Cister­cians are build­ing their church. Five of them set about rais­ing the basilica high on the moun­tain. Not a soul in sight, no help in sight, but there is faith, there is fer­vour, there is a goal that will spur them on for cen­tur­ies. Stone upon stone, then the beams, the portal and the vault – everything takes its place. And yet the church is built not of stone but of con­vic­tion. Then, cen­tur­ies later, when faith has worn thin and most have lost their enthu­si­asm, once again: not a soul in sight, no help in sight. For all that the own­er­ship is now secure, the land around lies deser­ted.

It is a struggle to make my way up to the build­ing: a chance trickle of water, per­haps a vein of the holy spring, washes leaves down the path I am clam­ber­ing up. The little foot­path winds up from the edge of the vil­lage, a steep stretch, a rest, the blaz­ing sun warms my back, a bead of sweat runs all the way down… everything is idyll­ic. No human near­ness dis­turbs the rev­er­ence, but the near­ness of God is palp­able. A few more steps, and there stands the vast build­ing – aus­tere lines, geo­met­ric pro­por­tions, the rhythm of divine har­mony and cos­mic order shaped in stone. I lift my face to the sky as I search the top of the tower, then peer through the key­hole of the gate into the dim interi­or. The gate is locked. But some stray sound fil­ters out, a strain of church song, or only its echo? Frag­ments, no longer even aud­ible, of sac­red chants sung hun­dreds of years ago? Or is it only the air whist­ling in the key­hole? And yet in my thoughts the singing rings in my ears, as though it were join­ing the play of the four mys­tic­al sounds, the secret har­mony of the divine flute, the little bells, the holy names and the hymns of praise.

With an effort I tear myself away from listen­ing to the secret sounds. Beside the build­ing, ruins: strips of stone trace the ground plan of a lar­ger build­ing that once stood here. This must have been the mon­as­tery, for where the church is, there the mon­as­tery is – this was the church of a mon­ast­ic order. Today only grass springs up where the cook once trod, or where the fevered broth­ers lay in the infirm­ary, or where at dawn they set out through the cloister to Mass… Mown grass all around, and wild nature has been pushed back a little, in among the trees, back into the deep forest, bey­ond the saddle of the moun­tain. The set­ting does not hide but rather dis­plays the splen­did build­ing, and it looks down from the moun­tain with a stead­fast­ness carved in stone, down towards the val­ley, the vil­lage, the world.

The sun washes all round the build­ing, soaks its roof, laps at its sides, bathes its stones in its bright flood. Set­ting off to the left, I walk round the build­ing, for this is the blessed dir­ec­tion, the way the Sun travels. Above, the Sun­light, below, the Sun-way. This is the path of light. All is beau­ti­ful, all is mean­ing­ful, but as I come round, I meet a jar­ring sight. On the right side of the façade, a gate, a walled-up gate. What a con­trast! An impass­able gate, an entrance that shuts you out, and should you once get in, there is no way back, you are trapped in the space of holi­ness, there is no way out… But I am out­side, and although the great gate of the church is locked and there is no get­ting in that way either, there at least the hope remains that one day the gate will open wide and, spread­ing its wings, will not only invite the faith­ful but let them in. But here, at the walled-up gate? What chance can we pos­sibly speak of? Only the sign remains: once this was a gate, a pas­sage, an entrance – but walled up, it has lost its mean­ing. As a gate it is cer­tainly no gate, and as a wall it is not truly a wall. What did the mason, or the monk, feel as he laid the stones one upon anoth­er and bound them togeth­er with mor­tar? ‘I carry out my task, this is ser­vice’ – or did the impossibly strange nature of his work cross his mind? How much bet­ter to cut a door in a wall than to wall up a pas­sage?!

I go and stand before the impass­able wall, my out­stretched hands touch­ing the gate­posts, my chest pressed against the stones. As if I were breath­ing in the incense-cool air of the church with­in. Per­haps the stones inspire it, and thus my thought speaks: Let me be a pas­sage, an open gate for who­ever wishes to pass through me deep­er into the realm of holi­ness…