The world of violins and flutes, of horns and cellos, of fugues, scherzos and gavottes, obeyed laws which were so clear that all music seemed to speak of God. My body was not listening, it was praying. My spirit no longer had bounds, and if tears came to my eyes, I did not feel them running down because they were outside me. I wept with gratitude every time the orchestra began to sing. A world of sounds for a blind man, what sudden grace! The inner world made concrete.
Frederick Franck turned to the door of the building, a massive wooden sculpture in the form of the sun and its rays, and pushed it open.I saw that it turned on a central axis, so that only one half of the door was open at any one time.To remind us, he murmured, that we step into this sacred space as we walk into life, alone and silently . . .I looked around me and marveled at this ninety-year-old man from whose hand had sprung everything I could see.He had carved the door, made the stained-glass windows and every other object in sight.Pacem in Terris, I realized, was one man’s act of artistic faith: a work of art outside the parameters of the art world, and also a religious statement unconfined by any religion.