Celebration of Vespers
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Church of the Certosa di Serra San Bruno
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate,
Dear Brothers Carthusians,
brothers and sisters,
I thank the Lord that led me to this place of faith and prayer, the
Charterhouse of Serra San Bruno. I renew my grateful greeting to
Archbishop Vincenzo Bertolone, Archbishop of Catanzaro-Squillace,
and I speak with great affection to this Carthusian community, to
each of its members, and its Prior, Father Jacques Dupont, thank you
very much for your words, I ask him to extend my grateful thoughts
and blessing to the Minister General and the nuns of the Order.
I would like to underline that my first visit is in continuity with
some strong signs of communion between the Holy See and the
Carthusian Order, that happened over the last century. In 1924, Pope
Pius XI issued an Apostolic Constitution with which it approved the
Statutes of the Order, in the light of the revised 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
founding by Saint Bruno of the first community at the Chartreuse,
near Grenoble. On October 5 of that year, my beloved predecessor was
here, and the memory of its passage within these walls is still
alive. In the wake of these past events, but always present, I come
to you today, and I wish that this meeting would highlight the
profound bond that exists between Peter and Bruno, between pastoral
service to the unity of the Church and the contemplative vocation in
the Church . The ecclesial communion in fact need an inner strength,
that strength which Father Prior reminded us of with the expression
"captus ab Uno", referring to St. Bruno: "seized from the One," by
God, "Unus potens per omnia "as we have sung in the Hymn of Vespers.
The ministry of pastors from the community takes a contemplative
spiritual nourishment that comes from God.
"Fugitive relinquere et aeterna captare": leave the fleeting reality
and try to grasp the eternal. In this expression of the letter
addressed by your Founder to the provost of Reims, Rodolfo, lies the
core of your spirituality (cf. Letter to Rudolph, 13): the strong
desire to enter into a union of life with God, leaving everything
else that prevents this communion and allowing to grasp the immense
love of God in order to live only to love. Dear brethren, you have
found the hidden treasure, the pearl of great value (cf. Mt
13.44-46), you have answered the call of Jesus in a radical way: "If
thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what you possess and give it to
the poor, and thou shalt have a treasure in heaven: and come and
follow me "(Mt 19:21). Each monastery - male or female - is an oasis
where, through prayer and meditation, you dig incessantly deeper the
well to draw on the "living water" for our deepest thirst. But the
Certosa is a special oasis, where silence and solitude are guarded
with special care, the way of life begun by St. Bruno and remained
unchanged over the centuries. "I live in the desert with the
brothers," is the synthetic phrase written by your founder (Letter
to Rudolph, 4). The visit of the Successor of Peter in this historic
Charterhouse is intended to confirm not only you who live here, but
the whole Order in its mission, and significantly more timely than
ever in today's world.
Technical progress, especially in transport and communications, has
made human life more comfortable, but more agitated, at times
convulsive. The cities are almost always noisy: they rarely are in
silence, because there is always some background noise, even at
night in some areas. In recent decades, the development of the media
has propagated and amplified a phenomenon that was already looming
in the sixties: the virtuality that threatens to dominate the
reality. Increasingly, even without realizing it, people are
immersed in the virtual world, because of audiovisual messages that
accompany their life from morning to evening. Most young people who
are already born in this state, seem to fill with music and images
every empty moment, almost afraid to feel, in fact, this void. This
is a trend that has always existed, especially among young people in
urban and more developed areas, but today it has reached such a
level that we can talk about an anthropological mutation. Some
people are no longer able to stay long in silence and solitude.
I wanted to mention this socio-cultural condition, because it
highlights the specific charism of the Charterhouse, as a precious
gift for the Church and the world, a gift that contains a profound
message for our life and for humanity. I would summarize it this
way: withdrawing into silence and solitude, man, so to speak, is
"exposed" to the reality in its nakedness, is exposed to the seeming
"gap" I mentioned before, but in order to experience the Fullness,
the Presence of God, the Reality that is more real, and which is
beyond the senses. It 'a noticeable presence in every creature: the
air we breathe, the light we see and that is warm, the grass, the
stones ... God, Creator omnium, through everything, but he
encompasses all, as he is the foundation of everything. The Monk,
leaving everything, is "risking", as he exposes himself to the
loneliness and the silence so as not to live on anything, and in
this living of the essential, he also finds a profound communion
with his brothers and with every man.
Some might think that it is enough to come here to make this "leap".
But it is not so. This vocation, like any vocation, finds an answer
in a Path, which is the search of a lifetime. It is not enough to
retire to a place like this to learn to stand before God. As in
marriage, it is not enough to celebrate the Sacrament to actually
become one, we need to let the grace of God act and follow the daily
routine of married life together, thus becoming a monk takes time,
practice, patience, "in a persistent surveillance of God - as wrote
St. Bruno - waiting for the return of the Lord to open the door to
him immediately" (Letter to Rudolph, 4), and in this lies the
beauty of every vocation in the Church: to give time to God to make
his or her humanity take form, to grow according to the measure of
the maturity of Christ, in that particular state of life. In Christ
there is all the fullness of time, we need to make ours one of the
dimensions of its mystery. We could say that this is a journey of
transformation in which is implemented and manifested the mystery of
the resurrection of Christ in us, a mystery to which we drew tonight
the Word of God in the biblical reading from the Letter to the
Romans: the Holy Spirit , who raised Jesus from the dead, and that
will give life to our mortal bodies (cf. Rom 8:11), is the one who
also operates our configuration to Christ according to the vocation
of each one, a path that winds from the font till death, passage to
the Father's house. Sometimes, in the eyes of the world, it seems
impossible to remain for life in a monastery, but in reality a
lifetime is just enough to get into this union with God, the
essential and profound reality that is Jesus Christ.
For this I have come here, dear brothers who form the Carthusian
Community of Serra San Bruno ! To tell you that the Church needs
you, and you have need of the Church. Your place is not marginal: no
vocation is marginal in the People of God: we are one body, in which
every member is important and has the same dignity, and is
inseparable from the whole. Even you, who live in voluntary
isolation, you are actually in the heart of the Church, and you make
the pure blood of contemplation and of the love of God run in its
veins.
Stat Crux dum orbis volvitur - states your motto. The Cross of
Christ is the still point, in the midst of changes and upheavals in
the world. Life in a Carthusian Monastery participates in the
stability of the Cross, which is that of God, and of His faithful
love. Remaining firmly united to Christ, as branches to the vine,
you too, Carthusian Brothers, you are associated with the mystery of
salvation, like the Virgin Mary, who "Stabat" at the Cross, united
to the Son in the same sacrifice of love. So, like Mary and together
with her, you are inserted deeply into the mystery of the Church,
the sacrament of union of man with God and each other. In this you
are also individually close to my ministry. So Blessed Mother of the
Church, watch over us and Holy Father Bruno always bless your
community from Heaven.
Amen.
(Christian Allègre allegre@sympatico.ca)
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