Montserrat: the sublime mother-monastery of the ancient Crown of Aragon. Our Lady of Montserrat is the Queen of Catalonia - her house on the high hills outside Barcelona is one of only a couple of very ancient, very renowned, most influential, and still active abbeys in the Iberian Peninsula, comparable to very few other places, such as Silos.
A healthy patriotism, a pride of ancient Catalan roots, always existed in Montserrat, and it reached great levels as the liturgical movement progressed in the 20th century, and as the Benedictine Abbey became the most relevant liturgical actor in Spain. But then, something happened: the 1960s, as the UNMENTIONABLE EVENT transformed Montserrat as it transformed the Church. Liturgy became revolutionary, patriotism became bigotry, vocations transformed into dust.
But something must indeed be changing as the most liberal Benedictine abbey in Southern Europe prepares to host, as the main and closing event of a pilgrimage in honor and for the soul of a young priest who died a year ago, Fr. Jordi Moya, a High Mass, on the High Altar of the church of the Mare de Déu: next Sunday, April 29, for the first time in so many decades, the Queen of the Spanish Levant will receive her due once again, a solemn Mass, a Traditional Mass, as the countless Masses she received in her home. [Source: Germinans germinavit, via La Cigüeña]
May it be the first of many; may the soul of Catalonia, Spain, Iberia, and all of Europe rise again. "With God, all things are possible." (Mt xix, 26).
