Chemin d'arts sacré en Alsace - the Carthusian monastery

Description

This exhibition in the north cloister of the Molsheim Carthusian monastery recalls the presence of the Carthusian fathers and brothers for almost two centuries, from 1598 to 1792. Discerning, testing, questioning, approaching - these are the key words in Véronique Boyer's approach. St Paul's dazzling journey to Damascus takes us into the mystery of presence/absence. Paul is thrown to the ground, surrounded by light. He rises from the ground and, with his eyes open, sees nothing. Commenting on this passage, Master Eckhart says: "Now this nothing, this nothingness, was God." (Sermon 71). Commenting on this presence/absence in the great mystic Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727), Pietro Citati writes: "The soul has completed its terrible journey to find the light and discovers darkness or a light more disturbing than darkness; it has sought the fullness of God and encounters his absence. She has longed for love and knows aridity. All around her is the nothingness she had thought to fill with God, and yet she knows, or hopes, or dreams that this nothingness, this darkness, this non-love constitutes the supreme experience of his presence".