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A Meditation for Prime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

The Fifth Prior of the Grande Chartreuse
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Extract

Truth must be placed in the centre of your life as something beautiful.

Yet you must not sit in judgment on anyone who hates her, but have compassion on such a one.

Look at yourself too, why—since you desire to come to her—do you refuse to receive her when she reproves you for your vices? For see how many things Truth reveals.…

Without beauty or comeliness, and nailed to a cross, Truth must be adored.

The nobler and more powerful a created being is, so much the more freely must he subject himself to Truth. Indeed it is because he is subject to her that a man is powerful and noble.

The unstable things of time vex and weary you: why then do you not flee from them to other know that beyond is to Truth?

Yet you must bitter and contrary things, Truth is to us most bitter and contrary, because separate adversi- ties fight against one or more worldly pleasures; but Truth attacks them all at one and the same time…

You cannot hate anyone without committing sin. For the work of holy men is to desire the welfare of sinners.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , August 1946 , pp. 55 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © 1964 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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Footnotes

1

GUY I (Guigo), known as the Venerable, was the fourth Prior after St Bruno. he When he took the habit only two houses existed—the Grande Chartreuse and Squillace. When he died in 1137 there were fifteen. Among his friends counted St Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter the Venerable of Cluny, His practical works of repair after the avalanche of 1132, and building (bringing water to the new site in wooden conduits from the fountain of St Bruno) were many. His spiritual building is shown by the growth of the Order; the Consuetudines which he wrote down to establish uniformity of custom in the Houses, his Life of St Hugh of Grenoble written by order of Pope Innocent II in 1134, and in the ‘Meditations of which a French Dominican has said, ‘Leur mérite les a fait souvent réimprimer’. The translation here printed is made by M. R. Willy.