The Power and the Glory

Note: Some of the photos accompanying this post were taken in 2014, when we were allowed to take photos inside the monastery and the main church.

Melk Abbey is a Benedictine monastery that has been praying daily for the world since the year 1089. A rebuilding program lasting for 40 years in the early eighteenth century has left us with a spectacularly beautiful baroque complex that houses a school, a library, a vineyard and a church whose beauty defies description. The rationalism of the late eighteenth century led to the closure of many monasteries whose only product was prayer. This cloister escaped the axe of Emperor Joseph II because it also produced wine, spices and educated students from its school.

The school is still here, and its 800 students from age 10 to 18 must still study theology. In our inclusive age, however, a student here need not be Roman Catholic. She can be Evangelical; he can even be Muslim.

Benedictines sing their prayers, and the 28 monks who still live here sing the daily office in a small chapel adjacent to the large Abbey Church. The noon service takes place in the big church, and the public is invited to worship with the brothers of the cloister.

The entire facility is magnificent. Many of the dormitory rooms were made for the family and court of Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Maria Theresa, who was especially fond of Melk Abbey. For this reason, none of the residences along the 600 yards of corridors can be called shabby. Most are used now for offices. A marble dining room made for the use of the royal family still stands with moveable lunettes to allow guests to hear the music of a chamber orchestra during their meals.

The main church, a baroque masterpiece, beggars description. Marble and gold cover every surface from the high altar to the organ pipes up in the choir. A ceiling painted with images of clouds and angels could plausibly be described as a window into heaven.

And yet. . .

When I think of the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art, precious stones, precious metals, gold-covered reliquaries, liturgical vestments and golden jewel-studded chalices used here, I have to wonder whether the humble carpenter from Galilee would approve. I must wonder how many poor starving Austrians could have been fed had those resources been used differently. I must wonder about orphans who were compelled to a life of labor rather than education. Could the abbey’s extravagant resources have been used to relieve their suffering?

Possibly so, but when I see the beauty on display here, the meticulous care that prelates and craftsmen have given to the service of God in these buildings, the way the indescribable beauty of this abbey reflects the glory of God, I must finally conclude—I’m glad they built it.Leggi altro