Tomorrow, I will be taking Easyjet to Geneva and then travelling to the French Alps via Annecy with my sisters for the wedding of my niece, Mary and her fiancé, Robbie. The photo shows Église St Martin at Les Allues where the wedding will take place.
Yet another Chapel! This is the Family Chapel. The community meet here for prayers before the weekly walk.
And here is the magnificent and atmospheric library.
A closer shot of the far end shows Our Blessed Lady (much loved by the Carthusians) and the crucifix overlooking the place of study.
This is the view of the Guest House from halfway down the stairs. The Guest House is actually older than the main part of the Monastery. It is very grand but not much used.
This is the Bishop's room - actually set out as a throne room. This room has not been used much in recent years.
When I first saw the workshop in my cell, I had the frivolous thought that if you were driven mad by the solitude, you would not be denied the equipment to express your feelings -
The next photo is something of a triumph. Not only did I get the axe-swing exactly synchronised with the camera's self-timer, I also actually hit the wood squarely. That did not by any means always happen. (The "incredible hulk" colour cast somehow got put in by a mistake when reducing the resolution in PaintShop Pro.)
The garden was a little neglected. A previous visitor had cut the grass down quite a bit with a scythe and left a pile of hay. I cleared some foliage from the doorway and other places where it was overgrown. The novice master suggested that I should burn the debris. He said that it was one of the joys of living there that you could start bonfires when you felt the need. Growing up in Croydon is not like being brought up on a farm so my experience of fire-starting was limited to getting bits of furniture to catch light on Guy Fawkes Night, and experimenting with pilfered bits of sodium and potassium from the chemistry labs (our favourite as boys was the half-inch square chunk in the coke can - you have about 10 seconds to get out of the way.)
The Great Cloister is about two-thirds of a mile all round. In recent years, the brothers have taken to delivering messages on bicycles.
With all this activity, and the healthy diet, they do keep the good Lord waiting quite a while before their mortal remains are laid to rest in the simple cemetery which is in the centre of the Great Cloister.
The other day I received the copies of Evangelium that I had ordered. This is a new catechetical resource from the CTS (Catholic Truth Society). I put up a post about this in mid-July. Evangelium was written by Fr Marcus Holden and Fr Andrew Pinsent, two recently ordained priests from the English College in Rome. We are going to use it in my parish for the RCIA course. 
Many people are under the impression that the private Mass was abolished by Vatican II. You may well be told by liturgists that saying Mass without "the people" present makes no sense in the modern Church - or even that it is forbidden. Next time anyone tries to tell you this, refer them to the letter Optimam partem of Pope Paul VI in 1971 to Fr Andrew Poisson, the Minister General of the Carthusians. The text (in Latin) can be found in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis 1971, volume 63 pages 447-450. Here is my translation of the relevant section of the letter:Monks who are bound by the obligation of choir in the Carthusian Order, almost from its beginning, have been priests, or religious who are preparing themselves to receive sacred orders. There are those today who are of the opinion that this is not fitting that cenobites or hermits, who are never going to exercise the sacred ministry, should be raised to the priesthood. As we have already said elsewhere (Cfr. AAS 58 (1966) p.1181) this opinion certainly lacks a firm foundation. For many Saints and very many religious have combined the profession of the monastic or indeed the eremitcal life with the priesthood because they have had a sound perspective of the fitting relationship between both consecrations, that proper to the priest, and that proper to the monk. Indeed, solitude, the absolute loss of the goods of this world, the abnegation of one's own will: things that are undertaken by those who enclose themselves within the bounds of the monastery, most singularly prepare the soul of the priest to be devoutly and ardently offered up for the eucharistic sacrifice which is "the source and summit of the whole Christian life". Furthermore, when that full self-giving, to which the religious devotes himself, is added to the priesthood, he is configured in a special way to Christ who is at the same time priest and victim.The novice-master put me onto this document last year when he was talking to me about the course in sacramental theology. It is listed as one of the important fontes in the Carthusian statutes - one of very few magisterial documents to refer specifically to the Carthusians. By affirming the value of the private Mass, it is also important for the secular priest who should never feel awkward about celebrating Mass quietly on a day when he is not bound to celebrate a publicly scheduled Mass.
When the second Vatican Council treated in a special document about priests and their duties, it rightly laid down that those duties include the care of the people of God. However, this care is carried out by yourselves in celebrating the eucharistic sacrifice as you are accustomed to do every day. This celebration most often takes place in your eremitcal oratories, that is to say, in a devout recess, where the soul of the monk, fixed on the things of above, drinks in more richly the Spirit of love and light. Therefore the vocation of the Carthusian, when it is faithfully adhered to, brings it about that the universal intention, which is present in the eucharistic sacrifice, becomes the intention of each monk who is carrying out the sacred rites. The Vatican Council itself declared this fullness of eucharistic charity in these significant words: "In the mystery of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, in which priests fulfil their office most especially, the work of our redemption is continually carried out, and therefore its daily offering is warmly commended. Even if the presence of the faithful is not possible, this offering is an act of Christ and the Church." (Presbyterorum Ordinis 13)
The meal is taken at a shelf in the window recess, called the Refectorium. There is a personal tablecloth, a metal knife and a wooden fork and spoon to eat it with.
To drink, there is a choice of fruit juice or Parkminster's home-made apple wine. It sometimes gets called cider but apple wine is probably a safer name because it is 10% abv. It is quite dry and decepively strong. I had this for the first two days then asked for orange juice because the wine made it difficult to stay awake during Vespers.
The diet is probably as healthy as it is possible to be - the monks had this worked out long before modern nutritionists. I found that there was plenty to eat although to be fair, I did not do as much manual work as most of the monks and therefore did not need to eat as much. They look pretty fit physically and some quite elderly men seemed to thrive on heavy labour in the "obediences" which is the name given to the areas where the vegetables and fruit are grown, the wood is chopped and other manual tasks are undertaken. Traditionally this area is for the Brothers to work in but the Choir Monks also work there if it is conisidered suitable.
The bread hatch lights up automatically when you open the door. The picture of St Thérèse of Lisieux shows that even very simple things can be an occasion of prayer.
I don't usually post the Pope's messages because they are available in so many other places on the Internet. But I have just read yesterday's Angelus message, courtesy of Zenit and it is such a fine example of simple pastoral preaching that I couldn't resist putting it here. I think I will print off some copies for my parishioners.Dear Brothers and Sisters:
Today, Aug. 27, we remember St. Monica, and tomorrow we will remember her son, St. Augustine: Their testimonies can be of great consolation and help for many families also of our time.
Monica, born in Tagaste, in present-day Algeria (in Souk-Arhas), of a Christian family, lived in an exemplary way her mission of wife and mother, helping her husband Patricius to discover, little by little, the beauty of faith in Christ and the strength of evangelical love, capable of overcoming evil with good.
After his death, which occurred prematurely, Monica dedicated herself with courage to the care of her three children, two boys and a girl, among them St. Augustine, who in the beginning made her suffer with his rather rebellious temperament.
As Augustine himself would say later, his mother gave him birth twice; the second time required a long spiritual labor, made up of prayer and tears, but crowned in the end by the joy of seeing him not only embrace the faith and receive baptism, but also dedicate himself entirely to the service of Christ.
How many difficulties there are also today in family relationships and how many mothers are anguished because their children choose mistaken ways!
Monica, a wise and solid woman in the faith, invites them not to be discouraged, but to persevere in their mission of wives and mothers, maintaining firm their confidence in God and clinging with perseverance to prayer.
As to Augustine, his whole life was an impassioned search for truth. In the end, not without a long interior storm, he discovered in Christ the ultimate and full meaning of his life and of the whole of human history. In adolescence, attracted by earthly beauty, he "fell upon" it -- as he says honestly (Confessions 10, 27-38) -- selfishly and possessively with behavior that caused some sorrow in his pious mother.
But through a toilsome journey, thanks also to her prayers, Augustine opened himself ever more to the fullness of truth and love, to the point of conversion, which occurred in Milan, under the guidance of the bishop, St. Ambrose.
Thus he remains as model of the way to God, supreme truth and good. "Late have I loved you," he wrote in his famous book of the Confessions, "O beauty so ancient and so new .... For behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside .... You were with me and I was not with you ... You called and cried to me and broke open my deafness: And you sent forth your beams and shone upon me and chased away my blindness" (ibid.).
May St. Augustine obtain for us also the gift of a sincere and profound encounter with Christ, an encounter above all also for all those young people who, thirsty for happiness, seek it in mistaken ways and get lost in dead ends.
St. Monica and St. Augustine invite us to turn with confidence to Mary, seat of wisdom. To her we entrust Christian parents so that, like Monica, they will support their children on their way with their example and prayer.
To the virgin mother of God, we commend young people so that, as Augustine, they will always tend to the fullness of truth and love, which is Christ: He alone can satisfy the profound needs of the human heart.
Pope Benedict XVI - Angelus message given at Castel Gandolfo on 27 August 2006
[Translation by ZENIT]
Many adults in Britain believe the incidence of pregnancy termination in their country should be reduced, according to a poll by Communicate Research for Choose Life. 53 per cent of respondents believe the number of abortions in the country is too high.This is all fine and dandy - but my question is:
I love the place, but I have not been to Lourdes for years. I hate the drunkenness, I hate the fornication, I hate the abuse of the liturgy, I hate the lack of real spiritual care for the young helpers. Last year all my antipathy was confirmed with a picture of one of our English bishops performing a drag routine, dressed as a nurse, even so I hadn't realised things had got to this state...The most important point here is probably the "lack of real spiritual care". We need to stop assuming that when taking young people away on a pilgrimage or youth event, anything will do, simply because we have "got them there". It will be no use appealing to this on judgement day if our lack of spiritual care has left them in a spiritually worse state than they were in before the "Pilgrimage".
There were 18 Carthusians martyred during the reign of King Henry VIII. In this picture you can see one monk hanging while another forgives the man who is about to execute him.
The penalty suffered by the Carthusians was that of being hanged, drawn and quartered. In this picture an axeman is quartering one who has just been hanged.
Ten of the Carthusian martyrs were deliberately allowed to die of neglect and starvation in Newgate prison where they were tied to posts with their hands behind their backs. There were actually eleven in the prison. Brother William Horn who was allowed to survive was hanged, drawn and quartered on 4 August 1540.
Below are some more pictures from the back wall of the martyrdom of these gentle but incredibly tough and saintly men who refused to take the oath of supremacy declaring Henry to be the head of the Church in England.
Saint John Houghton pray for us
The chapel is filled with display cases containing hundreds of relics.
The most important is under the altar, the body of St Boniface (notice the skeleton underneath the reclining statue.)
I rolled up the lace trim of the altar cloth to get a good photograph. But the lace itself is worth looking at in its own right. It is a very delicate lace - perhaps someone who is an expert can comment on it.
One one wall is an Agnus Dei. This is a wax tablet with the Lamb of God impressed on the front. On the reverse is an inscription recording the papal blessing. These devotional objects were very popular with Catholics in England at the time of the Reformation. Possession of an Agnus Dei was used as evidence that the holder was an obstinate papist.
One of the more gruesome displays is the reliquary of St Victoriana:
On the back wall of the chapel is a prized second class relic: the stole of St Hugh of Lincoln.
St Hugh was a Frenchman, born at Avalon castle in Burgundy. He became a Carthusian at the Grande Chartreuse in 1160 and was the prior of the first English Carthusian monastery, founded at Witham by King Henry II in 1175 as a penance for the murder of St Thomas Becket. It is sad to reflect that by the time of the dissolution of the monasteries under King Henry VIII, there were twelve Carthusian houses in England. St Thomas More had at one time considered joining them.
The next photo shows the door to the cell I was given. Each cell has a text on the door: mine was "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also". To the right of the door is the hatch where the brothers leave food and any other items such as toiletries, light bulbs etc. that have been requested.
Inside is a spacious ambulacrum with windows onto the enclosed garden. There is thus room for the monk to take exercise if the weather prevents him from walking in the garden. The stairs go up to the main living quarters and down to the work area and garden. To the left of the cell door, you can see the inside door of the hatch.
Here is a view of the ambulacrum from the stairs:
Upstairs, the first room in the main part of the cell is called the Ave Maria.
The custom is to kneel down and say a Hail Mary every time you enter this room. The novice master noticed that I knelt on one knee and he gently told me off - "Ah you're like the old Irish fellow - you'd be holding your cap on the other knee and be out the door as soon as the priest said Ite Missa Est." (Fr Cyril is Irish himself.) The Ave Maria is used for light work.
The wood burning stove provides hot water as well as heating. It wasn't really necessary at this time of year but I couldn't resist trying it out. If the fire is packed properly, it roars up very quickly and efficiently. One problem is that the paper used to start the fire was from old copies of the Thompson Directory. It was a bit laborious tearing out pages and screwing them up but I realised that newspapers would be a potential source of distraction.
The Carthusian leaves his cell three times a day - for the Night Office, Mass, and Vespers. If it is necessary to leave the cell for something else: to go to the library or to a class, for example, the recommendation is to try to arrange that activity after Mass or before Vespers so that there is no need to leave the cell on an additional occasion.
