Question 10.160

10.160 What do the prayers of monks mean to you, and even more: their choice of the contemplative life?

The monastic life is physically difficult, but it aspires to be completely immersed in the peace of God. Monks have chosen an active, silent life entirely consecrated to God. Little by little their days should become an uninterrupted prayer; in it the monk remains united with God during all his occupations. The true purpose of monastic life is to attain a more or less habitual state of prayer and penance, of liturgy and study, of manual labor and worship. As Thomas Merton wrote in The Sign of Jonas, silence and solitude, listening and meditation on the word, continually place the monk’s soul under the direct influence of the divine action.³

On this earth, monks must become the most humble, most patient laborers in their knowledge of the spiritual life.

Father Jérôme, who was a Trappist monk for almost sixty years at Sept-Fons Abbey, wrote realistic, admirable lines about the life of monks. In his Écrits monastiques, he remarked: “You do not become a monk in one day! It takes ten, thirty, sixty years. The young monk, the novice, is a bud in early spring, when the branches are still black and cold from the winter, when the fruit is still only a promise.”⁴

Apart from God and faith, monks are incomprehensible. We must not be afraid to say that they are useless. However, the monk knows that his vocation is mysteriously useful, because it is mysteriously efficacious for men; he recognizes that his poor existence is an imperfect participation in the life, Passion, and sorrowful death of Jesus Christ. Yet his soul must not lose sight of our Lord’s wounds.

Concealing his prayer in the great prayer of Jesus, the monk intercedes for all mankind, living and deceased, believers and unbelievers, unknown or very dear to him; not so that the wicked may become good, but so that they might have access to happiness and truth.

On October 9, 2011, in his homily during Evening Prayer at the historical Charterhouse of Serra San Bruno, where the mortal remains of the founder of the Carthusian Order are preserved, Benedict XVI spoke very fitting words about the essence of the Carthusian life and, in broader terms, about the greatness of contemplative life. For my part, I consider it one of the finest passages by the former pope: ” ‘Fugitiva relinquere et aeterna captare’: to abandon transient realities and seek to grasp that which is eternal. These words from the letter your Founder addressed to Rudolph, Provost of Rheims, contain the core of your spirituality (cf. Letter to Rudolph, no. 13): the strong desire to enter in union of life with God, abandoning everything else, everything that stands in the way of this communion, and letting oneself be grasped by the immense love of God to live this love alone. Dear brothers you have found the hidden treasure, the pearl of great value (cf. Mt 13:44-46); you have responded radically to Jesus’ invitation: ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me’ (Mt 19:21). Every monastery-male or female-is an oasis in which the deep well, from which to draw ‘living water’ to quench our deepest thirst, is constantly being dug with prayer and meditation. However, the charterhouse is a special oasis in which silence and solitude are preserved with special care, in accordance with the form of life founded by Saint Bruno and which has remained unchanged down the centuries. ‘I live in a rather faraway hermitage. . . with some religious brothers’, is the concise sentence that your Founder wrote (Letter to Rudolph ‘the Green’, no. 4). The Successor of Peter’s Visit to this historic Charterhouse is not only intended to strengthen those of you who live here but the entire Order in its mission, which is more than ever timely and meaningful in today’s world. Technical progress, especially in the area of transport and communications, has made human life more comfortable but also more keyed up, at times even frenetic. Cities are almost always noisy; silence is rarely to be found in them because there is always background noise, in some areas even at night. In recent decades, moreover, the development of the media has spread and extended a phenomenon that had already been outlined in the 1960s: virtuality risks predominating over reality. Unbeknownst to them, people are increasingly becoming immersed in a virtual dimension because of the audiovisual messages that accompany their life from morning to night. The youngest, born into this condition, seem to want to fill every empty moment with music and images, out of fear of feeling this very emptiness. This is a trend that has always existed, especially among the young and in the more developed urban contexts, but today it has reached a level such as to give rise to talk about anthropological mutation. Some people are no longer able to remain for long periods in silence and solitude. I chose to mention this socio-cultural condition because it highlights the specific charism of the Charterhouse as a precious gift for the Church and for the world, a gift that contains a deep message for our life and for the whole of humanity. I shall sum it up like this: by withdrawing into silence and solitude, human beings, so to speak, ‘expose’ themselves to reality in their nakedness, to that apparent ‘void’, which I mentioned at the outset, in order to experience instead Fullness, the presence of God, of the most real Reality that exists and that lies beyond the tangible dimension. He is a perceptible presence in every creature: in the air that we breathe, in the light that we see and that warms us, in the grass, in stones. … God, Creator omnium, passes through all things but is beyond them and for this very reason is the foundation of them all. The monk, in leaving everything, ‘takes a risk’, as it were: he exposes himself to solitude and silence in order to live on nothing but the essential, and precisely in living on the essential he also finds a deep communion with his brethren, with every human being. Some might think that it would suffice to come here to take this ‘leap’. But it is not like this. This vocation, like every vocation, finds an answer in an ongoing process, in a life-long search. Indeed it is not enough to withdraw to a place such as this in order to learn to be in God’s presence. Just as in marriage it is not enough to celebrate the Sacrament to become effectively one, but it is necessary to let God’s grace act and to walk together through the daily routine of conjugal life, so becoming monks requires time, practice and patience, ‘in a divine and persevering vigilance’, as Saint Bruno said, they ‘await the return of their Lord so that they might be able to open the door to him as soon as he knocks’ (Letter to Rudolph ‘the Green’, no. 4); and the beauty of every vocation in the Church consists precisely in this: giving God time to act with his Spirit and to one’s own humanity to form itself, to grow in that particular state of life according to the measure of the maturity of Christ. In Christ there is everything, fullness; we need time to make one of the dimensions of his mystery our own.

We could say that this is a journey of transformation in which the mystery of Christ’s resurrection is brought about and made manifest in us, a mystery of which the word of God in the biblical Reading from the Letter to the Romans has reminded us this evening: the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead and will give life to our mortal bodies also (cf. Rom 8:11) is the One who also brings about our configuration to Christ in accordance with each one’s vocation, a journey that unwinds from the baptismal font to death, a passing on to the Father’s house. In the world’s eyes it sometimes seems impossible to spend one’s whole life in a monastery but in fact a whole life barely suffices to enter into this union with God, into this essential and profound Reality which is Jesus Christ. This is why I have come here, dear Brothers who make up the Carthusian Community of Serra San Bruno, to tell you that the Church needs you and that you need the Church! Your place is not on the fringes: no vocation in the People of God is on the fringes. We are one body, in which every member is important and has the same dignity and is inseparable from the whole. You too, who live in voluntary isolation, are in the heart of the Church and make the pure blood of contemplation and of the love of God course through your veins. Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis [the Cross is steady while the world is turning], your motto says. The Cross of Christ is the firm point in the midst of the world’s changes and upheavals. Life in a Charterhouse shares in the stability of the Cross which is that of God, of God’s faithful love. By remaining firmly united to Christ, like the branches to the Vine, may you too, dear Carthusian Brothers, be associated with his mystery of salvation, like the Virgin Mary who stabat [stood] beneath the Cross, united with her Son in the same sacrifice of love. Thus, like Mary and with her, you too are deeply inserted in the mystery of the Church, a sacrament of union of men with God and with each other. In this you are singularly close to my ministry. May the Most Holy Mother of the Church therefore watch over us and the holy Father Bruno always bless your community from Heaven.”

Certainly, the life of a hermit may seem too rigorous, almost unsuitable in our age. But we must never forget that Bruno wanted to see God in an intimate faceto-face conversation. The founder of the Carthusians could not wait for death and eternity to respond to the urgency of his thirst. Indeed, Carthusians are impatient men.

In a letter to Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Léon Bloy wrote: “Whatever the circumstances may be, always put the Invisible before the visible, the Supernatural before the natural; if this rule is applied to all your actions, we know that you will be equipped with strength and bathed with deep joy.” Without meaning to, the writer summed up the essence of the monk’s ambition.

Monks are shining stars that silently guide mankind toward the paths of the interior life. Their whole life, down to its minutest practical details, is centered on God. We must not be surprised that this absolute gift can produce effects that surpass mere rationality. We do not give our life to God without consequences.

Saint Benedict was obsessed with truly pleasing God. In reading biographies devoted to him, I have always been struck by his joy of living in God’s sight. He thought of solitude as a proof of love. He devised rules that allow monks to wield the weapons suited to waging the difficult combat of the interior life. His ambition was to give his monks the means to dwell in the sight of God. With the ardor of the meek, this great saint was consumed by the desire to be in God. The Order that he founded has held a very important place in Church history, even in recent times; I would not be divulging a secret if I told you that the example of the Benedictines was decisive for Joseph Ratzinger. His thirst for God alone resembles that of monks in all respects.

When I was archbishop of Conakry, for ten years I looked for sons of Saint Benedict who would agree to settle in my country. Every day I begged the Lord to grant me that grace. In 1994, I finally managed to bring some Benedictine nuns from Maumont Abbey, in the Diocese of Angoulême. Previously I had tried to enlist the good offices of the monks of Solesmes for my project. Finally, the Senegalese monastery of Keur Moussa yielded to my insistent appeals by founding a priory in Guinea. God has worked marvels, and he has exceeded my expectations.

Indeed, I considered that there is no substitute for the prayers of the monks to arouse an unceasing search for God and to foster the spiritual life of my people. Now, whenever I return to Guinea, I never fail to devote at least two days to the Benedictine monks and nuns. I love monasteries because they are God’s citadels, strongholds where we can find him more easily, walls where the Heart of Jesus tenderly keeps watch.

There, those who seek God can say with the psalmist: “Domine, dilexi habitaculum domus tuae et locum habitationis gloriae tuae. … Unum petii a Domino, hoc requiram: ut inhabitem in domo Domini omnibus diebus vitae meae, ut videam voluptatem Domini et visitem templum eius” (Ps 26:8; Ps 27:4) (O Lord, I love the habitation of your house, and the place where your glory dwells. … One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple). In monasteries we rediscover purity of heart, munditia cordis.

I am firmly convinced that the Church continues on her path thanks to the intercession, day and night, of contemplative monks and nuns. The Bride of Christ is radiant with the invisible prayer of the soldiers who have hitched their lives to the vaults of heaven.

Today, despite the collapse of many traditions in the modern world, some men continue to base their whole lives on the love of God. In his treatise De amore Dei (On the Love of God), Saint Bernard wrote poetically: “The measure with which to love God is to love without measure.”

On May 24, 2009, during his visit to Monte Cassino, Benedict XVI spoke these incomparable words about Benedict: “To live no longer for ourselves but for Christ: this is what gives full meaning to the life of those who let themselves be conquered by him. This is clearly demonstrated by the human and spiritual life of Saint Benedict. who, having abandoned all things, set out to follow Jesus Christ faithfully. Embodying the Gospel in his life, he became the pioneer of a vast movement of spiritual and cultural rebirth in the West. I would like here to mention an extraordinary event in his life related by Saint Gregory the Great, his biographer, and which is certainly well known to you. One might almost say that the holy Patriarch was also ‘carried up into Heaven’ in an indescribable mystic experience. On the night of 29 October 540, we read in the biography, while leaning out of the window, ‘his eyes fixed on the stars and rapt in divine contemplation, the Saint felt that his heart was burning. . . for him the starry firmament was like the embroidered curtain that veiled the Holy of Holies. At a certain point, his soul felt transported to the other side of the veil, to contemplate unveiled the Face of the One who dwells in inaccessible brightness’ (cf. A. I. Schuster, Storia di san Benedetto e dei suoi tempi [Milan: Ed. Abbazia di Viboldone, 1965], 11ff.). Of course, similarly to what happened for Paul after he had been taken up into Heaven, for Saint Benedict too subsequent to this extraordinary spiritual experience, a new life had to begin. Indeed, although the vision was but fleeting, the effects endured; his features themselves, the biographers say, were altered by it, his expression always remained serene and his behavior angelic, and although he lived on earth, it was obvious that his heart was already in Paradise.”