Story of Mother Mary Martin

Page 1

THE STORY OF M.M.M. - HOW THEY BEGAN. GLENSTAL PRIORY. (Written for the first issue of the magazine but not published). The Medical Missionaries found their first home in Ireland in the Benedictine Priory at Glenstal, Co. Limerick. Approaching from the little village of Murroe, Co. Limerick by a long avenue traversing a hillside we reach this Priory so beautifully situated among lake and woodland scenery. From the towers and terraces of the Castle, built on the slopes of Slieve Felim, the view extends far beyond Limerick and the Shannon to the west, to the Galtee mountains to the east and south east, and over the Golden Vale to the south. In May 1927 the first group of monks entered Glenstal from Maredsous in Belgium. Though few in number they started immediately their Monastic life. No work, manual or intellectual is excluded from their vocation and in Glenstal they had for many years to provide many commodities and even necessities by the labour of their own hands. The first foundation established in the new Monastery was a school of artistic crafts for boys of the working class, to train them in skillful and beautiful work. A few years afterwards a college was opened to give boys a classical education. In the meantime the monks rendered the spiritual services of edification to the people of the district. They spread little by little the ideas and the sense of beauty in the cult of God, both by the productions of the Art School and by the lectures and lessons on the plain chant and the liturgy. Nothing proves better the supernatural vitality of the old Monastic Orders than their suppleness of adaption and the attraction they exercise after so many centuries on "active souls" as well as on those who feel called to the "peace of contemplation". In our time of feverish activity a fresh proof of this was given when the newly founded Institute of the Medical Missionaries of Mary, frankly modern, found a solid resting place in a Benedictine Priory;