuary which belongs to the people of the new covenant. 
Carrol: Revelation 21, verses 16 to 22The wall is built of jasper, while the city is pure gold, clear as glass.The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every jewel…And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, each of the gates is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold, transparent as glass.I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.
Canon Simon: It’s a vision Christians of every persuasion are grateful to claim. One after another, the barriers which separate humankind from God are removed, until nothing remains to come between God and His people. Ultimately, the new Jerusalem has no temple – God and the Lamb is the Temple. Father Martin: To go back to Ezekiel, it’s surely revealing that the former temple priest and prophet insists he never entered the temple’s inner room or most holy place. Perhaps he didn’t need to. By contrast, there is evidence to suggest that on completion of their fasting and prayer, penitential visitors to monasteries like Nendrum did finally make it to the altar Canon Simon: Cross-marked grave slabs nearby suggest that for some, Nendrum was a final destination. For more, though, probably even for most, it was a spiritual staging post. The original flagged stone pathway which leads to the door of this Church, also leads away. Indeed, from Nendrum and other nearby shores, monks set sail with their manuscripts for permanent exile in continental Europe.Father Martin: God brought people here and God sent them on from here – as He sends us on today. Yes, Nendrum represents an interval, a time for rest and healing. Yet it also a represents a time of testing, of inviting God to cleanse our inner desires so that our perspective changes and we see the world differently.Canon Simon: Crucially, God goes with us and so we end as we started, with another Trinitarian circling or Caim prayer. Christians sometimes turned gently clockwise as they prayed The Caim, drawing three circles around themselves with their index fingers to involve their whole selves, body, mind, soul and spirit, and to express their sense that God was in the circle with them. We pray together:
Bless to me the sky that is above meBless to me the ground that is beneath meBless to me the friends who are around me Bless to me the love of the Three Deep within me and encircling me. Amen.
Music: Sicut Cervus (Palestrina)Choir of the Sistine Chapel From Cantate Doino (Deutsche Grammophon)
Closing Announcement:Sicut Cervus by Palestrina ends that Sunday Worship which came from the Nendrum Monastic site at Strangford Lough in County Down and was led by Father Martin Magill and Canon Simon Doogan.The producer was David Walker.Next week Sunday Worship will be a service to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11 from churches on either side of Ground Zero: St Paul's and St Nicholas', New York.