Montserrat

After a day of worshiping the sun at the beach it was time for penance. We made a pilgrimage to Montserrat.

The Montserrat monastery is about an hour outside Barcelona by train and is set in some pretty amazing rock formations.  Those monks seemed to always seek out cool spots for their hermitages. This one is no different. The rocks in this area have been eroded into fantastic shapes--a perfect place for contemplation.

The first monks had crawled up into these rocks by about the year 900. Later in the middle ages, the story goes that a couple of shepherd kids found a secret cave and inside was a miraculous carved wooden figure of the Mary and Jesus. Apparently all sorts of miraculous things are attributed to this statue. It's future as a pilgrimage site was cemented and the hermitages and chapels just kept getting bigger and bigger.

Aside from all the religious tradition, the place is quite striking and makes a good site for pilgrimage. It seems to be something between a religious site and a national park for the Catalans.

I can't help but think that if we had had monks in the US early on, all our national parks would probably have monasteries in them.  Think of it, Yosemite, Zion, Bryce, Grand Canyon all with a bunch of robed monks instead of rangers and monasteries instead of lodges.