The meaning of "being a Carthusian"

Among the religious families, there are those like the Benedictines and Cistercians, who live more in community. Others live in greater solitude. Camaldulites and Carthusians belong to the latter. The monks and the nuns of the Carthusian Order, while living separately in their own monasteries, share the same rule and follow a unique model in the person of their founding Father, Saint Bruno.

The Carthusian does not live alone as the Carthusian monastery is a community. Nevertheless, he will pass the greater part of his life in his cell where he prays, works, takes his meals, and sleeps. During the course of the week, he only leaves three times a days for offices and communal mass: in the middle of the night, the Night Office, the morning Eucharist and Vespers towards the night.

The Carthusian can be a cloistered monk or a brother, two different ways of living the same vocation of solitude.

This solitude is not lived for its own sake, but as a privileged means of attaining intimacy with God.

No one can follow this path if not called by God. The discernment of this call (vocation) asks that we make a retreat of two weeks at the monastery. Other than this, Carthusians never receive retreatants.

Almost all our homes were built along the same basic principles: a grouping of hermitages (or "cells") linked to one another by a cloister which ends at the communal grounds: church, refectory, and the Chapter, separated by the entrance door by the workshops and the lodging of the monk in charge of the day to day running of the house. There are the "main" homes (like La Grande Chartreuse, with over 30 cells) and the "lesser" homes (like Portes, in the French region of Ain, which retains many primitive aspects of a charterhouse)

At la Grande Chartreuse the Museum of la Correrie allows one to have an idea of the Carthusian life.