THE true religious is a person who, having renounced by solemn vow the world and everything sensible and perishable, lives for God alone and concerns himself solely with what is eternal. Since eternity alone is his portion, it must be the sole object of all the activity of his mind and all the motions of his heart. What Jesus Christ presents to men in general in the form of counsels becomes, for the religious, on account of his vocation, utterly binding precepts. He will only begin truly to fulfill the duties of his state when his detachment is total, when his self-denial is genuine and effective, and when he succeeds in making the sentiments of his heart bear fruit in his actions. Sainteté 1.3; 1683:1; 1701:1.3.

VOWED consecration means nothing else but the immolation of a holocaust, total and absolute. . . . [The fathers] could  describe monastic profession as . . . continual meditation on God’s judgments, a crucifixion, a true martyrdom, living in apostolic perfection, an angelic conversatio. In this they simply wanted to say that the solitary must be insensible to all human affections, separated from all that is mortal, with a conversatio that is completely heavenly . . . that the monastic vocation, as Saint Basil says, lifts men to the purity of the angels. Sainteté 1.4; 1683:4–5; 1701:1.5.

THE deserts and the monasteries were filled with the spiritual heirs of the Apostles and Martyrs]. In accord with God’s command, Anthony, Hilarion, Pachomius and their like brought together men who would attach themselves to them with a view to practicing the same perfection and living in the same deprivation and forgetfulness of creatures. All the monks who followed them as their true masters and fathers were formed . . . in the same holiness and the same separation from sensible things. Sainteté 3.1; 1683:15; 1701:1.17

IF the present order of things gives rise to a totally contrary impression, it is because of the decadence and corruption of our times. In itself, the monastic life remains what it has always been. God neither alters his designs nor countermands his orders. He requires no less a degree of perfection and detachment from his religious today than he did fourteen hundred years ago. Saint Bernard was not afraid of being excessive when he told his brothers that they had promised God to live in the perfection of the apostles . . . . It is evident that within the Church the religious are privileged to take the place of the martyrs and to imitate the perfection of the apostles. Sainteté 3.1; 1683:16; 1701:1.181

IT is for others to serve God; yours is to unite yourself perfectly to him. For others, it suffices to believe in God—to know, love and adore him; you, on the contrary, must penetrate the depths of his wisdom and knowledge that you may see him in himself and possess him.Sainteté 4.2; 1683:32–33; 1701:1.37–38.

WHEN men and women contract marriage, they think it enough to pose the requirement of corporal chastity. But he who surpasses infinitely in beauty all the children of men demands of those souls he considers as his brides a purity worthy of his own. It is to them, more than to others, that these words of the Holy Spirit are particularly addressed: “Sancti estote, quoniam Ego sanctus sum.” (Lv 11:44: “Be holy, for I am holy.” )You see how the Bridegroom in the Canticle wants his bride to be perfectly and completely beautiful, how his heart is sensitive to everything about her. . . . He cannot abide the smallest fault or defect in her. “Tota puchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te.”(Song 4:7: “You are wholly beautiful, my love, and without a blemish!”) He calls her beautiful twice, to show us that she should have a twofold beauty: she should be as pure in soul as she is chaste in body. Sainteté 5.4; 1683:57; 1701:1.83–84.20.

SAINT Cyprian expressed the same opinion when he gave the name of “foolish virgins” to those who imagine that because they are physically chaste they are genuinely pious, despite the fact that their hearts are corrupted by avarice, pride, envy, and detraction.Sainteté 5.4; 1701:1.89–90.

SAINT John Chrysostom perfectly expressed that truth, when he said that a virgin preoccupied with the things of the world does not merit inclusion in the ranks of the virgins. Truly to deserve this glorious title, renouncing marriage does not suffice. The profession of virginity also requires a chastity of soul. . . . The five virgins whose lamps were extinguished were indeed virgins, physically, but they were not pure in spirit. Uncorrupted by sexual intercourse with men, they were defiled by their attachment to possessions. Their bodies were pure, true enough, but their souls were immersed in all sorts of adulteries. A thousand evil thoughts filled them, an endless cycle of avarice, tightfistedness towards the poor, envy, laziness, negligence, pride—all the spiritual and interior vices capable of destroying the venerable state of Christian virginity. What good, after all, is virginity, when it is joined to a hard and pitiless heart?Sainteté 5.4; 1683:64; 1701:1.91.

THE saints regarded poverty as the solitary’s wealth. It is those who renounce the things of earth in imitation of the apostles that have a genuine abundance. . . . To such a degree does the hope of future goods absorb them that the notion and memory of present things is lost to them. . . . This disposition, brethren, is so truly great that it can only be the fruit of total self-denial. Whoever wishes to be established in this state must strip himself unreservedly of everything, and in the first place of himself. Nothing created or transitory may be allowed to occupy the smallest space in his heart. He must follow Jesus Christ with an attitude of such perfect disinterestedness that he can say together with the great martyr: “Jam Christi incipio esse discipulus, nihil eorum quae sunt in mundo desiderans” [Now, desiring nothing in all the world, I begin to be a disciple of Christ].

Brethren, believe me: A religious will never find peace in his reclusion until he abandons himself totally to the only one who can bestow it. If he does not accept all the sufferings and privations that befall him—hunger, thirst, cold, heat, illness, his superiors’ way of proceeding, his brothers’. . . ill-humor as coming from God’s Providence, he will live out his days in bitterness. . . . From such exalted thoughts and reflections as these, brethren, you cannot help concluding that religious poverty goes beyond a mere cutting-back of outward wealth and possessions. Rather, in the same manner as chastity, it divides the heart from everything, visible or invisible, that is not eternal. It strips us of all, leaving us with God alone and those things that can lead us to the possession of his kingdom.2 Sainteté 5.6; 1683:74–75 and 84; 1701:1.103–4 and 114.

PERFECTLY lived, it is obedience that gives the religious his proper form and establishes him in his state. By means of it, he consecrates himself and offers himself up to God, striking the blessed deathblow that puts an end to his worldly life and makes him live the life of Jesus Christ. “Vivo ego jam non ego, vivit vero in me Christus.” Gal 2:20 ] “I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me.”][Sainteté 5.7; 1683:100; 1701:1.132–33.

AS I think of nothing but how I may contribute to your edification, this being the duty most bindingly imposed on me by God, I will simply say to you, brethren. . . , that God’s chief end in making a new covenant with men was to establish here in this world a cult worthy of his majesty and to find true worshippers, who would worship him, as Jesus Christ says, in spirit and in truth: “Venit hora in qua veri adoratores adorabunt Patrem in spiritu et veritate” [“But the hour will came when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth.” Jn 4:23] —in that purity that can only be the effect of the fullness of his Spirit and the abundance of his grace.”32 Sainteté 3.1; 1683:11–12; 1701:1.13–14.

AS the love of God is the first and most binding of the divine precepts, its obligations are the clearest and most self-evident. If the heavens and the entire universe tell us unceasingly of his grandeur and glory, we can say that they likewise proclaim to us our obligation to love him. . . . We adore him on account of his sovereign majesty; we owe him love on account of his infinite goodness.Sainteté 7.1; 1683:113; 1701:1.149.

WHEN the Church wishes to stir up the love and piety of her children by reminding them of all the graces the divine mercy has shown them, she can find no more moving climax with which to conclude her account than that grace which is the culmination and the fulfillment of all the others. Directing herself to God, she cries out to him in an access of tenderness: “That the lord might save the servant, he gave up his Son.” “Ut servum redimeret, Filium tradidit.” [cf. Exultet: “He gave up the Son in order to redeem the servant.”  In his first letter, Saint John speaks exclusively of charity and love. “Let us love, not in word or in speech, but in deed and truth.” “He who does not love does not know God, since God is love.” Sainteté 7.1; 1683:123; 1701:1.161.

AFTER this, there should be no further need to ask how we should love God; these reflections speak for themselves. If they fail to produce an equal degree of understanding, it is because they make use of the language of the heart. To understand this language, it is necessary to have a heart, and most people do not have one. But the saints who have received the new heart and the new spirit promised by God through the prophets—“Dabo vobis cor novum et spiritum novum ponam in medio vestri” [Ez 36:26: “I shall give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.”]  —are profoundly affected by these truths. Sainteté 7.1; 1683:124; 1701:1.162

NEXT to the commandment of loving God, the most important is that of loving our brothers. By this sign, Jesus Christ told us, people would distinguish those who are his disciples from those who are not: “In hoc cognoscent omnes quia discipuli mei estis, si dilectionem habueritis ad invicem.” [1Jn 13:35: “By this love you have for one another, everyone will know that you are my disciples.”]  Solitaries, having the duty to be the first among his disciples—not in rank or dignity, but in piety and holiness—should also be preeminent in charity. Jesus Christ is more fully within them. His mind and his outlook are more markedly apparent in them. They demonstrate more traits of his holiness. All this renders them more worthy of love and respect. Sainteté 10.1; 1683:245; 1701:1.305.

THE religious state constitutes an entirely spiritual way of life, a determination to live together in indissoluble and inviolable union. Solitaries are bound to each other through a spiritual covenant made in the presence of the Holy Spirit, who acts as its mediator and witness. It is a union that should far surpass in closeness that which exists among the members of the human body. cf. Basil The Long Rules, Question 7. 43 Sainteté 10.1; 1683:246; 1701:1.306.

    IN places of peace and sanctity, such as monasteries are, it is absolutely indispensable to put into faithful practice the few means the Rule provides for monks with regard to mutual love: The means you have at your disposal for exercising charity towards your brothers come down to a number of concrete practices: offering them good example, praying for them, and showing the signs of gentleness, affection, and deference permitted by monastic observance. Sainteté 10.1; 1683:246; 1701:1.306.

TRUE religious are united by such close and binding ties that we could say it is in them that these words of Jesus Christ are perfectly realized: “Claritatem quam dedisti mihi, dedi eis, ut sint unum, sicut et nos unum sumus.” [Jn 17:22: “I have given them the glory you gave to me, that they may be one as we are one.”]  As Saint Basil puts it, they have a single mind, a single heart, and a single will, and we can add a single occupation: to serve Jesus Christ and to fight without respite against the enemies of his name and his glory. Sainteté 10.1; 1683:248; 1701:1.309.

CHARITY is the bond and foundation of monastic communities. It creates and sustains them, making the brothers live as God decrees, in unity and holy concord, bearing the yoke of the Lord humero uno, [Zph 3:9: “Under the same yoke.”]  with the same mind, the same heart, and the same will. Sainteté 10.5; 1683:260; 1701:1.322.

    IT is in their weakness that the brothers experience themselves most as brothers, for they face the same enemies and can witness their mutual efforts in striving to overcome them. Moreover, many can find strength and happiness in the endurance and faithfulness of even a single individual: Let them extend a helping hand to each other, the strong supporting the weak . . . the firm encouraging the wavering, so that . . . they can win the same victory and receive the same crown. Sainteté 10.1; 1683:248–249; 1701:1.310.

ONLY if you were completely ignorant of the necessity and usefulness of prayer, of its power and its role in your sanctification, could you fail to know that you have an obligation to make u se of it before God for your brothers’ sanctification.Sainteté 10.3; 1683:253; 1701:1.314.

THIS is how we see that the apostles and disciples prayed after the Ascension of Jesus Christ, as it is written: “All of them persevered in prayer with a single mind, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers”— demonstrating thus the fervor and the unity of their prayer. For God who calls together to dwell in a single house those who are of one spirit will receive into his eternal dwellings only those united in the same prayer.Sainteté 10.3; 1683:254–25; 1701:1.316–17.

SAINT Bernard was not afraid of being excessive when he told his brothers that they had promised God to live with the perfection of the apostles. . . . Is it not to you, brethren, as coenobites that these words of Saint Bernard are addressed: “Yours is a very exalted calling, higher than the heavens, equal to that of the angels. In no way is its purity less than the purity of these pure spirits. You have committed yourselves to attain not simply holiness, but the perfection of holiness—the very summit of this perfection. For it is for others to serve God; yours is to unite yourselves perfectly to him. For others, it suffices to believe in God, to know, love, and adore him; you on the contrary must penetrate the depths of his wisdom and knowledge that you may see him in himself and possess him.”Sainteté 3.1; 1683:16–17; 1701:1.19, and Sainteté 4.2; 1683:32–33; 1701:1.37–38.

IT is true that the Christian who has been buried with Jesus Christ in baptism and been given new life by this sacrament— a life animated and centered in the Spirit of Jesus Christ himself—ought to live as dead to the world, its goods, honors, business, and pleasures. But in his case, this renunciation can be made through a certain disposition of his heart. Permitted to retain the outward ownership and use of all these things, he will need to be so inwardly detached that he will remain poor in his prosperity, chaste in his marriage, temperate at his table, and dedicated to God in the midst of his dealings with others to which his state of life obliges him.

For a solitary, however, this is far from enough. He cannot stop there. He must detach himself literally from all that is sensible. Since eternity alone is his portion, it must be the sole object of all the activity of his intelligence and all the motions of his heart. What Jesus Christ presents to men in general as counsels becomes for the religious, on account of his vocation, totally binding precepts. He will only begin truly to fulfill the duties of his state when his detachment is total, when his self-denial is genuine and effective, and when he succeeds in making the sentiments of his heart bear fruit in his actions. Only those who remain in the grossest ignorance of the monastic state can deny this, people who have never concerned themselves with it or read what the holy fathers have to teach about it. Vessels set apart for divine service and worship cannot be used for other purposes without profaning them. Likewise, the religious who by special consecration has become the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit and the temple of God must keep this reality constantly before his gaze. Sainteté 1.3; 1683:2–3; 1701:1.2–3

BE mindful, brothers, to carry out the Holy Spirit’s precept: “Oportet semper orare et non deficere.” [“Pray continually and never lose heart.” Lk 18:1.]Take special care to purify yourself by means of prayer, making it the first of your duties and allowing nothing to come between you and the fulfillment of such an important and highly recommended duty. But be careful not to let your prayer consist of dry speculation, empty of the spirit from which it derives all its merit and all its power. . . . Do not imagine that prayer is merely a product of the intellect, a series of spiritual thoughts or a reflection on some pious subject. Do not resemble those persons who think they have prayed well because kneeling, they have meditated before the altar on a few Christian truths or attempted to practice the rules and methods of prayer suggested by those who treat of such matters. Your prayer should be the voice, the cry of your heart, proceeding from your heart’s sentiments and expressing its inner feelings and desires. Or, truer still, it should be the Holy Spirit who by his divine workings forms the prayer within your heart . . . and places words on your lips, since only his utterances are worthy of the divine majesty and of being heard by God. Sainteté 9.1; 1683:275–76; 1701:1.352–53.

THE other is, at the time marked out for prayer, to separate ourselves from all visible things, denying to our senses, our imagination, our memory, our reason and our very heart all that is not God. Those activities we otherwise accept as imposed on us we reject as illicit at this time and fix our gaze on God alone. He alone in himself and without mediation is our entire occupation.Sainteté 11.1; 1683:279–80; 1701:1.357-58.

BUT what are these conditions? I hold them to be purity of heart and fervor. The saints considered these conditions so necessary to prayer that they placed them before all others.

HE wishes all creatures to withdraw and cede their places to him, that he may be completely alone in those he has distinguished with such tender and signal marks of his infinite goodness. Anything but himself which he sees or encounters there displeases and perturbs him. “Remain alone,” says Saint Bernard to such chosen souls, “Don’t you know that your Bridegroom is extremely modest and will never make himself known to you when others are present?” [on the Song of Songs 40.4SC 40.4]5

This purity is incumbent on all Christians, brothers, but especially on solitaries. It is for this that God has withdrawn them from the midst of the world and led them into solitude, so that finding them free from all preoccupation and perfectly detached from creatures, he can first purify them and then fill the void of their intellect and their heart, establishing in them, while they are still in the world, his kingdom of blessing and glory as if in a heaven.

Fervor, the second condition for prayer, is no less necessary or important. In fact, it is inseparable from the first, since prayer can never be pure if it is not fervent.Sainteté 11.2; 1683:280–83; 1701:1.358–61.

HE wishes that they subject themselves to all in an attitude of genuine humility . . . that with all the might of their souls they yearn for what is eternal. Lastly, that by the constant exercise of piety, they ascend to perfect charity, which casting out all fear will make them serve God on earth as the angels do in heaven: without any thought of punishment, but simply for the sake of truth and justice, their pure love for Jesus Christ and the consolation they have in pleasing him. Sainteté 4.2; 1683:45; 1701:1.59

To these two requirements, the holy fathers have added a third: compunction of heart. Actually it ought to be considered an effect and a necessary consequence of the others. Those who have united themselves to God through a perfectly pure and fervent prayer, filled with the knowledge and love of God, cannot help but feel an intense suffering when they see the Divine Goodness, so worthy of being loved, daily affronted by human beings, and when they see that they themselves have the misfortune to be among those who offend and displease him.

Such a sentiment ought to exist in all true disciples, in everyone on fire with holy zeal for the glory of his name. Yet it is so proper to monks that it constitutes as it were their character and their distinguishing trait. Their vocation is to mourn; their profession is to grieve continually. Their life is one great sacrifice of tears offered for the world’s sins and their own. They are the ones prefigured by the men . . . sealed by the prophet with the letter of mercy at God’s command. . . . “Thus says the Holy Spirit: Inscribe the letter Tau on the foreheads of those who weep and afflict themselves on account of the abominations committed in the midst of Jerusalem” [Ez. 9:4].

It was for this reason, brethren, that the ancients desired solitaries always to make their prayers with compunction of heart. They were to keep it present in all the aspects of their lives and in all their exercises, and ever to purify their prayers with the waters of their tears. Sainteté 11.2; 1683:284–87; 1701:1.362–65

ALWAYS begin your prayer in a profound awareness of your nothingness, trusting in the promise of the Holy Spirit: “Oratio humilitatis se nubes penetrabit.”[Sir 35:21: “The humble man’s prayer pierces the clouds.”]Without fail, lay up some words of Scripture in the mouth of your heart, as Saint Basil advises, words that can serve to express your needs or which relate to the mysteries or contain the truths you have come to venerate.

But to say all this in a more orderly fashion. First: Whether you are taking the truths or the mysteries of faith as the subject of your prayer, consider them attentively and make a careful meditation upon them, as completely as you can. Second: Let what you have meditated penetrate you, so that it warms your zeal, stimulates your piety, and produces devout affections. Third: If the subject is your indigence and your wretchedness, investigate them thoroughly. Subject yourself to a detailed and rigorous self-examination and judge yourself severely, laying before God your all neediness and your wounds, that he in turn may judge you with clemency. Fourth: To ensure that your prayer not stop at the level of simple aspirations or pious reflections, take some definite resolution with regard to your spiritual necessities, how you plan to amend your behavior or improve your rule of life—all this depending on the vices you wish henceforth to avoid or the virtues in which you intend to make progress. Fifth: Thank God that for all your unworthiness, he has permitted you to be in his presence. To facilitate the foregoing practices, make use of passages in your reading that have especially touched and edified you, and of those thoughts that tend to animate your devotion.Sainteté 11.4; 1683:291–93; 1701:1.371–72.

HERE, my brothers, is a method that, though brief, is also holy and useful. You should feel free to follow it and apply it. Should you discover, however, that it does not suit you, that you have difficulty in adapting yourselves to it or that it does not yield the hoped-for benefits and advantages, do not force yourselves to continue, as if your prayer depended on it. God’s Spirit is free and in no way bound to human rules and practices. He gives himself to souls and inspires them in the manner that pleases him.Sainteté 11.4; 1683:293; 1701:1.372.

Brethren, when you come before the face of God and kneel at his altar to pray to him, abandon yourselves to whatever movement he inspires in you. Have a great confidence that the God who preserves the life of your bodies by his constant protection will not deny you the grace of prayer, without which you could not preserve the life of your souls. Hand over to him the disposition of your whole being and follow the promptings of his Spirit in complete simplicity, whether they lead you to ponder his truths, to tell him of your or your brothers’ spiritual needs, or—should he inspire you—to present to him the needs of the whole Church. Follow him when he makes you shed floods of tears at the recollection of your faults, when he lifts you up to contemplate his ineffable beauty, and when he calls you to adore him in profound silence. Follow him when he attracts you and unites you to himself by the sacred bonds of love, when he illuminates you with heavenly lights, inspires devout sentiments, or forms within your heart fresh resolutions about your conduct. Abandon yourselves to him as well when he lets you remain in his presence with nothing to do but await in blessed idleness the actions he produces in souls that belong to him, according to his good pleasure.Sainteté 11.4; 1683:293–94; 1701:1.372–73.

I do not intend, brothers, to give you any more extensive rules on prayer than these. No other subject than prayer has been so written about or prayed over. Prayer after all is a wholly divine activity, better learned through God’s anointing than through human instruction. The Holy Spirit is its origin and principle and should also be its master and teacher.7Sainteté 11.4; 1683:293; 1701:1.373.

WHEN the saints taught that the solitary’s prayer should be continual and that he was bound to pray without ceasing, they did not mean to say that his contemplation of God had to be so continuous and so incessantly attentive that it was never subject to interruption. They recognized that a state of complete stability and immobility was proper to angels rather than to human beings; furthermore, that there are in monasteries duties imposed by God calling for so much dedication that they inevitably draw the brothers’ attention away from the Divine Majesty, temporarily obstructing the view.Sainteté 11.4; 1683:293–94; 1701:1.373–74.

AND so, brethren, to rid you of your doubt as to how anyone can so forget himself in prayer as to be unaware that he is praying, I will tell you that when the soul . . . goes out of itself in all the movements of the heart and all the functioning of the intellect and draws near to God in prayer, it is like a person who finds himself looking open-eyed at the sun at noon. His eyes are so struck and dazzled by the sun’s rays that he sees nothing but the brightness that surrounds him. His vision is restricted to this; none of the other objects are visible to him. In the same way when by a special grace a soul is penetrated by God and immersed in that unfathomable light, it is he alone that it sees, he alone that it perceives, he alone that it knows. Everything else escapes it, disappears, except for that beauty which it possesses and by which it is possessed. It is this beauty, endlessly attracting and ravishing the soul by its infinite loveliness that makes it incapable of interrupting or suspending its attention for even a moment. Thus hindered from making the least reflection on itself, it is aware neither of itself, or what is happening to it, to the extent of not perceiving that the state it is in is the consequence of the exalted quality of its prayer. Sainteté 11.7; 1701:1.392

KNOWING, after all, that the whole world continues in being solely by the merit of the Incarnation, that it is the foundation of our salvation and the gate of heaven, I cannot see how anyone could be so rash or presumptuous as to try to enter there without honoring the one God used to provide the entrance. . . . And if redemption is purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ, can anyone fail to realize that she is so united to him that in the saying of the Fathers the savior’s flesh is the same as Mary’s: “Caro Christi, caro Mariæ”? As a result, any indifference shown towards the mother cannot fail to reflect upon the Son. [He went on to say] Dear brothers, it would not be possible for us to be too diligent or assiduous in our recourse to her. Maybe you will say that already you daily sing her hymns and canticles of praise. To that I say, Yes, very good, but you should not stop there. Unless you add to these prayers and intercessions that we all say in public some private practices which you use to honor her as you call upon her, you will never fulfill your obligations as a religious and especially a religious of the Order of Cîteaux. For example, the recitation of the rosary, litanies, frequent aspirations to her as protectress, telling her from the depths of your souls, “In te sunt oculi nostri; ne pereamus, Virgo benedicta!” [“To you our eyes are turned, O blessed Virgin. Do not let us not perish,.”] I tell you, brothers, that for myself I count it a day lost and badly spent when I do not find a few moments to turn to her and commend my eternal salvation to her. I encourage you to do the same, and if you omit to do so, it will only be by deviating from my express wishes. For as I have told you, devotion to the Blessed Virgin is one of the most powerful means of sanctification God has placed at your disposal.

 Élévation (à Jésus sur ses principaux états et mystères, à la Trinité sur le mystère de l’Incarnation, à Dieu en l’honneur de la part qu’Il a voulu donner à la V. Marie dans le mystère de l’Incarnation). 86Albert Cherel, Rancé (Paris: Flammarion, 1930) 115. Pierre Le Nain, Vie de M. de Rancé, 2 vols. (Paris: 1719) 2:486.

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