The Lady on the mountain
Montserrat - picture provided by author
The skin on my hands is peeling. It has been happening since Spain, the dry sensation making me acutely aware of my physical being, like realizing that you take breathing for granted when a cold comes on. I lather lotion onto my hands, but it does not smooth the scaly patches. Unlike a sunburn that provides a guilty satisfaction when you can peel off a layer of skin, the texture of my hands is flaky and uneven. The patches look like a mountain range from an aerial view, interconnected but dispersed. It’s as if the Spanish air has implanted itself in my hands and wants to be released, but I will not let it go. I’d rather feel the itch than let my hands look just as they did before Spain. It is the only physical manifestation of my journey that I can claim, an analog equivalent of the layers that have become unwound within me. My body is making me new not by adding anything on but by expunging that which is no longer a part of me. I prayed to be inflamed so that I might set the world ablaze, and now my skin has become brittle kindling.
The whole time I spent preparing for and traveling to Spain for my pilgrimage of St. Ignatius’ life, I wonder if there will be a moment that is both existential and adolescent - something that evokes the aura of a John Hughes film or a first kiss. The kind of moment that feels elastic, like it will be this way forever, a twist of cigarette smoke in the sepia-toned streetlights. I want to feel something profound - I have not been on a retreat or pilgrimage since I was in college and the expanse of time that now stretches before me - no graduation to look toward, no precise deadline on the horizon - is at once dream-inducing and terrifying. What will mark my years now, the abstract fabric of one’s third decade of life?
The monastery on Montserrat seems to promise this moment as my tour bus drives up the mountain. The basilica, Santa Maria de Montserrat, sits atop the mountain. The name Montserrat oozes with Latin, a language I love, an ancient whisper. Mont- from mons, meaning “mountain,” -serrat from serro, meaning “to saw up,” as in the participle “serrated.” The ridge of the mountain is a series of rocky spokes jutting into the sky like a knife. The road winds around the mountain to drop us off at the road we must walk up to reach the cathedral and its stone piazza. It is air and earth, God’s work and man’s fused together in a collage.
You cannot take pictures inside the basilica. It is actively and frequently used, the monks’ vespers prayers floating beneath the watch of the church’s patron, the Black Madonna. She is small in stature, about three feet tall, and overlooks the entire congregation from her balcony. The clothes on her and her son are gold, and their skin is black, said to be the result of long exposure to the ash of candles. Seated with her son in her lap, crown on her head, and globe in her hand, she was carried by young men in the eighth century, becoming heavier and heavier as they carried her, so that once it was unbearable to go on, they set her on Montserrat and built the monastery around her, rather than carrying her down the mountain as originally intended. The Blessed Virgin chose Montserrat for this rendering of herself, a command and a promise.
During the day, pilgrims and tourists travel to the mountain and wait in line for hours to venerate the Black Madonna and touch the orb in her hand, the only part of the statue not encased by glass. There is no town on the mountain, no restaurants or ice cream shops. Once the basilica clears out after Vespers, only the fifty people in our group remain.
We have mass in a chapel located behind the Black Madonna. We look up and see her white backside, the original color. She looks out onto an empty cathedral, as if ensuring that we are not interrupted. I feel a need to give all of my being to this place, to be active in the readings and music lest I become apathetic to the surroundings. I want to remember this mass, but I am aware that one day the details will escape me - and that this is likely the only time I will see the statue from this perspective.
The Black Madonna in her niche
After mass, I stand in front of the Black Madonna and touch the sphere in her hand, pilgrims on either side of me. About 500 years ago, a man named Inigo, later calling himself Ignatius, laid down his sword in front of this statue after making a confession and praying through the night. He pledged his life to her, not the statue, but whom she depicts. A woman, a spouse, a mother. The protector of his king, the nurturer of his savior. Inigo traveled from Loyola to Montserrat to fall on his knees in front of this statue. I sense that she also wants me to lay down my sword before her, but I am not a soldier. I want to sit before her and wait until she or her son tells me what to do. But there are pilgrims behind me, waiting in line, so I walk away.
Is this when the skin on my hands started to become arid? My hands are often clammy, even when I am not nervous. That they are now the opposite is starkly noticeable. Does the Blessed Virgin worry I will forget her if I do not have this physical reminder, like tying a string around my finger? I want to ask how she thinks I could forget her, but when I look over the mountains that night onto the black sky and dots of light from the towns below, and when I climb the mountain in the morning to see the sun sitting between the peaks, I can see why she might think this - I am enchanted by the terrain but it is the statue, and what Inigo did there, that I must remember.
I travel in parallel with Ignatius. Whereas his spirit must have been soaring above the mountain after Montserrat, so does mine. After Montserrat, Ignatius began a period of asceticism and spiritual suffering in Manresa. As we drive toward Manresa, I can glimpse the ridge of Montserrat and ache to be back. Manresa is miles away from the mountain, a small town next to an unattractive river. It makes sense to me that Ignatius went to a cave to explore the depths of his soul - he didn’t want to look at Manresa any longer than he had to, the contrast so deep. Manresa is where Ignatius began to serve the poor and expose himself to his own weaknesses, letting himself fall. It is where he wrote the Spiritual Exercises, his magnum opus of the interior life. Before going to Montserrat, I thought that Manresa would give me my moment, but looking at it now, I am deflated.
The cave where Ignatius prayed and wrote the Spiritual Exercises is now a part of a chapel, a portal to nothing. Walking through the tunnel to the cave’s chapel is like being on a school field trip - single file, hands to yourselves, boys and girls. I want to throw myself on the floor, feel the stone under my legs rather than the padding of a kneeler. I want the grittiness, the musty smell that has been driven out by making this cave into a chapel. I want to go back to Montserrat and stay on the mountain. In a thrash of immaturity, I refuse to let my soul return from its heights and come back to the ground.
We walk down to the river at the edge of Manresa, brown and muddy. It is where Ignatius crossed to enter this new city, a visual regression that would allow for his formation. I can’t imagine his disappointment when he turned around to see the mountain. Why didn’t he stay there forever? Someone asks if I want my picture taken on the bridge. “No,” I reply, “I don’t find it very beautiful.”
The jagged rocks of Montserrat
Later, I read St. Ignatius’ biography and learn that it is on this bridge that he had a great spiritual awakening and many truths came to him. Maybe the river looked different then. Or maybe he wasn’t so vain as to care about the aesthetics. The dry patches of skin on my hands flee and I know they are trying to be blown back to Montserrat, and be buried in the ground, be trampled by an ibex that could implant shards of my person into the mountain.
I feel like I’m scratching a balloon, sure that it will pop at any second, but it doesn’t. That one night could not be all that Montserrat had to offer me, there must be more. If I could have stayed, maybe I would know what to lay down before the Black Madonna. Maybe I would know how to be like Ignatius. But I have nothing. Is it because I have not strayed from the Church, at least not yet? I have strayed from God, of course, I’ve driven nails into Jesus’ palms, but I have not strayed from the Church. I have not had the youthful experience of searching for something different, to either find what I’m looking for or return home changed. Is that something I need? Will I only be able to enter my cave and uncover Truth if I go somewhere where a cannonball can hit me, like Ignatius experienced? I’m a pebble on the mountain, wanting to move, but without enough weight to create the momentum to roll down - I’m waiting for a push.
When we arrive in Barcelona, it is blaring and chaotic. This city is supposed to be the joyful culmination of my fortnight-long journey before I go home, but I am claustrophobic and stressed. I go to a bar and drink a gin cocktail infused with hibiscus. The fizz is sharp on my tongue. Other people my age, some older, some younger, yell and laugh and drink. Is this the climax of my pilgrimage, inebriating myself? I don’t find anything wrong with it, exactly, except that I do not want to do so right now. I want to be on the mountain. It is the only place where I don’t think it would matter if I was with others or alone, but maybe that is a false sense of security. Maybe it was only because of the company, just like everything else. A seal of my dependence, my weakness. I sense her watching me from the mountain. I do not know if she is beckoning me or sending me out. I look up at the sky. Ignatius found inspiration in the stars, but the sky above me is an opaque blanket, the only light coming from airplanes. Would he have been inspired by those, too?
After Barcelona, I return home to the United States. My skin continues to peel. I moisturize, I massage, but nothing changes. I stop trying to make it change and let it be. If this is how my hands are destined to remain, then at least they will remind me of Spain. I look at a photograph I took on my hike of Montserrat, the vast sky, the monastery in the distance. Is that where my soul lives now? I can’t get it out of my head, can’t get her out of my head. In my mind she bangs on the glass, wanting to escape, calling me back. There is an emptiness in my stomach that makes it feel like returning home is impossible.
A few weeks later, I sit on the balcony of my apartment on a clear morning. There is a basil plant, a tomato plant, a pot of flowers, red, pink, yellow. It is quiet; the day’s construction projects and traffic have not yet begun. I open my laptop to write, optimistic for the day while the city sleeps around me.
The screensaver background on my laptop changes every day, Microsoft’s algorithm showcasing different photographs from around the world. If I click on it, a web browser will open up with more information about the place. This morning, the image looks familiar. A winding road, a cable line. In the corner of the screen, I see that unmistakable edge, the sharp blades of the mountain ridges piercing the sky and my memory. The tagline reads: Not a remote, inaccessible mountain terrain, this range provides a myriad of ways to get up and around. I click on it. It is the serrated mountain. An image of Montserrat fills the screen. There are links to scroll through, photographs to browse. She has followed me through the pixels - Santa Maria de Montserrat.
The search result at the bottom of the page reads Montserrat Monastery with a link to a tour company. I don’t see any photos of the Black Madonna, at least not on the first page. How will people know who beckons them there, who found it for them? Maybe some people would not like that a side of the mountain has been used to worship God, perhaps due to qualms with the Lord Himself, or because they deem any touch of man’s hand on a natural place as a corruption. Corruption, from the Latin corrumpere, to spoil or destroy. That which wasn’t once whole cannot be broken.
The air on my balcony is cool but still, so that my skin does not rise in bumps. It is much like the morning I hiked up the mountain, and looked at the monastery below like it was a jewel I could dig up. It was quiet there, too. The mountains made an open v shape in front of my view, the sun gleaming at the top like a scoop of vanilla ice cream on a cone.
That same day at work, I open the new edition of the quarterly newsletter from the Vatican Apostolic Library. I am not sure when I started subscribing to this - maybe when I became a librarian, maybe before, like it was a foresight into what my career could be, a fusion of personal and professional passions. The newsletter is a fifteen-to-twenty-page PDF file that appears that it was formatted on a Word document - nothing fancy, just pleasant graphics and photographs. I scroll through and read about the diplomats who have recently visited and the research projects underway. Further down there is the heading “Bibliophiles from Barcelona.” The brief paragraph describes an unidentified group from Barcelona that came to look at the Ripoll codex and Ripoll Bible. I read that the Ripoll Bible was produced in the Benedictine monastery of the same name in Catalonia. I’ve never heard of the Ripoll Bible. Is the monastery referring to Montserrat?
I google frantically. I instruct students how to conduct research for a living, but my skills have fled me. I type in slews of mismatched words into the search bar: Ripoll montserrat. Ripoll codex bible montserrat. Ripoll montserrat bible monks monastery. I learn that there is a city named Ripoll and that it has a monastery named Santa Maria de Ripoll. But what about Montserrat? There must be a connection. I don’t know why I need there to be one so badly - maybe to confirm that she is indeed seeking me out, to feel wanted by the mountain, to even the score.
I go back and reread the paragraph - it mentions that at the time of Abbot Oliba the monastery became an important cultural center. I search for Abbot Oliba. He was the leader of the monastery. I find his Wikipedia page and Command F search for Montserrat. There it is - Abbot Oliba founded Sancta Maria de Montserrat in 1025. I continue to search. Where was the bible produced that the scholars from Barcelona saw at the Vatican? Was any of it made at Montserrat? I go to the website for the Library at Montserrat. I search, but I don’t see anything that could make me think that the Ripoll bible was made in Montserrat. To be sure, I enter a query into the library’s contact page asking if the library owns any productions of the Ripoll bible and if any of it was produced at Montserrat. The next day, Brother Xavier responds to me:
We have some facsimiles in our collection. No part of this Bible was produced here in Montserrat: it was written entirely in Ripoll, before the Foundation of our Monastery.
I trace the timeline. The Ripoll Bible was produced in 1056, 31 years after Abbot Oliba founded Santa Maria de Montserrat. There is a loose correlation - enough to let myself believe that Montserrat is following me, that I am wanted by the Black Madonna and her mountain. I was there for only a short time, but I remember the night we stayed. I went for a walk with two friends on the side of the black night, the gift shops and museum and abbey closed for the night. My friends went back into the hotel. I decided to stay outside for a few minutes, breathing in the night. There weren’t many stars visible in the sky, but I could see mountains in their bluish-black color. The abbey sat on my left, its expansive square opening up like an ocean. This place was more than magical, it was ethereal. I sat on a bench and listened to two men speak in Spanish to each other, becoming impassioned with words I could not understand, the language washing over me like a lullaby.
A few days later, I notice that the skin on my hands is smooth again. I no longer have a tactile reminder of Spain attached to my body. Does God think that I need these signs of the mountain, that I am going to forget without them? Or worse, will I remember it as less transformative than it was? Misremembering might be a worse fate than forgetting. We never think we’ll break up at the beginning of a relationship, when it is sweet and surreal. The fall comes later.
Why can I not forget Montserrat, why must I be so obsessed with it? Is it because my time there was short, like sharing a passing glance with an attractive stranger, the mystery and wistfulness wrapped into a mess of hope and desperation? Is it because I don’t know when my next moment will be, that I’ve been given a coordinate but nowhere else to go?
At night, I close my eyes and try to return to the mountain. I am in the chapel, the Madonna’s white back facing me. I do not want to idolatrize the statue or the mountain, but doesn’t the environment fundamentally change our being? It is because she chose the mountain that her allure is so strong. Maybe that is the problem - she is Santa Maria de Montserrat and Our Lady of Pilar and Saint Mary of the Woods and many others. Many names, the same person, different devotions. I am looking at the surface, at her face and her mountain and her name, but I forget the thread that lies beneath, the child who sits on her lap.
My friend comes to visit from out of town. We walk through my hometown, surveying a row of bustling restaurants before deciding to walk to a quieter section of the business district and sit outside at an Italian sandwich shop. I have not yet told her about Spain, so when we sit down to eat our chopped salads and bread, I try to paint the image with colors I cannot see. I tell her about Montserrat, about the mass and the lady and the mountain. I tell her about feeling followed and wanted by the mountain, how I don’t know if it’s an imagined or true grip.
A breeze whisks my napkin to the next table over, where a young woman and man are sitting.
“I’m sorry,” I say, going to retrieve the napkin.
The woman hands it to me. “I heard you talking about Montserrat,” she says.
“Oh, yes,” I say.
“That’s my name.”
I look at her. I’ve never seen her before. The only person I’ve ever met named Montserrat was one of my tour guides in Spain, where I first learned that it was even a name parents gave their daughters. I become giddy, telling the woman that I was recently at Montserrat, and ask if she’s been. From behind sunglasses she smiles at me, and I wonder if she also knows that the wind that blew my napkin toward her was not of this world. She hasn’t been to the mountain in Spain, but tells me there is also an island in the Caribbean with the same name that has a volcano. By possessing the name of the mountain, this woman declares to me, subtly, gently, that the mountain is not a part of me, it is not written into my identity. I have no ownership of Montserrat, nor do I belong to it. I was afforded a glance, but the lady will stay on the mountain whether or not I am there. It is somewhat relieving to realize that I have not been chosen, that the task of proclaiming her mountain’s name does not rest on my shoulders. Santa Maria did not ask for my sword - she just showed me where I could lay one.
I place a figurine of the Black Madonna on my bookshelf. Neither the substance nor the environment is hers, just as the skin which has shed from my hands is no longer a part of me. The smoke from the cigarette has curled and disappeared into the night, invisible to my eyes yet unextractable from the air.
