Church of the Charterhouse of Serra San Bruno
Sunday, 9 October 2011
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate,
Dear Carthusian Brothers, Brothers and Sisters,
I thank the Lord who has brought me to this place of
faith and prayer, the Charterhouse of Serra San Bruno. In renewing my
grateful greeting to Archbishop Vincenzo Bertolone of
Catanzaro-Squillace, I address this Carthusian Community, each one of
its members, with deep affection, starting with the Prior, Fr Jacques
Dupont, whom I warmly thank for his words, while I ask him to
communicate my grateful thoughts and my blessing to the Minister General
and to the Nuns of the Order.
I am first of all eager to stress that this Visit of
mine comes in continuity with certain signs of strong communion between
the Apostolic See and the Carthusian Order, which became apparent in the
past century. In 1924, Pope Pius
XI issued an Apostolic Constitution with which he approved the Statutes
of the Order, revised in the light of the Code of Canon Law. In May
1984, Blessed John Paul
II addressed a special Letter to the Minister General, on the occasion
of the ninth centenary of the foundation by St Bruno of the first
community at the Chartreuse [Charterhouse] near Grenoble. On 5 October
that same year my beloved Predecessor came here and the memory of him
walking by these walls is still vivid.
Today I come to you in the wake of these events, past, but ever timely, and I would like our meeting to highlight the deep bond that exists between Peter and Bruno, between pastoral service to the Church’s unity and the contemplative vocation in the Church. Ecclesial communion, in fact, demands an inner force, that force which Father Prior has just recalled, citing the expression “captus ab Uno”, ascribed to St Bruno: “grasped by the One”, by God, “Unus potens per omnia”,
as we sang in the Vespers hymn. From the contemplative community the
ministry of pastors draws a spiritual sap that comes from God.
“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,
n. 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 St 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”, n. 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, [the Creator of all], 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 St 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”, n. 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 Christi’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.
Amen.
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