MONASTIC events
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The witness of the Trappist Monks of Tibhirine
by : Armand Veilleux, ocso
On the night of March 26-27, 1996,
seven monks from the Trappist monastery of our Lady of Atlas at Tibhirine, in
Algeria, were kidnapped by a group of armed men. One month later a message
attributed to an Islamist group claimed the responsibility for their kidnapping,
offering to exchange them for Islamist prisoners. Two months later another
message attributed to the same group announced their death. They were
decapitated and only their heads were found, not their bodies. After a funeral
Mass at the cathedral of Algiers, their remains were buried in the cemetery of
their monastery at Tibhirine. After
their death, the Testament of Father Christian de Chergé, who was the Prior of
the community, was made public. That text, which was addressed by Father
Christian to his family, is one of the most profound and most beautiful
spiritual writings of the 20th century. It had, and it continues to
have a great influence, in the Muslim as well as in the Christian world.
Two years ago a film was made, based
on their lives, or rather the last few years of their lives, revealing their
relationship with the local Muslim population. The title of the film was Of Gods and Men, and it has had an
enormous impact in all the countries of the world where it was shown. It is not a documentary. But although it is a fiction, it is based on real
facts. And it conveys extremely well the
human and spiritual experience of that small community during the last few
years before their death, and how that experience was rooted in the local Algerian
context.
Anyone who sees the film without
knowing the history of the community may think that they were simply a small
community of French monks who had been living in Algeria for a little while,
and who stubbornly chose to stay there, even when a situation of civil war had developed,
and who did so out of solidarity with the local population. In reality their community had been part of
the Algerian people and of the Algerian Church for more than half a century. In
order to understand their witness, we need to replace it in the history of
Algeria and of the Church in Algeria.
The Church in Algeria
There was a flourishing Christian
Church in North Africa in the time of Augustine of Hippo, but it was a Latin
Church, the church of the Roman invader and it disappeared rapidly after the
crumbling of the Roman Empire under the invasions of the Barbarians, even
before the Arab invasions.
Several
centuries later Christianity returned to Algeria with the invading French army,
in 1830. The Kerchaoua mosque, one of
the most important mosques of Algiers, was immediately transformed into a
Christian cathedral, with the canons of the infantry firing as the cross and
the French flag were raised on the minaret. That event signaled the type of
Christian presence that would last more or less unchanged for about a
century. It was the Church of French
settlers among a Muslim population. A first monastic foundation was made in Algeria,
at Staouëli in that context, in 1843. Although it developed rapidly and grew into a large successful
community, it did not last. It was
closed in 1904.
The
monastery of Tibhirine, which was founded in 1934 was of a completely different
style. It started as a refuge for a few
monks from Slovenia who were fleeing persecution in their country, and it was
soon assumed as a regular monastic foundation by the French community of
Aiguebelle. It was a poor, humble and small group of foreigners who began to
live simply amid a poor Arab population. Right from the beginning the monks developed
a close relationship with the population, in a situation of mutual respect that
rapidly became mutual love.
The type of presence of the
Christian Church in Algeria has already begun to change some years before, with
the coming of Cardinal Lavigerie, the founder of the missionaries knows as the
“White Fathers”. But that type of
presence was altered more radically, some twelve years after the arrival of the
Trappist monks, with the coming of bishop Duval – later on Cardinal Duval -- to
Algeria. Duval was appointed bishop of
Constantine in 1946 and then of Algiers in 1954, during the war that led to the
independence of the country, a few years later. He was above all a pastor, but a pastor who constantly analyzed the
political situation in the light of the Gospel. He constantly condemned all forms of violence – that of the colonial
army as well as that of the Algerian fighting for their independence. He refused to accept a society where there
was a small minority exercising power over the great majority. He believed in the brotherly cohabitation of
the Arabs and the foreigners, of Christians and Muslims. He was not an intellectual, and he did not
care too much for the type of theological dialogue à la Massignon that showed the theological and religious
consonances between the Gospel and the Koran. What he believed in was concrete, basic human solidarity in all aspects
of human life between Christians and Muslims, even in a situation where
Christians had become a tiny minority. To
leave Algeria, after the independence of the country and after almost all the
settlers had left, because the Church could no longer be powerful and
influential, was not an option for him. He led the small remnant of his Church through the independence period,
acquired Algerian nationality, and was widely respected till the time of his
death a few days after that of the monks of Tibhirine. It is interesting to
know that, after independence, when Arabic became the official language of the
country, many of the new political elite learned the Arabic language from the
Catholic missionaries!
Because the monks of Tibhirine had
developed such bonds of brotherhood with the local population their monastery
survived the war of independence and was able to continue in existence after
the country had become an officially Muslim country, and after almost all the
foreigners had left. Nevertheless, since
there was no longer any hope for local recruitment – because any proselytism
and any conversion to Christianity was prohibited by the Law of the country –
the Trappist Order decided to close the monastery in 1963. That decision was communicated to cardinal
Duval, by the Abbot General of the Order, in St. Peter’s Basilica, one morning
at the opening of that day’s session of the Vatican Council. The Cardinal reacted very strongly; and for
various reasons, including the Abbot General’s unexpected death on the same
evening, the monastery was not closed. The community continued to maintain its
excellent relationship with the local population. If the presence of the monks
of Tibhirine in post-colonial and Muslim Algeria was so important for Cardinal
Duval, it was because they embodied in their way of life the type of Church he
wanted for Algeria.
But the community had become very
small and it was reinforced by several volunteers who came from different
monasteries of the Order. New vocations
also came and one of them was Father Christian de Chergé. He came from a
military family and had spent part of his childhood in Algeria, where his
father was stationed and he learned from his mother how to respect the
religious practices of the Muslims. Later on he served as a young officer in Algeria, during the
independence war, and at some point had his life saved by a Muslim who lost his
own life for saving him. This was a turning point in his life. He became a priest in Paris, but decided
later on to return to Algeria as a monk of Tibhirine. But before going to Tibhirine he spent some
years at the Pontifical Institute for Islamic Studies in Rome, where he
acquired a good knowledge of Islam and a great esteem for its spirituality.
A
few years later Father Christian became the Prior of the community and he established
an ongoing dialogue with a small group of profoundly devout Muslims, especially
a group of Sufis. A dialogue group
called the Ribat es Salam met at the monastery. Tibhirine is well known for that aspect of dialogue, and rightly so, but
there was another more important dialogue that was common to the whole
community, and that existed at Tibhirine even long before Father Christian
came. It was that brotherly cohabitation
-- so important for Cardinal Duval -- the sharing of work and of small material
possessions, the friendship with neighbors, the participation in their
important celebrations, the attention to everyone’s need. Those simple monks were authentic witnesses
to Christian love. And that is the main
aspect of their witness or “martyrdom”. They were “martyrs” (=witnesses) by the way they lived more than by the
manner of their death. The local population, that was composed of simple,
ordinary Muslims, not of radical Islamists, saw them for what they were first
of all a group of men dedicated to God and to prayer, and saw their monastery
as a place of contemplative prayer.
I
knew all of them personally. But there
is one that is particularly dear to me : the medical doctor, Brother Luke (who
is one of the main figure in the film). He was the “heart” of the community,
where he had been for half a century at the time of his death. He was a man who experienced violence all his
life and manifested love all the time. He was born in 1914, at the beginning of the First World War. As a child, therefore, he knew the tragedy of
war and mostly the difficulties and suffering that followed the war. He wanted to serve mankind and therefore he
became a physician. Soon after the end of his medical studies, however he
entered the abbey of Aiguebelle, in France, as a lay brother. Although he had a good intellectual formation
he chose to be a simple laybrother. This was at the beginning of the Second
World War, and he volunteered to go the prison camps in Germany to offer medical
service to the prisoners, and mostly to allow a young father of a family to be
released. He spent the war as a prisoner, tending to the medical need of the
prisoners and even, occasionally, to some German soldiers. When he was freed in
1945 by American soldiers he then returned to his monastery. Soon after, he
volunteered to go to the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria, where he stayed for
the next fifty years, till the time of his death in 1996.
When
Brother Luke arrived at Tibhirine, the community was a small poor community
among a poor population. Actually the village of Tibhirine had developed by the
gathering of an Arab population around the monastery. Brother Luke opened a
dispensary for the neighbors and offered his medical service to everyone. Till
the end of his life he took care of everyone who came, irrespective of
nationality or religion. He was highly respected and loved by everyone. With the passing of time this became true of
the whole community. They were respected and loved by everyone around them,
because they respected and loved everyone. That was the reason why it was possible for the community to stay in
Algeria after the war of independence when the French settlers had to leave and
when the country had become Muslim. Brother Luke was made briefly a hostage during that war of independence,
in the early sixties, but he was rapidly released when he was recognized by
rebels who had been attended by him. Toward the end of Brother Luke’s life,
when there were hospitals and dispensaries in the country, people continued to
come to brother Luke, not only because he was a very good doctor, but also, and
perhaps most of all, in order to receive a word of wisdom.
The Civil war of the ‘90ies
Then,
there was a radical change in the Algerian scene in the early nineties. The population
had become disillusioned with the political party, controlled by the army,
which had led the country for a quarter of a century. At end of 1991 an
Islamist political party, the FIS (Front
Islamique du Salut) won the first round of the legislative elections and
was clearly set to win the second round. The Generals of the Army interrupted the electoral process, imposing a
military dictatorship. Thereupon a long period of extreme violence began in Algeria,
some of which must certainly be attributed to more and more radicalized Islamic
armed groups and some of which must also certainly be attributed to the
counterterrorist techniques of the army. The ordinary people had to choose between those two forms of violence.
Some
in the Church took sides by approving the interruption of the electoral process
as a necessary means to save Algeria from what they saw as the danger of an
Islamic domination and the imposition of the sharia. The monks of
Tibhirine did not choose. They felt they
had to keep a brotherly relationship with everyone, and first of all with the
ordinary people who were themselves hostages in that power struggle. They
wanted to be brothers to everyone including the two main groups in the conflict
– the “brothers of the mountain” as they called the rebel groups and the
“brothers of the plain” as they called the army. That was unforgivable. And they paid for it with their lives.
They
were not the only victims of that violence. Many who believed in peace and worked for peace were killed, Muslim Imams
as well as Christian priests and religious. Many other witnesses to Christian
love gave their lives in that same period. Each one of them was very well integrated into the Arab population and
each one was killed in the place where he/she exercised that concrete love, for
example as a teacher or as a nurse. It
was clear that it was that proximity and that brotherhood that was considered unforgivable
by some. Most of all, we have to be aware that these seven monks were only a
few among 200.000 Algerians who were victims of the same civil war, of the same
mad violence. I find the fact that only the heads of the monks were recovered.
It means that their bodies are somewhere in the ground of Algeria, mixed with
those of all the other victims from which they certainly did not want to be
separated. Our brothers felt that they had to condemn violence from whatever
side it came. A few days before the
kidnapping of the brothers, Father Christian gave a retreat to a group of lay
people in Algeria. In one of his talks
he said that the “Thou shall not kill” applied to everyone, to the army as well
as to the militants. At that moment he
probably signed his death warrant.
Whether
the monks were killed by radical Islamic militants -- what is the official position
of the Algerian government -- or whether they were killed by the Security
Service of the army -- as I am convinced they were -- does not affect in any
way their being authentic “martyrs”. As I mentioned before, they were martyrs
not because of the circumstances of their death, but because of the way they
lived. And, obviously, it was the way
they lived the Gospel that led someone – whoever it was – to get rid of them.
The
last three years of the life of that monastic community of Tibhirine were the
most intense and the most beautiful. The
film Of Gods and Men shows precisely
what the monks lived during those three years, how they related to the local
population, to the army and to the “brothers of the mountain” during that short
period. It shows mostly how the
community was constantly faced with the question: “Should we leave or should we
stay ?” and how they arrived at a consensus in their decision to stay, through
an honest and at times difficult process
of community discernment. One remark is
however necessary. The film shows one
long process of discernment, over a three year period, leading to an achieved
consensus. In reality the brothers went
through that whole process – and that consensus --six or seven times during
that period. Every time some of their
friends were assassinated, or every time a new danger manifested itself, they
did again that discernment process and arrived each time at the same
conclusion.
Why
did they stay? In fidelity to their monastic vocation that implies a vow of
stability; but also because they felt that it was a necessary form of
solidarity with the local Church and mostly with the local population with whom
they had established deep bonds of love and brotherhood – a population that was
threatened as much as they were but did not have the choice to leave. It was also, not only for themselves but also
for the people around them, a way to affirm what Father Christian called the
“right to difference”, that is the right to not to choose between two types of
violence when everyone, on both camps, wanted them to take stands.
I
mentioned a few minutes ago, that most of them had come to Tibhirine as volunteers.
This means that they had received their monastic formation in different
monasteries. Furthermore, each one of them had a particular history before
entering the monastery and all of them were very strong personalities. To make a “community” out of such a bunch of
strong characters seemed humanly impossible. But during those last three years, they became a very strongly united
community. I had the grace of visiting
them just two months before they were kidnapped, precisely with the purpose to
review with them – at their own request -- all their decisions and their journey
of the three preceding years. I can
witness that I never met a community so profoundly united. That community was a ripe fruit.
It
was an authentic Christian community, that is, not a group of people who had chosen
each other, but a group of persons who had chosen the same vocation, or rather
who had all been called to the same mission. Their unity was not reached through human techniques, but through prayer
and attentive discernment of the manifestation of God’s presence in their
life. That discernment included personal
and common prayer, but also honest and at times almost brutal discussion.
(Remember the moment when one of the brothers tells the prior “We have not
elected you to make all the decisions alone”!)
Monastic
life is basically a life of communion. It is first of all a life of communion with God through contemplative
prayer. That communion with God is
expressed in the communion among brothers . If that communion is authentic it
will not be closed on itself but will be open to people outside the
community. The monks of Tibhirine lived
all the aspects of that communion, and it was beautifully expressed in the
“Testament” written by Father Christian, which I mentioned before. If you wish, I would like now to look as a
few of the aspects of that experience of communion through some passages of
that beautiful text.
The Testament of Father
Christian de Chergé
The
text bears two dates: Algiers, 1st December 1993 - Tibhirine, 1st January 1994.
This requires a bit of explanation. On November
30th, 1993, Christian went to Algiers to meet one of the monks who was returning from
France. Since the plane was delayed they
stayed in Algiers for the night. That very day the GIA (Groupe Islamique Armé) had called on all the foreigners to leave
the country or face death. Father Christian wrote the first draft of his
Testament that evening.
Then, on December 15, a group of 14
Croat workers are killed by the Islamists at Tamezguida, a few miles from the
monastery. Most of them were Catholics
and used to come to Mass at the Monastery. Ten days later a large group of
rebels came to the monastery during Christmas night, demanding various things
that the monks refuse to give. After the visit – well described in the film,
the monks had a long discussion about staying or leaving. At first, almost all thought that they should
leave. They gave themselves 24 hours to pray over it. When they gathered again, after those 24
hours of prayer, all had decided to stay. It is after those dramatic events, on
the 1st of January, that Christian put the final touch to his
testament. It was placed in a sealed
envelope sent to his family, and it was opened on Pentecost Day 1996, after his
death. Here is the beginning of the
text:
If it should happen one day... that I
become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the
foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family
to remember that my life was given to God and to this country.
There
are several elements of great significance in that short sentence. Father Christian wants his community, his
Church, his family to remember something. His life has not been a solitary relationship only between him and
God. He is aware of belonging to a
community (my community); to a Church (my Church) and to a natural family (my
family). All those relationships were
very important to him. But more
important was the fact that his life did not belong to him. It had been given. And it had been given not only to God but
also to this country, that is, Algeria. Everything here is very incarnated. He does not own his life; he does not own his
community, his church, his family; he has renounced them; but they remain
important for him. He is, therefore, a
free man, a poor and a pure of heart who can see God.
That
radical detachment was not something done one day once for all, and done
alone. It was a common experience he had
done with the rest of his community. In
their last circular letter to their friends, in December 1995, the brothers of Tibhirine
said, speaking of a possible death: "the violent death of one of
us or of all of us together would be simply the logical consequence of all the
forms of renunciation we have already done: of family, country, community in
order to follow Christ..."
Because
of all these encompassing forms of renunciation, the real community of Father Christian
and of his brothers was made up not only of the twelve monks of Tibhirine and
Fès (which was an annex house of Tibhirine) but also of the members of their
respective families, and of all the Algerian people, whom they loved.
Christian
loves them so much that he cannot desire martyrdom, since this would be to
desire that someone whom he loves should commit a terrible crime against the
God of life.
I don't see, in fact, how I could
rejoice if the people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder. It would be too high a price to pay for what
will be called, perhaps, the "grace of martyrdom", to owe this to an
Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to
what he believes to be Islam.
Someone
who has reached that level of purity of heart is a real contemplative. We must now read the most important section
of Christian's text:
"... my most insistent curiosity
will then be set free. This is what I
shall be able to do, if God wills, immerse my gaze in that of the Father to
contemplate with him His children of Islam as he sees them, all shining with
the glory of Christ, fruit of His Passion, filled with the Gift of the spirit
whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the
likeness, playing with the differences."
In
everything that has been said and written about interreligious dialogue, I
don't think there is anything whatsoever that has reached such a depth. On the one hand there is this contemplative
attitude that wants to see through God's eyes and contemplate all his children
of Islam (we could add: of Buddhism, of Hinduism, of Israel, etc.) as HE – God -- sees them, in all their
shining beauty. On the other hand there
is this beautiful vision of a playful God who takes a secret joy in
establishing communion, refashioning in each one the original likeness (His
likeness), playing with the differences. (The background image of this is
certainly the passage of the book of Genesis where God is described as
fashioning man out of clay, like a child playing in the sand, and breathing
into his nostrils his own breath of life, his own likeness.)
Then,
Father Christian thanks God for his life:
"This life lost, totally mine
and totally theirs, I thank God who seems to have wished it entirely...In this
THANK YOU which is said for everything in my life, from now on, I certainly
include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you, O my friends of this
place..."
Then
comes the most mysterious and most beautiful part of the text. At the beginning of the Testament there was a
kind of sub title which it is almost impossible to translate in any language: "Quand un À Dieu est envisagé" The
French word À Dieu is much stronger than the English equivalent
"Farewell". Then there is a
play with the French word envisagé; which means "envisaged",
contemplated, but can also mean, in the line of thought of Lévinas (whom Father
Christian was reading at that time), en-visagé: that is something that has received
a visage, or has been transformed into a visage.
With
this in mind we can understand the final part of the message, where Christian
speaks to the person who might take his life:
And you too, my last minute friend,
who would not have known what you were doing.. Yes, for you too I say this Thank You and this A Dieu "en visagé de
toi": that is, commending you to the God who has taken a visage in you (or
in whose face I see God).
This
capacity of seeing God's face, God's incarnation, in the person who is slitting
your throat is certainly the fruit of a profound contemplative life lived in
deep relationship with a group of brothers, with a Church and with the whole
human family.
Conclusion
The
community of O.L. of Atlas at Tibhirine was an ordinary small monastic
community, living a life of solitude, prayer, work and silence. When it became dangerous for foreigners and
especially for Christians to stay in Algeria, and when they were all invited to
leave, several people said to the monks: "You should leave. We understand that missionaries want to stay
in order to continue their work of evangelization; but there is no reason for
you to stay here, since you can continue your life of prayer in any other
place. To pray here or to pray elsewhere
is just the same thing." Such a
reasoning did not make any sense to these monks. Because they had lived that life of prayer
for so long together and in that place, not only had they become deeply united
as a community, but they had created deep bonds with the whole local
Church. They had also developed deep
bonds of friendship with the local population, to the point of letting the
local Muslims use a building of the monastery as the village mosche.
And
the story has not stopped with their death. Because of what these very humble and simple monks lived, and because of
the way they died, millions of people, including millions of Algerian Muslims,
have also seen something of God's face in them.
The
great success of the film Of Gods and Men and its reception by people of all nationalities and religions is itself
something extraordinary. It is a witness
to the fact that the values that were at the heart of those simple monks and
that are ºwell conveyed by the film are values that are important for men and
women of all times and all places.
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