ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?

I have been looking up the ungodly. Not, initially, in the physical or social sense: they are all around us and we will get to them presently. No: in the linguistic sense. Since I have been reading the Psalms a good deal lately, I realise that there too they are everywhere. So I wanted to find out what the Hebrew term was, and then what was its Greek equivalent in the New Testament.

The Hebrew term, I find, is rasha, with the a’s pronounced as “ah”. And it’s a strong term, meaning ‘guilty’ or ‘wicked’. So ancient Israel did not beat about the bush, so to speak: the opposite of the chasid or godly person is not just somebody who doesn’t believe in the Deity but a guilty or wicked man.

If we read the Psalms, it is not hard – especially from Psalm 119 – to find out what a chasid is. He is someone who loves the Law and obeys it: the Law in all its glorious intricacies, the Law that provides the parched traveller, lost in the spiritual Negev or Nefud desert, with a path that if followed will inevitably lead him to a well and even to an oasis. The path was made and given by God: man’s job is to find it, follow it and learn it by heart. That is the way to God. The holy man is also the righteous man, who abstains from evil deeds and succours the defenceless; if he is so, then God’s favour will uphold and follow him. His granaries will be full, his wife and children will be as green olive trees, and he will not eat a morsel or drink a drop without giving thanks – Baruch atta Adonai Elohenu . . . .

His opposite is not the decent man who just doesn’t believe in God: his opposite is the evil man, the one who robs widows and children of their savings, who says “Tush, God will not see it” and cheerfully enriches himself without a smidgen of charity, and who, as the Psalm wonderfully says “grins like a dog and runs about the city”.

In the New Testament, where Greek takes the place of Hebrew, there is a significant change. The “ungodly” now is the asebès, the man who will not venerate, will not be respectful, will not “hallow” the holy. Not actively wicked, he is the one who shrugs. He reminds me of the Athenians who listened politely to Paul on the Unknown God and said, “Hmmm. Interesting. Come back some other time.” To the asebès, all gods are sort of equal, equally interesting, equally boring in the long run, equally irrational and thus quaint but unimportant.

Today’s ungodly are more like the Greeks. They tend to say, when asked, that yes they believe in some sort of higher power as long as they can think of feeling it on a mountaintop at sunrise; but above all never, never in a church; not in a church, not in any sort of group, not in the context of any kind of intellectual definition or spiritual rigour, not in a tradition of thinkers, not in any context that would bind or constrain them in any way at all.  Moreover, a number of them, reacting to militant Islam in a carefully non-discriminating way, proclaim the idea that all religion is not just slightly irritating but positively harmful.

While our very modern and rhetorically evangelising churches keep telling us that we must be active witnesses, encountering today’s ubiquitous ungodly is a challenge neither St Paul nor Luther ever had to face. Paul did better with Jews than with Athenians; Luther convinced many members of a degenerate Catholic Church. And we? We are often told (by our own churches) that as long as we live a life of clear and evident faith, that will interest and intrigue people enough to start a conversation. In my own experience this is mostly untrue: people note that Dwight is religious, in the same way that Beatrice does crosswords and Charles collects old absinthe bottles, and move on.

The not-very-satisfactory provisional solution is to keep a keen ear open for  the opportunities that do sometimes arise in conversation, and to keep one’s private feelings about today’s asebèsis firmly to oneself.  One point I have sometimes made is a modern version of Pascal’s Wager. “Look around you at the people you know,” I suggest: “Do you on the whole think those who do not believe in God are happier than those who do?” That sometimes makes people stop and think. But the problem is huge, and remains. How does one make inroads on a culture, not of anger or persecution but of complete indifference?

ADVICE FROM A BUSY ADMINISTRATOR

"Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there....Some people prefer solitude. They say their peace of mind depends on this. Others say they would be better off in church. If you do well, you do well wherever you are. If you fail, you fail wherever you are. Your surroundings don't matter. God is with you everywhere - in the market place as well as in seclusion or in the church. If you look for nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you. God is not distracted by a multitude of things. Nor can we be." 

Meister Eckhart, alias Eckhart von Hochheim (ca. 1260-1328), Dominican theologian, mystic and monastic supervisor from Thuringia.




Hat tip: "Mid-Week from St Matthias", St Matthias's RC Church, Somerset, NJ.

IT'S 2018. I HAVE JUST BEEN APPOINTED . . .

I have updated this post from 3 1/2 years ago, because I still like it.

St Mary's Church, Kersey, Suffolk

IT’s 2018. I HAVE JUST BEEN APPOINTED ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

Oh dear. Now what? I have an indeterminate term ahead of me, I am about to be appointed by the Sovereign, and I need to know what to do to, for, and with the 77 million Anglicans of whom I will soon be the titular spiritual head. Not in any authoritative sense, for, true to traditional Anglican muddle, Canterbury is in no way a Pope. He has no power; he has no authority other than moral and traditional; he cannot order much and can command less. And nowadays, most Anglicans will be sure to disagree with him vehemently on almost all issues they consider important. So?

This has its good points, too. Canterbury can, if he likes, be individual, eccentric, and stubborn; and if he is seen to have a touch of holiness, or even greatness, he may get away with it. Rowan Williams, on the other hand, showed us all exactly what to avoid when he said that any successor of his should proceed ‘with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other’. Under that reportedly saintly man, the Church let its agenda be set by the media, and was thus always seen to be behind. Michael Ramsey, who admittedly lived in the prehistoric age Before Twitter, is a better example. When asked by a bratty Oxford undergraduate ‘Your Grace, what’s wrong with the Church of England?’ he murmured not one word about sex, gender, or LGBT, but said crisply, ‘It doesn’t preach enough.’

So here I am, with two short months before my intronisation, and some serious praying to do. I’ll start with Don Camillo. That only slightly fictitious Italian parish priest talked frequently with the crucified Christ on the wall of his church, and dealt with local ex-virgins and would-be Communists on the strength of it. We may think him pawky, but those conversations will, I suspect, be a good way to start. Right, Lord?

What (few will ask because most think they know) is wrong with the Church of England? And those other churches in our Communion? I’d begin by showing people what’s right. It is a national Church, and one of the few; because it has the vocation to be a national Church, it cannot hide itself in a comfy closed doctrinal closet but must worry the issues until they succumb. It is on the whole a tolerant Church, a reasonably kindly Church, an unpretentious Church, a Church that functions best when assembling many people of different points if view for a liturgy of Matins or Communion followed by coffee or sherry, and cake.

It is not good at taking positions on knotty problems beloved by television talk-show hosts. It is not good at dealing with morals beyond the Great Commandments. It is not good at being Cool. It is not good at being political. It is not good at being Progressive, or Liberal, or Conservative. It is not good at being Ecological or Diverse.

So I think that I will not try to be any of those things. Journalists with microphones and enormous cameras will try to make me, and I will prepare a few good one-liners to send them home with. But I will not bite.

Instead, I will surprise them. I will give each of Britain’s parishes the choice of being, like the hexes in Jack Chalker’s Well World novels, Wild, Half-Wild, or Tame, the choice to be made by all members in a parish referendum. Wild parishes will permit everything, from gay marriage to djembe-rock services; Half-Wild will choose from a small list which changes they will adopt, but will then be stuck with those for twelve years before a review; Tame parishes will be traditional (and BCP) in every way, whether Low, High, or Broad. Once those choices are made, I will put a twelve-year moratorium on all discussions of ‘modernization’, whether of morality or of liturgy, in the Church.

The place of these will be taken by an enormous effort of spirituality, accompanied (but not replaced) by active charity. Discussion will be allowed of matters of theology, but not encouraged: I will try to steer my fractious Church in the direction of being a praying Church rather than a forum for disagreement. I will put huge effort into encouraging vocations, both priestly and religious, and maintain and encourage all Anglican religious orders. Since my appointment coincides with the 350^th anniversary of the Restoration (1668) Prayer Book, I will direct that for one year it be used in all prime-time parish services, with Common Worship relegated for that time to 8 a.m. I will institute part-time seminars on preaching for all Church of England rectors and curates, and encourage longer, text-based sermons in all Sunday services.

An easily-overlooked feature of these changes is that they are low-cost financially. On that front, I will encourage a new form of tithing compatible with high taxation, and I will appoint a committee to study the feasibility of part-time curates. I will encourage Government to increase its assistance in maintaining historic churches and their fabric, and encourage the creation of lay readers and Matins and Evensong services led by them.

Finally, I will initiate a large effort of promulgating the knowledge of Anglican spirituality and its history, including the lives of persons to be venerated; I will institute popular courses on the thought of Hooker and Burnet, on the sermons of Donne and Newman (even though he left for Rome), and on the poetry of Herbert and Watts.

Thinking about this has almost made me eager to begin. Thanks, Lord.    

Christmas Carol Service, Canterbury Cathedral

 

UNCERTAINTY

After my previous post on “Schrödinger’s Cross,” a friend suggested, half in fun, that I should turn to Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle. This was a challenge not to be resisted, even for as un-mathematical a mind as mine. I’m not sure that it is possible to apply it in any way but vague, fuzzy and inaccurate analogy. But we can try.

    The Uncertainty Principle relates to atomic-sized situations because in normal life situations it is too tiny to observe. Things are simply too big, too massy and too slow (like an automobile moving along a road). But what about spiritual situations? Factors like Sin and Grace?

    Simply speaking, the Uncertainty Principle says that you cannot measure a particle's position and its momentum simultaneously: as you try to narrow down position, momentum gets fuzzier; as you try to narrow down momentum, position gets fuzzier. Moreover, the element may not have had a definite position before you started measuring it.

    As you try to narrow down your measurement of Sin’s position, what happens? Possibilities:

         1.     you end up with Law, as in Mosaic/Rabbinic, Sharia, or Christian Puritan. You apply ‘Sin’ to more and more specific little actions (eating pork, shellfish, having more than 3 wives, turning on a light switch – or reading Elmore Leonard -- on the Sabbath).

         2.     If and as you do so, your vision of Sin’s momentum, its mass x velocity, gets fuzzier. You cannot measure both at the same time.

         3.     If your vision of Sin’s momentum gets fuzzier, you are in danger. Sin’s direction may not be at all times clear, but it has one constant: away from God. If you are deep in the minutiæ of its position, you are vulnerable to its momentum which may carry you surprisingly far from God in a surprisingly short time.

    Now let’s see what happens if instead you try to narrow down your measurement of Sin’s momentum.

Possibilities:

         1.     you get too interested in, & therefore too close to, its mass/velocity and you simply get sucked into its black hole.

         2.     even if not, your vision of its position gets fuzzier, and specific actions are harder and harder to characterise as Sin. You cannot measure both at the same time.

         3.     This is particularly true of your vision of their (the actions’) consequences. These are not what makes Sin Sin, but they are as it were indications of its (and your) future position.

    This makes a certain amount of sense, so far. Now let’s try it with something other than Sin. How about the Trinity? One’s first reaction would be to say that there are simply not enough data for measurement. However, that hasn’t stopped generations of theologians from trying. It’s now an unfashionable topic for investigation, but that shouldn’t deter us.

    Let us see what happens when we try to narrow down our measurement of the Trinity’s position.
Possibilities:

         1.     Externally, its position is in Heaven. But the more we try to narrow down the position of Heaven, the fuzzier our measurement of gets of its momentum, i.e. its impact on our soul. You end up counting angels on pinheads instead of responding to Glory.

         2.     Internally, the Three Persons relate to one another. But the more we try to narrow down our measurement of that relation as position – to measure the exact role of each Person, for instance – the fuzzier gets our measurement of its momentum. We will not, as one Church Father did, get tears in our eyes merely thinking of the Trinity.

    On the other hand, we might try to narrow down our measurement of the Trinity’s momentum.

Possibilities:

         1.     Paralysis: physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. The mass x velocity of the Trinity are so immense, so awe-inspiring – and the immensity and the awe it inspires are not collateral elements to be eliminated by the observer, but part of the Trinity’s very essence – that as we get closer to trying to measure it, we are overwhelmed entirely.

         2.     Our measurement of its position, whether external or internal, gets fuzzier. Internally, we may lose sight altogether of the difference between the Three Persons and confuse them or, worse, conflate them. We may lose interest in, and respect for, any sort of systematic theology. Externally, we may end up thinking that Heaven (and/or, by extension, Hell) is everywhere, or nowhere. “Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it,” said Mephistopheles. (Who, of course, lies.)

    What all this seems to show me is that yes, it’s an analogy in this context, and can never be precise, even with the limited precision of the UP in mathematics and quantum physics. But as an analogy it can be very valuable. Which in turn raises the question of the value of analogy in any intellectual endeavour. Paracelsian medicine upheld the ancient theory that nature was composed of meaningful and intentional signatures, which man must learn to read and interpret. (Walnuts were good for the brain.) Subsequent science has demoted analogy in favour of cause and effect. But in the intellectual endeavour that is theology – not just professional theology but the theology that is the necessary intellectual part of every believer’s faith – the signature concept may well still hold: an analogy may lead us to a valuable insight, in which case the analogy forms one term of a relationship. And there is every likelihood of that relationship’s being intentional.

THE JOYS OF TRANSLATION

My priestly daughter suggested I translate into English the admirable little French book on the Mass about which I wrote here in October 2014, Missa Est by Daniel-Rops with stunning photographs by Laure Albin-Guillot. Little did I think what joy the work would give me. One may read a book, which is already an improvement to skimming it; but when you translate it you read it a far more profound way: you have not only to find the words' equivalents but their meaning, which includes their resonance and their overtones. It is this meaning that must be recreated in the new language.
   (I have since discovered that there exists a 1950s American translation put out under the aegis of the very media-oriented Bishop Fulton Sheen, with photographs by the great Canadian Yousuf Karsh; but I don't want to see it before finishing my own, as you can perhaps imagine.)
   Apart from a whole new appreciation of Daniel-Rops's writing, both in the historical explanations and in the fervent meditations on each part of the ceremony, I've been struck by the intricacy, the structure, the profundity of significance and the potential for spirituality of the 1570 Tridentine Roman Mass. We non-Roman Catholics often grew up with an apprehension of things Papist on the one hand; and on the other, our Roman brethren have now, since the Second Vatican Council, so altered the liturgy that it often bears only the faintest, reminiscent resemblance to its magnificent forebear.

   The intricacy, first: as Daniel-Rops explains in his Preface, not one of its 30 parts can be considered, as the Tridentine Catechism puts it, 'as useless or superfluous'. 'The smallest versicle, the sentence it takes only seconds to pronounce, are an integral part of a whole where are associated and proclaimed the gift of God, the oblation of Christ and the Grace we receive. It is like a spiritual symphony, where all the themes come back, complete one another, and unite in a single intention.'
   The structure, second: we enter with anticipated joy; find our emphatically-imperfect inner mess a block, so confess; are absolved; hear the Church's teaching in readings and homily; include the world in our preparatory prayers; offer the fruits of the earth that will be transformed; assist, in wonder and prayer, at the Consecration; communicate; are brought back to the world in the Postcommunion; are blessed, and go back to our lives. It is as structured as a great play. 
   Profundity of significance. There is not a detail -- as I once explained to student to whom all this was new and fascinating -- that does not have at least six centuries of meaning attached to it; that does not come from years, decades or centuries of intelligence feeding devotion. Take the Confiteor, the General Confession: the priest who leads it, and who is sometimes followed in this by members of the congregation, strikes his breast three times, an ancient sign of humility. These three strikes are knocks: Christ's knocking at the door of our closed and stubborn heart. If we open to them in the Confession, we may be freed from our burden by the Absolution. 
   Finally, the potential for spirituality. If we participate entirely, with our whole being, in such a Mass, we will emerge as from a great tragedy: scoured and cleansed, washed and slightly trembling, but with a renewal of joy, hope and courage for the days to come. 

But where to find such a Mass, today? The international and universal intelligibility of Latin has gone, and visitors can barely follow what is going on. The Mass as I experience it in my cluster of French villages is a travesty; the gestures are hurried if not suppressed, half the words are missing, the atmosphere is that of an amicable chat among friends; the texts are half improvised, the homilies bellowed into an unnecessary microphone --- and yet the villagers are happy. The flow of the liturgy is brutally checked by the exchange of the Peace, as if King Lear were interrupted in the middle of Act IV by a loquacious bumpkin engaging the audience; yet the elderly peasants smile and say 'La paix du Christ' to their neighbours. It is all very Evangelical and sort of Baptist in atmosphere. It is, apparently, what the Council Fathers in the Sixties wanted, and one suspects it suits our present Pope perfectly. 

Yet those who want something else, who need, who crave a true, silent, adoring worship; who need time and stillness for intense prayer but time and stillness not alone but in community; they are short-changed. Those who yearn for worship of the Highest in reverence, in beauty, in quiet, in a movement of the spirit they can join in, in a 'spiritual symphony', are neglected and, if they are not close to some major city where there is an eccentric Church more or less frowned upon by the authorities, have nowhere to go.

   I do not know the answer to this. I simply hope that those of us who have the need for such a Mass (or Eucharist), replete with the history of our faith and of our Church, filled with the wealth of symbolism it carries, will have the courage to make our needs felt and not to let ourselves be treated as antisocial, egocentric and reactionary aesthetes. 
   As for us Anglicans, who have long had good reason to feel dubious (to say the least) about the Council of Trent, perhaps we should look again at this Mass, which our otherwise admirable ancestors dismissed as diabolical flummery: if we look again, with a devout eye and an open mind, we shall find such a wealth of nourishment for the soul as will last us days, weeks, months, and even years.    

A COMFORTING THOUGHT

I couldn't resist sharing this.

"My spiritual director likes to say there's good news and there's better news.  The good news is there is a Messiah. The better news is it's not you. So, it's not all up to you."

Fr Martin, SJ

Thanks to St Matthias, Somerset N.J.

NEVER ALONE

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 18^th 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.