Northern Cross St. Robert of Newminster

Br. Aidan, of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, received the June Issue of the Norhtern Star, Newcastle Catholic Newspaper, this morning (Monday).

The News completes the St. Robert Year.

The Saint Robert of Newminster Year of celebration draws to a close PARISHIONERS of St Robert's, Morpeth, will walk from church to the grounds of the ruined Newminster Abbey on the eve of the feast of St Robert of Newminster. Parishioners of St Robert's, Fenham will join their Morpeth friends for the walk, on June 6, which culminates with Vespers at the Abbey. This will mark the end of the year of celebration marking the 850tb anniversary of the death of Saint Robert in 1159. The walk starts at 3pm. and on return to the Church there will be refreshments in the church hall. On the feast day June 7 there will be Mass at St Robert's at 6pm followed by a family ceilidh and pie and pea supper at the Riverside Lodge. Parish priest Fr Lawrence Jones will lead the walk and offer the next day’s Mass, and will be accompanied by Fr James Doherty. who lives in retirement in the presbytery at Morpeth,

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Earlier (Sunday):

Last year we marked the 850th Anniversary. This eveing I got in contact with George ... of Morpeth and Fenham. He tells me that, in fact, today a good attendance were present to visit the site of Minster Abbey and return to gather at St. Roberts of Minster at Morpeth Church, and on to the Hall for the traditional hospitality.

We learned from George of one shadow on the occasion by the death of Fr. Kevin Gallagher at the age of 62 -the funeral to be at Our Lady of the Sea on Tuesday.

See the POST as from last year 2009.

POSTED BY FR DONALD AT 10:55 3 COMMENTS LINKS TO THIS POST

SUNDAY, 7 JUNE 2009

St Robert of Newminster (June 7) 850th Anniversary

George Thornton, author of Newminster Abbey writes, On 7 June the feast of our patron, the Cistercian, St. Robert, our two parishes in Fenham and Morpeth, celebrated the 850th. Anniversary of the saint by meeting at his Church in Morpeth. ....

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Monday, 07 June 2010 ST. ROBERT OF NEWMINSTER (12th century)

In 1132 Robert was a monk at Whitby, England, when news arrived that thirteen religious had been violently expelled from the Abbey of St. Mary, in York, for having proposed to restore the strict Benedictine rule. He at once set out to join them, and found them on the banks of the Skeld, near Ripon, living in the midst of winter in a hut made of hurdles and roofed with turf. In the spring they affiliated themselves to St. Bernard's reform at Clairvaux, and for two years struggled on in extreme poverty. At length the fame of their sanctity brought another novice, Hugh, Dean of York, who endowed the community with all his wealth, and thus laid the foundation of Fountains Abbey. In 1137 Raynulph, Baron of Morpeth, was so edified by the example of the monks at Fountains that he built them a monastery in Northumberland, called Newminster, of which St. Robert became abbot.

The holiness of his life, even more than his words, guided his brethren to perfection, and within the next ten years three new communities went forth from this one house to become centres of holiness in other parts. The abstinence of St. Robert in refectory alone sufficed to maintain the mortified spirit of the community. One Easter Day, his stomach, weakened by the fast of Lent, could take no food, and he at last consented to try to eat some bread sweetened with honey. Before it was brought, he felt this relaxation would be a dangerous example for his subjects, and sent the food untouched to the poor at the gate. The plate was received by a young man of shining countenance, who straightway disappeared. At the next meal the plate descended empty, and by itself, to the abbot's place in the refectory, proving that what the Saint sacrificed for his brethren had been accepted by Christ.

At the moment of Robert's death, in 1159, St. Godric, the hermit of Finchale, saw his soul, like a globe of fire, borne up by the angels in a pathway of light; and as the gates of heaven opened before them, a voice repeated twice, "Enter now, my friends."

Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]

The reprint of George Thornton’s book “Gods, Saints and a Scholar: The Early Northumbrian Experience”, (St. Robert of Minster of major interest), is expected.