Film Review: Die Grosse Stille (Into Great Silence)

Philip Groening waited thirteen years before the Carthusian monks at La Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble felt ready for their life to be filmed. The result is this 164-minute film that takes us, as its English title puts it, Into Great Silence. It is the first ever cinematic record of life at the Carthusian mother house. To achieve this poetic and beautiful evocation of the life of St Bruno's austere monastic order, Groening lived in the monastery and follow the monastic routine. He spent just three hours a day filming material for this documentary, accumulating in total 120 hours of film.

The film was selected for the Edinburgh Festival last year and has been lauded across Europe but it can only be seen at select cinemas in the United Kingdom. Although I did not wait as long as Groening to enter the great silence I had been anticipating its UK release for some time. It is well worth the effort of finding a cinema where it is being screened.

Die Grosse Stille allows one to experience Carthusian life through the cinematic art. The viewer is immersed in the silence, rhythm, seasons and chant of monastic life in this beautiful alpine monastery and enveloped in the serenity of the contemplative life in which God's presence is sought. In the silence of the monastic life - punctuated by the steady cadence of bells - even the ordinary jobs of chopping wood, mending a shoe or cutting woolen cloth for a new habit are embued with profound care as these menial tasks and routine chores are offered to God with love. In the midst of such silence, the conversations that take place during the weekly recreation are savoured and become precious, for the lips of the monks are otherwise opened only in praise of God through the chants and prayers of the liturgy. The monastic liturgy is sensitively filmed and we are allowed to glimpse also the hidden life of the monks in their cells, at work, in the cloister and even playing in the snow.

It was a special thrill to hear the monks sing the ancient Carthusian chant and discern certain tones that it shares with Dominican chant. Other aspects, such as the white habit (which included a black hooded cloak for the novices), the adoption of various bodily postures in prayer, and a scene of the monks eating together (as they do on Sundays and great feasts) in their austere refectory, reminded me of the influence of Carthusian life on St Dominic and the first Dominicans. It seemed to me that I was viewing the life of our spiritual ancestors.

I was also touched at seeing a novice, Dom Benjamin, being received into the community, taken to his cell by the other monks who prayed with him in his cell for that first time. We see him later learning to chop wood, sing plainsong and chant the readings during the night office. In many ways I felt a sense of connection with him, as I too am still so new to the adventure of religious life.


Scriptural texts repeatedly puntuated the film, in particular Jeremiah 20:7, You have seduced me, O Lord, and I have let myself be seduced, words that seem to explain why La Grande Chartreuse exists.

Religious life is a mystery and a gift, a divine call that no film can ever adequately reveal, but Die Grosse Stille does help us to see how God's grace - like the gently-falling snow that surrounded the monastery - is powerfully and silently at work in the lives of those who fall in love with the God of love. This is a cause for wonder and thanks, and as one views Groening's documentary, one cannot help but enter the silence and begin to contemplate this grace at work in one's own life, calling us to surrender all for love of Him.


To discover more about the Carthusian vocation, click on the links above, or visit the Parkminster website

Unity through distinction

Wednesday 3 of Lent

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:1, 5-9; Psalm 147; Matthew 5:17-19

I love oysters … but am I allowed to eat them? Since the Book of Leviticus states that “anything in the seas or in the streams that does not have fins and scales is detestable” (Leviticus 11:11), can we eat them without contravening the law of Moses? In today’s gospel we read that “not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Matthew 5:18). Are we, therefore, doomed to be over-scrupulous, and to respect strange laws whose purposes seem to belong to a bygone age? Are oyster-eaters the least in the Kingdom?

At first glance one might make the mistake of thinking that rules have to be followed mechanically and we might even consider that observances make us holy. But this is precisely what the Pharisees thought. Law is a protection, which allowed them not to be criticized. Today, Jesus shows a much deeper interpretation of the law and asks that our righteousness should exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees… In what respect? In the Old Testament law, God made things holy by separating them from what was unholy and the law of Moses followed this pattern accordingly. But Jesus reveals that this distinction has a more profound meaning. The fulfillment of this law reaches its climax in the apparent contradiction of the beatitudes in the section preceding today’s gospel. Jesus fulfills the law and makes us holy by uniting holy things with what used to be unholy!

Fulfillment is not a silly mechanical application of strange rules. It is more profoundly the freedom of inclusiveness rather than the slavery of separation between holy and unholy. Laws about food are fulfilled by Jesus’ eating at the table of sinners. Therefore, as the famous French Thomist Jacques Maritain used to say, “we have to distinguish in order to unite.” So Jesus fulfils the law by bringing out its perfect and inner meaning: the reconciliation of what is holy and unholy … The distinctions we make are ordered to a deeper unity. In an ecclesiological point of view, this gospel challenges us today: unity is not reached despite diversity, but through it … distinction need not mean separation.

During this time of Lent, I wish us to discover this freedom offered to us by Jesus’ fulfillment of the law … and to have the opportunity to eat a lot of oysters!

The duty to forgive

Tuesday 3 of Lent

Readings: Daniel 3:25, 34-43; Psalm 24; Matthew 18:21-35

A friend of mine has on his desk a little plaque that reads: ‘the one thing I can’t stand is when other people just can’t admit their faults. I’d admit mine – if I had any’. This witty phrase always brings a chuckle, but it also encapsulates something about human nature. None of us really wants to appreciate the darker side to ourselves. It takes bravery and suffering. But it is essential for us to confront these parts of ourselves if we are to live our lives more fully.

In Lent we are called to reflect on these parts of ourselves, and confront them. If we do this properly, we will see the parts of our lives that need to be reformed, and we won’t be happy! We might see in ourselves a person we don’t want to be. But this lesson in pain will help us to lead better lives.

Our pain causes us to seek forgiveness, and to know that the love of God is not removed from us when we display our weaknesses. This is good news – but we must not allow that to eclipse our duty to forgive other people. When we see our own weakness, we ought to understand the weakness of others. This is what is taught in today’s gospel. The servant, having been released from his debt by his master, then fails to show any mercy to the man who is in debt to him. Jesus points out that forgiveness is indispensable for our lives together as humans. We must forgive each other seventy-seven times. Unless we are prepared to accept that we are as weak and sinful as our brothers and sisters, and forgive them their trespasses, we cannot expect to be shown mercy.

Resist not evil

Monday 3 of Lent

Readings: 2 Kings 5:1-15; Psalms 41, 42; Luke 4:24-30

When violently attacked by a mob, Christ just walks away; he simply leaves his attackers behind. It might be said, then, that Christ is following his own commandment: resist not evil. But what sense is to be made of that refusal to resist evil, that preparedness just to walk away?

It cannot be that Jesus is happy for there to be evil in the world. That would be crazy. In fact, he himself endlessly asks people to change their hearts and minds. He never denies that evil is evil or pretends that it is good. Christ wants evil to be overcome - only he does not think it can happen on the terms in which people often conceive that victory.

The overcoming of evil in human hearts is to happen by allowing it to run its course. Interpersonal violence, in particular, is not to find the resistance that it wants. It is to become powerless because it meets no opposition. Only in this can violence meet an opponent for which it is no match. Violence cannot attain its aim of creating more violence, if it is left alone.

If Jesus had struck back at those who strike him, would it not have conveyed the message that violence is acceptable? The assault of the angry Jews is condemned instead by not being met with assault. In this way Jesus shows their violent anger for what it really is. He gives no excuses to those who indulge in aggression and injustice. By this means, he hopes to remove those things from their hearts.

Sometimes people say that Jesus’ command ‘resist not evil’ cannot be justified in the light of experience, that it is just an ideology which is out of touch with the realities of life. Of course, it is true, Jesus is not providing an absolute rule for every sphere of life; there are some spheres in which it is right to resist. But – in general – it seems to me the command not to resist evil is very closely in touch with the realities of life. It was because Jesus understood only too well the internal mechanisms of violence and other evils that he told his disciples not to resist.

God’s eternal presence

Sunday 3 of Lent

Readings: Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15; Psalm 102; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9

Moses was shepherding his father-in-law’s flock… Moses saw the burning bush… Moses saw and turned aside and covered his face, ‘for he feared to look at God’. These are epoch-making actions, defining moments and past events: they have already taken place. For the people of Israel, the Exodus, begun at this encounter with God on Sinai, is part of a history that identifies their very nature.

When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the ordinances which the LORD our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt; and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand’ (Deut. 6.21-22).

This identity is handed on through the passing generations; over the years. Who are we? We are the people God saved and brought to the promised land.

This identity with history is a feature of human life. What I mean is that every experience we have in the world, even daily sensations, follows the event. All too quickly a moment, an action, a feeling becomes a past event. Time chases away our existence. We live in the past.

But let’s go back to that mountain in the Middle East and Moses covering his face before the bush that burns.

The LORD sends him to bring the people out of slavery; to bring them into the present. And Moses asks fundamentally important questions in the face of this event. Who am I? Who are you?

Moses roots his identity in the past: his being drawn from the Nile; his crime; his flight from Egypt and his people. ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?’ (Ex. 3.11). This is why he argues with God.

God’s eternal identity breaks into the time-bound world of Moses: I am who I am. There is no time from which God draws his identity. No time when God is waiting to act or lamenting what has passed. There is precisely no time at all. God’s care for his people, his patient love with the sinner, is eternal.

So, if we have failed so far this Lent, in penance, we should not despair. Turn back to God; turn towards the present. We may bear fruit next year.

Sibling Rivalry

Saturday 2 of Lent

Readings: Micah 7:14-15, 18-20; Psalm 102; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Stories of sibling rivalry have a long history in human culture in general and as reflected in the scriptures: we have hardly been introduced to the first human progeny when we find Cain killing Abel. And family quarrels tend to be the most destructive, perhaps because that particular nexus of relationships finds us at our most exposed, and so especially vulnerable when things go wrong. Yet we learn how to relate ourselves to God through relating to other people, and our families are the original theatres where that particular drama of ourselves is first played out. Family stories understandably fascinate us, as a casual survey of soap operas and popular fiction will readily confirm. Hence the enduring poignancy of Luke’s account of a dysfunctional family in the parable of the prodigal in today’s gospel.

Luke’s narrative is powerful and has many resonances in human culture. I am inescapably reminded of Rembrandt’s famous portrait of the returning younger son kneeling in front of his father – one of the most powerful images of God’s compassion. Yet half of the text deals with the elder son. We discover through the narrative that he, too, has been alienated from his father, perhaps for longer, he has ‘slaved’ for his father for years, obeying grudgingly, never feeling rewarded. And he deeply resents his father’s joy at his brother's return, not seeing that he also is loved by his father – as Luke brilliantly depicts when he has the father go out to him, sulking in the field, to comfort him. This part of the story is a sad comment by Jesus on the Pharisees’ refusal to accept that the gospel, the good news, is extended to the outcast, to the lost. Precisely that is the challenge for us now: do we reach out to embrace the lost, or do we resent their demands on us and turn away?

Room for God in Europe?

Friday 2 of Lent

Readings: Genesis 37:3-4, 12-13, 17-28; Ps 104:16-21; Matthew 21:33-43, 45-46

Some time ago there was a debate in Europe about whether a proposed Constitution for the whole European Union should include a reference to God or to the Christian values that have long been part of this continent’s heritage. The course of the debate showed that many were of the opinion that Europe’s affairs could be managed perfectly well without any such reference and so ignored those who tried to argue differently.

Today’s Gospel narrates the parable of the landowner who, deciding to go off abroad, leased his vineyard to tenants. The tenants were given the freedom to look after the vineyard as best they could. However, they soon viewed the vineyard as their own property and set about attacking the representatives of the landowner when they arrived to claim his due. Jesus warns his listeners that those who pay no heed to the landowner risk being stripped of the gift with which they have been entrusted.

Today, more than ever, we need to learn that this world is a gift from God given to us for a while that we might attend it with care. In contrast to much of today’s political and economic agenda, which seems obsessed with ideas of progress and competition, we need to remind ourselves that life is not about the survival of the fittest. Rather, each person, created in God’s image, has a dignity that needs to be defended from the very beginning of life to its very end. So whether or not God gets a mention in the European constitution or other documents of that kind, it is important that there are still people prepared to risk everything and go out into the vineyard to preach the truths of our faith.