‘My commandment is that you should love one another as I have loved you.’  Jesus himself teaches us the secret. Just as he is welcomed by the Father so are we to be welcomed by him; and as he welcomes us, so are we to welcome….Note that this is not some sort of rule, exterior to our (Carthusian) lives, that Jesus might have imposed on us as a discipline.  These directives, outlined so simply, are truly the substance of our lives as children of God.  When I give my brother all rights to be welcomed within me, I am not according him a luxury; I am simply trying to live in truth as the child of God I am; that is to be as welcoming as I possibly can, because that will make me ready to be welcomed in turn by God himself.

The other side f the exchange of divine life that we (Carthusians) are to practice among us is the permanent inclination to allow ourselves to be welcomed by our brothers.  It is so easy, in fact, to refuse myself to my brother, under the pretext of discretion or respect of others, whereas he is prepared to welcome me, or may even feel a profound need of doing so.  Let us remember, for example, the strong words addressed by Jesus to Simon Peter: ‘If I do not wash your feet, you can have no part with me.’  That means: if you are not able to accept my being at your disposition, at your service, welcoming you fully and completely into my heart, what have we in common?  Could we not often ask the same question among ourselves?  –‘The Wound of Love’ A. Carthusian

…accept the poverty of the forty days (by Jesus) spent in the wilderness. Let us try to approach them in a spirit of humility, not so as to enrich our feelings or increase our store of images, but to accept the truth of the word of God as it is revealed by the Holy Spirit.

We are told almost nothing of what happened during Jesus’ long retreat, as he was led by the spirit of God. Yet, at the same time, we are told by that same spirit: draw from this source the living water which you need to become faithful dwellers in the desert. We must not allow ourselves to be frightened by the spiritual desert which the Holy Spirit thus calls us, for a desert is indeed what it is. Going into the desert is not simply a matter of giving up frequent human contact; it also means adopting an attitude in which the inner dialog is less and less concerned with new and attractive ideas but rather tends to concentrate on one person. Our abiding in the desert is justified for only one reason: we are there for Jesus.

Many of us realize that we have a natural attraction for solitude and aptitudes for a life with little human contact, drawn as we try by silence and a certain restfulness of our entire being. These natural attributes are very real; we need not disown them, and, in certain cases, there might even be the possibility of developing them in such a way that a sufficiently stable and harmonious solitary life could be built on them alone. But such a balance would know nothing of Jesus and would give rise to the suspicion that these words of our Lord might apply: ‘He who is not with me is against me’. (Matthew 12:30)  –‘The Wound of Love’ A. Carthusian

“Seek in reading and you will find in meditating; knock in mental prayer and it will be opened to you by contemplation.” —Guigo the Carthusian

When I pray, I do not call on God of philosophers nor even, in a sense, on the God of theologians. I turn to my Father, or rather, our Father. To be more precise, I turn to him whom Jesus, in complete intimacy and confidence, called Abba. When the disciples asked our Lord to teach them how to pray, he simply replied: ‘When you pray you say: “Abba”…To name God thus is to have certainty that we are loved; a certitude of a different nature from that referred to by scholars, but one derived from innermost convictions (at my deepest core is the desire for an intense love): a certitude of faith at which we have arrived, it seems to us, after periods of reflections, meditation and consideration of our interior inspirations; though ultimately this certitude is a gift. We have complete faith in the love we have in our hearts because it is the Father who has sent us his Spirit, now that his Son has entered his glory.

It is because the Father loves me that I am able to turn to him in complete trust and confidence. I do not turn toward him to stress my virtues (nor to concentrate upon my weaknesses), nor for well-calculated reasons, but trusting in the infinite tenderness of the Abba for his Son Jesus, since he is also my Abba. ‘The Wound of Love’ A. Carthusian

“There are people who think there is no holiness without miracles. We, on the contrary, do not think highly of miracles, for both the elect and the reprobate work them. We find no or few miracles in the great Patriarchs and many other Saints who were very pleasing to God.”

“Let each one think what he wants, but this is our opinion, and according to us, clever people, especially those who know the science of nature, do not think otherwise; in the midst of such long and violent headaches, not to lose the awareness of God, the habit of invoking Him and a religious piety, is not a less exceptional or less important fact than not having denied one’s faith, showing an insurmountable constancy in torture…”

“What one finds in the Charterhouse, then, is not a collection of great mystics and men of dazzling spiritual gifts, but simple and rugged souls whose mysticism is all swallowed up in a faith too big and too simple for visions.” –Guigo ‘The Life of Saint Hugh, Bishop of Grenoble

Carducho, Vicente; The Dream of Saint Hugh, Bishop of Grenoble; National Galleries of Scotland;

In view of this attitude of real concern that we must have for our contemporaries struggling with the countless difficulties of daily life, many Christians could be scandalized by another form of prayer: at times, it may be that the best way of praying for others is to forget them.  When we accept the deep poverty of this latter form of intercession, are we really betraying the expectations of our fellow men, or are we not, rather, responding in an eminent way?

Let us read again the words of Paul VI to the Prior of the Grande Chartreuse in his letter ‘Optimam Partem’:

It is the interest of the Church that the order of Carthusians should remain very much alive; that its members, wanting to give God the honor which is due to Him, continually devote their whole strength to adoring Him.  Through this pure and single-hearted worship, the Order is not only giving a sure and most valuable support to Christian people, but it is giving great help to others too, who are seeking the road to life and are in need of divine grace.  For contemplation and continual prayer must be considered as tasks of primordial importance, carried out for the good of the whole universe.

The pope’s teaching is clear; our (Carthusian) task is to adore God, to contemplate Him; if we are doing this in all truth, then we are fulfilling integrally our role of intercession.  Is this not what Jesus had taught?  ‘When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words.  Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him’ (Matthew 6:7-8)

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…’By devoting ourselves (Carthusians) exclusively to God we exercise a special function in the Church’….Our (Carthusian) prayer is the accomplishment of a public role that has been officially entrusted to us.  This does not mean that we are civil servants comfortably carrying out our job; it means that we are the Church at prayer: our prayer is the prayer of the Church recollecting herself in silence and coming together in the presence of God.  We bear within us the burdens of the world.  Our own weakness is the sign, only too visible, alas, of the weakness of all of humanity; our own sins make it easy for us to be in solidarity with the sins of the whole world; our confidence in God’s love cannot be limited to what concerns us personally, for our faith teaches us that in Christ we are all one in our journey to the Father.  This realization should exercise every temptation to esteem ourselves superior to anyone else; our cry to God, and the grace we receive from Him, have the dimensions of the Body of Christ in which all humanity is gathered into one, from Adam to the last of the redeemed. –‘The Wound of Love’ A. Carhtusian