Saint Bruno.
Artist: Girolamo Marchesi.
Date: Circa 1525.
Current location: Walters Art Museum, Baltimore,
Maryland, United States of America.
Credit line: Acquired by Henry Walters
with the Massarenti Collection, 1902.
Source: Walters Art Museum
(Wikimedia Commons)
The following Text is from “The Liturgical Year”,
by Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 14.
Time After Pentecost.
Book V.
Among the divers Religious Families, none is held in higher esteem by The Church than The Carthusian Order; the prescriptions of the “corpus juris” determine that a person may pass from any other Order into The Carthusian Order, without deterioration. And, yet, it is of all the least given to Active Works.
Is not this a new, and not the least convincing, proof that outward zeal, how praiseworthy soever, is not the only, or the principal, thing in God’s sight ?
The Church, in her fidelity, values all things according to the preferences of her Divine Spouse. Now, Our Lord esteems His Elect, not so much by the activity of their works, as by the hidden perfection of their lives; that perfection which is measured by the intensity of The Divine Life, and of which it is said: “Be you therefore perfect, as also your Heavenly Father is perfect”.
Again, it is said of this Divine Life: “You are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God”. The Church, then, considering the solitude and silence of The Carthusian, his abstinence even unto death, his freedom to attend to God through complete disengagement from the senses and from the World — sees therein the guarantee of a perfection which may indeed be met with elsewhere, but here appears to be far more secure.
Hence, though the field of labour is ever widening, though the necessity of warfare and struggle grows ever more urgent, she does not hesitate to shield with the protection of her laws, and to encourage with the greatest favours, all who are called by Grace to The Life of The Desert.
The reason is not far to seek. In an age, when every effort to arrest the World in its headlong downward career seems vain, has not man greater need than ever to fall back upon God ? The enemy is aware of it; and, therefore, the first law he imposes upon his votaries is, to forbid all access to the way of the counsels, and to stifle all life of Adoration, Expiation, and Prayer.
For he well knows that, though a Nation may appear to be on the verge of its doom, there is yet hope for it as long as the best of its sons are prostrate before The Majesty of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment