Jan 2011 The Road to Daybreak A Spiritual Journey by Henri J M Nouwen

Continue from ...... The First Gothic Arch! This afternoon Peter and I attended Vespers in the church of Our Lady of Morienval. Morienval is a small village about a half hour's drive from Trosly. We were not prepared for this unusual event. About thirty people sang Vespers together for the first Sunday of Advent. Most of them were members of religious orders from the area. The pastor who had organized the simple service told us that no Vespers had been sung in that church since 1745, when the Benedictine sisters, whose abbey church it was, left the area. It was a moving experience to pray with this small group of believers. We reached out over the centuries to those who had preceded us and took up the prayer that had been interrupted for 240 years. This in itself was unusual enough. But when the service was over and we had a chance to look around, we realized that we had come upon one of the most precious architectural gems in France. Built around 1050 in fine Romanesque style, the church has a central nave, three aisles, and a majestic clock tower. Its wide transepts and semicircular choir are flanked by two elegant, decorative towers. Compared to a cathedral, it is a small, homely church. We were astonished to see an eleventh-century church in such a fine state of preservation. Neither the feudal conflicts of the Middle Ages, nor the French Revolution, nor the First and Second World Wars had done any harm to it. It is undoubtedly one of the best-preserved Romanesque churches in France. The pastor of the church was eager to tell us about its history. He took us to the apse and showed us that one of the arches was pointed, in contrast to the rounded curves of the other Romanesque arches. As if he were betraying a secret, he whispered, "It is said that this is the first Gothic arch in the world." I was quite impressed to stand at the birthplace of the Gothic style, which would dominate the next several centuries. As a whole, the church was still round, down-to-earth, and simple. But the builder had begun to express an urge to go higher and strive for the heavens! The pastor turned on all the lights in the church and let the tower bells ring. Suddenly all was light and sound. We felt privileged to have a glimpse of the devotion and faith of people who had lived nine hundred years before us. They sang the same psalms as we did and prayed to the same Lord as we did. We felt once again a joyful, hope-giving connection with the past. As we left the church, a group of teenagers with a loud portable radio walked through the square, calling us back to the twentieth century. But as we looked at the church again and realized the beauty of this house of prayer, we said to each other, "We really should come back here and pray Vespers again." It seemed the right thing to do. The church was built for prayer.

- To Be Continued - © Copyright Shalom 2011. All rights reserved.