A group of ordinary men are to take part in a unique experiment when they spend 40 days in a monastery “to discover if the 1500-year-old monastic tradition has anything to offer a new generation”: that, in substance, is the aim of a new series on Britain’s BBC2 channel, called “The Monastery”, due to start on 10 May and to continue on the following two Tuesdays (17 and 24 May at 9.00 pm). The programme shows five lay volunteers trying to come to terms with the Benedictine Rule of “Ora et labora” (praying and working) and living together with the 22 Benedictine monks in Worth Abbey in West Sussex. According to the Abbot, Father Christopher Jamison, the BBC2 project represented “an opportunity to discover what our way of life offers to people today who do not share our beliefs. Our hope for the participants was that they would discover hidden depths to their lives and in those hidden depths encounter God. This hope was fulfilled to an extent that took us all by surprise and the story of their development is now portrayed in the programmes”. “The Monastery” is not an invasive ‘Big Brother’ or a “reality show” of the kind so popular today, but “a serious attempt to explore the role of religion, God, faith and spirituality in general in our society”. The five volunteers “adjusted to life in the monastery rather rapidly reports Father Luke, the monk who followed them at close hand even though the rule of silence was difficult for some to accept. At the end of six weeks they all testified to a change and the wish to translate their experience to the places where they live”. One of the five participants is the 36-year-old Belfast-born Gary McCormick, a painter and decorator who has spent much of his adult life in prison where he discovered his faith.
