CARTHUSIAN LIFE AND ITS INNER SPIRIT REFLECTIONS OF A FORMER RETREATANT (AROUND 1950) When the writer of these reflections on Carthusian life was less than thirteen years of age, there fell into his hands a beautiful little idealis- tic work on the Fathers of the Desert and he learned for the first time of those great heroes of the past, who left all things in search of a cave and a spring or an oasis in the desert, where they could live alone with God. And their example was an ideal that hovered before his mind ever afterwards, but which he could see no possibility of attaining. In the long walks he took in the mountains in summer, he saw from time to time an inviting cave not far from a spring of clear running water. Nevertheless he could not see how, in the climate of the United States, he could live through the winter in one of these caves nor supply him- self or be supplied with the bare essentials of daily sustenance that even a hermit would require. Much later he made a vocational retreat in a Carthusian monastery. There he realized that he had not been called to the Carthusian life. Probably the good Prior of the monastery thought his applicant would find a cave somewhere in the vast stretches of the American continent and be fed from time to time by some friendly Indian. In any case, he never forgot his experience with the Carthusians, and it is with admiration and gratefulness that he wrote the following reflections. Note: Carthusians accept for retreats only those who aspire to becoming members of their Order. The text of these reflections has been slightly adapted for the benefit of the contemporary reader. 1. THE NATURE OF CARTHUSIAN LIFE For what follows, see: André Ravier, s, » “Saint Bruno the Carthusian”, Charterhouse fermont, 2004. of the Transfiguration, Arlington, But what is this Carthusian life that is so attractive to the soul who really wants to live all alone with God? 1Carthusian life had its origin in the attempt of St. Bruno to find an opportunity to live alone with God as did the Fathers of the Desert. He was born at Cologne, sometime between the years 1030 and 1035, and was educated in France. At the height of his renown as a profes- sor of theology in Rheims, he retired in 1084 with six companions to a mountainous region in France known as the ‘Chartreuse’. There he lived with his six companions in little huts until the spring of 1090, when the Holy Father Urban II, a former student of his, sent him an order to come to Rome without delay. After acting as advisor to the Holy Father for only a few months, he retired at the close of the year 1090 to a solitude in Calabria. He had obtained permission from the Holy Father to resume his hermit life, provided he did not leave Italy. He died in this solitude on the sixth of October, 1101. Historically and de facto, Carthusian life is an attempt to bring into existence again the life of the Fathers of the Desert, and to solve the problems of one who seeks a cave where he can be all alone with God, but can see no means of providing for himself in such a cave the neces- sary means of existence. When a postulant arrives at a ‘Charterhouse’, as the Carthusian monasteries are termed, he is taken to his hermitage. This is generally a little two story house with a large garden surrounded by a rather high wall, which prevents the possibility of anyone looking into the garden except from the windows of the house to which it belongs. Upstairs there is an anteroom (called the Ave Maria). Here the monk offers a Hail Mary when returning from outside before entering the second room (called a cubiculum) where he spends the greater part of his day. This principal room includes an oratory, a study table with bookshelf, a dining table at a large window overlooking the surround- ings, a bed, a woodstove, closets and a bathroom. In the oratory the Carthusian recites the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin; and also the Little Hours of the Divine Office. On Sundays and special feasts the latter are sung in choir in the monastic church. Downstairs in his hermitage, there is a little service hatch which opens onto the cloister and there, at stated hours, a lay brother brings his meals and so one is not dependent on the risky fidelity of a friend- ly Indian. There is also a shop where one can work for exercise and recreation, but which seems to be really necessary only in winter when 2one must saw and split wood for the stove in his cubiculum on the sec- ond floor of his hermitage. 2. CARTHUSIAN SOLITUDE This life in the hermitage brings us to the consideration of an out- standing feature of the inner Carthusian spirit, namely, solitude. If we look at Carthusian solitude in its negative aspect, it is the loss of all things human, not for a time only, but forever. But if we look at solitude in its positive aspect, it is the life of the soul with God in the perfection of divine charity, a life foreshadowed in the prayer of our Lord: “That they may be one, as We are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that You sent Me, and that You loved them even as You loved Me” (John 17:22-23). It is not surprising that some find the first shock of the loss of crea- tures a great trial that causes doubts as to their vocation to a solitary life. But if one has passed through the fires of sacrifice before his entrance, this need not be the case, and probably will not be. But in any case, one should prepare one’s soul for temptation and be mind- ful of the words of warning given us in the Holy Scripture: “My son, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials. Be sin- cere of heart and steadfast, undisturbed in time of adversity. Cling to Him, forsake Him not; thus will your future be great. Accept whatev- er befalls you, in crushing misfortune be patient; for in fire gold is test- ed, and worthy men in the crucible of humiliation” (The Book of Sirach 2:1-5). But Carthusians are not the only ones in this world who have to take all that is brought upon them; however, of all men they are most likely to attain early to that “peace of God that surpasses all under- standing” (Philippians 4:7). This peace is not a negative something, the mere lack of anything to disturb the mind. When our Lord said: “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you” (John 14:27), He spoke of a condition of the soul that results from the actual expe- rience of the love of God, and the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity: “On that day you will realize that I am in My Father and you are in Me and I in you” (John 14:20). The peace which flows from this indwelling is a positive experience of the love of God, which diffusesthrough one’s whole being a spiritual sweetness, a quiet joyful happi- ness, and at the same time some-thing that may hold the soul for hours at a time, riding on its crest perhaps for days, or waxing and waning, but never completely departing, as the soul lives on in loving union with God, protected from the disturbing influence of creatures in its Carthusian solitude. Some experience, more than others, the disturbing influences of the presence of other human beings when they would give themselves to prayer; but it is a great aid to most to be all alone with God while the soul seeks to live in conscious union with Him. Sometimes those who have had no experience of the life of the soul with God in a Carthusian hermitage think that time must hang heavy on one’s hands as the months and the years roll on. But there is no necessity at all that this should be the case. It is quite possible for one to develop such a life of prayer that one seeks nothing else. If this is not possible at first, there is so much in theology, both general dog- matic and mystical, and in the lives and writings of the saints, which is conducive to prayer and to progress in the spiritual life, that the Carthusian day is all too short to allow for even minutes of weariness and tedium. 3. THE PENITENTIAL LIFE Carthusian life is not only a solitary but it is also a penitential life. Seeing that it was an at-tempt to bring into being again the life of the Fathers of the Desert, it could not lack a penitential character. Nor can any Christian life be devoid of an element of penance. For our Lord began His own public preaching with the words He had placed in the mouth of His precursor: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). And yet it cannot be said that Carthusian penances are indiscreet or excessive. They seem perhaps heavy in anticipation, but in actual prac- tice they soon become easy, largely because of the ability of our body to adjust its strength to the burden placed upon it. Before entering, one says goodbye to his last cup of good hot coffee and bacon and eggs for breakfast in the morning after Mass. One never has breakfast at any time of the year. One's dinner is at about 12:00. In summer a very light collation is served in the evening. From the feast of theExaltation of the Holy Cross in September, till Ash Wednesday, only one full meal in the day is served. One never eats meat even when sick. Eggs and milk products are omitted on all Fridays and in Advent and Lent. Friday is also a day of fasting on bread and water. One gradual- ly loses his extra fat and with the loss comes a marked sense of well being. Actual illness seems to be much less frequent in Carthusian life than in the general run of the population in the world. One soon gets used to the hours of eating, but if occasionally in the winter one is cold and tired and sleepy and hungry, there comes to mind the antiphon that Carthusians sing so often in choir: “We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The hair shirt soon becomes a trivial nuisance rather than a torment. The nightly ris- ing merely divides the day into two sections and soon becomes a mat- ter of course. To one who loves God and wants to live with Him, clois- ter, silence and solitude are the greatest blessings of Carthusian life. But having said all that, one’s days in the Charterhouse do not by habituation lose entirely their penitential character. As the years roll by, it is still possible to glory in the Cross of Christ. But our Lord fits the burden to human weakness and Carthusian penance never loses its character of moderation and discretion. That this should be the case was one of the reasons why St. Bruno united the solitary life with the coenobitical, so that those who even add to the daily burden of the tule various private penances, would still have their excessive zeal tem- pered by obedience to a superior. But why should a holy life be also a penitential life? Because the sanctity of the cloister gives expression to the natural drive of anyone who loves God to make reparation for his own sins, and also with Christ for the sins of the world. And because a solitary lives not only for himself but also lives for others by undertaking the most effective of all apostolates, the apostolate of prayer. Now we learn from Holy Scripture that prayer united with peniten- tial works is heard by God. Thus we read in the book of Judith that: “Eliachim the high priest of the Lord, went about all Israel and spoke to them, saying: ‘Know that the Lord will hear your prayers, if you continue with perseverance in fasting and prayers in the sight of the Lord. Remember Moses, the servant of the Lord, who overcame Amalek that trusted in his own strength, and in his power, and in his 5army, and in his shields, and in his chariots, and in his horsemen, not by fighting with the sword, but by holy prayer’ ” (Judith 4:10-12, according to the Douay version of the Bible). And then we have the words of the angel to Daniel: “From the first day that you made up your mind to acquire understanding and humble yourself before God your prayer was heard” (Daniel 10:12). Daniel said of himself when he began his prayer: “I ate no savory food in those days, and I took no meat or wine” (Daniel 10:3). 4. THE APOSTOLATE OF PRAYER In the Apostolic Constitution “Umbratilem” (1924) by which Pius XI approved the Statutes of the Carthusian Order, he speaks of Carthusians as “all leading in accordance with their In-stitute, a con- templative life far away from the din of the world and its follies, in such a manner that they not only contemplate the divine mysteries and the eternal truths with all keenness of vision, and by their prayer poured forth to God earnestly and without interruption, beg that His kingdom may flourish and daily be spread further and further, but they also wash away and make reparation, both for their own sins and those of others by means of spiritual and corporal self-denial, imposed upon them by rule or voluntarily added to the daily observance.” He then cites the incident referred to in the above passage from the book of Judith which tells how, when Moses, viewing the battle of Joshua and the Israelites against the Amalekites from the “brow of a neigh- boring mountain, was praying and beseeching God for the victory of His people, it came to pass that when Moses lifted up his hands to heaven, the Israelites overcame; but when on the contrary he lowered his hands out of weariness, then the Amalekites overcame the Israelites. On this account Aaron and Hur on either side lifted up his arms till Joshua came forth from the battle victorious.” The Holy Father then points out that Aaron and Hur signify prayer and penance. In this way he pointed out the function of the Carthusians in the Church of God. Their life is a life of prayer centering in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the solemn chant of the Divine Office, flowing over into mental prayer, recollection and union with God. Their life is a penitential life and a life of complete separation from all creatures and worldly interests that they may give themselves with power, derived from the grace of God, to the apostolate of prayer.There are some who look upon the contemplative life of a soul that lives alone with God as a selfish life and a neglect of the apostolic duty that one owes in one way or another to his fellow men. Such persons often falsely regard external action of some kind as the only aposto- late. And so they esteem highly preaching, writing, personal persua- sion and all intense activity to spread the Word of God. There may lurk in the minds of some of those who think in this way a hidden Pelagianism (doctrine which allows too much for man’s own strength). We should never forget that “we are not qualified to take credit for anything as coming from us; rather, our qualification comes from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5). “But I have the strength for everything from Him Who empowers me” (Philippians 4:13). Our Lord Himself however, has spoken the warning words: “Pray, that you may not undergo the test” (Luke 22:40). And St. Paul tells us that “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given us” (Romans 5:5). But to pour forth the charity of God in the hearts of others and to enkindle its flames in our own being, to illumine the minds of other human beings so that they will see the truth and have the courage to profess it, to give others strength to stand in justice and to take all that shall be brought upon them and in their sorrow to endure and in their humiliation to keep patience, or even to obtain such light and strength for ourselves is something to which we may perhaps con- tribute by prayer and penance offered up to God in union with the prayer of Christ dying upon the Cross. But it would be blasphemy to say that these are things that I can bring about by my personal activi- ty. If men are to attain to eternal life, then they must come to the serv- ice of God and stand in justice and take all that shall be brought upon them and endure. It would have been perfectly possible for God to save men and establish His kingdom even if men never prayed. God has no need of man. But for our sakes, He decreed to give us a share in the establish- ment of His kingdom and assigned an important role to our prayers. Therefore, Christ, knowing the eternal decree which decided that the spreading of the kingdom of God would be helped by human prayer, when teaching His apostles to pray, put into their mouths the words: “Thy kingdom come.”We must not neglect external activity in our work for the kingdom of Christ, but we must not slip into the error that our activity pro- duces faith in the minds of unbelievers. “I have planted,” said St. Paul, “Apollos watered; but God caused the growth. Therefore, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, Who causes the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6-7). Our Lord Himself taught us to pray that missionaries should enter into the apostolic field of work: “So ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for the harvest” (Matthew 9:38). And St. Paul hav- ing been sent into the harvest, asks the prayers of his fellow Christians for success in his work: “I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in the struggle by your prayers to God on my behalf” (Romans 15:30). The apostolate of prayer and penance is the active element in the Carthusian vocation and has been so since its foundation by St. Bruno in the eleventh century. Nor, in nearly nine cen-turies of Carthusian existence, has this work ever been abandoned. Carthusians have never been idle, but have lived a life of quiet but intense spiritual activity. ‘There has never been a time of relaxation in which prayer and penance was more or less abandoned. There has never been any need of a Carthusian reform; and it is said of the Order that it has “never been reformed because it was never deformed” (“nunquam reformata quia nunquam deformata”, Pope Pius XI, Apostolic Constitution “Umbratilem’, n° 7). The Carthusian mission is a hidden apostolate. A Carthusian Prior once said to me: “We never see the good we do, but I am perfectly sure that it is done.” There is no satisfaction of accomplishment, no con- gratulations from friends. Like the widow's two brass coins (Luke 21:2), the Carthusian contribution is unmarked and lost in the treas- ury of the Temple of God. The Carthusian lives in the darkness of faith; and patient hope in the darkness lends added value to his life of prayer and penance. His life is the very opposite of selfishness. It is a holocaust of self-sacrifice, a complete immolation of all that the world holds dear in order that through the darkness of faith, he may approach the throne of Him Who lives in unapproachable light; and also help to lead through the darkness an unknown and unnumbered multitude of the children of God. 85. THE LIFE OF THE SOUL WITH GOD But the prime end of Carthusian life is not penance, nor even an apostolate of prayer. For higher than the law that “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” is the greatest and the first commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). In pro- portion as one is united to God by divine charity he not only enno- bles himself but is also made capable of helping his neighbor. One day St. Bruno and two companions were talking in a garden adjacent to the house of a man called Adam, with whom he was stay- ing at the time. They began to talk of the deceitfulness of the pleas- ures of this world and how its riches vanish and leave nothing behind. They passed on to the consideration of the joys of eternal glory which death opens to holy souls. Burning with divine charity, the three made a promise and vowed to the Holy Spirit that they would forsake the world and lay hold of the eternal by embracing the monastic life (an episode from the life of St. Bruno). Years later St. Bruno wrote a letter to one of these two friends reminding him of his vow and urged him to forsake the world and live with God. “Live with God.” This is the true nature of Carthusian life. St. Bruno in a burst of enthusiasm for the life that he was enjoying cried out in this letter: “What could be beneficial and right, so fitting, and connatural to human nature, as to love the Good? Yet, what other good can compare with God? Indeed, what other good is there besides God? Whence it comes that the soul that has attained some degree of holiness, and has experienced in some small measure the incompara- ble loveliness, beauty, and splendor of this Good, is set on fire with love, and cries out: ‘Athirst is my soul for God, the living God. When shall I go and behold the face of God? (Ps. 42: 3)’ ” (St. Bruno, “Letter to Raul”). It is this seeking of God which constitutes the essence of any reli- gious vocation. It was one of the signs that St. Benedict looked for in his novices: “si vere quaerens Deum” (“if they are truly seeking God”). It is not enough to turn away from the emptiness of creatures; one must seek the fullness of Divine Being. 9It is a special characteristic of a Carthusian vocation that the soul should seek God and nothing else but God. God calls all men to seek Him above all creatures; but all men are not called in this life to seek God and God alone and to occupy themselves with nothing else but God. There are many very good, holy, and fruitful religious vocations that seek God above all and which find Him in a service rendered to man. But from the time that one enters his little Carthusian hermitage as a postulant, until one passes into eternal life, one is occupied with the things of God and lives all alone with God a life of divine charity. There is a little unbending and relaxation on the weekly walk, and in the recreations on Sundays and on some great feasts (Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are days of retreat) with the other monks. But there are no vacations, no visits, no dining out. There is no preaching, nor assisting in parish work, no external work of any kind. There is only a strictly cloistered life in which there is nothing but the chant of the Divine Office “in the sight of God and His holy angels,” spiritual reading and communion with God in prayer. This is what the Carthusian enjoys in the silence of his hermitage. And why does the Carthusian enter into his solitude in abstraction from all creatures? Dom Le Masson, superior general of the Order in the late 17th century, gives the answer in beautiful symbolism: “It is the very substance of the soul which should be united to God, not merely its faculties. And as we see in things of which we have experi- ence by our senses, two things cannot be joined together until they have been stripped and cleansed of all other things, so that each being completely isolated they touch one another and no extraneous thing lies in between them, so it is necessary that the soul should be stripped of everything and be established in complete solitude that it may be wholly united to and made one with God. For if there remains the most insignificant thing between God and the soul, to use our mode of speaking in this matter, then the soul itself does not touch God, but whatever it is that is held on to and placed between God and the soul. Thus when one touches a hand, protected by a glove, he does not touch the hand but the glove” (from the writings of Dom Innocent Le Masson). Nothing lies between the soul and the Being of God in one who has left all things and lives in the silence and solitude of Carthusian life. 10And there is something so peculiarly Christ-like in the Carthusian spirit, something that assimilates him who possesses it to the passion of Christ, something that St. Paul expressed so beautifully when he wrote of how he had passed through the fire of sacrifice and was dead to the law, and all he had loved in the past. And why all this self-anni- hilation? “That I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God Who has loved me and given Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:19-20). Carthusian life, after all, is the silence of the soul in the solitude of its union with God, and a living experience of the profound truth that “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him” (1 John 4:16). Can Carthusians live and flourish in the United States of America? Seeing that the perfection of charity is a gift that God gives to all mankind, and not a special prerogative of any nation or type of char- acter, there is no reason why there should not be a Charterhouse in the United States. In the year 1559, John Baptist Torron, later Prior of the Spanish Charterhouse of Miraflores, with a fellow Carthusian and a lay broth- er, set sail for the new world with the idea of establishing an apostolic center of prayer in America. They were kindly received in Mexico City and offered property in a solitude where there was a lake abundant in all kinds of fish. Torron returned in high spirits to obtain the neces- sary charter from the king, but this was refused (from a Carthusian Chronicle). And so died, through no fault of America, the first attempt to estab- lish Carthusian life in the new world. The mission that the superior general of the Carthusians has sent to the United States to look into the possibility of a Carthusian founda- tion in our country resulted in the present monastery, with its begin- ning in Whitingham, Vermont in 1950, and now permanently estab- lished at Mt. Equinox in Arlington, Vermont.CARTHUSIAN EMBLEM 13" century a globe surmounted by the Cross - The Cross stands firm, while the world turns’- with seven stats symbolizing St. Bruno and his first followersCharterhouse of the Transfiguration Carthusian Monastery 1800 Beartown Road Arlington, VT 05250