Seclusion That Does Not Feel Confining

Life is a few minutes spent together waiting for the great final meeting in the homeland where there is only one minute... but an eternal minute. It will be hard, won’t it? And yet it is true truth and real life. And we could - by practicing little by little - begin to live it here below. You especially, in your long hours of solitude and silence where you are so like a Carthusian in his cell. It is very difficult because it is very simple, and we are very complicated. So the way to get there is to simplify ...

My idea, my big idea, my idea that I would like to be unique is that everything is foreseen, prepared, ordered, or allowed, and realized every second by the almighty will of someone who loves us. A simple soul is therefore one who, at the bottom of everything that happens, knows how to discover, adore, love this will. A simple life is a life that takes place in the union of faith in this love.

Notice, I take care to say: union of faith. This is what confuses. We want to see, we like to see, we need to see. Now faith believes and does not see. It believes what another sees. When it has done this during the course of its days on earth, then it will in turn become vision. But in the meantime it must refer to the One who sees and who came to tell us: This is the truth, this is what is up there; this is what awaits you and will be given to you if you trust my word.

Be confident. Arrange your whole life around this trust and you will simplify it ... and you will begin, through the seasons that pass, the joys or the sorrows that succeed, to live a little the minute that no longer passes.

Dom Augustin Guillerand, Silence cartusien, 2001.