Carmelite Gothic Church Design
The monastery Church is the heart and center of the life and structures of the Monastery. It is in the Church that the choir monks gather for 8 hours each day to chant the Divine Praises according to the Carmelite liturgy.
Striving to be a fitting house of God, the Church is the pinnacle of the Gothic endeavors of the monastery. Different from Cistercian or Benedictine architecture which tends towards simplicity, the Carmelite Gothic Church is full of intricate detail. In everything the Carmelite Monks strive to reflect the beauty of the Mother of God who was the most perfect house of God as she bore the Creator of the world in her womb.
In the monastery everything is ordered towards the Divine, and the juxtaposition between the simplicity of the hermitages, the private spaces of the monks, and the beauty and grandeur of the Gothic Church is striking. The Church is God’s house, and can one give too much to God?