A Pilgrimage in Our Area: Otterberg Basillica

The next morning after the play, we had to split up.  It was Saturday morning and the boys had baseball and t-ball games.  At the same time our guests needed a ride to the train station downtown.  Immediately following that was a pilgrimage in a village not too far from our own.  Brian took the boys, Isaac and Drew, to their games and took Judah along for the ride.  I took our friends to the train station and the girls and Bobby came along to go straight to the pilgrimage site for Mass.

It was going to be tight to get to the church in time for Mass after the train station.  Unfortunately, I had been told there was a big easy parking lot right next to the church, so I had not looked ahead for van parking.  This was kind of true in the end, but when we drove up to the church we couldn't find the parking lot at all.  I circled the main part of the village three times before finally deciding to park in a lot up above the church.  this just made getting down to the church difficult and by the time we walked in the door, people were going up for Communion.

After the Mass was a tour of the old Cistercian monastery.  The unique thing about this church is that it started as a Catholic church and then was split by a wall into a Protestant and Catholic church in one.  At some point they took the wall down, but they still use the church for both denominations.  The church is a traditional "t" shape design.  The long part of the "t" is where the Protestants sit and the short parts of the t are where the Catholics sit.  the dividing wall was right after the cross on the "t" so that you were left with an "l" for the Protestants and a"+" without the bottom part sticking out for the Ctaholics. The altar is a square so the priest can face any direction he needs to.  The lecturn/podium swivels now to face the Protestant pews or the Catholic pews.  It is really so different.

And I was a huge photo failure this time.  I was wearing Bob most of the time and he kept moving so all my pictures were blurry.  None of my pictures turned out except for these two.  Below is a picture of the cool door knob.  This was for the old Catholic entrance. It's a snail.  The door knob for the Protestant entrance was a fish.