THE EVEN AND THE HALLOWS

Now that Hallowe'en is spreading like an oil-slick across the Atlantic and filling Western Europe with 8-year-old ghouls and wrapped sweets, it may be useful to remind the ignorant, and even the uncaring, about its morrow. In France, All Souls Day, November 2, has long been known as le jour des morts, the Day of the Dead, marked by visits to churchyard and cemetery and by a tidal wave of small-flowered chrysanthemums, bought at the local grocery shop or florist's to be placed on the tombs of the faithful departed. Now, even in the land of laïcité (state-sponsored secularism), Hallowe'en is spreading irresistibly; and so the two slices of the sandwich are in place, but the ham is absent and forgotten. And even in America the Religious, I'm not sure how many people remember that the scary fun of Hallowe'en is intended to scare the Powers of Darkness and not the populace.  For those Powers, the old folk wisdom said, walk the earth on this even, and we light candles in grinning heads to keep them away.
They walk the earth partly because the year's dark days are here, now after harvest, and partly because the morrow is a feast they hate with all their might. For it is the celebration of All the Saints: the entire community of those who have returned God's love with a power and might that is exceptional; an intensity the rest of us can venerate but likely not attain; and in whom we rejoice because they inspire us and, many believe, pray for us because they know our need as even we do not.
We have all met, upon occasion, someone of real and transparent goodness, and from such persons something like a light shines forth that is doubtless at the origin of the halo with which painters endow them. Such a gentle light surrounds a person simply good. What of a saint? I don't think I've ever been in the physical presence of one; but I have seen on photo and on film, and read the writings of, some I canonise in my heart and the Church may soon if it has not already. And from such persons there comes a power, a penetrating influence that is like a vast radiance: quiet often, unassuming even, not always uncontroversial but impossible to ignore.
Now imagine a room, a palace, a firmament full of such singular intensities. Can our minds and hearts even begin to encompass the light and the cosmic joy of it? It would intimidate us; it would frighten us. And if it would frighten us, think of what it must do to those sad souls and spirits who cannot abide the love of God and have chosen endless night rather than have to encounter it. No wonder that at the mere approach of its mere commemoration they gibber and howl and stalk our streets in despair. They want our blood, or at least our happiness: they are mad with jealousy and bent on our destruction. So we light fires and candles, we sing songs, we eat and drink and pray, and we hug our children in their small disguises; because we are creatures of hope, and tomorrow comes the light of all God's darlings, united for our good.

A THOUSAND YEARS AT THE CUTTING EDGE

Girolamo Marchesi, St Bruno

Today is the Feast of St Bruno (ca. 1030 - 1101), the founder of the Carthusian Order, the most complete of the contemplative communities. The Carthusians are hermits living in community; the order has never been reformed because it has never needed reformation. Books they publish are signed not with an author's name or even a monastic pseudonym but "A Carthusian". Bruno may be the only saint never officially canonised because a Carthusian would never accept such an individualising honour. The original monastery, which in an expanded form still exists, is in one of the world's more beautiful places, the valley of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps:

The Grande Chartreuse, the mother house of the Order

When a German film director Peter Gröning, asked if he could make a documentary of their life, he was told, "No, we're not quite ready. Come back in 15 years." Fifteen years later, he asked again, and was given permission as long as he came by himself with only a handheld camera. The result was the stunning Into Great Silence, of which the New York Times film critic said, "I would not call it the best film of the year: rather, the antidote to all the others." It is a film of surpassing beauty, in both the aesthetic and the spiritual sense. 

Carthusians live completely apart from the world and do not admit visitors, which is sometimes frustrating for those in the world who are attracted by them. But one can read their writings, some of which are published by Gracewing, including the superb The Wound of Love; and there are international virtual communities of Carthusian-inspired lay people, such as the International Fellowship of St Bruno (IFSB) and, more recently and most interestingly, Quies.

There are male and female Carthusian communities; they are divided into full religious (in the male communities Fathers, usually priests), who spend their entire life in contemplation, prayer and study, and Brothers (or Sisters), who perform the community's practical maintenance but share in the liturgical and prayer life. And one of the few activities which touch the world is the making of Chartreuse liqueur, flavoured with herbs, a drink of extraordinary depth and subtlety. 

The Carthusians are those who have gone all the way. They have given up everything to live close to God. One Carthusian wrote, "How does a Carthusian die? Very simply. You go to sleep, as on any night; you wake up somewhere else." It is, as T.S. Eliot wrote, "A condition of complete simplicity / Costing not less than everything." They are well worth getting to know.

A Carthusian praying in cell - from Into Great Silence

RADICAL YOUTH?

Sister of Charity in India

In France, one of this week’s events is a new film by Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, director of Les Héritiers (the Inheritors), a wonderful movie about a high-school class and their project on teenagers in the Holocaust. The new film concerns what we now call the “radicalization” of teenage girls, who often in a short space of time become what they think are strict Muslims and set off for Syria. Listening to an interview with the admirable director, who has lived with these girls and their families for three years, I was struck with a dolorous thought of great force: WHERE IS THE CHURCH?

            From what Mention-Schaar said, it was clear that many if not most of these girls, not at all from a Muslim or even immigrant background, were responding to on the one hand a barrage of indoctrination on the vile immorality of Western capitalist society, and on the other hand a burning desire for a life that is pure, upright, dedicated to both a divine plan and human betterment.

            Uh, huh. There was a time – and my wife remembers it well from her own childhood – when such girls burned to be missionaries or teaching nuns or religious working with the poorest of the poor. Mother Teresa was an example of those, probably a minority, but still, who went through with it.

            But even before this connection came up, when last year was proclaimed a Year of the Religious, and a number of people were lamenting the decline in vocations, I was astonished by the lack of recruiting, advertising or even public relations the Roman Catholic Church (and the Anglicans are no better) is doing on the subject. Supposedly, they want the young or the relatively young: many orders take no one over 45. But are they lifting a finger to get them? No. For a time I was a member of an Internet group of Carthusian enthusiasts called the International Friends of St Bruno. In the 2 or 3 years I spent with them I don’t think I ever saw a posting from someone under 40.

            It is, and probably always has been, a feature of the teenage years to want to be an arrow on a divine bow: straight, sharp, noble, and aimed and shot at a deserving target. Nowadays, it does not occur to many to turn to a religious order to be arrowed; but the social networks turn a startling number of them to an Islamist jihad. Were we to see a tenth of that recruiting activity, both in quantity and in quality, on the social networks for the Carmelites, the Carthusians, the Benedictines, the Cistercians or the Franciscans, the number of novices would shoot up; and even if only a minority stay the course, fewer monasteries and convents would be inhabited only by the agèd and fewer would close. And for those who want activity, who burn to help the downtrodden, the Sisters of Charity are still in Calcutta and elsewhere. Pure you can be; dedicated you have to be; needed you will be. Of course you won’t have the thrill of the Kalashnikov; but on the other hand you won’t have the sweat and the bad breath of the freedom fighter on top of you whose slave you have been declared. And nowadays, your parents might even – oh joy! -- disapprove.

young Carmelites

Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal