In the context of the Year of the Consecrated Life, the award-winning
French daily La Croix publishes, this
weekend, a rare interview with the General Prior of the Grande Chartreuse, the
mother-house of the Carthusian Order. As a long-time admirer of the Carthusians,
I found this fascinating and inspiring, and thought I would translate it for
this blog. LC refers to the La Croix interviewer, Frédéric Mounier; DL is Dom
Dysmas de Lassus, the General Prior.
LC: Within the
diverse choices of the consecrated life, how would you characterise the
Carthusians?
DL: The way of the Carthusians is rooted in the monasticism
of the Desert Fathers. We are monks, and have much in common with the
Benedictines or the Cistercians. Our specificity is a greater emphasis on the
solitary life. Yet we are not hermits, because the communal part of our lives
is far from negligible.
LC: Your separation
from the world is particularly decisive . . .
DL: That’s true, our cloisteredness is rigorous, not always
easy to accept. For we do not come out of the desert, not even, except in
unusual cases, for the death of our relatives. Rather than explain this, I
prefer to cite Christ who withdrew for forty days into the desert to pray. When
we speak of the desert, that is what we are talking about. But for two days
each year we receive our families in the hostel.
LC: What makes
solitude cease to be suffering?
DL: The emphasis on solitude should not be mistaken: for us
it is merely an external condition and a means. The goal is not solitude but indeed
its opposite, communion. Our whole life is constructed on relation. Everything
in it is conceived to favour the development of a relationship with God, of
communion in love with Him. If he lives his vocation completely, the Carthusian
is never alone. Nevertheless, living in solitude, even with that communion with
God, requires certain capacities, a type of spirit capable of bearing it. And
that isn’t given to everyone.
The
austerity of the Charterhouse doesn’t consist in the fasting, the getting-up in
the middle of the night, or the cold, even though those aspects are quite real.
The true austerity is the solitude. The first few years, the intimacy with God
is still fragile, and the desert, within and without, can sometimes make itself
rudely felt. But I hear monks complain more often of not having enough solitude
than of the opposite.
LC: In the silence,
how does one manage not to be deafened by oneself?
DL: In the beginning, the ego obvioudly takes up a lot of
space and makes a great deal of noise. Taming our internal forces takes time.
But right from the start it is possible to taste a true silence and to open
oneself to the presence of the loved one.
And that is what gradually pulls us toward the true silence, because
that communion is of such beauty and the noise of thoughts disturbs it.
LC: You live apart
from the world, but not in order to escape from it. How?
DL: When lighthouses still had lighthouse-keepers, they too
lived apart from the world, and yet they did so to serve those who passed by
them without seeing them. We do what others should do but do not: listen to
their hearts, there to hear the voice of him who gave them life. As a fine
passage from our Statutes puts it: “Separated
from all, we are united to all because it is in the name of all that we remain
in the presence of the Living God.”
We are like
the keepers of a transmission relay-station on a mountain-top. Ostensibly
isolated, it nevertheless sees the passage of millions of messages, and links
men to one another or to satellites above them. Something would be missing from
the earth if there were no men (all the contemplatives, not just us) who gave
their life to that communication with Heaven, in the name of all mankind.
LC: What do you perceive of the world?
DL: If you will allow me a smiling answer, I’ll say: first
of all, ourselves. What I mean is that men are men, in whatever part of the
world you find yourself – including within the cloister of a Charterhouse. So
we are a perfectly typical and absolutely normal sample of the world, far from
the pious images that all too often circulate about us. Human nature, the
essence of the world, is 100% present among us.
As far as
events are concerned, we get La Croix
and some other papers. The prior passes on to the monks the important things.
Materially spekaing, there are enough magazines and news media that circulate,
the texts of the Pope, of our bishop, the diocesan newsletter, etc. It’s not
necessary to have news each day in order to maintain that link. Their somewhat
limited number, on the contrary, helps us not to smother the most important
matters in a multitude of secondary things.
For
example, we follow quite closely the drama of the Oriental Christians, the
Synod on the Family, the Year of the Consecrated Life or that of Mercy, and all
the rest of the life of the Church and of the world.
LC: What would you say to a young person tempted
to join you? What, to you, is the decisive criterion?
DL: If you’re tempted, come and see. Our life doesn’t demand
extraordinary qualities. We have people who have completed the Polytechnique or
the Ecole Normale Supérieure [two of the mosst prestigious institutions of
higher learning in France – translator’s
note]. And there are others who have just finished high school. There are
solid persons and fragile persons. So it’s wrong to think that the Charterhouse
is restricted to exceptional characters. On the other hand, it’s true that only
a small number of persons are capable of sustaining a solitary life, because
what is needed for that is not exceptional qualities but very specific ones. In
reality, only experience can tell if one feels in harmony with the life in cell
or not. While we don’t have any particular demands, neither intellectual nor
human, nevertheless we cannot be an escape from the difficulties of the world.
Many
discover quite quickly that this life is not for them. But for those who have
received that grace, it is an extraordinary gift. Sure, there is a price to be
paid. But I truly regret nothing: we are privileged.
LC: How does one keep going in the consecrated
life?
DL: That is the difficult part today because fidelity is no
longer a value in contemporary culture. Sufficient to each day is the evil
thereof, because we receive grace only for today. Unshakeable confidence in the
love of God, trust in our Father in heaven, attachment to the heart of Jesus,
the quiet gentleness of the Holy Spirit, the protection of our heavenly Mother,
but also self-knowledge, the accompaniment of a spiritual father, the ability
to listen and to convert, an acute consciousness of the immensity of the gift
we have received: the divine sonship. All that is what allows us to go on.
The
greatest risk, after a certain time, is that of the blunting of desire, of
ceasing to rise. One settles in. One becomes an old bachelor in cell. Love is a
life that needs maintaining. As in marriage, there are difficult days and
marvellous days. But he who has understood, even in part, what it means to be a
son of God, doesn’t fear the hardships of the way.
LC: How does a
Carthusian live his desires?
DL: We renounce all desires for one only: the desire for
God. The risk, which would entail catastrophe, would be to seek primarily the
renunciation.
Seeking
only to destroy one’s desires doen’t entail the love of God. A Carthusian who
wanted to become a champion of ascesis would have it all wrong. Among us,
sprinting is pointless. We’re in a marathon. Our Statues say: But let no one rely on his own judgement:
for he who neglects to open his heart to a sure guide risks, through a lack of
discretion, advancing less than he should, either exhausting himself through
too much running, or of falling asleep through too much dawdling.”
We know that we need years to learn to manage our
sensibility. In solitude one can create a drama out of nothing. A classic
saying among Carthusians says, “The
novices are saints. The young monks are not saints but they don’t know it. The
mature monks are not saints and they know it. And there are some old monks who
are saints, but they don’t know it.”
LC: There are nuns,
too . . .
DL: Currently there are 62, including seven novices, spread
over five convents, two in France, and also in Italy, in Korea, and in Spain.
Their life
is the same as ours. It’s important to them. Until the last Council, their
structure was different. Their Carthusian “vicar” is the chaplain of their
house, but not their superior. The two congregations are spearate, each with
its own government. But I am the General Prior of both congregations.
Around
1140, after the first General Chapter of the Carthusians, the nuns of Prébayon
in Provence, seeking a more solitary rule of life, asked to join the Carthusian
order. This happened in 1145. There were as many as 13 convents, which is a
small number compared to the 160 monasteries that existed at the beginning of
the 18th century. After the Revolution, they recommenced their life
in 1816, until our own time.
LC: How has your
particular spirituality managed to continue for nine centuries?
DL: Because it doesn’t exist. We don’t have a specific
spirituality, because there can be as many different spiritualities as there
are Carthusians. And yet there is a profound unity between us. But the goal is
the same. What is particular to the Charterhouse is not solitude as such but the
particular quality of the relation to God that solitude allows.
LC: What gives you
the feeling of living, of loving?
DL: I have received more love than I could have dreamed.
It’s true that it’s only after twenty years of the religious life that I’m able
to say that. But the reward – why be afraid of the word? – was worth while, so
huge is it.
As far as
the feeling of living is concerned, for us no two days are alike. Even if seen
from the outside our life is extremely regular and ostensibly unchanging, on
the inside the landscape constantly changes.
LC: How does a
Carthusian die?
DL: Generally, the way he has lived: very simply. It’s like
the end of a day: one goes to bed at night after a tiring day in the certainty
that one will wake up [next morning]. On
the other side of death, one will wake up to eternal life. Dying doesn’t seem
troubling or difficult to me, on the contrary. Our whole life is oriented to
the great encounter.
LC: What is your hope for the world? What would St
Bruno say to it today?
DL: The hope of the world lies in ten words: He knows all,
He can do all, He loves me. Those words of Marie-Antoinette de Geuser [a young
French mystic who died in 1918] we can say of the world itself. If we truly
believe that the Wisdom and the Power of God serve his Love for men, that will
not let us understand what happens in the world, but it leaves us with the
certainty that all will end well. Christ is already the victor.
