Retreat: Meditations From a Monastery: Pluscarden Abbey

Series which goes in search of inner peace in three Benedictine monasteries around Britain. Pluscarden Abbey is a remote Benedictine monastery on the edge of the Scottish Highlands in Moray and is home to 21 monks. It is the oldest practising monastery in the United Kingdom, dating back to the medieval era. The monks live by the 6th-century Rule of St Benedict and life has changed little in hundreds of years. Given its isolated position, the abbey is almost entirely self-sufficient. The monks grow their own crops, make their own clothes and have little contact with the outside world. Unlike most Benedictine monks who wear a black habit, the monks at Pluscarden Abbey wear white, a symbol of their austerity and strict interpretation of monastic life. We follow a typical day in the life at the abbey - from the time one monk knocks on the doors of the brethren and chants in Latin to wake them up for the first service of the day at 4.15am right up to compline, the final service of the day.