Augustin Guillerand

Augustin Guillerand , actually Maxime Guillerand , (born November 26, 1877 in Reugny-de-Dompierre , Nièvre department ; † April 12, 1945 in the Great Charterhouse near Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse , Isère department ) was a French Carthusian monk and author numerous spiritual writings.

Life

Maxime Guillerand was born the son of farmers. With ten years he entered the minor seminary of Nevers one. In 1900 he was ordained a priest . He worked as a priest in various parishes and also as a teacher of history and geography before joining the La Valsainte Charterhouse in western Switzerland in 1916 and taking the religious name Augustin. In 1918 he made the temporary vows, on October 6, 1921 the perpetual religious vows . Two years later he was entrusted with the office of vicar and three years later with that of coadjutor. But after just a few months he had to give up the offices due to his health, which had been weak even before entering the Charterhouse, and especially psychological ailments bothered him very much. In 1929 Guillerand was transferred to the Montrieux Charterhouse in the south of France. A short time later he came as a vicar in the sister charterhouse of San Francesco near Turin , where he worked as the nuns' confessor. In 1935 he became prior of the Vedana Charterhouse near Belluno in Veneto and in the following years Convisitor of the Italian Order Province. After the outbreak of World War II, Guillerand returned to France, first for a short time in the Charterhouse Sélignac near Bourg-en-Bresse and then in the Great Charterhouse , where he died on April 12, 1945.

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Basic ideas in his work

The Gospel of John and the Epistles of John occupy a central position in his works . An important theme of his writings is the love of God as the source and destination from which everything flows and to which everything flows. For Guillerand, God is only love that gives itself. The life of the Triune God consists in this loving self-giving, but also the relationship of God to his creatures. In himself or outside of himself, God wants and does nothing other than to love and to give himself away.

Individual works

In the Great Charterhouse he wrote his most representative work Au seuil de l'abîme de Dieu, Elévations sur l'évangile de S. Jean , German: On the Threshold of God's Abyss. Thoughts on the Gospel of John . This work has also been published in Italian translation. The font Silence cartusien was translated into Italian, Spanish, English and, under the title Vom Schweigen der Kartäuser (Lucerne 1956), also into German. His work Face à Dieu has also been published in German under the title In the Face of God, Prayer Experiences of a Carthusian Monk . In addition to a few other writings, letters from Guillerand have also appeared in print and various translations.

All writings were only published posthumously and anonymously until 1959. The Carthusian is said to have burned many of his writings, which were never intended for the public, before his death.

literature

• Augustin Guillerand: In the face of God, prayer experiences of a Carthusian monk . Verlag Echter, Würzburg 1989, ISBN 3-429-01231-7
• James Hogg:  Augustin Guillerand. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 31, Bautz, Nordhausen 2010, ISBN 978-3-88309-544-8 , Sp. 573-576.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Augustin Guillerand e la vita certosina ; Retrieved September 21, 2009.