The Lough Derg Pilgrim Path is the setting for Pilgrimage this Autumn 

August 2020 Dates: 16, 18, 22, 26, 30 | September dates to follow 

Hello from Lough Derg

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention and for the past several months here at Lough Derg we have had to be very creative because of the needs of this present time.

Not able to open the island for the One Day Retreats in May we found a way to offer those retreats online in May and early June. Then at the end of June, the final weekend, we offered the opportunity for people to ‘Do Lough Derg from wherever they were’ and in the middle of July we relaunched the Lough Derg Pilgrim Path with two walks over a Saturday and Sunday one weekend.

Now that we are not able to open for One Day Retreats on the Island. We are still being creative. Four hundred years ago when pilgrims arrived to the lakeshore in a time of religious persecution and were prevented from crossing to Station Island. They found a way of completing their pilgrimage by saying their prayers along the lakeshore.

Their resourcefulness inspired us to put together a form of pilgrimage that will use our refurbished pilgrim path and offer a prayerful walking experience in the spirit and the tradition, we hope, of the best of Lough Derg.

I hope that those who long to be back on Lough Derg on Station Island may at least be able to come this far and to pray along the lakeshore. I hope it will be a time of grace and because we will be in the outdoors we won’t just be so stringently subject to the regulations that cover indoor spaces and so on. So it will be, please God, also a healthy experience for body and for soul.

I hope I may see you there – some of you at least.

Slán go fóill.

Fr La Flynn

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