The first indications of a vocation began when I was just 8 or 9.  I grew up in South Wales and summer holidays tended to be in those days either a camping or caravan holiday somewhere that was not particularly far from home. Many of those holidays were near Tenby, and always included a visit to the romantic and mysterious Caldey Island.  This was my first encounter with monks, and they held a strange fascination for me. In those days I didn’t know about its Anglican history and thought that monks and nuns were just something that was part of the Roman Catholic Church.

 

From about the ages of 13, I felt a call to the ordained ministry and so much of the focus of my discernment was geared toward exploring that. When I was 19, I went on a vocations weekend which was held at Neale House, the conference centre run by the Sisters of St. Margaret in East Grinstead alongside their Convent there. It was here that I first encountered Anglican religious. The sisters became a very important part of my life (and still are) and were to form my spirituality and my exploration of a vocation to priesthood. I became an Associate of the Society and was very much part of the family of that community for many years. They helped me to understand a disciplined prayer life. In time I was ordained and thought that God had done with me what he wanted.

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I have always had a love of liturgical music and particularly in plainchant, after visiting many monasteries this led me to discover the Rule of St. Benedict. This short document lays out the life of the monk , and its balanced and kind approach inspires me every day.

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My own journey toward the Community of Nazareth has been shaped by years of seeking a faithful, disciplined life rooted in prayer and obedience, yet lived within the ordinary circumstances of the world. As an associate of the Society of St. Margaret, I learned the value of community, rhythm, Eucharistic devotion and Anglican religious life. That experience awakened in me a deeper desire for a monastic commitment that could be lived beyond enclosure, without diminishing its seriousness or depth.

 

This desire continued, through my formation, initial Profession, through to Solemn Vows in the House of Initia Nova, a Benedictine community where I was given the grace to live a vowed monastic life marked by stability, obedience, and conversion. Over time, it became clear that my vocation was to carry these gifts into a  different form of community life.

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The Community of Nazareth emerged from this discernment: a community shaped by the hidden life of Christ, Benedictine wisdom, and Anglican common prayer, offered not as an alternative to existing communities, but as a faithful expression of the same monastic heart, lived quietly in the midst of ordinary life.