A N D  T H E   B L A C K   M A D O N N A

April 20th

Montserrat is a spectacularly beautiful Benedictine monk mountain retreat about one hour northwest from Barcelona by car.

Not only is Montserrat Monastery of significant religious importance but the natural beauty surrounding the monastery is simply breathtaking.

The history of Montserrat is fascinating and started in 880 C.E. (!) when a small group of shepherd children saw a bright light descending from the sky in the Montserrat mountains. In the same moment the children heard "angels singing and the music filled their hearts with a radiant joy." Overwhelmed by the experience the children ran home to frantically recall the experience to their parents. The parents were skeptical but knew their children were trustworthy and honest and so they went to where the children had experienced the visions to see if they could see what all the fuss was about. For the whole month following the first visitation the parents were also witness to the same heavenly experiences and were left with only one conclusion. The visions were a sign from God.

A local vicar was brought to the scene and witnessed the same experiences as the children and parents. The visions occurred in the same location in a cave on Montserrat mountain. When this cave was explored by the religious elders of the community they found an image of the Virgin Mary. A Black image. And from that moment on the cave became a holy sanctuary for religious pilgrims. The Black Virgin was enshrined, a Benedictine Monastery was built and the rest is history....For more than a thousand years, people have visited the Black Madonna, rubbed the orb and asked for their prayers to be answered. The Black Madonna is the patron saint of Catalonia and her image is revered everywhere.

We chose to take our hike first, as there were so many people waiting to see the Black Madonna. We had already taken a train up the mountain to the monastery, so from there we took a very steep funicular train to a higher level and then hiked to the top (!!!) of Montserrat. 5 1/2 hours round trip. It was beautiful at every moment, the ground and hills were covered with wild miniature daffodils and lush violets. The chaparral and hills looked like California, except for the thick copses of wild rosemary on the slopes.

I was struck by how similar the area was to the place I lived in India 150 K north of Mumbai. The hills there were filled with "saddhus", hermits who had renounced the world and had taken on a difficult discipline called Kashmir Shaivism, a worship of Shiva. They lived in caves or on dung heaps, and depended on the kindness of strangers to feed them. Like those hills, these hills are honeycombed with hermit caves, once occupied by religious "anchorites". I suppose after several hundred years of pilgrims climbing the mountain to visit the cave shrine of the Virgin, and what with so many hermits living in stone houses and caves around the area, a monastery was built.

The communal life of a monastery is called cenobitic, as opposed to the anchoretic (or anchoritic) life of an hermit. It is said that Christian monasticism started in Egypt. According to tradition, in the 3rd century St. Anthony was the first Christian to adopt this lifestyle. After a short while others followed. Originally, all Christian monks were anchorites (hermits) seldom encountering other people. But because of the extreme difficulty of the solitary life, many monks failed, either returning to their previous lives in the city, or becoming spiritually deluded. A transitional form of monasticism was later created in which “solitary” monks lived close enough to one another to offer mutual support as well as gathering together on Sundays for common services. The concept of a monastery was born.

Anchoritism never died out though, but was reserved only for those advanced monks who had worked out their problems within a cenobitic monastery. The idea caught on, and other places followed.

(Okay, I had to go there with the whole history of monasticism thing. Sorry. My brother Lindsay says, if you  ask an Ayliffe what time it is, he'll tell you how to built a clock.)

Anyway, after we returned to the monastery, we ate a light supper then visited the beautiful Basilica of  alabaster and gold leaf and the shrine of the famous Black Madonna. Most everyone had left so there was no line, no waiting. We rubbed the orb and prayed for peace, a Democratic President, clean fusion power, a general amnesty for undocumented aliens and a working theory for sub atomic particles and then we left. We drove back to Barcelona, dropped the women at Adolfo's where we enjoyed a lovely dinner, then as soon as we got home-fell immediately to sleep. Another remarkable day in a remarkable town.