Christ the Vision

Like all this contemplative’s writings, the collection of meditations gathered here was never intended as a book. They began life as short meditations, only written down because he found it helpful to commit his thoughts to paper while they were fresh in his mind. The sermons which follow, although delivered as such to the lay-brothers of the Grande Chartreuse, were really meditations made aloud. Those who assisted at these never forgot them, not so much for what they said but for what they revealed of, and in the monk who was the speaker.

That monk was Augustin Guillerand, well known to those who are inspired by Carthusian spirituality from his longer best-selling works They Speak by Silences and Where Silence is Praise, both of which have in print for over sixty years.

Originally published in French, and subsequently in translation by St Hugh’s Charterhouse at Parkminster in the 1960s, Christ the Vision is now available again for a contemporary audience, reprinted in a new edition.

Deceptively simple yet deeply profound, the simplicity of Dom Augustin’s writing hides a deep immersion in the divine mysteries, which, it could be said, formed the constant subject of his meditation. The sermons manifest the slow but penetrating deliberations of the Carthusian at prayer ̶that ‘long regard’, as Dom Augustin says elsewhere, ‘at the eternal truths’. It is this ‘long regard’ which is the motif which runs through all his writings, all his thought.

Here is an invaluable companion to those who wish to reflect more deeply on the Life of Christ and some great feasts of the Christian Year.