It’s the border between farmland and dunes dottes with holiday homes, but it will be the location of a small Cistercian monastery. The mayor and executive board are all for it, but the municipal council will also need to agree. But the signs are good, and the monks on Schiermonnikoog seem to have found their new home.
Four monks from the former Sion Abbey are currently residing on the island of Schiermonnikoog, off the northern Dutch coast, in a residential home they are renting. Ever since their arrival, a result of their decision to leave too-large abbey, the monks have been looking for a location to establish their monastery on the island. It will be a small religious house, but with the hope that it may be the start of something bigger. A hope that is recognised and shared by Bishop Gerard de Korte, in whose diocese the monks now reside. He has repeatedly identified the presence of the monks on Schiermonnikoog as one of the seeds of spiritual renewal in the diocese, together with the shrine of Our Lady of the Garden Enclosed in Warfhuizen and the community of the Holy Ghost Fathers in Heerenveen, which is in the process of growing from two to four members.
^On 26 January, Abbot Alberic and Brother Paulus introduced themselves to the 27 pupils of the local secondary school. This was one of several introductions to the inhabitants of Schiermonnikoog.
The future monastery on Schiermonnikoog will be in a unique position. As a Cistercian house it will be a home of silence and prayer, but located in a world of farming, tourism and nature. Schiermonnikoog is small, its sole village surrounded by a national park, and soon with a monastery on the border between the two.
Photo credit: Simon van der Zee
In Caelo et in Terra 
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