Page 5 - LOTN Summer Issue 50

DIOCESE

The Children's Choir and Diocesan Choir

Mass being celebrated for the Pluscarden pilgrims

here might seem to be some irony in making a of the Lord and being ready for our journey to heaven. It
Benedictine Abbey the location for a diocesan is a lively expression of the reality that we are already on
T pilgrimage. An Abbey is a place of relative quiet this journey: that our life as believers is a real beginning
and stillness. All that rather vanishes in the face of of the fullness of life in God that we shall have in heaven.
the pilgrimage. When the Bishop described it as an Psalm 121 speaks of the pilgrimage in which ‘the tribes
invasion, he wasn’t entirely joking! But it is an invasion go up, the tribes of the Lord’. The great international
we welcome. pilgrim destinations draw people from many nations. In
Abbeys are quiet places because in them we wait this regard our local Aberdeen pilgrimage is remarkable,
prayerfully for the coming of the Lord. The monks make because of the international character of the Catholic
a vow of stability. This doesn’t prohibit all movement, community in the diocese. The pilgrimage is a splendid
but it means we have no plans to ‘move on’, we have parade of the ‘tribes of the Lord’ going up to the Lord.
reached our final home on earth and are preparing for Long may they keep marching.
the journey to heaven. + Abbot Anselm Atkinson OSB
The pilgrimage also is about preparing for the coming

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