A simple encounter in Austria

Sometimes thing just happen. When I visited my mother last weekend in Linz/Austria I just took the car to have a nice dinner in a countryside restaurant next door, which unfortunately - was closed, so I wanted to go to another one which - I couldn’t find. As I was looking for this second restaurant, it was already getting dark; we drove by the monastery Wilhering, (see the photo) next to the mighty Danube. I haven’t been there for years, so we changed plans to have a look at the quite famous Rococo church (see the photo) of the Abbey.
Outside the entrance of the church was a young novice in his white robe, his ears though were plugged into the white headphones of his iPod. (I don’t know what music he was listening to).
As we entered the church he came behind us and ask us, as beside nobody was around, if he can lid the lights of the church. Of course we were happy to see the beauty of the interior of the church.
The young monk (he is 19) turned out to be born in the Ukraine, but lived most of his life in Bolivia, where he had become the national chess champion. Because of a Bavarian Cistercian nun that he had met there he got inspired to become a Novice in this Austrian Cistercian abbey. Magnus (that’s his name) ended up showing us for over one hour every detail of this church, his art, its history and the history of his order.
There was something in the simplicity of this obviously brilliant young man that touched me and my mother deeply. It was just hard to imagine how someone of his generation, who seemingly has seen the world (he also has lived in the US for while), had such a deep and powerful appreciation for the higher. There was just no inch of cynicism or ‘ironism’ in him, just a deep traditional faith. Only at the end of our private tour when we said full-heartedly good bye to each other he did what only a monk of his generation could do, he asked me for my email address and when we started to leave, it was already pitch dark out there, he put his iPod plugs back into his ears.
Sometimes thing just happen. My mother and I kept talking about him in the next two days. He was such a touching young man.