I contributed the Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Ulster on Friday 14 August.
You can listen here, or read the text below:
Holy Cross Abbey
I have visited the chapel at Holy Cross Benedictine Abbey in Rostrevor, Co Down, for many years. It is simple in design, yet rich in meaning. I believed I understood its message.
As you enter, you pass the original holy water font from Downpatrick Cathedral, dating from the twelfth century. It was gifted to Holy Cross by the Church of Ireland Diocese of Down and Dromore.
Above it hangs a plaque bearing St Paul’s words from the Letter to the Ephesians: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” This, too, was a gift—from the Church of Ireland parish of Kilbroney.
Behind the altar is an icon of Christ inscribed with his prayer from St John’s Gospel, “May all be one.”
The circular arrangement of the chapel’s wooden pillars evokes the trees of a nearby fairy fort.
St Bronagh’s holy well is nearby, its fresh springs feeding the valley. Bronagh was a sixth century saint who established a monastic community in the glen above Rostrevor. She was also one of the few women saints to have an Episcopal staff, a mark of her authority.
These ancient sacred sites marked the Kilbroney Valley as a place of spiritual significance long before the chapel itself was dedicated during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in 2004.
Without a word being spoken, the chapel had communicated to me its central message: Christian unity. That vision echoes the abbey’s 1998 Foundation Decree, which states that the community was established “to contribute to reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants in a land marked by reciprocal violence and stained by the blood of Christian brothers and sisters.”
Yet I had overlooked something.
Only after reading a short history of Holy Cross’ monastic community did I realise that, despite all my visits, I had never looked up.
Had I done so, I would have seen the chapel’s hidden centrepiece: a cross-shaped window set into the ceiling. When sunlight streams through, it becomes a radiant cross of light.
In a beautiful feat of architectural ingenuity—one that might have delighted the Neolithic builders of Newgrange—the cross of light is reflected in the communion cup when it is placed on the altar for the celebration of the Eucharist.
The cross of light, illuminating all who gather below, speaks not only of the hope for Christian unity but of its deeper reality. Whenever that hope seems distant or elusive, I remember that sometimes the most important thing we can do is simply look up.
Image: from Holy Cross Abbey Facebook page