The Orientale Lumen movement in England was initiated as a series of East-West Christian Monastic Meetings hosted by the community of Benedictine nuns at Minster Abbey in England. The first took place in 1996 at St Mildred’s Priory, Minster Abbey, Kent, following a period of deep study of Pope John Paul II’s Letter ‘The Light from the East‘. It also grew out of an earlier series of Monastic Patristic Study meetings, an encounter between Catholic and Anglican Benedictines.
The principal addresses at the first East-West Meeting were:
- A life pleasing to God: The Spirituality of the Rules of St Basil, Dom Augustine Holmes OSB (developed into a book of the same title published by DLT in 2000)
- St Basil, Father Athanase, Chevetogne, Belgium
- St Basil, Fr Anthony Meredith SJ
- The Practice of Spiritual Guidance in the East, Sister Marina, Monastery of St John the Baptist, Tolleshunt Knights
A short account of the Meeting was subsequently given by Sister Benedict Gaughan OSB in One in Christ, volume 40, no. 3, April 2005.