ELEGY TO SILENCE

(Father Sexton rings the bell… before Morning Prayer… Heading for Morning Prayer)

00:02:25:00

A strong smell of a life out of time runs through the monastery, odours diffuse the shimmering shape of Father Sexton, the youngest of the monks to follow the vows.

00:03:15:00

On normal days it begins at fifteen minutes past midnight, just as the monks wake up. When half the world rests and the other half moves to bed, the solitary Carthusians leave the cells together and perform Morning Prayer.

00:03:37:00

Fifteen minutes past midnight ... the prayer of silence will endure for two hours.

00:03:46:00

They are only together physically without exchanging a glance, let alone words.

(ambient)

Generic: Elegy to Silence.

00:04:03:00

At night the Carthusians are happier. The only light inside is that which cuts through the silhouettes. Come to God alone, immersed deep in silence. Like Christ, who spent 40 days in the desert praising solitude.

00:04:27:00

We never seek solitude and loneliness in order to try and flee the world. This is not normal and is not allowed. We seek solitude as an environment, a calm and a peace that helps us and easily allows us free time, so that there is time to be with God - the big advantage is that solitude is a means to an end allowing each of us our own personal relationship with God.

00:04:30:00 (v slowly)

And we leave, not because of guilt or loneliness, or because we were meant for loneliness – but simply to think about the end, there is a way for us to live with God more easily.

00:05:27:00

Father Anthony Eduardo Lopes was 20 years old when he entered the monastery in 1954 and filed away his civil name. He became Antony, the hermit. Adopting the name and the philosophy.

00:05:40:00

It took two years at university to think about it, and once I entered, I entered already decided. There are others who come here to decide, and we will try to advise them, and I think that knowing you want to enter requires a lot of thought.

00:05:50:00

After entering I had no doubts or difficulties, no trouble waking up at midnight or eating only once.

Cassette 3

00:06:00:00

It’s not difficult to get used to everything. And when we have difficulty with something that is a little more uncomfortable, we feel the need to go to the beach, or on vacation or a trip.

00:06:17:00

Have you ever been to the beach?

00:06:20:00

Until the age of 20 I swam a lot, I played a lot of sport like football, in fact I’m from Cadiz, I am from the sea. So yes, I rowed and swam up till the age of 20 but not since then…I have not seen the sea since then.

00:06:32:00 (slowly)

We feel the biggest sacrifice is being away from your family. We wont ever visit out relatives and they wont come to visit us here, and that affects your life, it is a sacrifice. Then there is the affect of letting go of football, or stopping going to the movies or watching TV, and so we advise that the first few months are difficult, but you realise that then it becomes easier.

00:07:00:00

In the silent monastery, only the attorney Antony, bridges with the hustle and bustle of the life of men. He used to be the prior and vicar. The current prior was one of the seven monks who founded the Charterhouse of Évora in 1960.

00:07:30:00

The Carthusian monks arrived in Portugal in 1587. There were seven of them. Seven others first founded the Charterhouse in 1084, in France. They remained in Portugal for 247 years, until 1834. The order succumbed to the echoes of the French Revolution and the splendour of other Lusitanian national orders.

The monastery, even though poor and self-sufficient, followed the course of all others. During state ownership, the monastery was turned into an agricultural college and fell into ruin. It was acquired in the middle of the last century by the Earl of Vilalva. The family of the Count, through the foundation Eugenio de Almeida, returned it to the order and rebuilt it in 1960.

00:08:28:00

Today the Charterhouse of Évora has 12 monks. Ten of them have satisfied their vows, while two of them are Aspirantes.

00:08:40:00

A dozen is enough, but the only problem here is that the Carthusian we have are all quite old.

00:08:52:00

The future is open for young people to follow instead, but for now, we are all in pretty good health and have no illnesses and so a couple can take over the monastery from us, but ten years from now hopefully there will be young people here to take our place.

00:09:10:00

George was a civil engineer for 27 years. Three months ago he came to the monastery. I had been here, but left to go to other worlds and other orders.

Returned.

00:09:22:00

-Why does a youth of 27 who had everything suddenly enter a monastery?

00:09:28:00

-The search for God, silence, prayer, seeking God in prayer, listening to the world, after all, the contemplative life encompasses all that.

00:09:44:00

-Something that the world of everyday life could not give?

00:09:48:00

-There is nothing that the world cannot give.

00:09:51:00

-And will you stay?

00:09:54:00

-The discovery is always a journey, it doesn’t exactly have an end. You cannot define it, it is a walk.

00:10:02:00

-At which stage of this journey are you?

00:10:07:00

-That is a difficult question to answer.

00:10:10:00

-But you feel prepared?

00:10:12:00

-Yes, yes, yes.

00:10:14:00

-What do you love most about this monastery here in Evora?

00:10:19:00

-The silence, the atmosphere of meditation and liturgy, it is very beautiful. Gregorian chant. All the elements that are part of the liturgy of the Cartesians.

00:10:31:00

-Does it affect your day to day life?

00:10:37:00

-For every choice there are sacrifices, life is made of sacrifices and choices. The important thing is personal fulfilment and it is with this perspective that I come here.

00:10:58:00

They live quietly, work in silence, pray in silence. Jorge is a layman. Of the 12, eight were priests, and four took a different path before arriving here. Just Jorge, among the laity, came earlier.

00:11:17:00

Andrew, the brother electrician, Jose Maria, the brother who takes care of the orange grove, and Antonio, the cook, have been here for many, many years. The Carthusians renounced meat. They eat only what life and their business demands. They have two meals a day. Here, time is tied to the rituals of the order with the clock bell.

00:12:04:00

Let's break the Carthusian order and alter the natural sequence of days, so that the monastery is open, full and full all the time. They lie down at eight thirty in the evening for three hours, and wake up when it’s already dark for the Morning Prayer. Before that first sleep brother Anthony distributes the second and last meal of the day to everyone: a very little fish with cooked vegetables.

00:12:38:00

Locked in their cells, only an emergency will release them.

00:12:44:00

The monastery is truly our cell. We officially go there 3 times a day.

00:12:54:00

The rest of the day, if we do not need anything we are in the cells, where we are occupied with work, study, and pray etc.

00:13:04:00

62 years ago Father Isidore was Francisco, a devotee of sport, but in 1943 he gave up all earthly pleasures to contemplative meditation and God.

00:13:18:00

Isn’t it a very big sacrifice?

It’s like marriage; to remain faithful spouses have to suffer and to endure. Before we agree we think of the consequences.

00:13:32:00

Nowadays the biggest problem facing the youth is the idea of forever. So they don’t want marriages or lifetime commitments.

00:13:49:00

Living in a prison cell for 20 hours every day for 62 years like father Isidoro, requires much more than the noble flame that keeps a marriage burning.

00:14:05:00

And in this cell, stripped of pleasure, there is just base cement and mass, that is not made for normal men.

00:14:14:00

Poverty is not lack of things, it is to think things can have no excess.

00:14:22:00

Do you not need anything else here in the room?

00:14:25:00

I have a bed and a mattress of straw. And here we sleep peacefully. We can eat, sleep and dress.

00:14:37:00

But still the food, you do not eat everything, right?

Virtually, the only thing we give up is meat.

00:14:40:00

So far, no Carthusian died of hunger.

00:14:54:00

Father Isidore suffered from a heavy stomach illness that failed to heal. His fragility freed him of fasting on Fridays. He is one of the 3 monks exempt from fasting.

00:15:12:00

The priests of the monastery are responsible for the training of the laity. Isidore, the priest vicar, the second in the hierarchy of the monastery after the Father Prior, has a computer in his cell, which he uses to study. But computer sharing stops at the priest.

00:15:31:00

New inventions are also used to help to serve God.

00:15:39:00

But does the computer have the internet on it?

No internet. Only the computer and the printer.

Does it communicate with the outside then?

No, no.

Is the computer enclosed as well?

00:15:53:00

Exactly. The internet makes us waste time and especially fills our thoughts with pictures that do not interest us…and with temptations too? Everyone has temptations in this world. Even Christ had temptations.

00:16:14:00

Father Isidore left to discover the beauty of flowers.

00:16:19:00

Would you not live without flowers?

I think not ... not unless God wanted it.

00:16:32:00

How can the flowers be so beautiful and not be God?

00:16:37:00

At Charterhouse, six days a week are always the same. Only the Sunday party interrupts the solitude, where lunch is eaten together in the cafeteria. Usually monks are left to harness their loneliness, but at times there are complaints about our absence from the community: so there is a meal on Sunday and a walk together on the first day of the week.

00:17:02:00 (spoken softly)

(I know that the children are happy with the walk and tour through 80 acres of property, it balances the six days locked in their cells.)

They are big boys, they are just doing what God wants. It is a prayer with faith, it is to sacrifice the food one eats. It is the day to day, always, always with God and nothing else.

00:17:28:00

Jose Moreira who wanted to be an active policeman, was a Carthusian for many years, but he changed his options. He married and had children. The physical presence of this man without habit, who is partially attached to the routine of the monastery, is more than the symbolism of a dream that was to be achieved.

00:18:54:00

And if people are sick, as I was, I lost a child and became sick, it is chronic, life, it can happen to anyone. A loss like this makes anyone sick, maybe even sick for the rest of their life. I felt bad and came here to recover my energy, mental and even psychological. All because they are helping me a lot. I help them, but do they not help me more? I think they help me much more.

00:18:15:00

The monks feel that the police protect them ... the police allow the monks to keep their days silent and alone.

00:18:28:00

Before the last meal of the day is one of the three times the monks pray together.

00:18:40:00

Quarter past five in the afternoon.

00:18:47:00

In the silence of his cell he prays at 6.45 in the morning when getting up, at 9 thirty, at noon, at 3 pm and at 7 in the evening.

00:19:02:00

Then they lie down, for their first sleep until Morning Prayer.

00:19:08:00

At 3 thirty in the morning they return to their cells for their second sleep.

00:19:15:00

Dantes said that it is bad to split sleep, but psychologists and doctors now say it is a wonderful thing.

00:19:30:00

They are two good sleeps then?

Exactly! Probably that's why we are focused for 80 years.

00:19:37:00

Perhaps - the good life ... life is very healthy, you understand?

00:19:48:00

At 52 Father Antonio's soul is accustomed to the austerity of the Carthusians, but his body is also, after being in the monastery for 6 months. There are ages at which a body of routines has even more difficulty in freeing itself from the natural pleasures of the soul.

00:20:11:00

To eat all day without daring to satisfy the greed, to always put aside the flesh, fasting on Fridays, just bread washed down with water? António Pinto Leite was a priest in many parishes. He left to find solitude.

00:20:31:00

And those who left, although I cannot see, cannot feel their physical presence, I think God does see them, and does feel for these people, as I once did. With his will, somehow they are ok. I had to do a long walk and experience a lot in my life to realise that a parish priest of pastoral life was not for me, I do not perform best. And so it was at my expense a bit, that I leaned.

And now, no doubt?

And now I have no doubt at all. I am delighted.

00:21:13:00

20 Hours in the cell, every day, forever. It is much more than any conviction.

00:21:19:00

At any time did you feel psychologically or physically trapped in prison?

00:21:26:00

In principle yes. Very much at first. Getting used to the cell is one of things that has a big effect. To be within a cell for 24 hours a day is something that affects you a lot at first, but then over time it becomes increasingly easier.

00:21:48:00

It affects you this is true. It caused me some tears as well, but that’s part of life. There are situations in life that we have to try to fight to overcome. And this is really the reward, the reward far outweighs the effort and the difficulties that we have.

Is it therefore a journey?

Yes, by no means clear. Even in the beginning when we left the world so to speak, it is quite difficult giving up what we have, right? Like the family…but either way we always keep in contact with our family, we can visit them once a year. We receive letters. It’s true, it affects me more than physical things, more than the commodities in the world, all the things that give us a good world, but compared with that we come here to find, which is basically God himself, there is no comparison is there?

00:22:58:00

To fulfil their vows, Antonio Jorge and the two aspirants to the monastery wear black when they exit the cell. Black is always opposite from the church, the church is white, the colour of the monastery.

00:23:12:00

In morning mass, Antonio is also distinguished by size. As in all joint prayers, the monks give themselves to God, omitting one another.

00:23:32:00

At Mass, a single earthly pleasure could take away from God. The wine of the Eucharist is a simple example of the foundation that protects them, and the monks who lent the name of the order to label the precious flavour.

0023:57:00

The contemplative life of Carthusians, made of rituals which are strange to any other church, requires that every priest celebrates Mass alone, in silence.

00:24:10:00

Anthony, the hermit, often does so at 3 am, after Morning Prayer.

00:24:18:00

Bruno, an American priest who adopted the name of the monk who 900 years ago founded the order, celebrates the awakening from a sleep first, just before the most common prayer of the day.

00:24:37:00

They live within themselves. Locked in a ritual that makes them different. They are apart from men, released from idle talk, standing in prayer. Prisoners to God, away from the crowds - the monks of silence come and praise the loneliness.