‘I hope that you are paying your regards to the Black Madonna!” exclaimed one of our priest writers, when he learned that I was spending my post-Easter-Octave break in Catalonia, staying with friends in the hills above Barcelona. He had just bumped into the Herald’s editor at the Venerable English College on the Via di Monserrato in Rome; it was a strange confluence of coincidences, for at that very moment I was at Montserrat proper and about to do just what he expected.
In fact I was having an ice cream, because entry to the basilica at Montserrat is by timed ticket and my hour had not yet come – mainly because the place was packed. With a companion I had driven round the hairpin bends that zigzag their way up the bizarre-shaped mountain, with its numerous pinnacles at the top like a row of higgledy-piggledy crocodile teeth. Others – hundreds of them – had done the same, or come by bus, or cable car, or funicular railway.
Montserrat’s history is very long and complicated; it involves all sorts of ups and downs, destruction and resurgence, and much sacrifice – even to the point of martyrdom. Two dozen of its monks were among the hundreds of Catholic priests and religious killed in <em>odium fidei</em> by Republican forces in the course of the Spanish Civil War; their names are recorded on a fine marble memorial in the piazza.
I confess that I had not necessarily travelled out of piety, however, but because our hosts suggested the trip knowing my penchant for ecclesiastical ephemera and because it was only an hour’s drive from their home at Vallromanes. I had never been, despite many Catalonian escapades over the years, and my May column was at the back of my mind. A visit to a local Marian shrine therefore seemed just the ticket.
It must be said that I was not put in a more prayerful frame of mind by the sliding scale of access at the abbey fortress, rather like one of those prix-fixe menus. For €7 you can park your car on the hillside in the blazing heat, while €10 gets you access to the cool underground car park near the abbey entrance. Lunch in the buffet restaurant hovers around the €20 mark, and on the Friday we visited seemed mainly to involve meat. I had a tuna sandwich in the café instead.
Access to the church is €8; for another €3 you can climb up to the famous image, high above the altar; €4 more lets you hear the boys’ choir sing the office during term time. Steeper increments come with access to an audiovisual display about Montserrat’s history, as well as to the abbey museum, where a selection of items from its phenomenal collections are on display. We handed over €18 each; happily, the museum and AV show were almost empty.
I daresay there will be letters, but I found Montserrat – so steeped in miracle and mystery – much like a noisy Catholic theme park, complete with gift shops. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I suppose; the monks are clearly onto a nice little earner. There are 80 of them, apparently – an impressive cohort in this day and age – but I didn’t see a single one. By the time I got upstairs to the shrine itself I was hot and bothered and mildly miffed.
So there I stood, in front of the darkened likeness of Our Lady and her holy Son; where millions have done homage before, saints and sinners alike. I thought it churlish to tell her how I felt about it all, so I simply touched her outstretched orb like everyone else, signed myself, and sang <em>Regina Caeli</em> silently in my head. Back outside, a wall of candles flickered red, white, blue and green: a dispenser charged €2.50 for a large candle and €3.50 for an even larger one.
The bigger the candle, the better the prayer? I never normally sneer at popular cult; given the number of people kneeling in the pews, I was cross with myself for not getting into the spirit of the place – and my rosary was in my other jacket.
Our Lady of Montserrat loomed large in my thoughts over the next few days, and I resolved that I would return and stay at the monastery – as Benedictines, the monks welcome resident guests – and try to do better.
The idea recurred as the sun shone and the temperature soared. A couple of days later, I sat at an airport bar to pass the time before my flight home. I noticed a priest in the corner, unmistakably Iberian and as cool as a cucumber despite his black suit, tunic shirt and slip-in collar. Looking rather like St Josemaria Escriva, he was toying with an empty juice bottle. When I looked up again he had disappeared.
For a moment I was disappointed; I had imagined a vignette in which I asked him where he served, where he was going, and whether or not he was a Herald reader. In return he might have asked me where I had been and what I had seen – and then I could have told him and asked for advice.
Some things are just not meant to be. Others, however, are. Glancing at the bar’s sign I realised with a jolt that it was called the Santa María. Will she never let me go?
<strong><strong>This article originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of the <em>Catholic Herald</em>. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent and high-calibre counter-cultural Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click</strong> <mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/?swcfpc=1">h</a></mark><a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">ere</mark></a>.</strong>
