Summarium
Our Lord has promised: Mary has chosen the best part, and it shall never be taken away from her...
La Petite Chartreuse monastery is dedicated to the ancient form of the wholly contemplative monastic life, affording the safety of the common life necessary for women religious, while maintaining the contemplative union with God made possible in solitary prayer. This marvelous synthesis of coenobitical life with eremitical life is largely forgotten in modernity, yet it was the first form of monastic life founded in the west, for example, at Liguge, France by St. Martin de Tours in the 4th century. In the 6th century, the early foundations of the Order of St. Benedict mitigated the Psalter to once a week incorporating Gregorian chants, but still allowed for the solitary prayer of his monks and nuns. The Order of Carthusians at La Grande Chartreuse in the early 12th century re-established the importance of the eremitical element of monastic life, without losing any of the richness of its liturgical chant or life in common. The community at La Petite Chartreuse are moniales eremitici (female monastic hermits or “hermit nuns”) consecrated to and in imitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces. As “little mediatrixes” the hidden contemplative prayer of the nuns acts invisibly as a channel of grace to the whole world. The Divine Office according to the Rite of St. Benedict, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, private monastic vows, nocturnal Holy Hours of reparation, and union with God in solitary prayer are fundamental elements. Under the patrons of the diocese and of monastic life, St. Martin de Tours, and St. Louis, King of France, the nuns follow a strict observance of silence, solitude, separation from the world (enclosure), sacred study, manual labor, austerity of life, and fraternal charity. Scroll Down for details and hororium...
Totum Vita Contemplativa
The Wholly Contemplative Life
...is without any other purpose than direct and constant worship of God and contemplation of Him. The exclusion of exterior works of apostolate fosters and favors the mystical activity of the interior life. The Tradition of the Church recommends certain elements for the wholly contemplative life.
Silence
Silence reveals Who God IS. One can best hear God speak in silence. All the more must the nuns live their whole lives dedicated to hearing God in the silence of the cloister, the choir, the refectory, the corridors, in their cells, in the silence of nature, and in silence before the Utter Silence of the Divine Victim residing in the tabernacle, in order to cultivate the silence and recollection of the soul.
Solitude
Enclosure
… Jesus commands: “go into your inner chamber, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.” The cell of a nun is the place of solitary prayer. Paradoxically, solitary prayer is full communion. In solitude and stillness, the longing for heaven given to contemplative souls is allowed to breathe and be nurtured.
Enclosure
Sacred Study
Enclosure
Separation from the world fosters the purity of the feminine soul, and protects the delicate contemplative vocation. Inside the enclosure, or cloister, the nuns are truly free to detach from the things of this earth in the poverty and austerity of life which the world cannot understand. In the cloister the proper eschatological perspective focuses the the whole being of the nun on Heaven, on God and the things of God, for this world is passing away.
Sacred Study
Sacred Study
Sacred Study
The intellectual life is foundational for the contemplative life. The repetitive reading of, and meditation upon, the whole of Sacred Scripture, especially in the sacred languages, imparts to the mind and heart the intricate and ordered dogmas of faith in Jesus Christ. Inasmuch as it is steeped in the perennial Magisterium and the Fathers, study of theology under all its categories means a lifetime of daily increase in the life of virtue, of daily increase of faith, hope, and charity, thereby ensuring perseverance in life of vows.
Manual Labor
Sacred Study
Sacred Study
The penance of daily manual labor is efficacious for continual prayer and silence. It binds the nuns to God and community. Work is performed in loving charity toward the sisters, and avoiding a worldly sense of urgency, in imitation of the early monastics. Physical activity focuses the mind and gives it rest and recollection by sublimating unruly thoughts and desires.
Traditional Monastic Liturgy
Traditional Monastic Liturgy
Traditional Monastic Liturgy
The Church mediates the deposit of faith through the sights, sounds, and language of her ancient liturgy. The degree to which the faith of the nuns is protected by The Traditional Mass and Monastic Office is the degree of protection afforded to the faith of the entire world.
The Ascetical Life
Traditional Monastic Liturgy
Traditional Monastic Liturgy
Ancient monasticism featured austere conditions for sleeping, nutrition, and avoidance of the superfluous. Hard beds, sparse food, and avoidance of comfort allow the spiritual faculties to grow in governance over the merely instinctive natural passions. Through this ordered way of life the ascetic learns humility by living solely on the grace of God, and not by her own power.
Redemptive Fraternal Charity
Traditional Monastic Liturgy
Redemptive Fraternal Charity
The vocation to the monastic life requires the courage to face oneself inwardly with God, and also to be vulnerable in allowing community to expose and heal obstacles to union with God which are part of human frailty. When the nuns lovingly assist one another in this process, true and deep fraternal relationships are possible, nourished as they are by the monastic prayer.