How do you explain the attraction of ancient, sacred music to a modern, largely secular audience?
I think it’s because the music is calm. It’s healthy. It’s touching. And you can feel that we sing it with some religious enthusiasm. People write me e-mails, and they say: “I feel touched by the finger of God when I’m listening to your singing.” We can also see that people, even atheistic or agnostic people, are very much attracted by our way of living. Many of them come to us (the monastery) and they listen, they just sit back and listen. I think we are showing them as a religious community, by praising God, that our way of life represents something that has been lost to them. I know it’s something that many people in Europe feel they have lost. How this CD came into being is an interesting “Old World meets New World” kind of story. Should we be surprised that monks like you are posting videos on YouTube and are generally pretty technologically savvy? I don’t know what people in the outside world think about monks in the monastery, but we are men of the 21st century. We are living in
