FOI Magazine - 36 - a long journey to healing - Michael Lapsley

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A quarterly magazine FOI No.36 - March - April - May 2013 - 5,50€

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VIE Contents

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Editorial: Fr. Laurent FABRE Special report:

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Michael Lapsley 14

Ecumenism

14 • “A rabbi speaks with Jesus”, Jacob Neusner 16 • The Holy and Great Orthodox Council 18 • Prayer

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Christian training

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Young adults

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Community life

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Young talent

20 • Bible: The letter to the Philippians 22 • The year of faith: “Jesus, I have confidence in you.”

24 • Christian radio stations in France: Happy birthday!

26 • The media and evangelisation 28 • “Catho style” - Testimonies

30 • International week: Be united 32 • The demo for everyone: We were there!

34 • News

35 • Marcin Kuczyński, photographer FOI magazine (Fraternité œcuménique Internationale, International Ecumenical Fraternity) is published by the Chemin Neuf Community-10 rue Henri IV-69287 Lyon cedex 02 Publication director: P. Laurent Fabre Executive director: Jean-Charles Paté, Editor in chief: Pascale Paté, Editorial committee: Camille Dacre Wright, Franck Démaret, Marie Farouza Maximos, Pieter Leroux, Fr. François Lestang, Véronique Pilet, Adam Strojny Graphic design: Annick Vermot (06 98 61 98 76), Photo credits: CCN, Michael Lapsley, 2013 African National Congress, Fotolia.com, michaklootwijk, daskleineatelier, piccaya.poco_bw.angelo.gi, Andres Rodriguez, kasiap, herreneck, Eisenhans,, VL@D Subscriptions: Marie-Thérèse Subtil, Nicole Zébrowski, Administration-Management: AME, Production: Sandrine Laroche, Printing: IML - 69850, St Martin en Haut – Printed on paper from sustainably managed forests, certified PEFC, Registration of copyright: December 2010, CPPAP : 0310 G 83338, ISSN : 1770-5436

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FOI • N°36 • March - April - May 2013

Editorial The Promised Land In 2013 the Chemin Neuf Community is going to celebrate its 40th birthday, with a new Pope. When I visited 49 Montée du Chemin Neuf, the first house of the Community, for the first time with my family and friends, it was the day of my ordination at the Cathedral of Lyon, the Archbishopric of all the Gauls, 40 years ago. So, as well as having the joy of celebrating my 40 years of ordination, I am also giving thanks for being a member of this Community for 40 years.

Father Laurent FaBRE Founder and leader of the Chemin Neuf Community

Latterly, I have come to realise that the mid-life crisis really is a trial for certain people. Like any crisis, it can also be the opportunity for growth, for positive steps: there is no growth without a crisis. Must the Chemin Neuf Community go through a mid-life crisis, a crisis of growth? It strikes me the answer is: Why not? If it means we grow in maturity. I should also add that we were warned in a very precise way during the World Youth Day in Madrid. It was the day we were at Guadarrama with 3,000 young people from all over the world and we very clearly received these words which were subsequently confirmed in an astonishing manner, “These people are coming in crowds. Enlarge the space of your tent, lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes, stretch for others the curtain that covers you” (Is 54.2). In other words, mid-life crisis or not, right now our Community is experiencing a time of unexpected growth.

As I write these lines, I find myself in an aeroplane which will soon land in Manila with three Community sisters consecrated to celibacy (Janis, Theresa and Marie); here Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle is handing us the care of a very large student hostel able to accommodate 200-300 students. That is on the right hand side of the world… on the left hand side of the map if you are in France, one sees Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world…and the immense Charterhouse where we accommodated this year a real little village of 25 families in training. We already know that for the next three month Cycle A, in this Aula Dei of Saragossa, we will be welcoming 30 families.

ww

We produce a film every month, translate it into over 20 languages and send to groups in 72 different countries throughout the world. This has created a network of prayer, the International Ecumenical Fraternity.

NET FOR GOD.

Two other very significant events connected to the mass media have also happened to us. As an invitation to the annual youth festival meeting at Hautecombe, the young people of the Community did an imitation of a well-known Korean singer and produced a video-clip which, as they say, created a buzz (cf p16). Already more than 650,000 people have clicked on “Catho Style”. And in the Low Countries, a television programme gathered 5 celebrities for a silent retreat in the very beautiful monastery given to us by the Benedictines (cf p31). This production, which has just appeared on television in 4 episodes, has already attracted audiences of 400,000. Since the day after the screening of the programme, we have had around 20 requests for retreats.

We have another challenge.

Situated between East and West, in the heart of Switzerland, we are going to organise, with others, a Conference on a theme of such importance to the Church: Baptism in the Holy Spirit. We already have 300 bookings! In short, the Lord had given us ample warning, it is time to strengthen our tent pegs and widen the space of our tent.

The mid-life crisis is also for many people a moment to reflect on their decline… towards life’s end. After 40 years of walking in the desert for the People, there is in fact the joyful perspective of the Promise land.

The day we were installed in the church of St. Christine of Kinshasa, a large crowd was welcomed by our brother Fr Bernardin in the presence of his bishop. A lay leader of that church told how, for 40 years, they had been longing for the arrival of a priest. With joy he added: “We are now at the end of 40 years in the desert, at last the people can enter the Promised Land”: and it is true that this poor parish in Kinshasa really is beautiful and full of life.

Father Laurent Fabre

FOI • N°36 • March - April - May 2013

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THE FILM

Michael Lapsley: A long journey towards healing

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A LITTLE HISTORY

South Africa

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TO GO FURTHER

Books, films, music

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FOI • N°36 • March - April - May 2013

special report

A long JOURNEY TO HEALING

Michael Lapsley

Today, with Net for God, we will follow in the footsteps of a witness for peace, Father Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest from ‘The Society of the Sacred Mission.’ Born in New Zealand, he was sent to South Africa in 1973 straight after his ordination to continue his studies and to act as chaplain to the students on several university campuses.

He was 24. It was here that he joined the growing struggle against apartheid.

This political regime rejected all civic, economic, and social equality between coloured and white people.

During this struggle, he became a victim of an assassination attempt in 1990, which led to the loss of both his hands and the vision in his right eye. In 2011, he told the story of his journey towards inner healing in the book Redeeming the Past: My Journey from Freedom Fighter to Healer.* * Michael Lapsley, Redeeming the Past. My Journey from Freedom Fighter to Healer, Hardcover, 2012.

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Fr. Michael Lapsley

A long journey towards HEALING Fr. Michael Lapsley: I never imagined that my life would somehow become tied with the journey of the people of South Africa. I joined a religious order to become a priest.

Among my formative influences was the example of my parents and the local church in terms of welcoming people of different races. So early on, I had a non-racial vision connected to my understanding of what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

One of South Africa’s great leaders, Chief Luthuli, once said, “Those who think of themselves as victims eventually become the victimizers of others.” And so, one of the challenges of history is to know how do we break the chain that turns victims into victimizers.

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That prepared me, in one sense, for South Africa but I suppose that when I arrived ithere, I thought that I was going to find three groups of people the oppressed, the oppressor and the human race that I would belong to.

And in a way, the rude discovery was that one there were only two groups, the oppressed and the oppressor. I often say that the day I arrived in South Africa, I stopped being a human being and became a white man, because suddenly, every single aspect of my life was decided by the colour of my skin. I went to a building to sort out my student visa and the building had two lifts or two elevators. One elevator said ‘whites only.’

“...: there were only two groups, the oppressed and the oppressors, and the colour of my skin defined to which group I belonged.”

The other elevator said ‘goods or parcels and non-whites,’ and that image has stayed with me through the years because it somehow symbolized what apartheid was about. The ‘we’ who were white were people, and black people who of course are the majority, were like objects, parcels, things, goods about whom we made decisions.

At the heart of the apartheid nightmare was that all political power was in the hands of the white minority. If I can use the figures of today, white people were about 5 million; black people were about 40 million. But we, who were white, were the only ones who had the vote. Even the last white constitution of the apartheid state had in its preface, ‘guided by God from generation to generation.’

special report Net for God: On the 16th June 1976, 20,000 students met in Soweto, a suburb of Johannesburg for a large peaceful demonstration, to say ‘no’ to speaking the Afrikaans language of the white people.

Michael Lapsley, Chaplain at the Durban University Campus

Net for God: Father Michael worked in Durban, on the east coast, as chaplain in three universities, where he met and gave spiritual training to young students of all races.

Fr. Michael Lapsley: I was a priest and a student on a white campus. I was also the chaplain of two black university campuses.

This was a very privileged situation.

One day I said to a black medical student, “I don’t believe in apartheid”. ”He retorted, “Father, that’s very nice. Where are you going to sleep tonight?” Of course, I was going back to my white suburb.

But in the face of the huge number of people marching, the police very rapidly began to fire into the crowd.

575 people died, among whom were many children. The fatal violence of that Wednesday 16th June would spread throughout the whole country.

Soweto became the epicentre of a racial movement that would never be extinguished.

Fr. Michael Lapsley : Once the events of ’76 happened, there were thousands of young black people imprisoned, detained, tortured, killed.

Thousands and thousands left South Africa and went into exile, some of whom were looking for military training, some of whom were looking for education that they had been denied inside the country.

And the thing that shook my faith to its roots was the recognition that those who shot children were people who read the Bible everyday, people

who went to church on Sunday... and shot kids! And I, myself had been a very committed pacifist up until that moment and I had believed that you could always get justice, in any and every situation, by non-violent means. But it was in the face of the killing of children specifically that my pacifism fell apart. So in that sense, I became like most mainstream Christians, who are not pacifists, who are committed to peace, but believe that there can be exceptional circumstances where the use of arms can be justified. And so in that sense I then joined the African National Congress of South Africa - the organization of Nelson Mandela - and became a chaplain, a pastor priest within the Liberation movement.

Net for God: The ANC, the African National Congress, had been fighting for the promotion of civil rights for black people since 1912. But in 1961, confronted with the failure of a strategy that had been non-violent so far, Nelson Mandela created a military branch which led the movement into armed struggle.

Arrested and imprisoned for life on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela became the international symbol of the struggle against apartheid.

So, I could choose to be against apartheid but I was choosing to be against it from the side of those who were its beneficiaries. I had a lot of acquaintances when I arrived, but no idea of what life would be like inside this racist society.

My engagement was something that happened over time.

But the events of 1976 were a turning point for me and my generation because it was in 1976 that black school children protested against having to learn their lessons in Afrikaans which was seen as a language of oppression.

1976: The demonstration by students in the streets of Soweto against the introduction of the teaching of the Afrikaans language in their schools.

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South Africa ...

Inhabited by many peoples for long centuries, South Africa was discovered by the Dutch at the end of the XVth century. Colonisation began in 1652.

From the XVIIth to the XIX th centuries: THE “WARS OF RESISTANCE”

The Africans resisted the colonists, first the Dutch, then the English, who seized their lands.

By the middle of the XIXth century, the Africans had been pushed into half a dozen small enclaves in the middle of a territory that had been taken over by the Boers (descendants of the colonists known as Afrikaners) and the British.

Two parts of South Africa were then governed by the Boers and two other parts by the British.

In 1899 war broke out between the Boers and the British.

This let, in 1902 to the defeat of the Boers, but also to the present map of South Africa.

1910-1948: THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA

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In 1910, a British Liberal government united the four colonies to form a sovereign state, the Union of South Africa, a dominion in the British Commonwealth, with its own parliament and government.

Until 1948, all the prime ministers would be Boer Generals.

Racist laws followed one another from 1910, as also did resistance to them. In 1912, the African National council (ANC) was founded.

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a little history

1948: INTRODUCTION OF APARTHEID In 1948 the pro-English government was swept out of power by the Afrikaner National Party, which had campaigned on the ”black peril”.

Instead of integrating the Africans into society, apartheid was imposed: physical separation of the Blacks, forced expulsion from towns and cities, prohibitions of mixed marriages...

This party remained in power until 1994, the year of the first democratic elections.

Between 1912 and 1960, the African National Congress led a nonviolent resistance, but successive South African regimes became increasingly repressive, and the Africans saw their rights continuously diminishing.

1960 : CREATION OF THE ARMED BRANCH OF THE A.N.C.

After a large massacre in Sharpeville in1960, Nelson Mandela set up an illegal armed branch of the A.N.C., in the hope that by means of an armed struggle, it would be possible to attain the objectives that years of pacific struggle had failed to achieve.

N. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and, together with some of the other leaders, was found guilty of some minor political acts. But then the authorities discovered the existence of the armed branch and a new trial took place.

Out of fear of the reaction of the international community, the detainees were not sentenced to death

but to life imprisonment in the prison on Robben Island.

The struggle against apartheid intensified between 1973 and 1990 both within the country (strikes, uprisings, demonstrations by African youth as at Soweto in 1976) and outside (boycotts) making the country ungovernable and putting pressure on the government to release Nelson Mandela after 27 years of detention.

11 February 1990 : LIBERATION OF NELSON MANDELA

In August 1990, the A.N.C. renounced the armed struggle.

Nelson Mandela took over the presidency of the A.N.C., once again pronounced legal, and entered into negotiations with F de Klerk, the president of South Africa. apartheid was abolished on 30 june 1991.

special report FR. Michael Lapsley: I often think of an interview with the president of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, who was asked about the armed struggle and his voice reduces to a whisper and he says, “They forced us into it.” And when you read your history, you can find some parallel with any western country in the sense that it was fifty years of non-violence, on the part of the people, before they came to the reluctant conclusion that they had to pick up arms.

But during those fifty years, more and more violence had been used against the people.

In 1993, Mandela and De Klerk jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize. On 27 April 1994, in spite of violent incidents throughout the country, the first democratic multiracial elections took place.

THE A.N.C. won with 62% of the votes. On 9 May 1994, Nelson Mandela became the first postapartheid president of South Africa.

In 1999, the ageing Mandela retired and passed the torch on to Thabo Mbeki, who would be reelected in 2004.

The football World Cup 2010 was organised in South Africa, a symbol of a new stage in the international order.

But also the language which people use mystified the reality. So for example, when the state used violence against the people, it was called “the defence of law and order.” When the people picked up arms, it was called “violence and terrorism.” So the very words obscured the reality of what was actually happening.

But I believe that whenever people pick up arms, however justified it may be, there’s a moral cost to be paid, a moral injury that is done. As human beings, we are not hard-wired to kill each other. We are made to live together in peace and harmony as sisters and brothers.

Net for God: Father Michael, now appointed the national chaplain for Anglican students, publicly denounced the injustice of apartheid, the abusive arrests and the use of torture.

The regime then expelled him from the country. With the agreement with his community, in September 1976, he went to Lesotho and then to Zimbabwe.

Fr. Michael Lapsley : In Lesotho, I was a chaplain in the liberation movement. There were three aspects to my work. One was educational. I was involved in helping young refugees, young exiles, with their education from the kindergarten to the university. I was also a pastor; I was there for people when there were marriages, when there were new births, and of course, in a war situa-

tion, I would speak in the cemetery.

We lived through so many deaths, so many massacres.

Net for God: He was thus forced to live outside South Africa for the next 16 years, whilst still exercising his work as a pastor and continuing in his fight against Apartheid as a part of the ANC. And from there he travelled round the world to make known the issues of justice and truth in that nation.

Fr. Michael Lapsley : It was the work of seeking to mobilize the faith community internationally, to assist the faith community to see that, at stake in South Africa was the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But I believe that whenever people take up arms, however justified it may be, there’s a moral price to be paid, a moral injury that is done.

Because either apartheid was true the most important thing in apartheid is the colour of our skin, or the gospel is true - that we are all made in God’s image and likeness. But both couldn’t be true.

So that was my theological work.

But also I was involved in “de-legitimizing”, unmasking the claim of the apartheid regime to be Christian. Now when I went to live in Zimbabwe, at one point the Zimbabwe authorities came to me and they said, “We have information that you are on a South African government hit list”.

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And for several years in Zimbabwe, I lived with armed police guards twenty-four hours a day. It was my theology that was a threat to the apartheid state. And I was saying across the world, “Apartheid is an option for death, carried out in the name of the gospel of life.” And in a way then, by seeking to kill me they illustrated my point.

And it was in April of 1990, three months after Nelson Mandela had been released from prison, that I received a letter bomb in the post from “the apartheid state”.

Net for God: It was on the 28th of April 1990, at his home in Zimbabwe, that, while opening a package containing two religious magazines, a bomb exploded in his hands. Father Michael lost both of his hands and the vision in his right eye, and his eardrums were shattered.

Fr. Michael Lapsley : And yet somehow, I felt that God was present with me in that experience.

I also felt that Mary, who watched her son being crucified, understood

what it was that I was going through.

People sent messages of prayer, love, support - people of faith, people of good will from across the globe. And for the first four months, I was as helpless as a newborn baby. And step by step, I had to begin to rebuild my life.

« And for the first four months, I was as helpless as a newborn baby.

And step by step, I had to begin to rebuild my life. » Coming to terms with the permanent character of my disability, I remember having seen an icon. And the icon showed Jesus with one leg shorter than the other. which is the opposite of traditional iconography, or perhaps it is just in western art that Jesus is depicted as a perfect white man. So it pictured the Messiah as disfigured.

And that picked up the image from Isaiah about the Suffering Servant

being disfigured - “marred beyond human semblance.” And for me, that was spiritually helpful as I came to terms with the fact that physical brokenness, in some respects, was going to be the story of the rest of my life.

I think that the prayer, love, and support saved me from hatred, from bitterness and from the desire for revenge. If something horrible is done to us, we are victims. If we survive physically, we are survivors. But often people remain prisoners of the things that leave a mark on their lives.

And so with God’s help, through the prayer, and love and support of so many people, I was able to take the next step to become victorious, victorious in the sense of being able to continue to help create the world of my dreams, a gentler world, better and more just.

Net for God: After a long convalescence in Australia, he returned to Zimbabwe in 1991. It was no longer possible for him to take charge of the parish in Bulawayo, which he had accepted just before the attack.

uw After the letter bomb, what is it that helped you to choose life? « After the letter bomb, I went back to the faith I had as a young child, to a simple total dependence on God. As I had joined a religious order at the age of seventeen, I had become steeped in the psalms. These psalms which had consoled people of faith for four thousand years, which speak of our confidence in God; these psalms were the source of my strength. But God’s help also came to me through the people who had supported me and through all those messages that I received from all over the world. The week before the bomb, I had been in Canada to speak to pupils in some schools. After I had received that bomb, what had happened to me was explained to the students, and they asked, “What can we do?” They decided to do some paintings. Each child did a painting and they were sent from Canada to my hospital in Harare. I also received paintings from school children in Australia who had never met me but who had heard about what had happened. I was surrounded by children’s paintings. Just for a second, I had the thought that it would be better if I died, then I looked at those children’s paintings and I said to myself, “Look, you are being prayed for, you are loved, you are being supported. Why feel sorry for yourself?”

This was an important stage in my recovery. »

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special report Peace and reconciliation The creation of the commission for truth and reconciliation which was set up in 1993 doubtlessly contributed to the prevention of a blood bath in South Africa after it had been freed from apartheid. The personality of the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Desmond Tutu, is clearly closely involved in the success of this experience of amnesty.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Fr. Michael Lapsley.

However, from 1990, the dawn of a new era seemed to be breaking in South Africa with peace talks under-way between Nelson Mandela and Frederik De Klerk, who became president of South Africa in 1989.

Convinced that he had a role to play in the healing of the nation, Michael decided to return to the land that he hadn’t seen since 1976, even though it seemed like a crazy decision. In trying to re-establish his personal contacts, he met Desmond Tutu, the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town in the south of the country. Archbishop Tutu gave him his support and allowed him to exercise his ministry in the diocese, and in 1993 to become the chaplain at the Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and Torture.

Fr. Michael Lapsley: When Nelson Mandela became the first democratic president of South Africa, it was almost unbelievable that we could be witnessing this.

We were living in this historic time that generation after generation had longed for, for which they had fought and died. And now it had finally arrived. We were part of this extraordinary moment of transition from the nightmare of apartheid to the beginnings of a democratic state.

And in some ways, my own journey is a mirror, in its own tiny way, of the South African journey. There was the period where we had to fight to slay the monster. But now it was a different time. It was now the time for reconciliation, for healing, for rebuilding. We had a Truth and Reconciliation commission led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and that commission gave us a giant head start in facing our woundedness.

Net for God: For more than four years, at the hearings organised by the commission, thousands of those guilty revealed the crimes that they had committed in the name of apartheid and obtained the forgiveness of the nation; and many victims came to forgive.

By exchanging “truth” for “reconciliation,” South Africa, little by little, freed itself from apartheid and avoided a blood bath.

Fr. Michael Lapsley : In my case, no one has taken responsibility for what happened to me, so I haven’t forgiven anyone for what happened to me. I’ve said, “I am not full of hatred, I am not bitter, I don’t want revenge.”

“I maintain that there is another form of justice, a re-constructive justice, which was the basis of traditional African jurisprudence. In that context, the objective sought is not punishment; In line with the concept of Ubuntu, the primary concern is reparation of the harm done, the re-establishment of stability, the restoration of disrupted relationships, the rehabilitation of victims but also of the culprits, who must be given the chance to become reintegrated into the community to which their offence or crime caused harm.”

Desmond Tutu, No future without forgiveness, Random House, 2000

Recommended reading...

Jacques DERRIDA, « Le siècle et le pardon », interview in Le Monde des débats, Dec 1999. The philosopher J. Derrida gives a review of his reflections on the theme of forgiveness and repentance. Where does the concept of forgiveness come from? Is it universal, present in all cultures? Does it have significance in legal or political situations? Questions such as these were raised by J Derrida in his seminar and about which the interview in Le Monde des debats presents a lively and accurate overview.

Republished as an appendix to Foi et savoir, J. Derrida, Points/seuil, 2000, « Le siècle et le pardon » is available free of charge on the internet.

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But that doesn’t mean that my healing journey hasn’t started. I have been travelling my healing journey all through those years but of course there’s still unfinished business.

But perhaps, one day, someone will knock on my door and say, “I sent you that bomb. Will you forgive me?” What will I say? “Yes?” “No?” “Not yet?” Perhaps I will say to that person, “Excuse me Sir, do you still make letter bombs?” And he says, “No, no, no. Actually, I work in the local hospital. Will you forgive me?”

“Yes Sir, I forgive you. And I would prefer you spend the next 50 years working in that hospital rather than being locked up in prison.” Because I believe a thousand times more in the justice of reparation than the justice of punishment.”

So often when we say justice we mean punishment, if not revenge. There is another kind of justice, the justice of restoring relationships. But then having said, “I forgive you,” perhaps we would then sit down and drink tea together and I would say to my new friend “Well Sir, I’ve forgiven you but I

still have no hands; my eardrums are still shattered; I still only have one eye; I will always need someone to help me for the rest of my life.

Of course you will help pay for that person, not as a condition of forgiveness, but as part of reparation and restitution in a way that are possible.”

Net for God: In 1998, in Cape Town, strengthened by his own experience and aware that millions of other people had suffered terribly, Michael Lapsley established the “Institute for the Healing of Memories.”

He provided the space for the victims, as well as perpetrators, of violence, so that they could tell their stories in “expression workshops” in order to overcome their trauma. Today, Father Michael travels the world to promote this work of healing.

Fr. Michael Lapsley: We need, as a generation, to face the wounds of the past. We need to be able to speak about our pain. I remember a particular woman who came to a workshop. And, it sounds a horrible thing to say, but what I

“God’s invitation to us: continue to recognise, to admit to the injuries that we have inflicted on one another, but that these wounds have stopped bleeding.”

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recall is I noticed the ugliness of her face. And she told the story of her son who had been killed fifteen years previously, but as she told the story it was like he was killed five minutes ago. So her life had stood still for fifteen years. And at one point in the workshop, I said to her, “What kind of life do you think your son would have wished for you?” And in the process of the workshop, she didn’t start to forget him, but she began to let him rest and began to see that her life needed to continue. And on the last day of the workshop, I could have walked straight past her because the lines of her face had changed; she had become radiant.

There is a story in the gospel of John; the story of Saint Thomas, Thomas the doubter. And you remember the story that the disciples are in the upper room; the doors are locked, Thomas is present, and the risen Christ appears. He says to Thomas, “Put your hands where the marks of the nails were; put your hands in my side.” And Scripture says that Thomas says, “My Lord and My God.” So one of the things we see in that story, is that the risen Christ was also the crucified Christ. The wounds were still visible, but the wounds were not bleeding. And I believe that tells us something about God’s invitation to us, which is that we should continue to recognize, acknowledge the woundedness of what we have done to each other, but that the wounds have to stop bleeding.

And that’s what happens when healing takes place. If you like, it’s the invitation as individuals, as communities and nations, not to be ‘Good Friday’ people who continue to crucify each other but to be ‘Easter Day’ people, who rise to new life, when yet the wounds are visible. So, my wounds, they are visible, they are dramatic, but they are not bleeding.

special report TO GO FURTHER Bibliography DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE, A Rainbow in the Night: The Tumultuous Birth of South Africa, De Capo Press 2009, (Original in French, entitled Un arc-en-ciel dans la nuit).

After India, Dominique Lapierre explores South Africa and provides us with a historic saga whose heroes are Nelson Mandela, Dr Christian Barnard, and Helen Lieberman, a South African Mother Theresa.

ANDRE BRINK, A Dry White Season, This has been translated into many languages.

Ben Du Toit is a history and geography teacher in Johannesburg; in that same school, Gordon Ngubene is a black South African who like all black people at the time can only have low grade work; from time to time, he works for Ben. A film version of this book was produced in 1989, “A Dry White Season,” directed by Euzhan Palcy, starring Donald Sutherland as Ben Du Toit and Marlon Brando as the lawyer who represented the black family.

NELSON MANDELA, A Long Walk to Freedom, Started in 1974 in the prison on Robben Island, these memoirs were finished by Nelson Mandela after his release in 1990, from twenty seven years of detention. A major chronicle of one of the great upheavals of the late XXth century, this book is also a testimony of an exemplary struggle for human dignity.

Discography Johnny CLEGG , Johnny Clegg and Savuka. (born 1953) The “White Zulu”.

Apart from his talent as a musician and a dancer, Johnny Clegg is the first pop-star from the white world of show business to have at the same time highlighted the cultural message of the blacks, in particular the Zulus.

Anthology, In my African Deam, Shadow Man, Beautiful World, Third World Child.

Myriam Makeba (1932-2008), nicknamed “Mama Africa”.

An exceptional African singer whose crystalline voice doggedly pursued the struggle against racism and apartheid.

Numerous albums: Mama Africa, Homeland, The Click Song, Welela.

Films Invictus (2010),

directed by Clint Eastwood, with Morgan Freeman.

This film is set during the Rugby World Cup finals which took place in South Africa in 1995, and shows the way in which Mandela acted to defuse the racial tensions.

Good bye, Bafana,(2007), directed by Billie AUGUST, with Joseph Fiennes, Dennis Havsbert and Diane Kruger

The life of James Gregory, a white South African prison warder who was responsible for guarding Nelson Mandela from his imprisonment in the 1960s until his liberation in 1990.

Gregory was in charge of Mandela day after day for 25 years. He was his jailer, his censor, but also his confidant on Robben Island then Pollsmoor, and finally Victor Verster, from where he was freed in 1990.

Mandela and de Klerk (1997),

directed by J.Sargent, with Sydney Poitier and Michael Caine.

Recounts the freeing of Mandela who is played by Sydney Poitier.

Cry Freedom, (1988) directed by Richard Attenborough, with Kevin Kline, Penelope Wilton, Denzel Washington

In South Africa in 1975, the white journalist Donald Woods becomes befriended with Stephen Biko, the leader of the extremist “Black Consciousness” movement, whom he encountered in the course of his work as a reporter.

Becoming more and more close, Woods is a witness to acts of violence by the police against the black community and becomes more and more involved in the struggle against apartheid... up to the arrest of Biko and his death under conditions which the authorities try to cover up...

Did you know that John Ronald Reuel TOLKIEN was born in South Africa?

The author of the Lord of the Rings was born in Bloemfontein in 1892.

Admittedly, he moved to England at the age of six. But doubtlessly TOLKIEN'S imagination was fed by the countryside of his childhood.

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Judaism and Christianity

A Rabbi speaks with Jesus If the visible Unity of Christians that we desire could be compared to a tree with its boughs and its multiple branching, what would its unseen part, its roots be like?

Conversely, what would be the substance and the fate of a tree with no connection to its roots? That is to say that Christian Unity could not live, know itself and spread in ignorance of the Israel of God!

Noémie MEGUERDITCHIAN,

Armenian Evangelical Church, CCN

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After centuries of separation and persecution, an unheard-of rapprochement is in the process of being achieved with the Jewish people, especially since Vatican II. In this rapprochement, it is often Christians who are coming closer to their Jewish brothers and sisters – they are discovering the richness of a living tradition which throws astonishing light on the Gospel and the life of Jesus with a new and joyful understanding and intensity.

Conversely, it is still not so often that Jews seek out Christians, wanting to know their Christ better. Jacob Neusner takes exactly that approach in his book A Rabbi Speaks with Jesus1. The book is not recent. Benedict XVI refers it in his work Jesus of Nazareth as “by far the most important work for dialogue between Jews and Christians published in these recent years.”

In his study of the Sermon on the Mount, Benedict XVI refers to the book by the “great erudite Jew”. Among the numerous interpretations of the Sermon that he knows, it is, he says, the book by this believing Jew which “opened his eyes (…) to the greatness of Jesus and the decision which the Gospel places before us.”

But before that, Jacob Neusner explains at length the meaning of this step; why and how did it come about that he is interested in Jesus? The tenor and motive here are particularly enlightening for every true dialogue, insofar as they are situated at the deepest level of what is a meeting in truth and of the daring needed to take this risk, “Why did I write this book?

Because I like Christians, I respect Christianity and I want to take seriously the faith of people whom I appreciate (…) I would like to pay homage to those who have ordered their life according to the teachings of Jesus.”

In A Rabbi Speaks with Jesus, Jacob Neusner imagines himself as a rabbi; nourished by the Torah, he mingles with the crowd of onlookers (obviously Jews) who are listening to Jesus’ teaching at the foot of the mountain, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. On the common basis of the Torah taught by God to Moses on Mt Sinai, he enters into an extremely respectful and rigorous dialogue with Jesus.

Jacob Neusner owes his vocation as a teacher of Judaism to Protestant and Catholic professors who appreciated him and who opened to him every facility to introduce Judaism into their University setting. Friendship and gratitude do not prevent him from entering into a respectful dialogue (but without complacency) – he pushes the debate right to the limit of the questions he

“On the common basis of the Torah taught by God to Moses on Mt Sinai, he enters into an extremely respectful and rigorous dialogue with Jesus.”

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The Sea of Galilee seen from the Mount of the Beatitudes

brings with regard to the Torah. This way of discussion is found in Jewish tradition since the beginning and bears the mark of a profound reflection.

The God of the Torah “is a God who is waiting for you to discuss with Him (…)

In my religion, discussion constitutes a sort of religious service, as much as prayer is (…) I don’t think a non-Christian can render the one whom Christians know as Christ a more sincere homage than to offer a good and solid discussion.”

Listening to Jesus in the light of the Old Testament and rabbinical traditions, J. Neusner finds numerous points which are familiar to him. Jesus said that he came not to abolish but to fulfil the Torah; his teachings show that the demands of the Torah are more profound than was understood till then.

He is impressed, touched by the greatness and the truth of these words, and, at the same time, he comes up against a radical incompatibility which torments him at different levels: m Who is the one who speaks like this: “It was said to your ancestors (…) but I say to you…”? “It was said” refers back to what God spoke to Moses on Sinai.

“Here is a master of the Torah who says in his own name what God revealed on Sinai (…) But what type of Torah is this which adds to the teachings of the Torah without recognising its source” which is God? For Neusner it is not so much the teachings of Jesus which are the question, but Jesus himself, who speaks in place of the Torah, the place which belongs to God alone. “Is your master God?” Rabbi Neusner asks Jesus’ disciples, “for I

now realise that only God can demand what Jesus requires.” m Another point disconcerts Neusner: it appears definitively that Jesus, across the majority of his sayings, does not address himself to Israel as a people, “all Israel”, but to persons taken individually or in groups of disciples. This is insupportable since Israel, born from Sinai, is above all a people, a nation, a society, “a kingdom of priests and a holy people.” “I would like to hear a message which is not for me alone, for my life and my family – but for us all, eternal Israel, which was at the foot of Sinai.” m Moreover in his teaching, not only does Jesus not address himself to Israel as a people, but he goes so far as to burst what holds them together: the honour due to father and mother, and the observance of the Sabbath. He directly contradicts the Torah, leading to the breaking of several of its commandments.

Finally Neusner leaves Jesus “without disappointment but not without regret.”

Confronted through the message of Jesus by the mystery of the equivalence between Jesus and God, which fills him with admiration and with fright, he refuses to follow Jesus and chooses faithfulness to “eternal Israel.”

We started these lines by evoking the indispensable taking into account of the Jewish tradition and people in our march towards Unity.

This could allow us to suppose that Unity must be lived with our Jewish brothers and sisters, and that in this way the tree would be reconnected with its roots!

Through Neusner’s discussion, we understand that Jewish faith and Christian

faith are two quite distinct paths whose premises are quite different. At the same time, through this way of dialoguing, what astonishing opening are we not called to? An opening to an encounter with a misunderstood elder brother – rich in new promises, which dislodges us from our closed representations of Unity?

In presenting Neusner’s ‘step’ a little earlier, I did not indicate his goal, which I was keeping for the end! “My goal is to help Christians to become better Christians (…) and to help Jews become better Jews (…) I will be proud if Christian readers answer, ‘Yes, we have considered the questions you have raised, we thought about them and discussed them with you in our mind, and we confess Jesus Christ with a faith stronger than ever.’”

In fact, Neusner’s book allows us to enter more deeply into the mystery of the divinity of Jesus through the Jewish roots of his message. All the words we know so well, the familiar presence of Jesus throughout the Gospel, are rendered to us from the first day with a gripping newness.

The object of our faith finds a new depth and an unsuspected freshness which makes us burn with the desire to follow Christ and to know Him in everything we discover about Him. v 1- Jacob Neusner, A Rabbi Speaks with Jesus, McGillQueen’s University Press, 2001 (originally published 1993).

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The Holy and Great Pan-Orthodox Council

Between History and Modern Times From 18th to 20th October, a meeting held in Paris dealt with preparations for the Holy and Great Orthodox Council, whose convening was announced at the first Pan-Orthodox Conference at Rhodes in 1961. Among those present was Noel Ruffieux, a Swiss Orthodox lay-person who has served his Church and worked towards ecumenism for many years. This is his view of the challenges faced by the long-awaited council.

Noël Ruffieux, President of

the Ecumenical Commission for the Fribourg Region (Switzerland).

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People have been talking about a General Council of the Orthodox Church for a hundred years, and it has been in preparation for fifty; it has been so long some people are doubting that it will happen!

At the heart of the problem is a paradox: The Church’s conciliar structure makes the organisation of the conciliar process more difficult.

Conciliarity is the basis of Orthodox Church life. An expression of the fellowship of the people of God, it is in tension, either positive or negative, with the Primacy.

The Church is based on the Eucharistic Assembly united around the Bishop.

The local Church comes first, as it is there that salvation through Christ is celebrated, offered and experienced.

But the local Church, fed by the Eucharistic experience, will never be self-sufficient. She has to live in community with other local Churches. We move from local Churches, (plural), to one universal, eternal and worldwide Church of Christ. Hence another tension which is often difficult to manage between autonomous, region-based churches and national Patriarchs.

Conciliarity takes place firstly in the celebration of the Eucharist, and fraternal fellowship within the community. This is where the Orthodox Christian resolves tensions peacefully. The Council is the celebration of this community, open to all members of the Church, and the expression of the authority conferred

by Christ on His apostles, and to the bishops, their successors.

So, why have the Orthodox Churches found it so hard to convene a General Council, or to be the Church, united in the Body of the Lord ?

The answer lies in history, with its spirit of division and self-interest. Following the fall of Constantinople in 1453, most of the Orthodox Churches had to fight for their survival under the Ottoman Empire. The Russian Orthodox Church, which had suffered less under Islam, was oppressed after 1700 by the autocracy of t he tsars, then, as were other Orthodox Churches, under the Soviet régime.

This «Babylonian captivity» isolated national Churches one from another.

“In the XIXth Century, (...)

Isolated churches looked to a strong identification with the people and the nationstate to bind them together.”

In the XIXth Century, when Orthodox countries were freed from the Ottomans, Orthodoxy became the unifying force which united nations infused with a new national spirit; Isolated churches looked to a strong identification with the people and the nation-state to bind them together. In 1872, Orthodox Primates, meeting in Constantinople, vigorously condemned this nationalistic tendency,

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The prophetic words of the Patriarch Athenagoras 1st

Preparations for the Holy and Great Pan-Orthodox Council, held at St. Serge, Paris on 18 October, 2012.

called phyletism or church tribalism.

At the end of the XXth Century, when Russia freed itself from communism, the Church appeared again as a force for national unity, and suffered the same temptation. Phyletism has contaminated several national Churches, and has clouded their communications. A kind of religious autism has interfered with dialogue. This is the first and most serious challenge faced by the future Council, and the main stumbling-block in its path.

The second challenge is the expectations of the world which any Church has to meet if it is to present to the world the Word of God who has come to enlighten all humanity. During the last 50 years, a list of council themes has been drawn up, an enormous number of learned documents produced.

But the Church has been overtaken by events. The world has moved on, the interaction between civilisations has taken a different form, which has created new problems. The context in which the Church exists has radically changed. How do we communicate with this new world?

Above all, the question of meaning: What to say to the world? What message of salvation can we offer it?

A third challenge is the problem of the Orthodox diaspora, scattered over the whole world. This crucial theme raises several questions at the same time; communion between Orthodox Churches, meeting the modern world, working towards unity with other Christian Churches. We can only meet the challenge of the diaspora by bringing

Church practices and the ecclesiological doctrine of communion into agreement.

A fourth challenge is the participation of the faithful in the work of the Council, before, during and after its meeting. «The people of the Church are the guardians of the faith» declared the Orthodox Primates in 1848.

Now, at the present, the laity – and even the priests - have been kept at a distance, not deliberately but through oversight. The Council has been taken over by bishops, theologians, canon law specialists. Information has been incomplete, debate non-existent. Since 1972, initiatives have been taken, approaches suggested to create a genuine movement of the people of God towards involvement in the Council, without which it cannot survive, succeed or be accepted.

This global challenge is considerable, the kind which should be met with enthusiasm, rather than fear and caution.

It is the ‘kairos,’ the opportune time, to act for the Lord. «You know the time (kairos) in which we are living. It is the moment to wake from sleep». (Romans, 13, v. 11).

The challenge goes way beyond the Orthodox Churches, it concerns Churches worldwide. When the Patriarch of Constantinople first had the idea of a General Council, at the beginning of the XXth Century, he suggested a perspective which should inspire the Orthodox: the way to Orthodox unity is inseparable from to the movement of all Christian Churches towards the unity of the Body of Christ. v

(1886-1972), The Patriarch Athenagoras 1st, (1886-1972), ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 1948 to 1972, founder and great visionary of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, made a prophecy which is still relevant in the light of the current preparations. «As long ago as 1951, in an encyclical addressed to all sister Churches, the Patriarch had expressed his wish to convene a General Council.» 1 It was not until 24th September to 1st October 1961 that the first pan-Orthodox conference was held at Rhodes. «This is the first time for a very long while», said the final communiqué, «that the Orthodox Church has come together in a conference which demonstrates its fullness so completely.»

As Olivier Clement commented in his book «Conversations with Patriarch Athenagoras», one of the successes of Rhodes is that it expressed unity and diversity, respect for traditional structures as well as today’s strengths, in the exercise of a primacy which is based not on power but on service, a centre of unity and harmony».

1 - Dialogues with Patriarch Athenagoras, Fayard, 1969

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Prayer

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We magnify you, Light of the world!

Risen Christ!

We magnify you, Light of the world!

You are risen indeed!

This is the night when, for your people/you worked such wonders: For them you opened up the sea/and set up the column of fire.

It is the night which saves from evil/ those who put their faith in Christ.

This night, which leads them to grace,/unites them with the assembly of the saints.

This is the night when Christ/broke the bonds of death.

Raised victorious from hell/he drew the Universe to himself.

O night of true happiness for us/when Christ rose from hell You shine like the day/you are light for our joy This night which makes holy/restores us to innocence and joy, Drives away all evil-doing and hatred/and makes us desire unity, Night when a light rises/which spreads and multiplies, Like an evening sacrifice/which the Church offers through our hands.

Also we pray to you Lord/that through the night unceasingly may burn The flame of this paschal candle/which mingles with the brightness of the heavens.

May it burn through the night/until the morning star comes, Jesus Christ, risen,/our light and our peace He who comes back up from hell/who reigns with the Holy Spirit At the right hand of God our Father/for ever and ever. Amen.

An excerpt from the HAUTECOMBE EXULTET, which is sung during Easter night

A text of the Chemin Neuf Community - CD11

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Christian Training

Bible: Letter to the Philippians

Living in harmony As we move towards Easter, what biblical passage might we study?

Why not St Paul’s letter to the Philippians, brimming with a joy which Paul found in the midst of adversity and which is at the heart of the community.

“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

Letter to the Philippians, Ch 2 (NIV) Live in harmony. That is at the heart of Paul’s exhortation from the depths of his prison. His main motivation is joy, which is the fruit of the unity of a community – the living building block of the Church! What could be a better expression of unity than living in harmony? It is the aim of every couple, every community, or every government. However, you only have to look around you to see the numerous obstacles to consensus.

Paul is going to invite the church at Philippi to believe that a Christian community can live in complete harmony and thereby achieve perfect joy. But where does the necessary momentum come from? How can the motivation to overcome divisions be found?

Pieter LE ROUX,

Evangelical Baptist Church

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Today, an astonishing experience is on offer: weightless flight. It involves flying for two and a half hours in the passenger cabin of a specially adapted Airbus, in order to experience 5 minutes of weightlessness. The cost? Six thousand euros. And don’t think of getting a seat

before 2014, because there is a long waiting list! All with the sole object of escaping gravity for 5 minutes.

Isn’t this craze for such an expensive flight a marvellous illustration of our refusal to abase ourselves?

Paul points out for us the direction to take on the hard road to perfect joy: “Value others above yourselves”! He invites us to abase ourselves.

It is a revolutionary dynamic which plunges us into an exchange of good deeds in which everyone is a winner.

Everyone finds themselves the beneficiary of a skill that he or she does not possess. It is a perpetual motion of charitable exchanges. It is perfect love.

There is, nevertheless, a small problem – trust. How can I be sure that my spouse, my colleague, my brother or those in authority over me are not going to look after their own interests? Because if there is indeed an obstacle to unity it

an training training an training Photo Ann Ronan / Heritage Images / Scala, Florence

is the fear of inadequacy. Paul wrote these words from his prison. It is as if the trials of cold, loneliness and death confirmed the joy he found in unity.

The Church meant more to him than his own life. Thus the anguish of dying in his prison come second to the care he wants to offer to the Philippians.

This invitation to faith is not new: ‘Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son.’ (1 Kings 17).

At the height of a famine, the widow of Zarephath finds herself preparing a small loaf of bread for the prophet Elijah. Faced with the risk of annihilation, she prefers to believe in a providential God, rather than having an extra meal.

It is the same for the small boy who offered his loaves and fishes for Jesus’ miracle of feeding the five thousand: “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?” (John 6). Jesus also praises the actions of the widow who put her last coins into the Temple treasury (Luke 21 v2).

Pride is at the root of this lack of trust in God and in my neighbour. The Oxford dictionary definition is clear.

Pride: consciousness of one’s own dignity; the quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one’s importance Paul is able to keep heading towards unity and the perfect joy which flows from it, because he has placed his trust in God’s justice. He can turn his back

Dombes Institute of Theology

St Paul dictating his letters in prison

on the fear of inadequacy, because his God will not allow him to be annihilated. This is forcefully recalled in the letter to the Romans: ‘If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. ‘Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.

On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.’ (Romans 12) What power and Godly wisdom there is in this exhortation! Whatever the conflict of interests, we are freed from all resentment, because God is looking after our interests.

Justice rules already. Our worries for ourselves are useless. We are free of

seeking pardon and forgiveness for those who has done evil to us. Nothing or no-one can stand in the way of God’s plan for each of us!

Paul’s invitation to value my neighbour above myself can only be envisaged in the light of God as guardian of our interests. That is why Paul begins with a condition: ‘Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion.’

The early shoots of joy in our prayer life and in the service of God are a sign that he wants to make our joy perfect by annihilating pride. All our interests are protected; we are free to pardon and to intercede on behalf of our neighbours.

In this way they gain access to the pardon which frees them from despair.

What an Easter! v

Bible Study:

4-5 May

GOD’S SPIRIT & newness of life according to Paul

A journey through several of Paul’s epistles, which will illustrate the extent to which his concept of life in Christ and in the Holy Spirit led him to think of Christian existence in an original way.

Registrations: itd@chemin-neuf.org

Christian Grappe, Faculty of Protestant Theology, Strasbourg University

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Christian Training

Spiritual life: The year of Faith

YEAR OF FAITH

“Jesus,

I trust in You.” The latest number (n°35) of F.O.I. included the first of a series of articles devoted to the Year of Faith.

In answer to the question “For you , what is faith?”

Father Antoine Cousin responds by evoking Benedict XVI ‘s invitation to enter by the ever-open door of faith. What is faith? An act (of faith) and a content (of faith).

Benedict XVI’s letter marking the launching of the Year of Faith begins with these words: “The door of faith (cf. Acts 14, 27) which leads to a life of communion with God and to entrance into his Church is always open to us. We are able to cross the threshold when the Word of God is proclaimed and when the heart is willing to be shaped by the grace that transforms.

Entering by this door means embarking on a life-long path. It begins at baptism (cf Rom.6,4), whereby we can call upon God as Father, and ends with the passage from death to life everlasting.” (1)

The Door of Faith is always open At the threshold of this Door is baptism, and the word that rings out, as it did on the day when Jesus was baptised “Thou art my beloved Son , in thee I am well pleased” (Mk 1,11).

This Word is for Jesus. It is also for us: we are beloved with the same love.

The whole life of Jesus manifests this, up to his death on the Cross where he gives up his life for our salvation. He showed us that we too, share the infinite love of God.

Antoine COUSIN,

Priest, at the Chemin Neuf Community

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In Him, we are the beloved sons and daughters of the Father. The Holy Spirit dwells with us. We are loved with an unconditional love. And forgiven. The Door is always open.

We are invited to cross the threshold.

It becomes possible for us to say “yes” to the Lord. Yes, I believe in God, the Father. Yes, I believe in Jesus Christ, his Only Son. Yes, I believe in the Holy Spirit. Yes, I have faith in Him, I trust in Him, I put myself in His hands, I offer Him my life. Such are the words of our baptism and they are the words we are invited to renew this year. God’s love opens the Door of Faith to us and our faith finds fulfilment in the love of God. “Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.” (John 21,17). Our act of faith also enables us to approach without fear, the last door, the passage from death to life eternal. The love of God precedes and makes possible our faith.

Renewing our act of faith The path we have taken is one to be followed all our life. The Door often lies before us. We are invited to cross the threshold again, sometimes joyfully, sometimes painfully, in peace, or in strife, once and for all, and each day.

During this year of Faith, we are asked to renew our act of faith. We have been given the grace to meet the Lord, to be called by Him. Ours is the grace to live with Him, to live through Him, to have faith in Him, and we know to what extent the path of faith is sometimes fragile. “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mk 9,24). Lord, I believe, come and renew my faith in Thee.

an training training an training And if it so happens that we sink into the waters of mistrust, the hand of Jesus is still outstretched. “And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased” (Matt.14, 31-32). The path is sometimes hard, but the Lord comes to help us when our faith fails. The Gospel stories are a precious recourse, providing a constant invitation to have faith. “Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole” (Mk.10,52), “Fear not: believe only”(Luke,8,50), “O woman, great is thy faith”…(Matt.15,28)…

The journeys of the saints who have preceded us can also help us. Sister Faustine has handed down one of the simplest and most beautiful of all prayers: “Jesus, I trust in thee”.

It is a prayer from the heart. One only has to repeat it as though telling the beads of a rosary or after the manner of the Eastern monks. It will perform its task in us. It does what it says.

First above all, Mary points the way to faith, “Behold the handmaiden of he

Lord; be it unto me according to thy word”. (Luke 1,38) As to the question of knowing what we should do, Jesus always brings the same answer, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent”.(John 6,29)

The content of our faith The year of faith is also an invitation to deepen our knowledge of the One in whom we have put our trust. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. And of all things visible and invisible”. What is the sense of these words? What do they mean for me?

“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God, Begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God…..”

What does that mean? “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son……..”

May the Spirit of Holiness lighten our understanding ! “ May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory consent to give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation that will lead you to a true knowledge of him!” (cf. Eph.1,17) Our act of faith involves coming to a deeper understanding of the contents of our faith. Benedict XVI writes, “The essential contents which, for centuries have defined the heritage of all believers need to be strengthened, examined and understood in constantly new ways so that they bear coherent witness in historical contexts which are no longer those of the past”. (Porta Fidei n°4). The Lord’s thinking is not our thinking, his ways are not our ways. We can, at all times, ask for the grace that would convert our understanding.

Faith is inseparable from Hope and Charity. They are a gift of God, a grace that we can seek particularly this year. v 1- Benedict XVI, Motu Proprio Porta Fidei

Benedict XVI, a man of Faith

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s Benedict XVI decides to give up his pontificate, many commentators describe him as “a man of faith”. Indeed, in many of his writings Benedict XVI expressed his desire to come to a deeper understanding of the Christian faith and the necessity of returning to a Jesus who is as much the Jesus of faith as of history.

His first Encyclical, “Deus caritas est”, went directly to the core of faith, for religion is not about law or morality, but about love: “The fact of being Christian does not spring from an ethical decision or a great thought, but from the encounter with an event, a meeting with a Person”. The Pope’s message for Lent 2013 takes up this approach, reflecting on the link between faith and charity . “Faith, means to come to Benedict XVI at the WYD, Madrid, 2011 the knowledge of truth and to abide by it (cf 1 Tim. 2,4); charity, means to walk in the way of truth (cf Eph. 4,15). Through faith we come into friendship with the Lord, charity enables us to live and nurture this friendship (cf John 15,14).”

In this indissoluble link between faith and charity, Benedict XV reminds us that the greatest work of charity lies in evangelisation. “I wish that you all may live this precious time in a renewal of your faith in Jesus Christ, that you may walk in his way of love for the Father and for each brother and sister that we meet in our life.”

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Christian training

Birthday: RCF is 30!

30 years in the service

of evangelisation In the spring of 1981, in Lyon, Father Couturier’s city, the idea of creating a Christian radio station (1) was spontaneously thought up and developed with an ecumenical viewpoint.

From January 1982, Cardinal Decourtray, the Archbishop of Lyon, supported and decided on the creation of this associative radio station.

Its statutes were drawn up and signed by the leaders of all seven of the Churches represented in Lyon: Catholic, Greek, Orthodox, Reformed, Lutheran, Armenian Apostolic (2), Anglican and Baptist.

From the outset, these leaders were statutory members of the station’s Advisory Board and fixed its main objectives, summarised as follows by Cardinal Decourtray: “Together we want to create a Christian radio station which is openly Christian, without complex or triumphism; a radio station with all and for all; a radio station which will develop communication as far as communion.”

For everybody, the urgency to evangelise over the radio waves required this ecumenical vision, which was not only written into the statutes, but also into the way the station was run and, particularly, into the programme schedule.

From the first weeks of broadcasting (April 1982), Radio Fourvière, later to become Fourvière Région, then RCF (Francophone Christian Radio) was to give voice to people who were clearly identified by the Church they belonged to.

In a true ecumenical spirit, each person reflects on his own faith, while discovering and showing deep respect for the traditions of others.

Emmanuel PAYEN,

Chemin Neuf Community the founder of RCF

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Every day, many different people meditate on the Gospel, explain the doctrinal similarities and differences between all the Churches, give information about the life of each Church in the world and give testimonies in which listeners can perceive the work of the Holy Spirit as

a fraternal call to convert hearts. Gradually these programmes develop in listeners a real ecumenical spirit at the same time as a genuine openness to the words of Jesus, who entrusted his disciples to his Father with the words: “That they may be one so that the world may believe.”

“Gradually these programmes develop in listeners a real ecumenical spirit at the same time as a genuine openness to the words of Jesus.”

A dialogue in truth and fraternal love develops between those who broadcast and those who listen, forging a durable ecumenical family spirit on a daily basis. Many listeners confirm this specificity of RCF and spread the word to those around them. It’s like an enactment of the Parable of the Sower. Over the airwaves, everywhere and in all directions, the Word of God is sown, is propounded, is audible.

an training training an training Why do I like RCF ?

I like RCF because, in an era where the visual image is all-important, it’s a spoken medium. It’s main mission is to promote listening; journalists listening to those they interview, and the listeners tuning into the station. As a Christian radio station, RCF allows us to listen to the Word of God, the word that penetrates our innermost ear, that of our heart.

RCF’s mission is to sow the good seed throughout the world. No one knows where or how it will germinate! Others will harvest the fruit when the time comes.

I remember a letter that arrived a few months after the start of the radio station. A Yugolsav student had chanced upon Radio Fourvière in his room on the La Doua campus in Villeurbanne. He wrote to the station to find out where he could get hold of the “Jesus serial”.

He knew nothing about Christianity and every morning he would listen to the Gospel passage read out over the airwaves. Without delay, he was sent a copy of the New Testament and directed to the campus chaplaincy. Three years later, at his request, he was baptised.

This momentum of evangelisation over the radio has met the expectations of the 62 dioceses and diverse communities in a cooperative approach whereby each of the 62 radio stations contributes the best of its programmes to the whole network. Technical progress now makes it possible to listen to RCF not only on FM, but throughout the world via the internet.

Today, over 30 years after the start of RCF, we can all rejoice that this same ecumenical spirit continues and progresses. Those currently behind the radio station remain faithful to the original vision. As a privileged means of evangelisation, RCF still needs today, as it needed in the past, the active and prayerful support of each and everyone of us to ensure that the Good News reaches hearts and minds to the ends of the Earth. v 1- R.C.F.: a cooperative of 62 Christian radio stations present in France and Belgium, and accessible worldwide via the internet.

2- When Pope John-Paul II came to Lyon in October 1986, he was welcomed to the Amphitheatre of the Three Gauls by His Grace Norvan Zacharian, Arhchbishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church, with the words: “Holy Father, we are happy to welcome you here where the Christian roots of our country lie....our Christian Churches in Lyon have a common voice: Radio Fourvière.”

I like RCF because its listeners are varied. One listener in two has no link with the Church (according to an official opinion poll) and its a tremendus means of evangelisation if our programmes are welcoming, interesting and well-meaning... a vast programme!

I like RCF because it’s local (4 hours of programmes a day produced by each of the 63 local stations), national (for 20 hours a day the same programme schedule) and international (Radio Vatican broadcast 3 times a day).

30 years old is still young, but it’s also the beginning of maturity. With RCF, times change but what is essential remains.

Michel Coutellier President of RCF Lyon Fourvière

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& evangel The Catho Style charismatic, community experiment was a resounding success when used to announce the forthcoming Hautecombe Festival. The video, a Gangnam Style parody produced with very limited resources, resolutely set out to broadcast the Christian faith to everyone across the new continent - the Internet continent. A challenge which has much in common with that faced by all the Christian churches.

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@ lisation I was recently surprised to see my little niece playing with a touch-screen tablet far more skilfully than many of us adults… It has to be said that, in fact, Generation Y (those born after 1980) is changing all the time and is at the forefront of a cultural revolution that is taking us from a society of one-way transmission to a society of two-way communication, moving from a written culture to a screen culture. Some would describe this post‑modernity as ultra-modernity, with its outright denial of everything human. But, when we as Christians consider the example of St Paul, a man who knew all about networking and communication, how can we fail to look upon this marvellous human invention with real hope, seeing it as an invention full of promise and challenge for the Church and for evangelisation today.

The reality of a new continent In particular, Generation Y is living on a new continent: the Internet continent, which will have a population of about three billion in 2016, i.e. 45% of the world. This continent comprises such large countries as Facebook which will have a population of one billion in 2015 and Twitter (500 million). It is rapidly expanding, becoming ever more lively and dynamic (thirty times more dynamic in terms of information exchanged in ten years time) and is a tremendous forum for exchanges and research (four billion videos watched every day on YouTube, five billion searches on Google).

“It is up to you especially - the young - to spread the Good News across this digital continent1” Benedict XVI

In particular, Generation Y is living on a new continent: the Internet continent, which will have a population of about three billion in 2016, i.e. 45% of the world. This continent comprises such large countries as Facebook which will have a population of one billion in 2015 and Twitter (500 million). It is rapidly expanding, becoming ever more lively and dynamic (thirty times more dynamic in terms of information exchanged in ten years time) and is a tremendous forum for exchanges and research (four billion videos watched every day on YouTube, five billion searches on Google).

…A generation thirsting to hear the Good News The Church, faithful to her Lord, has always sought to reach out and meet men and women where they are in their lives, for nothing human is new to God–made–man: there is nothing that cannot be transformed. Today, the Internet is part of life so it must also become part of the life of faith, and that is even more the case for young people.

If St Paul used all the modern resources of his time to proclaim the Good News (Roman roads, trade routes, ships, letters, etc.), if the Apostles were able to «inculturate» the Good News wherever they were sent (Roman Empire, Mesopotamia, Africa, etc…), how can we remain unmoved today by this call to inculturate the Gospel in this new continent - to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world as we are called to do

at the end of Mark’s Gospel? What a challenge!

The right balance…

Obviously, in a society where we spend longer and longer in front of our computers in a virtual world, we have even more need of incarnation, and that is particularly true for the young. Nothing can replace face-to-face contact and in response to the ephemeral and the instantaneous, homo internatus needs to encounter flesh and stone.

Pastoral work can never succeed without it.

... A new launching pad for mission Internet offers the Church a wonderful new opportunity - a sort of megaphone that can today reach those who are far away from her. Creative opportunities abound on the Internet and relevant projects can be given the widest publicity with only limited resources (cf. the Catho Style buzz).

People are waiting for the Church to get online: for example, one of the most commonly asked questions on Google is «Who is God?» So, today we must launch out on an audacious, unfettered, pragmatic, creative pastoral programme. Web2.0 communication gossiping the Gospel. (cf. aleteia.org).

1- Pope Benedict XVI speaking to a group of young people after his «tweet» v

Arnaud Bonnassies, Deacon working for the CNN Mission to Young People

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As part of the preparation for the Hautecombe Festival this summer, we planned to create a video in December to begin advertising the event.

Although we had three meetings, no idea had come up that we found convincing. We just knew that we wanted to meet young people in their real young life; then, at the beginning of November, we get the chance to have Jean-Baptiste Fourané at one of our meetings, principally to listen to his advice on communication (he founded the Easter Festival in Chartres and the magazine UNvisible). During that meeting we evoked several things that work with young people and particularly that Gangnam Style song that, the day before, had attracted not fewer than 20,000 people for a giant flashmob at the Trocadéro.

Information is received and finds its place somewhere in our brains and the meeting ends. When we are about to depart, an idea appears, an inspiration that leaves no doubt: we must create a Christian parody of this world-wide hit. It is an immense wave on which we want to surf.

From that moment we are off for a sprint: we write the words for the song during the night, we sketch out a scenario and the very next week-end we meet in Paris with young people from all over, Lyon, Nantes, Reims, Paris. Each one brings material gleaned here and there, clothing, props, video and still cameras.

Another sleepless night to organize the plan for filming in Paris and above all to create the choreography and we’re away! It was a living miracle. We saw how, within a few hours, the force of a community could unfold, how each one could use his charisma to serve a common mission.

“Catho Style” was born from the talents of each one, dance, videoediting, song, sound-mixing, publicity planning and above all by the force of the Lord which impelled us to join humour and mission in the service of His message.

Mustapha A., manager of the St. Sixtus Centre for Young Christians in Reims

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The Genesis of “Catho Style”

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INTERNATIONAL

FESTIVAL

www.welcometoparadise.fr

Celebrity beyond just young Christians

«

« The video was a means to show forth the considerable activity of young people in the Church. » It is not rare these days, in Catholic circles for some complete stranger to come along and ask me, “Excuse me, aren’t you in Catho Style”. Although the question was a bit disturbing at first, I got used to it and now I use the opportunity to tell the person about the purpose of the video: to promote the festival. But the video had echoes far beyond just Christians: all the students from my school and many of my friends saw the video!

It was a means to show forth the considerable activity of young people in the Church, which seemed to be completely unknown to many people of my age.

Indeed, several students from school, non-believers, came to talk to me about their questions, initiating very rich times of sharing. Finally, my position as the principal actor of the clip allows me to have a privileged role for witnessing and evangelising on a small scale in the engineering school environment.

«

Benoît S., engineering student at the Ecole des MINES Paris Tech

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18-30 YEARS

Risk evangelism

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I agreed to appear in the Catho Style video because I really liked the idea: using the internet to help people see the Church from another angle, to advertise the Hautecombe 2013 festival and to make them want to follow Christ!

It took several days to make the video but we, the dancers, were called for just one week-end which was very dense: putting together the choreography and filming in several different parts of the capital, all in a great spirit of fraternity but also a certain degree of stress. We did not have much time! We enjoyed it but I did not know yet what importance the video would have once it was finished… I never guessed that in less than 3 days the video would have been viewed on Youtube more than 150 000 times! In the few days following the publishing of the video, many of the comments and reactions affected me deeply. Often I took them personally.

This led me to feel very vulnerable, to have doubts about our method, and even to shake my confidence in God. Fortunately, that did not last very long!

I soon received support from brothers and sisters, from my friends (some of them non-believers). Prayer had become difficult for I had a hard time letting go of that. When I managed to pray again, I felt the infinite Love of God take hold of my heart. Jesus Himself said to me: “Don’t be afraid, I am with you”. Yes, in witnessing we take risks: the risk of being made fun of, of being exposed. But that is of such slight importance weighed against all those people whose hearts were touched by our witness! For Catho Style, that was certainly the case! God trusts us, He uses our talents and our lives to send His Spirit and touch the hearts of men.

Camille, student in Lyon

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• CELEBRATE EASTER: 30 March1st April. In Hautecombe with 700 young people. Live the Easter liturgy and experience the joy of the resurrection! Praise, festivity, teaching, witness!

Buses from Lyon and Paris.

• EASTER IN CHARTRES - 30 March-1 April. Festivity, witness and evangelism with the International Choir. The participation of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin! Possibility of joining the choir for the week-end. (Rendezvous Friday 29 at 18:00) • WEEK-END “Welcome the Holy Spirit and receive His gifts”: 2021 April in Tigery (91). 2 days for learning to listen to the Holy Spirit and letting Him guide your daily life! Discover life in the Holy Spirit, a better knowledge of His charisma and gifts.

• FORUM FOR YOUNG PROFESSIONALS 22-32 years! 27-29 April in Sophia Antipolis (06). 3 days to reflect upon the meaning of professional life. Speakers: Emmanuel Faber, Elena Lassida, Fabrice Hadjadj. Evening Jazz in night. www.forumjeunespros2013.com • Welcome to Paradise ! International Festival 4-11 August.

5 days of vacation between lake and mountain with 1000 young people from all over the world and you choose what you want to do: 40 workshops, + than 20 sports, spiritual times, great witnesses…Reservations at www.welcometoparadise.fr • Many other suggestions on the internet site: Mass for youth, Praise evenings, “Appel” group etc.

• Secretary 18-30 years: jeunes.chemin-neuf.fr 01 47 74 93 73 or 06 30 14 06 96 jeunes.france@chemin-neuf.org

coming events

youth

14-18 YEARS

• WEEK-END “YOU WILL RECEIVE A POWER” 14-18 years: 6-7 April in Strasbourg (Plobsheim), 13-14 April in Sablonceaux (17) and in l’Etoile de Mer (50), 18-19 May in Lyon and Tigery (91) • A WEEK OF REVISION FOR THE BAC from 22-27 April at the Dombes and in Tigery (91) from 29 April to 3 May. • EASTER IN CHARTRES: 30 March – 1st April: A week-end of festival and shows to celebrate the resurrection!

• EASTER IN HAUTECOMBE: 30 March – 1st April: 16-18 years only, limited to 40 participants – Live the Easter liturgy and experience the joy of the resurrection!

• LANGUAGE SCHOOLS: 11-22 June in England in Langport for 15-18 year-olds. Improve your English and experience together Christian community life. The days are organised around language courses, community life and relaxation, in English!

• SUMMER 2013…MULTIPLE PROPOSALS…IN SABLONCEAUX: SAbouge: 14-15 years, 9-14 July, throw yourself into it (sport and great games).

Step by step: 16-18 years, 9-14 July, 5 days of hiking, set out on an adventure across the Charente on the road that leads to God and experience fraternity.

Festival of Sablonceaux: from 16-21 July, 14-18 years, a camp on a large scale with 200 participants! A la carte activities.

SAdonne, 16-18 years, 8-20 July, for those who have already taken part in summer camps.

• Secretary 14-18 years: 04 72 13 73 64 or 06 61 61 02 72 14-18ans@chemin-neuf.org SITE : chemin-neuf.org/14-18ans

FOI • N°36 • March - April - May 2013

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Community Life

Meeting of the national leaders

Creating unity Every year, during January, the leaders of the countries where the Chemin Neuf Community is present (25 countries) meet at Tigery for an “international week” For the fifty brothers and sisters who meet it’s an opportunity to share experiences of community and mission, but also to work with the council of the community and to renew themselves spiritually and fraternally.

A time for unity and fraternal support.

Testimony: Benoit Lokila DRC Benoit Lokila is a member of the team leading the Community in the DRC. He is married with nine children and an evangelical protestant.

IEF: Benoit, how do you live the call to the unity of Christians in the community ?

“I will share two points which have helped me to go further in this call for the unity of Christians.

First of all, God has given me the grace of conversion in my way of seeing brothers and sisters from other churches.

He has helped me to not put myself only in one register, that of a member of an evangelical protestant church but as a disciple of Jesus. A disciple doesn’t do

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whatever he thinks best but what his master tells him to do. This way of looking at things has allowed me to understand that all those who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour are disciples like me; I must love them, come close to them and live with them.

And then, every evening in front of the Blessed Sacrament, I see Jesus who died in order to unite all the children of his Father and then, on the other hand, I see his church divided. I see how much Jesus suffers at this and, every evening my tears flow. This gives me more strength to make a ‘bridge’ between my church and the Catholic Church. Sometimes I receive difficult words from my protestant brothers and sisters, but this doesn’t discourage me.

Each evening, before the Blessed Sacrament, seeing the supreme gift that Jesus gave to unite the children of the Father, I think that it is necessary to be able to serve and to die. This is the only way unity can happen.”

munity life in the comm comm mmunity life in the

In Oosterhout – celebrities looking for God. It all began with a surprise telephone call in September 2012. A team from a Dutch evangelical television station asked me if we would be available to put on a silent Ignatian retreat, which would be televised. We took some time to meet and discern as a community. Encouraged by the Community’s foundation text (Luke 4: 16-19) which reminds us of our mission to evangelise, and which was the reading of that day in both the Catholic liturgy and that of our Moravian brothers, we decided to risk the adventure.

The idea had come from England where a similar project had been undertaken under the direction of a Benedictine abbot and the BBC (The Big Silence).

Dutch media professionals who were Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians had seen the programmes on YouTube.

As a result they decided to organise their own Ignatian retreat. They were convinced that this tool of the Exercises was an amazing opportunity which would allow people of different backgrounds to meet God in a deep way.

The idea was to make a Dutch version of ‘The Big Silence’ with the slight difference that the five retreatants would be From left to right : Kim Feenstra - model people who were well known Elle Bandita - Rock star, Lieke van Lexmond - actress in the media and the world: Christina Curry – model, Sanne Vogel, actress. a top model, an actress, a TV presenter, a rock star or nions and some from the Chemin Neuf someone young people would idolise. community lived an extraordinary week The idea was tinged with a particularly together at the Abbey of St Paul in Oosecumenical touch. We have to rememterhout. And God did his work! The ber that, in this country where the Reresult will be shown every Sunday eveformation took effect with great power ning in February on the third TV channel and vigour in the 16th century, it was in four episodes of 45 minutes each. A 3 French and Spanish Jesuits who were minute trailer is already available on the sent to extinguish the Calvinist flame. internet (www.opzoeknaargod.tv) and Which was not without violence on we would like to ask your prayers for both sides, and which, even today, has Lieke, Kim, Sanne, Ryanne et Christina left a great mistrust of Jesuits on the : that the seeds sown might grow and part of Protestants. bear fruit. And especially that the Lord might touch the hearts of those who The fact that it is these Protestants who, will watch the programmes and that he five hundred years later, are publicising gives us the strength and intelligence to the Ignatian Exercises must surely be carry on this beautiful mission. a sign of the work of the Holy Spirit?

And so it was that at the beginning of Ruth Lagemann, the Netherlands November, an evangelical television team, Jesuits, Ignatian spiritual compa-

Exhortation : Jesus stops to pray.

In the Bible, the most important thing is in the centre. Now today’s gospel (Mark 1: 29-39)describes to

us a day in the life of Jesus: he heals the sick and casts out demons, he preaches the Good News, but at the centre, he stops to pray, to nourish himself and to be strengthened by the closeness of his Father. This is a call to us to put prayer, an intimate relationship with God, at the centre of our lives. Do we wake up in the morning thinking “I can’t wait to pray”?

We prepare our meetings well, and our public speaking, our accounts and our flowcharts but do we prepare the most important thing, our meeting with those we love, our daily meeting with The One we love? More important than being men and women of action who pray and entrust their acts to God, we should be men and women of

prayer whose actions come out of this prayer. This is also essential in order to carry out our responsibilities. This place where we can get our breath back also allows us not to breathe with our “head under water”. The first responsibility of a leader is to him or herself: to stay strong and peaceful in order to support others. In the same way, prayer is the place where we allow space to the real leader, God himself, when we allow free rein to the Holy spirit. Rather than being just leaders who rely on the help and the light of God, we must become instruments of Him who acts in our community. The question which we are asked today is, “What is the centre of your life?”

Homily 16th January 2013 P. Etienne Vetö, International Week Tigery Gospel: Mark 1: 29-39

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Community Life

The demo for all on 13th January

We were there!

Chemin Neuf community members in France mobilised to join with hundreds of thousands of others to express their profound disagreement with the planned opening up of marriage to people of the same sex. Violaine, married and mother of five children tells how she and her daughter Anaïs experienced this day.

“At 4:45 on the morning of Sunday 13th January the alarm went off in Saint Alban de Roche (in the Isère department).

This is not just another Sunday! Encouraged by the Church, we have decided as a couple to make ourselves heard in this way. Pieter, my husband, is staying at home with our other four children.

The journey feels like a pilgrimage. We are leaving from Villefranche-sur-Saône: a coach organised by the Community is making a stop there. It is a joy to see all my brothers and sisters from the Community and the Communion, who have also got up early to demonstrate!

Right from the first kilometres on the motorway, I am struck by the sight of other coaches heading the same way.

These few hours of travel are broken up with rest stops where we are already meeting crowds of other demonstrators. Praying the office of Lauds as well as a time of intercession refocuses us

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on the main point of the day: to go and carry the message that the family is the basic unit of society where everyone, both children and parents, can flourish and find happiness. In prayer, there are two of us sharing the same conviction: the angels are there, interceding with us for France and for all her families. A policeman who got on the bus to give us a few instructions says 400 000 demonstrators are already there (not counting the angels!).

A briefing by Emmanuel Contamin, a child psychiatrist, reminds us of the undeniable importance and necessity for a child of having a father and a mother (see article opposite).

Once at the Porte d’Italie, we chant slogans and wave banners in time to festive music. A peaceful and joyful atmosphere greets us. The organisers cannot get over how many people there are: we have to wait for a good

hour before starting to move forward.

Then we make our way in an amazingly quiet atmosphere. The Champ de Mars is already full by around 15:30 and the various processions have been slowed down.

We hear a few words from political personalities on giant screens in the Champ de Mars at 17:00. Frigide Barjot announces another demonstration if this one is not enough and Anaïs exclaims: « Mum, I want to do it! We’ll come back, won’t we? » An initial count comes to 800 000 participants! We will learn later that there were actually a lot more than a million.

The day comes to a calm end in the bus.

We continue to pray that France will not take this dangerous step.”

Violaine Le Roux

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Three reasons for a child psychiatrist to refuse this law As a child psychiatrist, I am concerned about the children who would be affected by this law.

1. “Taken hostage” Everyday I see how much children suffer from unstable family situations, where they are often « taken hostage » by fragile parents focussed on their own emotional needs.

The objective put forward of making their relationships more secure could be reached just as well by defining a status of step-parent, with rights, and above all, duties to the child; but instituting marriage between people of the same sex meets an adult need, and its direct link to filiation will reinforce still more the idea of a child as a mere object of rights.

2. “Artificial filiation” This is going to lead to the creation of artificial filiations to two fathers or two mothers by bringing in reproductive technologies reserved until now for medical treatments. The child will be seen from the outset as a product.

Filiation with a father and a mother is after all a fundamental anthropological structure, which can be found in all cultures! The child will be deprived of a part of his or her origins, which is contrary to the international Convention on the Rights of the Child.

3. Negation of our biological nature The underlying philosophy is a denial of limits and a negation of our roots in

our biological nature, when research on early development has clearly shown the richness of the connections between a baby and his or her parents, from the womb through to the attachments, clearly differentiated between father and mother, by means of which (s)he develops his personality in the early years.

Finally, it is wrong to say, as some of my colleagues do, that there is no difference in the outcome for children brought up by homosexual parents: studies currently available are too limited, and not sufficiently rigorous, and we need more critical distance to be able to evaluate the long term effects; some studies are already sounding alarm bells (problems with bonding or social adjustment) which justify a cautious approach in my opinion.

If one had to invent a model which would give children the best chance, it would undoubtedly be heterosexual marriage: while children brought up by homosexual couples must have their legal status secured and not suffer any discrimination, it is legitimate for society to institute and prefer « natural childrearing», as that is what will enable the best sustainable development of future generations!

Emmanuel Contamin, Child psychiatrist in Lyon Illustration taken from the video «Anatole se demande comment on fait les bébés ? » (Anatole wonders how babies are made) made by L’Appel des Professionnels de l’Enfance, available on Dailymotion.

One father, one mother, it’s elementary “Born into a baby boom family, by good luck, I know my paternal and maternal origins and am transmitting this connection to our four children.

Here’s hoping they keep hold of the idea! Today, in France the law could transform the family and filiation. It’s a big question for our society to debate. Let’s make sure we can discuss it calmly! I chose to come from Lyon to Paris on 13 January to make my opinion count, and to pray better for those who govern us. I walked 8 km in the cold, which is not a new argument, but came away strengthened by this immense gathering from all over France expressing the same wish: that a balanced family structure based on a man and a woman may live for generations to come.”

Yves L., citoyen

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Community Life PENTECOST 2013

1973 - 2013: The Community is 40 years old “At Pentecost, by Christ’s death and resurrection, God’s Spirit was spread abundantly, like a waterfall capable of purifying all hearts, of extinguishing the flame of evil and of lighting in the world the fire of divine love. Let’s rediscover the beauty of being baptised in the Holy Spirit!” (1) Forty years ago in October 1973, the Chemin Neuf Community, born out of a prayer group, would bring together 7 people at 49 Montée du Chemin Neuf in Lyon, France.

Thus started an unbelievable story, inspired by the Holy Spirit following on from Vatican II, which led the Community “from Lyon to the whole world”.

At Pentecost 2013, on 18th and 19th May, in the 27 countries across the world where it is present, the Chemin Neuf Community will gather. You too are invited to recognise the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit over the 40 years the Community has existed, in prayer, in community life, in commitment to Christian unity and reconciliation and peace

among people. It will be an opportunity to look back over the ground covered and to look forward to the future by opening a window to the rushing wind of the Holy Spirit, that overwhelming experience of God’s love for every man!

The programme is to include: “40 years of history in praise”, a conference by Father Laurent Fabre, the founder and leader of the Community, “International Flashmob” for peace in the world, “Network prayer” for unity between our Churches and countries. Like a big, open-air Upper Room, from the country we are in, in communion with all the church movements and new Communities gathered in Rome around the new Pope..., we will all come together to call upon the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts and our world!

1- Benedict XVI, Pope of the Roman Catholic Church (2005 - 2013), Penetcost 2008

WEEKEND 18 - 19 MAY 2013 At the heart of this anniversary: A UNIQUE MOMENT OF COMMUNION AND PRAYER FOR THE WORLD THANKS TO MODERN MEANS OF COMMUNICATION! Saturday 18 may 2013 from 5pm to 7.30pm CET MULTIPLEX VIDEO BROADCAST from Rome to “the network of 27 countries” where the Community is present and accessible to everybody in live and deferred transmission on:

www.40ans.chemin-neuf.org

Cana Sessions CANA COUPLES : A privileged time to take stock, spend time together and deepen the couple’s unity - CANA FIANCÉS : a real place for discernment, a time to get to know each other better and love each other more deeply - CANA Hope: for those who are separated or divorced and who haven’t remarried - CANA SAMARIE : for those who’ve committed to a new relationship after divorce or separation.

DATES OF CANA SESSIONS

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HAUTECOMBE (73)

27 APRIL - 3 MAY

CANA COUPLES (no children)

14 - 20 JULY

CANA COUPLES (with children) BOUVINES (59)

21 - 27 JULY

CANA COUPLES (with children) HAUTECOMBE (73)

28 JULY - 3 AUGUST

CANA COUPLES (with children) AIRE SUR L’ADOUR (40)

4 - 10 AUGUST

CANA COUPLES (with children) LES DOMBES (01)

11 - 17 AUGUST

CANA FAMILY

SABLONCEAUX (17)

21 - 27 JULY

CANA FIANCES

HAUTECOMBE (73)

4 - 10 AUGUST

CANA HOPE

SABLONCEAUX (17)

21 - 27 JULY

CANA SAMARIA

MONTAGNIEU (38)

rendez-vous

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Talents

Young Talent MARCIN KUCZYŃSKI “For me photography is a tool for work, and entertainment, but it’s also my passion.

It allows me to quench an internal thirst to create, to express myself and to revive moments from the past. A thirst to create, because the final effect, in the shape of a simple photo, is the result of a multitude of decisions: setting the camera, choosing the location and composition, deciding when to press the shutter button...

A thirst to express myself, because I want to share with others what I have experienced, seen or felt. I want to describe in my own way something that has happened just a few centimetres from the camera lens.

Finally, a thirst to revive moments from the past. Photos, like novels, can enable us to take part in events that are new to us. For me, photography is part of experience, and thus of life. I am happy and I thank God for giving me the possibility to take photos. At present I’m in Lyon, and I’m sharing with you some photos of this city which I like very much.”

FOI • N°36 • March - April - May 2013

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from 8 to 20 July 2013 4 camps 300 14 to 18 year-olds an unforgettable summer