The London Charterhouse PDF Download

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. LIFE IN THE CLOISTER?THE LAV BROTHERS' LIFE?OBJECTIONS TO THE CARTHUSIAN RULE. Some details of the daily life of the inmates of the London Charterhouse may be gathered from a general knowledge of the Rule which is observed in all the monasteries of the Carthusian Order. The sons of St. Bruno are, and have always been, entirely devoted to what is called the contemplative life, as distinguished from that known as mixed or active, employing all their time in prayer, in study, and in manual labour, and never undertaking?except in obedience to the Apostolic See, or in some extraordinary emergency?any kind of exterior mission. It must not, however, be supposed that a Carthusian's contemplation implies a lazy, useless, objectless squandering away of the precious moments our Creator has given us, in order that we may employ them to His honour and glory. The Divine Office takes up a considerable part of a Carthusian's time, portioning out the various THE GREAT WATCH. 2/ hours of the day. As?if such a comparison may be made?the times for work or pleasure come in between, and are in a certain manner determined by the different meal-times, for persons living in the world; so in the monastery, holy Mass, private prayer, spiritual reading, study, and manual labour fill up the intervening moments between the various divisions of the Office. Many people are thinking of retiring to rest when the Carthusian monks begin their day's work, and in the Middle Ages, when late hours were unknown, it was the dead of night; for between ten and eleven o'clock in the evening the Sacristan rings the first bell for Matins. The religious called excitator, because it is his business to awaken his brethren, has already performed his duty, and every monk, on hearing the great ...