This year the Priory celebrates the Golden Jubilee of the coming of the friars to Boars Hill. To mark the occasion, a number of celebrations have been taking place. In May Bishop Crispian Hollis (Bishop of Portsmouth) came to say Mass during the Provincial Chapter. Later in the year there will be a celebration with the priests and religious of the area. On the anniversary itself, October 12, there was a celebration for the members of the Carmelite Secular Order, as well as those who frequent Boars Hill on a regular basis. A full congregation participated in the Jubilee Mass, which was followed by a festive meal. Present also was Fr Ambrose McNamee, who was part of the very first community 50 years ago, and was Prior for the first 5 years.

 

The following is the text of the homily given by Fr Vincent O'Hara OCD, Prior, at the Jubilee Mass:

"Our primary sentiment on this occasion is one of gratitude - gratitude, first of all, to God for the past 50 years and the many blessings that this place has brought to so many people, ourselves included; and gratitude to all those who have gone before us who served generously here - many of them now gone to their eternal reward. It's a time for remembering, and it is right that we should do so, in deference to those who have preceded us. And our remembrance goes back far beyond the past 50 years, for our Carmelite presence in Oxford is rooted in history and goes back many centuries. One of the very first Carmelite monasteries in England was founded in Oxford as far back as 1254. When you think that our Order only began on Mount Carmel in the early 1200s, and our Rule was given in 1209, and the first General Chapter of the Order was held in 1247, then the foundation in Oxford was very early indeed.

That first monastery was located more or less where Worcester College is now, at the bottom of Beaumont Street, and it would appear that the friars had a College in those early days of the University city. We're even told that there were 54 in the community at one stage! The community lived right next door to Beaumont Palace, birthplace and residence of Richard I and King John, of Magna Carta fame. And indeed Beaumont Palace was to figure in later Carmelite history, 60 years later in fact, for in 1318, King Edward II gave Beaumont Palace to the Carmelites, in thanksgiving for his safe delivery from the Battle of Bannockburn through the intercession of Our Lady. Whether it was still used as a royal residence when it was handed over to the Carmelites is unclear, but the friars found it necessary to build a small chapel as an annexe to the nearby St Mary Magdalen Church. It's still there today and has a statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. And there is still a little street in that area called "Friars Entry".

The friars ministered from Beaumont Palace for the next 200 years, until the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century. Most of the stones from Beaumont Palace went into the building of St John's College in St Giles - but providentially a few of them found their way here in the 1960s and they guard the entrance to our driveway.

So it was a strong sense of history that inspired a generous benefactor, Teresa Brock, in the late 1950s to request a return of the Carmelite friars to the Oxford area, when the time was right. She had been a Carmelite nun for a while in Notting Hill, and had also connections with the Oxford Carmel, which had been in Moreton Road since 1922. The search for a suitable site was not undertaken with any great vigour until the Superior General of the Order, Fr Anastasio Ballestrero, later Cardinal, paid a visit to our Province in 1960 and, in spite of being told by the friars that the time was "not opportune" for a foundation in Oxford, he insisted that the search be stepped up!

So the wheels were set in motion once more, and a kind Catholic estate agent put his services at our disposal, and Chilswell House on Boars Hill was found to be for sale. According to Fr Ambrose, the sale very nearly stalled when the vendor suddenly upped his selling price quite considerably at the last minute, but the Provincial, Fr Joseph McElhinney, held fast, saying there was no more money, and giving a 6 o'clock deadline for the sale to be concluded, which it was on January 12, 1961.

The first community to take up residence here were Fr Ambrose McNamee, Prior, with Fr Brocard Mansfield and Br Joseph Walley. Reading Fr Ambrose' diary from that time, it is obvious that those early days were tough - it's like reading from St Teresa's "Foundations" in places! The purpose of the new foundation was to serve as a House of Philosophy for the Province, so accommodation had be built to house the first batch of students that were due to arrive in September 1962, on completion of their second year of Novitiate in Wincanton. So the present Annexe was built in double-quick time and the first students duly arrived, eight of them altogether.

For the next seven years, the "Priory of St John of the Cross", as it was called, was a thriving centre of philosophy, with all the courses taught in-house by our own Fathers. Our own numbers were supplemented in due course by Carmelite students from Malta and even from Australia. Over those seven years, a total of 33 students passed through Boars Hill.

With the decline in vocations towards the end of the 1960s, coupled with the difficulty of keeping two Houses of Studies staffed from our own resources, it was decided to revert to having a single House of Studies for Philosophy and Theology in Dublin.

So from 1969 onwards, the Carmelite Priory in Boars Hill became a simple monastery of the Order. The Fathers had some outside ministry, including the chaplaincy of the RAF camp at nearby Shippon (Abingdon). The Centre was designated a "House of Prayer" and offered to friars as a place of rest and refreshment. However, such a large premises was difficult to maintain, and the early 1970s initiated a period of intensive reflection on its long-term viability. But soon new vocations began to emerge in England, and the Priory was designated as a Novitiate house. In addition, the surplus space in the Annexe was offered to people who wished to spend quiet time here and reside overnight. This new venture gathered momentum, and the demand was such that there was a need for additional accommodation, so the Pyramid building was constructed in 1989. Furthermore, the novices were transferred to the restored and extended Priory so as to create maximum space for retreatants until eventually 27 rooms were made available, and still are up to the present time.

In the interim, there have been many ups and downs, and much soul-searching, and this place has used up almost as many lives as a cat - but with the decision of the Province in 2008 to substantially refurbish the entire Centre, we have entered calmer and more serene waters, and we are in a good space to celebrate our 50 years of existence and to look forward with relative optimism to the foreseeable future at least.

What invigorates us, and gives us no small comfort, is the amount of people who have been nourished here in this place, and the legions of people who have found here an oasis away from a busy world, a place to recharge the batteries and immerse themselves in this place of prayer and allow themselves to be drawn into a praying community. On the face of it, our remoteness is a distinct disadvantage, but in fact this has turned out to be one of our greatest boons, and people are always commenting on how the solitude soothes their spirit.

Environment matters to people, and we can be grateful to the poetic soul of Robert Bridges for finding this place, overlooking the "city of dreaming spires". The poet and the contemplative are kindred spirits.

The twin ministry of this place is its function as a Retreat Centre and also as a House of Formation. The new vocations that we have been blessed with recently, with a promise of more to come, put new heart into us as we prepare to pass the Carmelite torch to a new generation, confident that the Providence that brought us here in the first place all those years ago will continue to guide us into an uncertain future - for ultimately, all our future and all our hope is in the hands of a provident and loving God. For, while we may not know what the future holds, we do know Who holds the future. And ultimately, "all we know about tomorrow is that the Providence of God will rise before the sun". And that's all any of us needs to know!

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