When in the fall of 2019, the XI Bienal de Arquitectura Jalisciense in Guadalajara organized an exhibition homage to Fray Gabriel Chávez de la Mora (1929-2022)—the first graduate of the School of Architecture of the University of Guadalajara—on the occasion of his 90^th birthday,1 I thought that someone should write a text framing Fray Gabriel among the religious architects of the 20^th century (Fernández-Cobian 2021). I was intrigued by his figure, in particular, as to why he was treated as a friar and not as a Dom, which is proper among Benedictines, and I wondered if this anomaly would be reflected, in some way, in his religious architecture.

Taking advantage of my visit to Mexico City in June of that same year, I wanted to visit the abbey of Tepeyac to talk to him about the matter, but it was physically impossible, and I could only greet him briefly by telephone. He told me that this singular treatment came from his time in the monastery of Ahuacatitlán, where everyone—professed religious and novices—were brothers, and only the prior was called father. Today the Benedictine monastery of Santa María de la Resurrección, in Ahuacatitlán (Cuernavaca, Mexico) is abandoned and threatens ruin. Its chapel is a fundamental work of religious architecture of the twentieth century, and although they are studying how to protect it and enhance its value, it is not easy to access it.2

At that time, my knowledge of Ahuacatitlán was scarce. The three monographs that existed at that time on Fray Gabriel (González Pozo 2005; Plazola 2006 and 2010) begin with two dazzling works: this chapel and the reform of the cathedral of Cuernavaca; then they go on to expose his extensive career in sacred and liturgical craftsmanship, and then to the construction of the abbey of Tepeyac and the sanctuary of Guadalupe, works that already correspond to another vital moment of the author.

At the end of the sixties, the so-called monastery of psychoanalysis caused rivers of ink to flow, to the point that the events that took place in Ahuacatitlán constitute one of the three milestones that placed Mexico on the ecclesial map of the second half of the 20^th century, together with the scandals of Marcial Maciel and the indigenous congress in San Cristóbal de las Casas (1974). Much was written about the group psychoanalytic experience and its promoters, and not only in local magazines, but also in media of wide world circulation such as Le Monde, Life, Paris Match, or Der Spiegel. Even plays and movies inspired by them appeared.3 Naturally, all the reports highlighted the most sensational aspects of the case. Later, their flame faded, although it never disappeared completely, and in the last few years a certain interest in that experience has reappeared in Mexico (Carrillo 1988; Cabrera 1996; Gutiérrez Quintanilla 2007; González 2011; Ashwell 2012; Litmánovich 2015 y 2008).

Fray Gabriel was one of the monks who survived—from a religious point of view—the psychoanalytic experiment; in spite of everything, he kept a good memory of that time and a great affection for its main protagonist, Prior Gregorio Lemercier, whom he considered his spiritual father. He died on 17^th December 2022, but in September 2019, he had the opportunity to revisit the place on the occasion of the retrospective that the Guadalajara Biennial dedicated to him: fifty years had passed.

It is not my intention to describe the details of the therapeutic analysis of the community of monks. I would like, however, to make a linear reading of the most relevant facts, to highlight the architectural implications of the process—-something that no one has noticed to date—and finally, to underline the role played by Fray Gabriel as a psychoanalyzed monk-priest and architect of the monastery chapel.4 Since the dates are important, we will review the events chronologically.5

It is worth remembering that in all religious orders with a Benedictine spirit, such as the Cistercians, the Trappists, or even the Premonstratensians, the monks live in community and commit themselves to remain in the same building all their lives. Stabilitas loci or local stability is the permanent adherence of a monk to a particular monastery.6 One understands, then, the importance that architecture acquires in the life of the monk, and in particular, the place where divine worship is celebrated.

Unlike what happened with the Franciscans, the Dominicans, or the Augustinians, who arrived with the Spanish conquerors during the 16^th century, in the mid-20^th century the Benedictines had not yet established themselves in Mexico, because the then King of Spain, Carlos I, thought that their contemplative life would not be useful for the evangelization of those lands. On the other hand, the kings of Portugal did send them to Brazil. Therefore, before speaking of this monastery, it is necessary to remember how its charismatic prior, Joseph Gregorio Lemercier, ended up in America. Who was he? What was his relationship with Mexico? 7

Joseph Lemercier was born in Liege (Belgium) in 1912. Shortly before his 17^th birthday he moved to Africa with the White Fathers (Society of the Missionaries of Africa), and remained with them until 1932, when he entered as a novice in the Benedictine Abbey of Mont-César, in Louvain, one of the centers of the Liturgical Movement.8 There he studied theology, changed his name to Gregory and in 1938 was ordained a priest. Years later he recalled that the monastery was divided into two camps: the intelligent non-pious and the pious non-intelligent. In his opinion, this vital division was the consequence of the unappealable condemnation of modernism made by Pope St. Pius X in 1907. He set out, therefore, to bring about in himself the union of religious life and intelligence.

In Louvain also lived the Mexican Ignacio Romerovargas Yturbide and the Belgian Thomas d’Aquin Chardome, with whom he conceived the idea of making a foundation in America; Mexico seemed to him the perfect place to re-spiritualize the Church (Lemercier 1968). In 1939, Gregorio, Hildebrando, and Benedicto, as the other two companions were called, obtained permission to move to the Aztec country, but the outbreak of World War II forced Lemercier to join the Belgian army as a chaplain. He was taken prisoner, and in 1941, after being freed thanks to the economic support of the Romerovargas family, he managed to join his companions at the Benedictine Abbey of Conception (Missouri, United States).9

Thus, in 1942, Hildebrando and Benedicto moved to Mexico. The former acquired in Guaymas (Sonora), a farm called La Granja, where they founded the monastery of San Benito del Mar. Lemercier joined them in 1944. But in 1946, the bishop of Sonora, Juan Navarrete Guerrero—currently in the process of beatification—began to hear rumors of alleged abuses committed by the monks, so he ordered them to leave his diocese immediately. Benedicto decides to marry a local woman and disassociate himself from the project.

Claiming the impossibility of living from agriculture in such a dry climate as that of Guaymas, Hildebrando and Gregorio asked different bishops for permission to settle in their dioceses. But after trying unsuccessfully in Mexico, Morelia, Guadalajara, Puebla, Tulancingo, Zamora, Leon, Apatzingan, Veracruz, and San Luis Potosi, it was finally the bishop of Cuernavaca, Francisco Gonzalez Arias, who welcomed them.10 They settled in Huitzilac, where they founded the monastery of Monte Casino.

We have no information about the architecture of these first two foundations. We only know that at the beginning of 1949, an irresolvable conflict arose between Romerovargas and Lemercier over economic, liturgical, and personal issues,11 two sides were created among the monks and Romerovargas sold the monastery. The eight monks in favor of Lemercier refused to abandon it. There are attempts of armed struggle with sticks and machetes, so Gregorio and his followers settle in the house of the sacristan of the town of Santa María Ahuacatitlán. Finally, Hildebrando decides to hang up his habits and leave the Catholic Church.12

Already alone, and thanks to the support of the primate abbot of the Benedictines, Bernardo Kaelin OSB, on January 14, 1950, Lemercier obtained from Pope Pius XII permission to found an independent monastery following the primitive Benedictine rule: Santa María de la Resurrección (Fig. 1).13 The new bishop of Cuernavaca, Alfonso Espino Silva, authorizes him to establish himself officially in his diocese, and seven months later, he can see the first wing of the building erected (Fig. 2).

In 1952 Sergio Méndez Arceo (1907-92) assumed the bishopric of the diocese of Cuernavaca, who in 1959 erected the monastery as a conventual priory and appointed Lemercier as prior. At that time the community consisted of about thirty monks. The monastic rigor that was lived in Santa María de la Resurrección, together with the aspiration of its prior to combining intelligence and piety, made Thomas Merton cite it in 1957 in his book The Silent Life as an example to follow for all of Latin America.

Psychoanalysis had made its appearance at Santa María de la Resurrección towards the end of the 1950s. The causes of its origin were related to the absence of previous filters in the admission of candidates, since from the beginning—and contrary to what is customary in the Benedictine tradition—Lemercier refused to implement them in his monastery. There was no distinction between monks and converts (Braunfels 1975). He soon realized that the community had become filled with maladjusted and violent characters—drug addicts and active homosexuals, above all—who compromised the climate of prayer and intellectual work. The Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal, who resided there for a period between 1959 and 1961, describes in detail this sort of Monipodio’s courtyard, to the point of going so far as to say that the Belgian intended to welcome there all “the refuse of society” (González 2011, 27).19 Chávez de la Mora, on the contrary, recalls that St. Benedict asked to welcome everyone, as long as they sought God, and explains that the monastery had resources, such as fraternal correction or chapter meetings, to correct individually or collectively the brothers who committed faults.

The fact is that at a certain point, Lemercier began to doubt the balancing effect—in his own words—that monastic life could exert on individuals. For example, he noticed that the homosexual tendencies of some monks, far from being attenuated, had been accentuated. More importantly, he began to question his own capacity as a spiritual father and as a director of souls. Undoubtedly, he was exhausted from correcting. As a first step, he sent two monks to meet in Mexico City with Francisco Garza, a psychoanalyst of the Sociedad Psicoanalítica Frommiana (SPF), but the experience did not work, in his opinion, because of the too humanistic character of his therapies. He then thought of turning to Mauricio Gonzalez de la Garza (1966), a writer and friend of his who was a psychoanalytic enthusiast living in the monastery while drafting his master’s thesis on Walt Whitman.20 González de la Garza, also a homosexual, was in turn analyzing with Santiago Ramírez, president of the Asociación Psicoanalítica Mexicana (APM), of Freudian and atheist line.21

But the trigger for the full introduction of psychoanalysis in the monastery was the hallucination suffered by Lemercier himself on the night of October 4-5, 1960. This experience completely disrupted his life and that of the monastery, for after it Lemercier would ask himself in all its crudeness what was the origin of the subjective experience of the faith of the monks of his community and of his own. He himself narrated it on several occasions:

The prior considered himself a hard, cold, rational man, extremely skeptical of any kind of mysticism. Therefore, the next day he went to see Ramirez, who refused to psychoanalyze him—he believed that this was not his problem—and sent him to an ophthalmologist, who found that the nocturnal experience could be related to the beginning of ocular cancer. Even so, as Lemercier insisted, Ramirez ended up recommending him to go to Dr. Gustavo Quevedo, a psychoanalyst he trusted, with whom he entered psychoanalysis three months later, on January 17, 1961.22 On March 8, cancer was confirmed in his left eye, which was immediately removed.

Thinking that what was good for him would also be good for his brothers in religion—“the long asceticism of psychoanalysis has led me to a spiritual life that I could not have reached in thirty years of monastic life”, he would affirm in his conference in the USA (Lemercier 1969)—, shortly afterwards Lemercier requested Quevedo’s intervention to explore, through the novel system of group psychoanalysis, the quality of faith of the monks in his monastery23 (Fig. 14).

Although Lemercier did not force anyone to be psychoanalyzed, it was certainly enough for the prior to suggest something for any monk to be willing to do so. However, some did not accept it. In this regard, the difference in perspective that two of the surviving monks have on the process is striking. Fray Gabriel—who was basically an avant-garde artist in the sixties, with all that implies—was very happy; in fact, he usually affirms that in his case, both the individual and group sessions were a complement that helped him to find the true motivations of his vocation.24 For his part, Friar Benedict Verber was always very critical of this type of therapy and did not psychoanalyze himself.25

On July 16, 1961, L’Osservatore Romano—the official journal of The Holy See—published a canonical warning (monitum) questioning psychoanalytic training as a condition for access to the priesthood. In spite of everything, the first group session at Santa Maria della Resurrezione took place three days later. Quevedo, 46 years old, was assisted as a listener by the young Paraguayan doctor Frida Zmud Simkin, 37 years old, whose photos of her psychoanalyzing the monks published years later by Pierre Vals in Paris Match magazine would travel around the world (Fig. 15).26 Quevedo made two groups: one with those who had made the triennial vows, and another with those who had already made their perpetual vows, Fray Gabriel among them. The sessions took place twice a week, usually in the private homes of the analysts, until a consultation room was built ex-profeso for this purpose. Years later, Zmud would draw an almost paradisiacal picture of the architecture of the place:

On a hill, from high above, where both the city and the valley can be seen, rises the Benedictine monastery of Santa María de la Resurrección. Surrounded by tall jacaranda trees with clusters of violet flowers, and covered with bright red and orange bougainvillea and aqua plumbagos, here stands the convent, where until recently, a group of monks going about their routine chores, stepping on petals everywhere as they walked, their feet barely protected by leather sandals. With their heads shaved, completely covered with hoods, wrapped in robes that evoke the fetal membrane, the monks perform the same tasks over and over again, in complete silence, surrounded by a warm breeze, precisely like a fetus that is protected and gratified by the pleasant climate of the womb (Zmud 1971, 10).27

November 1962. The first session of the Second Vatican Council. The Bishop of Cuernavaca, Sergio Méndez Arceo, in a memorable plenary intervention, proposes that the Catholic Church attend to the teachings of Marx, Darwin and Freud. Specifically, he recommends the use of psychoanalysis for the correct discernment of the suitability of religious vocations or their pathologies, and in any case, as a complement to monastic life.28 He gives the example of the work that Lemercier had been developing with the monks of Santa María de la Resurrección. The scandal is a major one.

A few months later (August 1963), the primate abbot of the Benedictines, Dom Benno Gut, was sent to the monastery. After his visit, he proposed that psychoanalysis should only be practiced before the novitiate and only as a therapy. This recommendation did not convince the Sacred Congregation of Religious, which in April 1964 sent Father Odo J. Zimmermann OSB, Prior of the newly founded college of Tepeyac, as an extraordinary visitator. But against all odds, his report was also positive.

In September, events came to a head. Lemercier travels to Rome to attend the third session of the Second Vatican Council as an advisor to Méndez Arceo (Fig. 16). On the eve of his return, he receives a call from The Holy See ordering him not to return to the monastery, because a new visitation had been arranged without his presence; in spite of everything, he decides to travel. He arrives in Mexico on December 30, but they do not allow him to enter Ahuacatitlán. And when the new visitor, in his report, suggests the possibility that Lemercier could return, they answer him that not only is he not allowed to enter, but that any epistolary relation with the community is avoided.

In April 1965, the prior wrote to The Holy Office offering to travel to the Vatican to discuss his case. Since he did not receive a reply, after five months of absence, on May 20 he returned to his post, informing the Sacred Congregation for Religious. In September, he attended the last session of the Second Vatican Council accompanying Méndez Arceo. In Rome, he gave some interviews (Fresquet 1965; Laurentin 1965) and requested an audience with Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, then Secretary of the Holy Office, who received him on October 26. Ottaviani informs him that they have decided to confine him in Belgium, reminding him of the prohibition to practice psychoanalysis as indicated in the monitum of 1961. Lemercier defends himself by saying that he had never transgressed these rules. When Ottaviani asked him to explain it in writing, Lemercier refused, arguing that it was not up to him but to the Sacred Congregation to prove that he had transgressed them. On November 12, he was summoned by a tribunal, and seeing that his confinement would not be lifted, he left the courtroom. He returned to Ahuacatitlán, where his psychoanalysis had not been interrupted, while Méndez Arceo got Paul VI to transfer the case from the Holy Office to a commission of three cardinals.

The year 1966 passed uneventfully, and it seemed that in Rome they had forgotten about him. But at the beginning of 1967, Lemercier decided to give the press a pamphlet entitled A Benedictine monastery in psychoanalysis, and immediately Life magazine published an inflammatory report (Fig. 17). In the midst of the post-conciliar period, the prior had challenged the Vatican authorities and they responded forcefully. On May 18, the Roman Rota issued a sentence that read as follows: “Father Lemercier is admonished not to sustain either in public or in private the psychoanalytic theory or practice that he himself recognizes as psychoanalysis properly so called, in the strict sense, under penalty of suspension a divinis, by the same fact reserved to The Holy See” (Gonzalez 2011, 95).

This sentence would motivate the immediate dissolution of the monastery. In fact, at the chapter meeting held ten days later (May 28, 1967), the monks themselves decided to abandon it and continue with psychoanalysis. The Vatican approved the decision.

On Sunday, June 11, 1967, Lemercier celebrated Mass for the last time in the chapel of Santa María de la Resurrección.29 At the end, after singing the hymns, all the monks, in procession, left the chapel, and already in the cloak room they were stripping off their habits. In the afternoon they distributed a communiqué that would appear in the press the following day, announcing the closing of the monastery and the beginning of a new project: a community not dependent on the Catholic Church, which would include twenty-one of the twenty-four monks.

The three self-excluded—the priests Fray Benito Verber, who was the last guardian of the monastery, Fray Hugo González, and Fray Gabriel—wanted to remain monks, although not Benedictine, but diocesan, and hoped that Méndez Arceo would allow them to attend to the new ecumenical community that was being created. This new community made up of three religious, independent of the Benedictine Confederation, never fully materialized. No one was very clear about how it would be organized or where it would live, although until the situation was defined, they continued to live in the monastery for a few months. The bishop appointed Fray Gabriel to be in charge of it.

The text underwritten by “Lemercier and the Emmaus family” was published on June 12, 1967. From that day on, many religious moved to the Emmaus Psychoanalytic Center (CPE), which had been founded the previous year (1966), on the other side of the gate that closed the monastery, as a filter to prepare future postulants to enter the novitiate. The new ecumenical community was to have a different lifestyle. Its mission was the practice of psychoanalysis, addressed to all those who wanted to free themselves from their neuroses: alcoholism, depression, sexism, or homosexuality. They were the Emmausites. Other monks left for various monasteries in Mexico or Europe. The situation was confusing.

On Saturday, June 17, 1967, Méndez Arceo distributed among all the parishes of his diocese the document “Reflexión del señor Obispo de Cuernavaca con todo el pueblo de Dios en su diócesis sobre el Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Resurrección” (Reflection of the Bishop of Cuernavaca with all the people of God in his diocese about the Monastery of Our Lady of the Resurrection), which he himself read the following day in the cathedral. In this text, the bishop calls for unreserved acceptance of The Holy See’s decision on the monastery, warning that perhaps psychoanalysis has been overrated.30

Although he wanted to remain faithful to the Catholic Church all his life, Lemercier was convinced that, at least in his immediate environment, psychoanalysis was more curative for people than the usual practice of religion. Fray Gabriel, for his part, recalls that at this point, many monks could not do without psychoanalysis, and so they sympathized with the prior.32 And since the Benedictine order disengaged from them, the decision was either to join the CPE or to create a new diocesan institution (which was his personal choice).

On the other hand, the Monastic Workshops (1956-67) that our architect directed and where the crafts that had made the monastery famous were made, were renamed Talleres Emaús (1967-68) and Artesanías Emaús (1968-92) in the CPE.34

On September 16, 1967, the Vatican granted Lemercier dispensation from all his obligations connected with the priesthood and religious profession, including that of celibacy. After his exclaustration, he regained his given name, José (Joseph). He was 55 years old (Fig. 18). The playwright Vicente Leñero, who in 1962 portrayed the Belgian priest as “an impressive man”, since “the grace with which he handled his stature, the white hair so blond, the plastic eye that filled his left orbit and the elegance, the softness of his gestures, turned him before the interlocutor into an almighty giant, wise, holy and seductive” (Leñero 1982, 4), in 1968, after his reduction to the lay state, feared that his charm had been completely diluted.

It seems that this was not entirely the case, since on July 21, 1968, Lemercier married Graciela Rumayor (1936-2017), a young woman whom he had met exactly one year earlier. The press echoed the event: “The religious wedding was officiated by the Benedictine fathers Gabriel Chávez de la Mora, José Munich [sic, by Juan Münch] and Hugo González, former members of the Emmaus community and former religious subjects of Lemercier” (García Labordena 1968, 14). Contrary to what might have been foreseen, the ceremony was not held in the chapel of the monastery, but in the garden terrace of the residence of Ignacio and Edith Gianelloni, in Cuernavaca; and a day before the announced date, to avoid the sensationalist press. Even so, more than two hundred people attended, including family, friends and journalists. In the homily, Fray Gabriel affirmed that the wedding was beneficial for the Emmaus community, and he was grateful for the opportunity to marry his own father... “I congratulate you, Graciela, because you have accepted José; it was not easy. And his work; it was not easy” (Suarez 1975, 118). Vivaldi’s Four Seasons opened and closed the religious act; fragments of the Misa Panamericana (Pan-American Mass) were also heard, which Méndez Arceo—who at the last moment did not attend, although he had been invited to officiate at the ceremony—had introduced into the liturgy of his cathedral.

Returning to the Centro Psicoanalítico Emaús, little by little two very marked groups were established in it: Lemercier/Quevedo vs. Chagoyán/Zmud,35 until in May 1968, when Lemercier burst into a session of the Paraguayan psychoanalyst and accused her of trying to destroy the community, the definitive rupture of the center took place. Frida Zmud withdrew to Mexico City with almost all the members of her therapeutic group. The situation unhinged Quevedo, who died of a heart attack on August 15, 1968.36 The ex-monk Alejandro Chao Barona—who had been the first psychoanalyzed and had just qualified as a psychoanalyst—took over his group and moved to the capital with Zmud. The CPE would close in 1982, with Zmud already living in Cuba.

While all this was happening, on February 2, 1968, Bishop Méndez Arceo laid the first stone of a new Benedictine monastery in his diocese: the monastery of Our Lady of the Angels, in the neighboring town of Ahuatepec, which had been canonically erected two years earlier (August 15, 1966).37 It is significant that this new foundation—depending on the abbey of Mount Angel (Oregon, USA)—took place right in this place and right at this time, among other things because, years later, Fray Gabriel would build his chapel, equally circular but larger than the one in Ahuacatitlán, although not as intense.38 Fray Benito Verber, who had remained legally responsible for the unoccupied building of Santa María de la Resurrección, joined this monastery.39 What happened, then, in Santa María de la Resurrección? There is very little information about this period. The only certainty is that—as we have already said—Fray Gabriel continued to live there for a few months (Fernández-Cobian 2020).

Suarez recounts a visit to the place in February 1969, accompanying the ex-prior, already secularized:

Eleven years later, in 1980, the sociologist Franca Basaglia-Ongaro visited the monastery with some friends. Suddenly, the silence that reigned there was interrupted by the presence and voice of a young man in his mid-twenties, with a beard and Hindu-like clothing, who told them, in broken Spanish, that this was private property. He asked them if they spoke English, and finally agreed to take them inside the cloister, where he explained that its inhabitants lived in cells that they shared with their families. He then led them to the round chapel where he proudly stated: This is our temple. When asked by the sociologist if this was a religious community, the young man replied that there were about twenty members, including Americans and Canadians, that each had their own religion and that it was wonderful to have a real temple where they could pray (Basaglia-Ongaro 1981; cit. González 2011, 144-145).

1987. On December 28, Joseph Lemercier died and his ashes were placed in one of the chapel walls. For one day, the monastery is reoccupied with many of its former inhabitants. Bishop Sergio Méndez Arceo, Fray Gabriel and Father Francisco Jiménez, Prior of the Franciscan community that inhabited the building at the time, concelebrated the funeral mass. Former monk Juan Lucio (Giovanni Lucci) remembers it like this:

I have not been able to find out the exact date on which the Spanish Capuchin friars who replaced the informal group referred to above had begun to live there, but I do know that they left the monastery in 1988, shortly after the death of its prior. Before returning to Spain, the friars communicated to Lemercier’s widow their desire to legally transfer the property to her, with the condition that it would continue to be used for social purposes. At first, Rumayor did not want to commit and spoke to Méndez Arceo. However, in 2004 he stated in an interview: “And now I manage it, with young people who come for spiritual retreats. They bring their priests. And they come from all over and stay for three or four days. There is room for about sixty young people” (González 2011, 145). Among the groups that most used the monastery building she cited the Movimiento Familiar Cristiano.40

So much for the facts. Let us dwell, now, on the chapel, as it was and as it was used at the times when it was the center of the life of the monastery of Santa María de la Resurrección. We have seen that Fray Gabriel received the definitive commission to design the chapel in 1957; but it was only completed in 1959 and consecrated in 1962.41 Therefore, it was hardly used as such for eight years (Fig. 19).

It is a circular space located at the north end of the courtyard formed by the three bodies of the monastery, as indicated by Benedictine tradition. Fray Gabriel, in the plans, calls it “the oratory,” as established in the Rule of St. Benedict (c. 52) (Figs. 20-21).42

The chapel has two access circuits: one to the west for the monks, who arrive from the monastery, and another to the east, for visitors from the outside. González Pozo describes them as follows:

The interior space is carefully thought out so that everything underlines the centrality of the liturgy. Gabriel places the altar in a position close to the geometric center of the piece, where he places a suspended Greek cross, so that the priest can celebrate the Eucharist facing the cross, with all the brethren around. During the time the chapel was in use, a new cross was placed every year. They were varied crosses, without crucifix—the ritual of consecration of the churches does not speak of crucifixes, but of crosses—with small colored glass globes inserted, like jewels.43

The monks are arranged on two levels, embracing the altar. On both sides, in an east-west direction, are placed—respectively—the ambo and the seat, forming the three liturgical poles. Both are made of chiluca stone ashlars. And to the north, aligned with the great cross—but not visible from the altar—, the tabernacle of the Eucharistic reserve is located. It was the first time that this layout was adopted in Mexico, which caused a strong controversy (Fig. 22).

The centrality of the altar is enhanced by the use of a lowered conical roof. This roof rests on twelve steel beams, which, supported by twelve other consecration stones—each one dedicated to one of Christ’s apostles—, converge radially on a central oculus.44 Light not only penetrates from this skylight, but also from another perimeter ring, tangentially bathing the thick volcanic stone walls arranged in a slope (Fig. 23). From this wise management of light, to a great extent, the remarkable results achieved by natural lighting from dawn to sunset were derived. At evening, during nocturnal prayer, the monks can see the firmament.

Visitors do not enter the monastic choir of the chapel, but follow the services from an enclosure to the east, which includes a small garden.45 The south door opens the chapel to the cloister protected by a lattice; it is dedicated to the memory of the absent brothers—those who at the time of prayer are busy with household chores.

To a modern observer, it is surprising that the liturgical layout of this chapel, built between 1957 and 1959, is very close to the postulates of the Communio-Raüme movement (2003) or even to the layout of the church of Saint-François de Molitor, of the Jesuits in Paris (1996-2005).

Let us now say a word about the symbolic aspects of this chapel. In my opinion, there are three levels of reading that could be applied in this case: the historical, the liturgical and the psychoanalytical.

Now, what is the architect’s own interpretation of the chapel of the monastery of Santa María de la Resurrección? To date, Fray Gabriel had never explained this project in detail but, in the conversation, we had on October 5, 2020, he provided quite a bit of information in this regard.

First of all, he recalls that the design and construction of the chapel predated the psychoanalytic process at the monastery, and therefore could not have been influenced by it. At the time, he was very attracted to topographical architecture, carved into the ground. He liked the excavated architecture he had seen in the ruins of Malinalco, near Cuernavaca, a large monolithic structure belonging to the late period of the Mexica civilization. There everything was integrated: steps, platforms, walls, steps. At the same time, he wanted to return to the sources, to the maximum simplicity of early Christian architecture.

Secondly, he had a little-known biblical reference in mind: Chapter 4 of the Book of Joshua. In this passage it is narrated that the Israelites, after entering the Promised Land by crossing the Jordan River, take twelve large stones out of the river and, organizing a liturgical procession, place them in a circle as a sign of gratitude to Yahweh. This archetypal circle of stones—which, moreover, is found in many sacred places—Fray Gabriel reproduced it in the twelve stones of consecration of the chapel. Each is dedicated to an apostle, each has a cross, and each supports one of the roof beams. In addition, the stone slope that contains them is very accentuated, so that the chapel can function as a sundial and mark the canonical hours.

The chapel is completely circular and Fray Gabriel compares its shape to a large censer (every temple is built for the praise of the Creator). Moreover, the circular arrangement of the monks shows that they are all equal before the Lord, that they are all brothers. We could ask ourselves: is it an open ring or a closed ring? At that time, Fray Gabriel did not know Vom Bau der Kirche (1938), the book where Rudolf Schwarz explains these concepts, although he had seen some of his church in the magazines that were received at the monastery: L’Art sacré, L’Art d’eglise, ARA, Liturgical Arts... The latter published in May 1955 his first project for the complete monastery, which was never fully realized; it is said there that our young architect worked “with a minimum of means and a maximum of intelligence”. In that project, the chapel was rectangular (Figs. 5-6 and 28). Symbolically, the square represents the world and nature; the circle, God and the cosmos. The first stone is right in the center and connects vertically with the zenith: Kairos—the second coming of Christ—, personal eschatological life. Once again, resurrection.

An interesting detail is that the pavement of the lowest platform is built with pebbles, to give the sensation of water (Fig. 29). Some years, during the Easter Vigil, they even flooded it, leaving the paschal candle in the middle (during the construction a faucet had been provided for cleaning).50 But the most controversial was the arrangement of the tabernacle in its own Eucharistic chapel.

Fray Gabriel insists that all the symbolic decisions of the building—which he left drawn in the plan-codex to which we have already alluded—were incorporated after their timely sharing, discussion and approval by the whole community. Even so, he recalls that the ecclesiastical hierarchy only authorized its construction—and the celebrations in Spanish and facing the people—on the condition that the monastery also had another conventional chapel so that the monks who wanted to celebrate Mass in Latin could do so. This was done, on the other side of the bell tower.

Fernando González has stated that

And among the contributions that the monks of the monastery of Santa María de la Resurrección made to the Catholic culture of the twentieth century, the concretion of a type of architecture that sought to introduce a new way of entering into contact with divinity, by transforming the conception of the temple and the liturgy, stands out. “At this point the participation of the monk architect Gabriel Chávez de la Mora was fundamental” (González 2011, 184).

Similarly, Méndez Arceo remembered this monastery as a dynamic center, fundamental for Christian thought and action in his diocese, and as one of the vital elements for the reception of the Council in the country, emphasizing that the liturgical renewal had arrived in Mexico precisely because of its architecture (Fig. 30). He thought that more than psychoanalysis, the main source of the conflicts that ended up closing the monastery of Santa Maria had been the way of celebrating the liturgy in that chapel, since neither the majority of the bishops of the country, nor the Benedictine communities of the continent liked it (Ponce and Robles 1988; De la Rosa 1979).

At the end of 1967, with holy peace, Fray Gabriel Chávez de la Mora moved to a Benedictine community of North American foundation that was being established in Lindavista, north of Mexico City, very close to the Villa de Guadalupe. Immediately, the then rector of the sanctuary, Guillermo Schulenburg, invited him to work on the Guadalupe complex, first designing an ephemeral basilica (1970) and then collaborating in the design of the new circular basilica (1970-76) with the team of architects led by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez. Simultaneously, he was commissioned to build the new Abbey of Tepeyac, with all its facilities—including a chapel, this time completely orthogonal—, in Cuautitlán Izcalli (State of Mexico), where his community would move soon after and where Fray Gabriel has resided ever since. But these projects are already part of another story.