St Alphonsus - Carthusian at Home
The Solitaries of Ciorani

At this desk at Ciorani St Alphonsus wrote The Glories of Mary, the Visits to the Blessed Sacrament and the first edition of his Moral Theology

The spiritual men who knew St Alphonsus and his first companions considered them to be living as did the early Desert Fathers in Nubia and the Thebaid, an allusion which is made here by Fr Tannoia the first biographer of our Holy Founder, when he describes the life at Ciorani. Nubia and the Thebaid in Northeastern Africa were the homes to hundreds of monasteries in the first centuries of religious life. Saints who lived in the Thebaid include St Paul the first hermit, St Antony the Father of monks, St Paul the Simple, St John of Egypt, St Humphrey and St Pachomius among others. Fr Tannoia’s high praise for St Alphonsus is echoed without exception by other writers.

St Alphonsus reserved for himself the smallest and poorest cell in the new house, a recess under a staircase. A priest named Charles Zampoli, who aided him in his missions, describes “this hole under the stairs, the whole furniture of which consisted of a poor table and a tiny bed, on which the Servant of God could hardly stretch himself while taking his brief repose.” Here he passed his days, praying, working, suffering at times a veritable martyrdom. He never left this solitary confinement in his free time except to pray before the altar or to betake himself to the confessional.

In this way did the apostle become a Carthusian at home, giving to all an example of a solitary and mortified life. His brethren followed the same difficult path of contemplation. One after another they asked to make what was then known as the Forty Days’ retreat.

Alphonsus passed these 40 days of retirement in the cave of Scala, Sarnelli in the hermitage, Sportelli in the silence of his cell. The other Fathers begged for the same favour.

Fathers and brothers alike, with such a superior as Alphonsus to set them the example, and renewed by retreat like re-tempered steel, vied with one another in advancing up the paths of holiness. “Nubia and the Thebaid,” says Tannoia,  “never saw cenobites more given to contemplation than our hermits of Ciorani. Never a superfluous word, never a step outside the cell without necessity, never the slightest infraction of the rule. Everyone fulfilled his task with joy and simplicity, after which he asked permission to be allowed to go to the church to pay his court to the King of kings by night and day for as long as possible.”

One of the community, Fr Villani, has depicted in vivid colours at the process of canonisation the life which was led at Ciorani: “We lived,” he says, “in a very poor house, and we lived in common under constitutions which were not yet written, but which we observed as strictly as the rule of the most austere Orders. Devoted entirely to recollection, to the practise of virtue, and to the severest penance, we gave ourselves up to spiritual reading, meditation and work, with a holy ardour which the mortified life of our founder still further increased. Among our mortifications must be counted especially those we practised at table, where we were usually served with a simple minestra and some ill-seasoned vegetables.  This meagre nourishment we often took seated on the ground. It was only rarely that we ate meat. The Servant of God used to scourge himself to blood, but he took care to cover with a coat of whitewash the marks upon the walls of his cell.”

The contemplative life is the true furnace of Apostolic zeal. He who loves God burns with the desire to make Him loved by others. It would not be true therefore to suppose that the inmates of Ciorani were inactive. Alphonsus himself preached more than 20 Missions and retreats in the course of the years 1739 and 1740.

The Carthusian at home had produced the Apostle abroad. “The sermons of the Servant of God,” says an eye-witness, “his beautiful hymns, his incomparable zeal, the abundant fruit produced by his preaching made so deep an impression upon us that the entire population begged him to found a house in our town. We wished not to be separated from him.”

“Carthusians at home, Apostles abroad.”

“Therefore, you, My beloved, who have been chosen out of this world to produce in that same world a true image of My Life, so that everyone who sees you is reminded of Me, must give the greater part of your life to recollection and silence; that is, to give more time to the service of Magdalen, who chose the better part, and the other smaller part to the good services of Martha. Thus, you will combine in yourselves the two ways of life, represented in these two beloved sisters, and you will be very like My Life, which was the model of everything that is good.” Thus spoke Our Most Holy Redeemer to Mother Maria Celeste Crostarosa whose religious name was “of the Holy Desert.” Our Holy Father St Alphonsus put it in the terms quoted above - “Carthusians at home, Apostles abroad.” He wanted us to be as the hermit monks of the desert in our monasteries and as the Apostles themselves abroad. Redemptorists live a pre-medieval monastic life. †

The Interior Peace that God gives Good Religious to Enjoy

The promises of God cannot fail. God has said, “Every one that has left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or lands for My name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting.” That is, the hundredfold on this earth, and life everlasting in Heaven.

The peace of the soul is a good which is of greater value than all the kingdoms of the world. And what avails it to have the dominions of the whole world without interior peace? Better is it to be the poorest villager, and to be content than to be the lord of the whole world, and to live a discontented life. But who can give this peace? The unquiet world? Oh no, peace is a good that is obtained only from God. “O God!” prays the Church, “give to Thy servants that peace which the world cannot give.” Therefore, He is called the God of all consolation. But if God be the sole Giver of peace; to whom shall we suppose will he give that peace but to those who leave all, and attach themselves entirely to their Creator? And therefore is it seen that good religious shut up in their cells, though mortified, despised, and poor, live a more contented life than the great ones of the world, with all the riches, the pomps, and diversions they enjoy.

St Scholastica said that if men knew the peace that good religious enjoy, the whole world would become a monastery; and St Mary Magdalene of Pazzi said that all, if they knew it, would scale the walls of the monasteries, in order to get into them. The human heart having been created for an infinite good, all creatures cannot content it, they being finite, imperfect, and few; God alone, Who is an infinite good, can render it content. “Delight in the Lord and He will give thee the request of thy heart.”  Oh no; a good religious united with God envies none of the princes of the world who possess kingdoms, riches, and honours. “Let the rich,” he will say with St Paulinus, “have their riches, the kings have their kingdoms, to me Christ is my kingdom and my glory.” He will see those of the world foolishly glory in their displays and vanities; but he, seeking always to detach himself more from earthly things, always to unite himself more closely to his God, will live contented in this life, and will say, “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will call upon the name of the Lord, our God.”

St Teresa said that one drop of heavenly consolation is of greater value than all the pleasures of the world. Father Charles of Lorraine, having become a religious, said that God, by one moment of happiness that He gave him to feel in religion, superabundantly paid him for all he had left for God. Hence his joyfulness was sometimes so great that, when alone in his cell, he could not help beginning to leap. The Blessed Seraphino of Ascoli, a Capuchin lay-brother, said that he would not exchange a foot length of his cord for all the kingdoms of the world.

Oh, what contentment does he find who having left all for God, is able to say with St Francis, “My God and my all!” And with that to see himself freed from the servitude of the world, from the thraldom of worldly fashion, and from all earthly affections. This is the liberty that is enjoyed by the children of God, such as good religious are. It is true that in the beginning, the deprivation of the conversations and pastimes of the world, the observances of the Community, and the rules, seem to be thorns; but these thorns, as our Lord said to St Bridget, will all become flowers and delights to him who courageously bears their first sting, and he will taste on this earth that peace which, as St Paul says, surpasseth all the gratifications of the senses, and all the enjoyments of feasts, of banquets, and of the pleasures of the world: “The peace of God which surpasseth all understanding.” And what greater peace can there be than to know that one pleases God? †