FOI Magazine 43 english

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a Special Report

the Cross Christians in the Middle East

N O I T A M OR F N A I T llesum i H a CHRIS y t t E rd to lha From Tei

A quarterly magazine FOI No. 43 - December 2014 - January - February 2015 - 5,50 â‚Ź

Embracing

VIE Contents

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Editorial by Father Laurent FABRE

Special report 4

Embracing THE CROSS Christians in the Middle East

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Ecumenism

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Christian Formation

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14 • The Armenian Apostolic Church – the feast of the Nativity 16 • Jerusalem – the ecumenical Circle of Friends 18 • Prayer

20 • A synod about the family – Linking theology and pastoral care 22 • A film “Salt of the Earth” and a book “Praying with Charles Péguy”.

24 • From Teilhard to Etty Hillesum

Youth

26 • Dancing for God 28 • Testimonies

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Life in the Community

35

Portrait

­­32 • Lisie Fabre: Happy one hundredth birthday!

33 • David Mampouya: his route to the diaconate.

35 • Angélique Kastendeuch

FOI magazine (Fraternité Oecuménique Internationale, International Ecumenical Fraternity) is published by the Chemin Neuf Community, 10 rue Henri IV, 69287 Lyon Cedex 02, France Publication director: Fr. Laurent Fabre Executive director: Jean-Charles Paté, Editor in chief: Pascale Paté, Editorial committee: Franck Démaret, Prisca Horesnyi, Fr. François Lestang, Ludmila Mampouya, Marie Farouza Maximos, Fr. Gabriel Roussineau, Timothée Tillard.

Graphic design: Annick Vermot (06 98 61 98 76), Photo credits: Cover: AFP © AHMET IZGI / Anadolu Agency, Central pages: AFP © Gail Orenstein/NURPHTO, Special report: P. Tony Khoury, Télélumière, FraternitéenIrak, CCN, Valérie Pécresse, Shutterstock : diak, Other pages : fotolia.com : angelo.gi, Andres Rodriguez, kasiap, herreneck, Eisenhans, cirodelia, Evgeny Govorov / CPP/CIRIC : Alessia GIULIANI, M.MIGLIORATO, Subscriptions: Nicole Zébrowski, Administration-Management: AME, Production: Sandrine Laroche Printing : Saxoprint.fr, Registration of copyright: December 2014, CPPAP : 0310 G 833338, ISSN : 1770-5436

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• December 2014 - January - February 2015

Editorial Fabulous

“It’s fabulous!” exclaimed the astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Bibring.

Around him 6000 people were glued to the screen which was showing Philae, a small human robot which was 511 million kilometres away, much further than the sun. Before going into sleep mode for a few months, it had succeeded in pivoting through 35 degrees and, making a final effort, in sending to we earthlings beautiful photos of the comet and this very serious and very funny message: “My life on the comet has just begun. I will tell you more about my new mission soon. Z…Z…Z…Z…Z… (Philae Lander, 15 November 2014 at 01h00).

What I most admire is not only the unprecedented scientific achievement, nor the fantastic collaboration between 8 european countries. It is not only Rosetta’s high speed chase which has taken over 10 years, ricocheting from planet to planet (through the action of gravity), but, as every media outlet has recognised, the very explicit quest for the truth, the impassioned research into our origins: - Where did we come from?

- How did life on earth appear?

- How to take a sample of matter created barely 4.5 billion years ago using a sort of harpoon-drill?

- What happened 13.7 billion years ago at the moment of the Big Bang, at the instant of that tiny beginning which was smaller than a grain of sand?

Georges Lemaître, a great astronomer, mathematician and philosopher who was a priest and a friend of Einstein, was the first to “think” this tiny beginning, this Big Bang, which a host of contemporary discoveries are in the process of confirming.

Teilhard de Chardin, a great palaeontologist who was also a priest, dared to write in 1942 “Matter which is purely inert and inanimate does not exist! Everything in the universe contains, at least infinitesimally, some germ of inner life and spontaneity, that is to say of conscience. What we call raw material is certainly alive in its own way (…) atoms, electrons, elementary particles must have a rudiment of immanence, a spark of spirit.”

Father Laurent FaBRE Founder and leader of the Chemin Neuf Community

On Tuesday 28 October, Pope Francis affirmed to the Pontifical Academy of Science that the reality of the Big Bang does not contradict “the creative intervention of God. On the contrary, it requires it.” Likewise, evolution is not incompatible with the idea of God, because “it requires the creation of beings who are capable of evolving”.

And what if, for non-believers and believers alike, this impassioned scientific research into our common Origin was simply, the pale reflection of God’s wish, our wish and His?

FOI • N°43

• December 2014 - January - February 2015

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6 From persecution SUMMARY OF THE FILM

to refuge

8 Iraq and Syria

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

10 Valérie Pécresse Interview

12 Fr. Paul Karam

TESTIMONIES FROM LEBANON

Nayla Tabbara

13 Christian diversity

THE MIDDLE EAST: HISTORY

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over the centuries

FOI • N°43

• December 2014 - January - February 2015

special report

Embracing

THE CROSS Christians in the Middle East

Following the recent Net for God film entitled “The Cross and Hope”, this new FOI Special Report would like to bring the Christians of the East to our attention and to our prayers.

In Syria, three years of civil war and terror have compelled hundreds of thousands of people of many different cultures, religions and social classes to flee the horror.

Starting its campaign of persecution in Iraq, then spreading it to Syria, a terrorist group proclaiming itself as “Islamic state” or “DAECH” in Arabic, has been attacking religious minorities with extreme cruelty.

This report is bringing you the testimonies of some Iraqi and Syrian refugees, describing their path into exile. We also hear from some religious and political leaders for whom this tragic situation calls for a commitment to act and to provide assistance. Finally, it provides some pointers to help us to feel more concerned about what our Christian brothers are going through.

Net for God is a network of prayer, training and evangelisation which was started in 2000, and which is committed to Christian unity, reconciliation and peace. Each month a film is produced, translated into 20 languages and distributed in approaching 70 countries worldwide to all the members of the network which constitutes the International Ecumenical Fraternity (www.netforgod.tv) The DVD of the film is on sale at ame-boutique.com Photo: View over the Plain of Nineveh taken from the Raban Hormizd d’Alqosh Monastery. A family from Qaraqosh living as refugees in a school in Erbil at the end of last June. © Fraternité en Irak

FOI • N°43

• December 2014 - January - February 2015

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SUMMARY OF THE FILM “Embracing the Cross: Christians in the Middle East”

From persecution to refuge “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” Revelation 3, 20-21 Persecution and flight In the face of persecution, flight is the only solution for many. Eastern Christians, but along with them, numerous Middle Eastern religious minorities such as the Yezidis, are today victims of cruel persecution.

This tragic situation is the work of a terrorist group named DAECH1, selfproclaimed Islamic State which first struck in Iraq before today terrorising Syria. A symbol of this situation, the letter Nun (‫)ن‬, signifying “Nazarene” is put on the houses belonging to Christians by the jihadists.

Once this discriminatory symbol has been put up, the owners of the house are offered three possibilities: paying an exorbitant tax in order to have the right to remain in their house under unbearably precarious conditions, renouncing their faith and embracing Islam, or fleeing for their lives.

As a result, like the Holy Family of Nazareth, spending years on the roads to escape Herod, thousands of Christians have left all they had in great haste and found themselves in exile in Lebanon. This last bastion of peace in a Middle East that is so severly shaken, the land of the green cedar represents their only hope for survival in the face of suffering, oppression, violence and humiliation. Lebanon is in fact one of the Arab countries with the biggest

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Christian population, the majority of which belong to the Maronite Church.

Its founder, Saint Maron or Maroun, an ascetic who lived in Syria not far from Antioch during the fourth century, gathered small communities of disciples around himself. They were drawn to his spirituality, which remained faithful to the Council of Chalcedon, and attached to the Aramean traditions that the local population continues to follow to this day.

The history of this Maronite community is punctuated by periods of persecution and exile, and so it is quite natural that these thousands of recently made stateless people should come here for refuge.

Thousands of Christians exiled from one day to the next Butrus Ramsi, an Iraqi refugee from Mosul reports, “We heard the loud speakers and we were informed that DAECH had arrived near to our home.

So we fled from our house.. To start with, we thought that it would just be a question of a two or three days and then we would be able to return. This is not what happened. The situation worsened… So we went through that dreadful month until we arrived in Lebanon. My wife told me that she wanted to return, to check out the house. I told her, “Forget about the house. I have come with you so that your dignity and that of your

• December 2014 - January - February 2015

1 son are preserved.” When we left the house, I could take nothing with me except for the passports, birth certificates and baptism certificates. We barely had time to close the door. There was no time to take anything else. It was the same for everyone else here. The region has been devastated. Perhaps we shall be able to return to our land in the future. What is happening to us at present is terrible.” » >>>

special report Salam and Sanaa have four children and Sanaa is expecting a fifth. They escaped from Mosul. “The terrorists took everything from us: our house, our tools, our jewellery. They left us nothing”, Salam tells us. “They attacked us and made announcements in the mosques that all Christians must leave Mosul. So we left”, Sanaa continues.

“I am responsible for my family, so we fled. If the terrorists had caught us, they would have murdered us right in our own house. We have nothing, not even the papers for the house.

They stole everything from us. It’s an unbearable tragedy. We are about to have a child, is it to blame for all this?” adds Salam.

With such a painful history, and such a hard life, how can we hope beyond all hope? How can we understand what is happening to us? How can we find any meaning in the events that are taking place and see signs of God’s discrete presence in our lives?

Lubna, an Iraqi woman, testifies to us about her hope, “In spite of everything that has happened, Iraq is still our land, our home, the place where we have all our memories. We pray every day. Our trust is in God alone. God is the source of our life; if we lose our prayers, we lose our life. God is present with us.

He protects us even during the most difficult times. When we fled, we could see the shells and missiles above our heads, but the hand of God was protecting us. God is always beside us. It is hard - even patience has its limits, this is not easy.”

Welcoming our brothers Faced with this situation, Christians in Lebanon and throughout the world have been rallying round. In Lebanon, Nicole Gemayel, the daughter of the Maronite President, Amine Gamayel, has been telling us, “It’s very hard.

It’s our duty to do our utmost to help these people who have been driven from their homes solely because they are Christians. So we, as Christians, must do our utmost to help them.”

Father Sisar Majeed, of the Chaldean Church in Stuttgart, speaks to us about the situation in Germany.

“We have about 3000 parishioners, of whom 99% are refugees. We want the world, especially the West, to know what is happening in our country, to our people, and that this will get people here to think, ‘How can we help them?’ Whether they are Christians or Yezidis or any other minority, they are above all human beings who need help. We cannot say that there are first and second class people. Human beings are one. These refugees only want to live with dignity, and we want to give them that opportunity: to live a normal life in peace.

There have been many initiatives, such as the Study Group on the Eastern Christians at the French National Assembly (in July 2014, see p. 10) or the twinning between the diocese of Lyon and that of Mosul (on 2 October 2014, see p. 11). The aim is to help the ones who want to leave, to find accommodation for them, but above all, to make it possible for them to return home to their country. v

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Ivana Simunic, Net for God

1- DAECH, Arabic acronym for “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant”.

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Photos : 1- A refugee camp in Iraq 2- Crossing the border between Syria and Lebanon 3- The interior of Mart Shmony d’Ankawa church, in the Christian district of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan 4- Fr. Tony Khoury, a Maronite priest from Byblos in Lebanon, with the parents of two children who were killed by DAECH in Iraq 5- An Iraqi refugee family in Stuttgart (Germany)

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From Christian origins until today...

Iraq and Syria: landmarks Iraq A country rich in culture, with Sumerian, Assyrian, Persian and Babylonian roots, located in the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates, Iraq is one of the cradles of civilisation. In 2011, Iraq had almost 33 million inhabitants.

Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was governed by a secular, essentially Sunni elite, which oppressed the Arab Shiite majority and the Kurd minority. The fall of the Saddamist regime reshuffled the cards, and since then, we have been witnessing a ferocious struggle between the clans. In over ten years, the war in Iraq led to the death of over 5000 American soldiers in battle, and of over 120,000 Iraqi civilians. Since 2003, approaching 3.6 million Iraqis have been displaced, either internally in Iraq or to a foreign country.

Today’s threats to the minorities The majority of the Iraqi population is Muslim, either Shia or Sunni. But there are also Iraqis of other religions, Christians, Yezidis, but also Kakai , Shabaks and Sabians living in the same territory, who have been there over 2000 years. These minorities are being threatened today.

Christians have become one of the preferred targets of the jihadist movements which emerged as a result of the fall of the former regime.

The Christians of Iraq Since its beginnings, the Christians in Iraq spoke Aramaic, the language of Christ, (there are 600,000 Christians in Iraq, less than 3% or the population, of whom 400,000 are Catholic Chaldeans).There were a million Christians in 1980 and 1.2 millions in

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Territoires revendiqués par Daech

Turquie

Chypre

Liban

Syrie

Iran Irak

Cisjordanie

Égypte

Israël

Jordanie

Arabie Saoudite

1987. As a result of the chaotic situation in the country, more recent figures are unreliable. Since the fall of the former regime and the as a result of the sectarian war, the majority of the Christians have left the country or found refuge in the north, near Erbil, in the Christian zone of Ain Kawa.

The situation is continuing to deteriorate for the Christians in this country. After Mosul was taken by the islamists on 10 June 2014, a further stage was reached. The threat has become extreme for the Chaldeans, as there are many Christian villages close to Mosul.

Syria...

Syria is facing chaos. After over three years of intensive war, the country is torn apart more that ever by, at the same time, a civil war, a cold war and a holy war. Out of 22 million Syrians, 160,000 have been killed, and over a

• December 2014 - January - February 2015

Koweït

third have left their homes; 6 million of these are refugees elsewhere in their country and 2 million have fled elsewhere, mainly to Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.

Christianity This country was originally Christian.

The Muslim conquests which started in the VII century put a stop to this expansion however, and many Christians converted to Islam at that time.

Since then, the proportion of Christians has been in continuous decline, and they are now in a minority in a country with a Muslim majority.

The Eastern Christians in numbers The Church was founded in the east, and it was from this ancient nucleus that it spread, step by step, throughout the Empire. So it is no surprise that the Eastern Churches have the same age as Christianity. They are made up today of a mosaic of Churches which

special report TESTIMONY

Maria, a Syrian refugee in Lebanon The mother of four children, Maria is a refugee in Lebanon. She fled from the Christian village of Daraa with her husband and children as the hostilities were starting in 2011.

“We went down to Cham where it was still quiet, but the situation got worse and worse with so much bombing that we could no longer live there.” So at the end of 2013 her husband decided to make a trip back to Daraa to fetch the money that he had left with his cousin so that the family could leave and find refuge in Lebanon. But he was abducted and considered lost. Maria managed to go to Lebanon with the children. She did not want to leave the children with parents-in-law or brothers-in-law. And so she went to a refugee camp with her children because she had nowhere else to go.

But her profound trust in the Lord had not dimmed even so, and she said to us, “As the Lord has protected us and guarded us since 2011, when the fighting started, I hope that He will not forget us here. I said to Him, ‘It is you who will prepare my way because I have nothing at all down

here.’” As for her husband, he has finally been released for a ransom of 1,200,000 souri (the national currency) which was collected together by his cousins. But he was isolated in that village, no one could go to him after he was freed.

It was thanks to the mayor that he managed to get to a village that was more accessible where his cousins went to look for him. On his return to Cham, he was surprised to find that his family was no longer there, and he is now stuck back there. His wife, who managed to speak to him by telephone, in now telling us that he has kidney problems. “I learnt that his health is not at all good. He does not know where the water that he drinks comes from nor his food. No one has recognised him after all these events, and till now, I haven’t seen him.” In fact, all the people who had been abducted or declared lost cannot leave Syria immediately because they have to go through a procedure to ensure that they are not criminals. Maria’s case is not isolated, and as a result of all the violence of the past three years, there are thousands of Syrian families who have been obliged to flee the country, their community and their family like Maria and her children. v

originated from the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. It is estimated that there are some 11 million Christians in the Near and Middle East today, but because a mass exodus is taking place, their number cannot be given with precision. These Christians are distributed across eleven Eastern Churches who have different rites.

The minority Syrian Church, which is descended from the first Christian community in Antioch, and the Chaldean Church are threatened by the uncontrollable islamist rebels who are bringing about a violent repression and a massive exodus of these communities. v Ivana Simunic, Net for God Sources: lemonde.fr, lacroix.com Centre de déplacés de Mar Elia, à Erbil fin octobre 2014 - © Fraternité en Irak

FOI • N°43

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Interview

Valérie Pécresse The UMP deputy for Yvelines is joint chair of the Study Group on Eastern Christians at the French National Assembly. This was officially set up on 17 September 2014, and is made up of 105 deputies from all parties. She tells us how this group came to be set up.

NFG: You have formed the Study Group on the Eastern Christians at the National Assembly. Could you tell us what the key element in this innovation are?

As the deputy for Yvelines, I wanted to investigate the situation in the Ile-deFrance region. I was advised to go to meet the Assyro-Chaldeans, an extremely lively and well organised community in Sarcelles.

There, I was confronted with the most appalling testimonies. It was before the fall of Mosul, and all the events that have taken place since then, but the Islamic State terrorists had already crossed the Syrian border and come into Iraq.

The testimonies of these families were filled with the greatest concern. They said, “No one is listening to us.“You are in the process of permitting the death of the Christians of the East.” This came as a shock to me. If Christians are not defended by countries with Christian roots or of Christian tradition, well, they will never be defended.

If France, the country of human rights, which defends minorities around the world, does not defend the Christian minorities in the East, it will be tragic.

I had already been confronted by this question when I was Minister of Higher Education. During a visit to Egypt, I asked to visit a Coptic church which had just been attacked and to find out what had happened. This caused a great diplomatic upset, because a minister of the French Republic does not have the right to deviate from her planned route to go to show solidarity with an afflicted Coptic community. So we have a

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question, this question of Eastern Christian minorities, which is close to my heart because I believe they have the right to claim to live where they have been for centuries; they have the right to freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of opinion, just as we guarantee on our soil the rights of all other religious minorities to practice their faith.

NFG: What are the issues that this study group is looking at?

At the beginning, we wanted to raise the alarm. The situation was just beginning to deteriorate. We wanted to raise the alarm concerning all the minorities in the Middle East against whom oppression was beginning. This coincided more or less with the appeal of Mgr; Barbarin, which was also ringing alarm bells.

But we had the impression that we were a voice in the wilderness. At the beginning, the National Assembly refused to allow the creation of a study group by arguing, “Christians?

But we are a secular republic, it’s not our business to defend Christians. Oppressed minorities? That’s very vague, which minorities? The Middle East?

That’s very complicated. How do you define it geographically?”

So it was very difficult to set up this group. Finally it was Laurent Fabius, the Minister of Foreign Affairs who allowed us, Véronique Besse, the Deputy for Vendée and myself, to arrange for the group to be set up in the Assembly, knowing that it did not exist in the Senate. Our objective was to have a cross-party meeting place, with a mixture of representatives from the right

• December 2014 - January - February 2015

and the left, who would work on the same subject. Because this matter was beyond all of us, it was beyond our political divisions, it was a matter that we all had to deal with, we, the French people.

At the end of that summer, I suggested to the former prime minister, François Fillon, that we should visit Iraq to assess the seriousness of the situation. We wanted to know what was happening, not by hear-say, but on the spot, by questioning the people who had lost everything. Did they prefer help to allow them to stay living where they were, armaments for fighting the terrorists, returning to their homes with perhaps an international intervention force, or did they prefer to come to France as refugees? I returned with the conviction that yes, we should accept the Eastern Christians in France, either on a temporary or permanent basis, that we should take in those who were afraid of returning to their homes. But the real solution, the real challenge for us, is to arrange for them to return home.

NFG: What impressed you the most during your journey to Iraq?

The fact that these displaced people were at the same time experiencing very great deprivation – some of them had had to leave everything behind – and living with great dignity, with great solidarity. You could see that these are minorities who had held together in the face of past discrimination and persecution, so they have formed very united communities. There is this tremendous vitality and at the same time, these troubling questions, “How are

special report we going to manage? There are no places in the schools, what can we do for our children when the new school year starts?” This is the most upsetting thing, seeing all these little kids gambolling around everywhere, and asking oneself, “What will their future be now?”

We have also been confronted with the stories of other minorities, apart from Christian ones, notably the Yazidis.

These are animists, and for the islamists, they are practising the religion of the devil. They have been hunted down, their women raped, and some young girls have been sold. The Yazidis have really been persecuted, they were driven up a mountain at 45°C so that they would die of hunger and thirst.

Compared to that, the situation of the Christians is not the worst in Iraq today, there is even worse.

In reality what is happening is the persecution of others who are different. An ideology is being imposed that insists that all should be identical, that all should believe the same thing. Behind

this there is obviously the Sunni-Shia war which is tearing the Middle East apart and is very serious, and which we, the Christians, see as very wrong.

And today, we have succeeded in setting up a bridge of humanitarian solidarity, we have the capacities that are needed. The work is under way, even if it is complicated, cumbersome and bureaucratic. But what is a big worry more generally, is the presence of thousands of French people who are now beginning to fight for the jihadists. I should like to understand what this struggle means. I should like to understand how a young French person, raised in France, brought up with our values, could one day turn into a terrorist tool. And beyond that, I should like to know what we are going to do with them when these French citizens come back to France. They are often young, indoctrinated, and they have become machines for killing, for torturing; what are we going to do with them? This is a matter that is moral, political, and social, but also concerns security. v

A refugee camp in Iraq, near Erbil, after the heavy rains at the beginning of October.

Fraternité en Irak (BROTHERHOOD IN IRAQ)

Lyon Mosul

On Thursday, 2 October 2014, 850 people took part in the inauguration of the twinning of the Dioceses of Lyon and Mosul. This was done in the presence of representatives of the Churches (Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon, Mgr. Louis Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldeans of Iraq) and of the State (Mr. Gérard Collomb, Senator and Mayor of Lyon, Mr. Jean-Jack Queyranne, President of the Regional Council), but also of some Non-Governmental Organisations and communities of Eastern Christians plus some of the people from Lyon. All wanted to show their solidarity and their concern towards the persecuted minorities of the Middle East. This friendship evening, around a fine Iraqi meal, was also a thoughtful and serious gathering, conveying the meaning that a shared meal is a sign of closeness to all those who were suffering and living in hope.

For Mgr. Barbarin, this twinning is primarily a spiritual twinning between the dioceses. “It is for psychological comfort, it is a sign of friendship, of being present, there are twinnings between families.”

This was how he had replied to the request that Mgr. Sako made to him,

This is an organisation that was set up in 2011 by young French people. Its aim is to provide support for religious minorities in Iraq who have become victims of violence, (Christians, Yezidis, Kakais, Shabaks... ) so that they can live with dignity in their own country. For the past four years, its members have been going to Iraq regularly to build up links of friendship with the inhabitants of the plain of Niniveh in the north of Iraq, and of Kurkuk. Fraternité en Irak supports humanitarian projects and longer term projects related to health and childcare. The offensive launched in Iraq by Islamic State on 10 June 2014 made Fraternité en Irak set up an emergency programme to come to the help of the thousands of refugees that had been driven from their homes. Starting in August, ten tonnes of medical supplies have been provided, housing has been built and thousands of items of warm clothing have been distributed.

“Don’t concern yourselves with money, it’s not firstly about money, we need friends, we need to know that you’re thinking about us, that you’re praying for us”

To support Fraternité en Irak ; go to fraternite-en-irak.org

www.lyonmossoul.org

FOI • N°43

• December 2014 - January - February 2015

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TESTIMONIES FROM LEBANON

Fr. PAUL KARAM, President of Caritas Lebanon “This is a situation which is weighing upon Lebanon with all its weight, this small land which is already in all sorts of difficulties, starting with its very limited infrastructure. And because there is an enormous number of Syrian refugees present on our. territory.

It is almost a third of the Lebanese population. We’re talking about 1,600,000 Syrian refugees. The other serious problem that we are experiencing together is that of Iraq, with the invasion there by DAECH and the great silence of the international community and the Arab League. The Christians are threatened, they are going through a time of exodus, and at the same time they are being attacked because of their own Christian faith. The churches in the plain of Nineveh and Mosul are empty; there are no more services, no more masses in the churches, or in the convents. So a large population has been abandoned and they come as refugees to Lebanon. But Lebanon cannot hold all these people. And there is a big political issue behind all this. If there is a demographic destabilisation, I think that the future of Lebanon will be in question, and with that, the future of the Near and Middle East. Lebanon is now the only country in the region where we still manage to retain a Christian Maronite president, elected by the parliament. Finally this is the humanitarian aspect which is really serious; finding a hospital place is becoming more and more difficult. So how can we manage? This is the real question. Myself, I base my words on the exhortation of Pope Francis to the international community, “We must, before all else first of all stop arms trafficking” Photos (from top to bottom): The meeting of the Adyan Association in Lebanon in 2013, the city of Beirut, Iraqi refugee children learning the catechism in Beirut

NAYLA TABBARA, Muslim co-founder of Adyan,

for a rapprochement between religions

The way of thinking of DAECH must be eradicated. We Muslims must take aboard our responsibilities. It is not enough to say that these groups have nothing to do with Islam. We need to take this responsibility because what they are doing is done in the name of Islam, and they are using basic texts to legitimize their actions. We recently managed to do some work with representatives from the different religious communities in Lebanon, on the values of citizenship viewed from the stand

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points of religions. This work has helped to integrate the others into the religious education of each religion.

Usually in our religious education we do not mention others and rarely mention citizenship. The teaching of religion speaks rather of a person’s relationship with God and with his brothers in his religious community.

Why do we manage to work in the Arab world, to give an example to the world?

It is because we believe in the words of John Paul II, ‘Lebanon is more than a

• December 2014 - January - February 2015

country, it is a message.’ We reformulate this by saying that we are moving from the nation-state to the messagestate; a country that can be a message for the world through its diversity, but on condition that it knows how to manage this diversity.”

special report HISTORY

Christian diversity in the Middle East over the centuries Maronites, Chaldeans, Melkites, Assyrians, Copts, Armenians... When you try to get to know the Eastern Churches better, you are, to start with, discouraged by the divisions in these Churches, and the terminology used to describe them.

At the same time, these names are fascinating, they would sometimes even make you dream if they were not too often associated with tales of massacres and exiles. They take us back to the long histories of communities whose origins go back to antiquity. Their languages, their liturgies and some of their sanctuaries bear witness to a distant and prestigious past.

Eastern Christianity was made up of churches who were competing on the basis of theological debates, which ended in institutional divisions during the councils of the fifth century. The “Nestorians” insisted on the human nature of Christ. The “Miaphysites” on the contrary emphasised the divine nature of Christ. The “Chalcedonians” (the ones who won the day against the Miaphysites at the Council of Chalcedon) affirmed that according to them, Christ was fully man and fully God. They recognised Mary as “mother of God”. Finally there was a formula for a compromise (the Monothelite doctrine), according to which Christ had two natures but a single will, which was condemned at a council at the end of the seventh century.

Yesterday, as today, these disputes were certainly beyond the comprehension of most Christians. Cultural and political cleavages characterised the Roman east and its surroundings

and explain the magnitude of these divisions. The Eastern Church (the “Nestorians”), which spoke Syriac, was established beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire, in the Persian Empire. The Miaphysites were spread across three non-Greek-speaking regions with different languages, the Copts in Egypt, the Syriacs in Syria (referred to as “Jacobites” by their adversaries) and the Armenians, who for a time had their own independent kingdom.

A Syriac community that was living around a monastery dedicated to Saint Maron adopted the Monothelite doctrine and made up the Maronite Church which became established on Mount Lebanon.

And finally, the Chalcedonians referred to themselves as “Melkites” because they remained loyal to the Emperor in Constantinople (the term Malik means emperor in Arabic). After the Muslims became dominant in the seventh century these divisions became hardened.

During the Middle Ages, The Christians of the east and the west little by little became strangers to one another.

The time of the crusades is revealing.

On the one hand, the leaders of the Eastern Churches looked to the Frankish princes for refuge and protection. The Maronites even united with the Catholic Church at the beginning of the thirteenth century. On the other hand, the Franks often appeared to be more foreign to the eastern Christians than the Muslims. The Christian minority was confused by the invader sometimes, and as a result suffered under the Muslims who suspected them of complicity with their enemy.

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Starting from the sixteenth century, the relationships between Europe and the East under the control of the Ottomans intensified. For the western Christians, even if it was difficult to make pilgrimages to Palestine, the Middle East was seen as a vast Holy Land, where Christ had lived, and where the first Christian communities had developed. And when, following the protestant reformation, the Catholic Church gave its worldwide missionary activity a new impetus, relying especially on the new orders such as the Jesuits, the Middle East was a favoured target. The aim was to lead the Eastern Christians into union with the Holy See. Locally, the Easterners, facing many difficulties, were able to call on the west for help. This created some adherence, but also some reactions of rejection with a reaffirmation of their “Orthodox” identity. As a result, with the exception of the Maronites who were already Catholic, all the five Eastern Churches split into a Catholic component,, and a non Catholic component, not united with Rome. The Franciscans, already established in the Holy Land constituted the kernel of a Latin Church under the authority of a Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem in the nineteenth century.

Finally various denominations of protestants, whose missionaries been present in the Near East since the beginning of the nineteenth century, also set up churches.

These conflicts calmed down during the twentieth century. The Roman Church has moderated its concept for a centralised structure, and has encourage the Eastern Catholics to play a moderating role between herself and the Orthodox Christians. Organisations for meeting and for dialogue have been established. They have led to some common Christological declarations which have resolved misunderstandings. Both is the current difficulties in the Middle East and in the diasporas, the Eastern Christians are seeking new paths to Christian unity while still holding on to their traditions. v Aurélien Girard, Lecturer in Modern History

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The Armenian Apostolic Church

The feast of the Nativity The Armenians have always celebrated Christmas, the Coming of the Magi and Epiphany on the same day: the 6th January, as adopted by the Church Universal (1).

In fact it was only in 354 that Pope Liberius decided to celebrate the Birth of Christ as a separate festival in order to counter worship of the god Mithra on 25th December, the day of the winter solstice.

The 6th January was retained in the calendar to mark the Epiphany.

Zaven Yegavian

Adviser for Education to His Holiness Aram I

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For the Armenians, the festival begins after a week-long fast on the evening of the 5th January at 11 pm with the Christmas vigil according to the ordo. This long night is known in the Armenian as the djrakalouytz (which refers to the lighting of the candelabra to celeCelebration of the Nativity brate the Holy Birth at the Armenian Apostolic Church in Marseilles, 2013 and Divine Revelation).

The celebrants, with their richly decorated chasubles, each you with fainting heart. Lead me to the holding a candle in one hand and a cenhigh rock that stands far out of my reach. ser in the other, process up the steps of For you are my refuge, a strong tower the sanctuary, glorify the Holy Mother of against the enemy.”

God singing the hymn dedicated to her.

During the night vigil and the following three days dedicated to the birth of In the nave, deacons, acolytes and canChrist until the Day of the Dead, many of tors, all sing the hymn of blessing: “God the Gospel readings are those relating has sent his Word”. The homily follows the Resurrection, especially if Christmas and then the hymn “We give thanks to falls on a Sunday. The presence of the God”. The clergy intone the trisagion, three virgins at the tomb is acclaimed.

“Holy God, Holy and Powerful, Holy and The second part of the ceremony begins Immortal, born to us, revealed to us, with the Universal Prayer. Up until that have mercy on us.” The cantors on the point the altar curtain has remained right of the altar sing the hymn relating closed. The Old Testament prophecies the miraculous birth and the celebrant are read out from a lectern in the centre priest follows on with the Universal of the Church. The Bishop wearing his Prayer and the Litany of the Saints. richly decorated chasuble begins by reaUsing one of the recitative rhythms, ding of the first three chapters of Genethe cantors then sing Psalm 61 antiphosis and then the clergy, in descending nically “God, hear my cry, listen to my hierarchical order, read out Isaiah 7, prayer. From the end of the earth I call to Exodus 12 to -24, Micah 5 to 7, Proverbs

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1 to 9. A dramatic reading of the entire prophecy of Daniel is performed in its entirety. An acolyte (chosen for the vibrant quality of his voice) takes the part of the narrator and three choirboys act out the episode of the three men in the furnace. The readings conclude with Psalm 135: “Praise the name of Yahweh, you who serve Yahweh, praise him”.

Right down to the present day, the pupils of the Armenian schools of the Diaspora learn the prophecy of Daniel by heart. Twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, they act out the drama before the Mass is celebrated. The deacons sing the hymn composed by St Nerses the Gracious (c.1100-1173): “O great and wondrous mystery revealed to us today, angels and archangels sing with the shepherds ‘Glory to the New-Born Babe’.”

Chapter 2 of the Gospel of St Luke is then read out: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace for those he favours”. The Mass then follows. As we said at the beginning, the Holy Armenian Apostolic Church commemorates the Nativity, the Coming of the Magi and the Epiphany in a single ceremony. At the end of the Pontifical Mass, the Bishop goes to the baptistery and takes in his hands the silver Dove containing the Holy Oil, which is prepared once every seven years by the Catholicosate of Etchmiadzin in Armenia and in Antélias in the Lebanon.

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This Holy Oil is made from 40 aromatic plants (the exact list is a well-kept secret) and it takes 40 days to prepare in a special silver cauldron. Almost miraculously, as the mixture is warmed it turns into a thick oil (miuron).

The Supreme Pontiff blesses the Oil with the Holy Right Hand of St. Gregory the Illuminator. Each bishop in his role as a primate of his diocese takes some of the Oil, to distribute to his parishes for use in the sacraments. The sacraments of baptism, ordination to the priesthood and the funerals of members of the clergy cannot be carried out without the Holy Oil. The Baptism of Christ is celebrated by placing a bowl of water in the sanctuary. The celebrant pours a few drops of Holy Oil into the water as a child plunges the Holy Cross into the bowl. The water is then distributed among the faithful.

The following day, i.e. 7th January, the Mass for the Dead is said with a prayer commemorating the Martyrdom of St Stephen. v

A journey through Armenia trekking, spirituality and culture....

Ephata

4th-14th June 2015 ephata . chemin - neuf . fr

The Armenian Apostolic Church is one of the Eastern

Orthodox Churches. It bases its claim to be an Apostolic Church by tracing its origins back to the Apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew. It became the official Church of the Kingdom of Armenia with the conversion of King Tiridates III c.295 by St. Gregory the Illuminator. Its distinctive character developed between the 6th and early 8th centuries.

For a long time both the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church considered it to be Monophysite because, along with the churches of Alexandria and Antioch, it rejected the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon (451) condemning Eutychès’ Monophysitism. The Armenian Church however felt this was an incorrect description of its position as it also considered Eutychès’ Monophysitism, which had been condemned at Chalcedon, to be heretical.

In 1996, in a joint declaration, John-Paul II and Karekin I gave thanks for the joint efforts of their Churches to seek unity in Christ, the Word of God made flesh. They confirmed that “the controversies and unhappy divisions which sometimes have followed upon the divergent ways in expressing their faith, as a result of the present declaration, should not continue to influence the life and witness of the Church today”. (1)

The current Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, His Holiness Karekin II, lives in Etchmiadzin near Yerevan, the honoured primate among the church hierarchy. He became Supreme Patriarch on 27 October 1999.

1- http://www.vatican.va, Declaration of 13th December 1996

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Jerusalem: An ecumenical circle of friends

Talking Together as Brothers and Sisters Theological, spiritual and fraternal ecumenism are often thought of as separate activities. We often notice, however, that theological work is based on brotherly relationships, and on prayer. Lysanne Guilbault experienced this in Jerusalem, while working together with Christians of different denominations, all of whom belong to the Ecumenical Circle of Friends.

Lysanne GUILBAUT, ccn A consecrated celibate, member of the team responsible for the Community in Israel

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“The world is in flames. The fire could easily burn down our house. But above all the flames stands the Cross that nothing can destroy.” 1 These words of Edith Stein seem pertinent today, when war is threatening various areas of the world, in particular the Middle East.

In this context, the scandal of division between Christians is an open wound.

And I would add ‘in Jerusalem more than anywhere else’.

In the place of Calvary, the Resurrection and Pentecost, this scandal of division is even more difficult to accept.

But signs of hope can be seen, even in the worst of the conflict. The Jerusalem

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“Here in Jerusalem the scandal of division between Christians is even more difficult to accept than anywhere else.”

Church, in its very humble way, is part of the Ecumenical movement.

As Fr. Frans Bouwen stressed in a recent article, different initiatives towards unity have taken on a particular significance in this city, as they resonate with its unique character. These few lines carry a flame of hope to the hearts of

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many people living in Jerusalem. They were written to highlight an initiative which is itself an attempt to respond to God’s call “that they may all be one, so that the world may believe”.

(John 17, v. 21)

An initiative which came to being in a group of ecumenical friends.

Last June, the Ecumenical Circle of Friends in Jerusalem decided to study an ecclesial document on convergence entitled “The Church-Towards a Common Vision”, on the theme of the nature and mission of the Catholic Church.

This document was approved by the “Faith and Constitution” Commission in Penang in 2012.

From Meeting as Brothers to Seeking a Dialogue.

A few words on the Ecumenical Circle of Friends, which was formed in the early 1960’s. It holds monthly meetings of Christians of all the Churches in Jerusalem, Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic. These gatherings are an opportunity for sharing information and ecumenical problems. The climate of trust within the group can also make it possible to share very serious matters.

Recently, a Syrian Orthodox brother drew our attention to the diaspora experienced by his church, and the suffering it is causing.

For various reasons, ethnic and economic as well as religious, the birthplace of Syriacs, largely in Syria and Iraq, is gradually losing its population. The Patriarch of this church is faced with the heavy responsibility of working to prevent this phenomenon from developing even further. He is also constantly travelling the roads to support men and women persecuted for their faith.

This brother’s testimony caused a genuine meeting of minds within this group of friends. Hearts were opened

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to the presence of the Holy Spirit in him, and in his church tradition which is being severely tested, but also enriched by the faith of its martyrs.

This fraternal feeling in its turn gave rise to the idea of an in-depth exchange based on theological study. The study group consists of some members of the Ecumenical Circle of Friends, together with theologians and managers of training colleges working in Jerusalem.

Their aim is to draw up a response to the document studied, and to send it to the “Faith and Constitution” Commission.

Here is a brief account of the main themes of this group’s work.

• Attention to Points of Meeting.

Each of our meetings has one chapter of the text as its theme. After a time of prayer, one person from the group introduces the study by presenting the content of the chapter. For each theme addressed, we try to be conscious of the points for ecclesiastical agreement emphasised by the text, so as to begin a dialogue between our church families.

The questions at the end of the chapter are used as a guide to our discussion.

• A Discovery.

The group is still in its infancy, and it is a little early to assess the fruits of the dialogue we have begun. Even so, we realised one thing during our first meetings. We discovered how seriously the “Faith and Constitution” Commission took the replies of the various Christian Churches at the different stages of producing the document. It was even moved to add a completely new chapter at the beginning, on the link between the nature and the mission of the Church.

It was thought essential to emphasise that the very nature of the Church calls it to mission. It is not a question of founding a community which then carries out mission. The Church’s foundation lies in the Triune God’s plan for the sal-

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vation of Humanity, and the Church’s mission flows from its nature as the Body of Christ.

• Publicising the Nature of this Contribution.

Although we are still just beginning, we already feel the call to play our part in having this document received in our respective spheres of influence.

Personally, I rejoice that the theme of the next ecumenical session at Hautecombe (12th – 15th March, 2015) is to be the study of this document. (Notice to anyone interested). v 1- Edith Stein, The Crib and the Cross, Ad Solem, Geneva, 2007, p. 43 2- Frans Bouwen is a Missionary in Africa, and a specialist in Eastern Churches.

3- Frans Bouwen, “The week for prayer for Christian Unity in Jerusalem” in: Proche-Orient 57, 2007, p. 319

The Ecumenical Council of Churches. (ECC).

This organisation presents itself as “a brotherly Community of Churches which acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour, and strives to make a common reply to their common vocation , for the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit1.” The “Faith and Constitution Commission” is its theological voice, made up of several members, ministers, lay people, university members and Church leaders from all over the world, all chosen and sent to participate officially by their respective Churches. Other Churches, non-members of the ECC, (among them the Roman Catholic Church,) are full members of this doctrinal commission.

1- The Ecumenical Council of Churches: Constitution and rules. “Constitution - 1 Basis” • December 2014 - January - February 2015

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Prayer

Migrants and refugees: towards a better world “Mary gave birth to her firstborn, a son; she wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Lk 2, 7). Still more, Jesus, Mary and Joseph experienced what it means to leave one’s own land and be migrants: threatened

by Herod’s thirst for power, they were forced to flee and take refuge in Egypt (cf Mt 2, 13-14). But the motherly heart of Mary and the attentive heart of Joseph, Guardian of the Holy Family, always remained confident that God would never abandon them. By their intercession, may that same certainty be always firm in the heart of migrant and refugee.”

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The message of Pope Francis for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees

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A 9 day-old Assyrian baby sleeping in a church in Erbil in Iraq on August 11th 2014. The Assyrian Church supplies food and clean water. The families have fled from the Islamic State.

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Christian Training

Synod of bishops on the family

Between theology and pastorality In several recent issues, F.O.I. magazine has taken an interest in the reflection undertaken by the Catholic Church on the situation of families in our time. Fr. Gérard Berliet took part in the synod on the family, as an expert. A priest in the diocese of Dijon, he has for many years been in mission to the faithful who are divorced and remarried.

He recounts for us the main threads and the atmosphere of the synod.

Fr. Gérard Berliet

Associate to the Special Office for the Synod on the Family

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This “extraordinary” synod brought together principally the presidents of the various episcopal conferences and cardinals chosen by the Pope. It was part of a long-term plan of which the first step was the preparatory questionnaire sent out in the autumn of 2013 by the synod office.

The reflection in common of the fathers was inaugurated by the consistory of February 2014. It is scheduled to finish during the “ordinary” synod of which the theme will be: “The vocation and mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world” which will bring together for three weeks in October 2015 the elected delegates from the different episcopal conferences.

As for the apostolic exhortation, if there is one, it should be in 2016.That means nearly three years of work from the beginning of the reflection to the orientations given by the Pope to the universal Church. Between the 2014 meeting and that of 2015, the Churches are called to an in-depth study from a theological and pastoral point-of-view. Thus it will be, hopefully, a work of maturing in the whole Church.

A novelty in this synod was the presence of couples or lay witnesses. This was much appreciated.

During the first week, each theme entered upon by the General Congregations was illustrated by a witness – usually from a couple - coming from every continent. Then we began a task of lis-

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tening – a bit fastidious, but fascinating as well – to the Fathers who were each allowed four minutes, the control of the time being entrusted to the vigilance of the delegated presidents! The speeches followed the order of subjects set out in the “instrumentum laboris”.

The work followed from one text to another. The “relatio ante disceptationem” (relation before debate) had been proposed at the beginning of the work by Cardinal Erdö, Archbishop of Budapest.

It concluded after the week of the General Congregations in the editing of the “relatio post disceptationem”, again read by him and published on Monday morning, then amended by the ten linguistic groups (2 Francophone, 3 Anglophone, 3 Italophone, 2 Hispanophone) during the early days of the week.

I bring to mind four themes from the discussions. There was a debate on the notion of “gradualness”, the content of which was not clearly defined. It was not clear whether it was a question of the gradualness of man’s reply to the law which, as the norm, is invariable.

The concept of “mercy” much invoked, was also not defined. Was it simply compassion or was it divine mercy which regenerates the sinner and draws good out of evil?

It had also been proposed to discuss irregular matrimonial situations as Lumen Gentium speaks in its n° 8 of nonChristian religions: “The Church subsists

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(“sustitit in”) in the Catholic Church although many elements of sanctification and truth subsist outside its structures…”

This comparison was not retained because those in an irregular matrimonial situation are usually responsible for that state, while one does not choose one’s religion when one is born in a particular place.

Finally, there was a discussion of the fact that it would be normal that the faithful who do not have access to sacramental communion might do so, as they could have spiritual communion.

The amendment work made it possible,

by Friday, to finish the “Relatio Synodi” now available in French.

“The dialogue was frank, and so very different convictions were expressed.”

Pope Francis was seen to be very attentive to the proceedings – he was present at all the General Congregations except that of Wednesday morning, because of the habitual general audience.

He had hoped for clear speaking: “Let no one say: ‘One cannot say that; someone will think that…’” (1) In fact, the dialogue was frank, and so very

different convictions were expressed, particularly during the hours of “free speech” at the end of the afternoons.

It is rather a good thing: nothing was taboo, neither the different preoccupations related to families throughout the world, nor methods of pastoral accompaniment. Although the debate may have been lively, full of contrast, the Church remained in unity.

As a proof of this, the final text of the “Relatio Synodi”, of which almost all of the 62 articles were adopted by a large majority of voters, since the required majority is of 2/3 of the expressed voices.

As to the articles which did not obtain a 2/3 majority, we know they were three in number: number 52 on the possibility of non-generalized access of remarried divorcees to the sacraments of penitence and Eucharist, number 53 on the possibility of considering for them sacramental communion as some of them experience fruitfully spiritual communion (the logic being: “he who lives the reality may live the sign which signifies it”), and number 55 on welcoming into the community people of homosexual tendency. The fathers thus judged that, on these particular points, the reflection was not sufficiently ripened for validating numbers 52, 53, 55 of the “Relatio Synodi”.

Resulting from this there are, of course, openings for study, particularly theological. Several were evoked in General Congregations or in linguistic circles.

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They reflected for instance on what constitutes the sacrament of marriage: when the engaged couple have sufficient knowledge of the four pillars (liberty, indissolubility, faithfulness, fecundity), is the fact that both are baptised sufficient to constitute a marriage or should one hold that a minimum of commitment to the person of Christ is necessary? It is a point to be defined.

As well, the theology of the body, developed by John-Paul II in the catechisms of the beginning of his pontificate, is little known in France.

A better apprehension of this teaching by pastors and communities should make possible a clearer measuring of what is the sacramentality of marriage and its link with the Eucharist.

Finally, for that which touches upon sacramental discipline, work on links between the Church and the Sacraments, on the links between the sacraments themselves, in the person of Christ, would help to get away from too binary a reading of the sacramental life (if I do not receive absolution, I receive no pardon, if I do not receive sacramental communion, I receive no communion, I am excluded). This work, of course, has begun here and there. It is left for us to go into it more deeply and to make it accessible to the communities. That is our mission. v 1. Opening speech by Pope Francis, October 6, 2014

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Christian Training

Marvels to discover The Salt of the Earth an ode to life!

In his latest film, a documentary entitled “The Salt of the Earth”, the director Wim Wenders invites us to discover or rediscover the work and journey of the Brazilian photographer, Sebastião Salgado. While the leaders of the great nations meet to discuss if it is “still possible to save our planet”, this documentary with an epic sweep and a universal dimension is a hymn to mankind and the beauty of our planet.

“A photographer is someone who writes with light, who draws the world with light and shadow.”

This is how Sebastião Salgado, the fammous photographer known for the aesthetic qualities of his black and white photos, describes himself. But, in making this film with Salgado’s own son, Wim Wenders discovered much more than a photographer. The first images of his he sees speak of someone who loves human beings. “After all, aren’t people the salt of the earth?” asks Wenders offscreen. Sebastião Salgado fled Brazil and the dictatorship in the 60s to take refuge in France. An economist by training, he chose to become a self-taught photographer, after his wife bought him

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a camera. In 1986 he published Other Americas, a book resulting from several years of work in South America. He is a man who is passionate about the human race and has been describing, for the past forty years, throughout the world, the despair of peoples who have fallen victim to climatic catastrophes, wars, ethnic cleansing, displacement and famines. “I had to speak out about what was going on.” With his photos, he shows the consequences of our unwillingness to share and the way man can be like “a wolf to man”.

His latest project, Genesis, is like a “love letter to the planet”, which testifies to the splendour and the authenticity of the lands and peoples spared by the contemporary world.

The whole film, very humanist in tone, speaks of love. The love of photography, of making beautiful images; love of mankind and of nature. But also the love of a woman for her husband, who recognizes his vocation and supports him through everything, to the point of raising their children alone for months at a time.

His work Exodus includes all the catastrophes which marked the end of the 20th century: famine in the Sahel, war in Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, population movements in the Congo.

But his love for the human race did not survive the shock of atrocity. He came home from his last assignment in the Congo, sick in body and soul, in a state of intellectual despair for mankind. “I thought that we did not deserve to live,” he says.

And the love of a son for his father: “I wanted to make this film to get to know my father better,” says Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the co-director. An intergenerational film, with family documents.

“Resurrection” came through an idea his wife had: to replant his parents’ deforested land, in Brazil. “The Earth saved Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado from despair” according to Wim Wenders.

Indeed, since 1994 the Fondation Terra has grown and replanted an Amazonian forest, at first on the family estate and now well beyond, in what has become a national park. Results can already be seen: life has returned to this arid land as it became green.

And for Salgado too, life has come back!

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“The Salt of the Earth” is an evangelical expression: as salt preserves food, charity, a virtue which desires and does good to others, is the key to our survival.

“The Salt of the Earth” received the jury’s Special Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in the “Un certain regard” section.

It can only be an encouragement to rise to the current challenge: take action to be able to say “yes, our planet can be saved!” v Pascale Paté, ccn The Salt of the Earth by Juliano Sibeiro Salgado and Wim Wenders (2014 - 1h50) with Sebastião Salgado

an training training an training A book by P. Deruaz

Extracts

Prier 15 jours avec Charles Péguy 1 Fragile God

Everywhere, God was first. God first loved us. God had plans for us. This “miracle in advance”1 is really too incredible to believe. He who first sets eyes on his love, and declares himself is the first to put himself in a position of dependency, expectation and openness. He makes the first move in the relationship with his creature. He takes the initiative in love, promises, commitment, covenant, witness, encounter, in the passage to resurrection which transcends life. He takes the risk.

Does mankind have the capacity to respond to these initial steps taken by God, to this previously unheard of offer? Are they able to react in kind to this love, rather than with the fear which imposes certain behaviour, duties and morals?

Would it not have been safer and more efficient for an all-powerful God to use that power to direct and control, and for man to protect himself with sacrifices, to invent propitiatory rites and libations to deflect anger or attract favour, and to purchase the amount of god required? Or for God to be distant and less connected, and for man to ignore him, even deny him, with no relationship or religion? (...)

Astonishment echoing the psalmist’s cry of admiration and amazement at the attention and the power given by God to his creature: “what is mankind that you are mindful of them?” (Psalm 8:4). We are here at a key point in Péguy’s journey.

For God, having declared his love and cast himself as the needy one, cannot accept the submissive response of someone de-

prived of liberty, obliged by force or fear.

Love is not ordered or decreed, cannot be conceived of outside an individual’s spontaneous reaction, outside the sources of being. (...)

Mankind will therefore be created free by essence. Gifted with liberty by the Creator, before God. A liberty to act and accomplish. (...)

This is an extraordinary upheaval. Here God, by making himself vulnerable to a free response from his creature opens himself up to mankind, exposes himself to their response and responsibility and passes over from God to man. In this appeal, this call, this vocation, God gives mankind power over himself.

He steps out from his image as the mythological or even biblical omnipotent untouchable God, Pantocrator for the Greeks or Sabaoth, «Lord of Hosts» for the Hebrews. He shifts his boundaries as a God, intangible in his perfection, sanctified, set apart, with all access blocked, protected from man’s finitude and weakness, and from his choices. “God is no longer shielded from God”2, as Jean Debruynne put it (in Chemins de croix).

God puts himself at his creature’s mercy through a love freely offered, a flow of love in which man takes God’s role. Within his creature’s reach, to be responded to freely, to be acknowledged or denied: devotion or repudiation, relationship or rejection. He needs his creatures and counts on them. Accessible through a bond between him and them, a “religion” as relationship. “You have made them a little lower than God” (Psalm 8:5).

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In this freedom given by God as a gift, man can have relations with a God who precedes, and God takes the risk of being loved but also of being denied, neglected, scorned, fought against (is he already at the ford of Jabbok, ready to meet Jacob and to rebaptise him Israël, “he struggles with God”?). He takes the chance of being blessed – perhaps a pious man would speak well of him, with fine words and prophecies – or blasphemed against – an impious person would speak ill of him, with complaints, calumnies, scorn and indifference. Between mankind and God, roles are reversed. (...)

God’s vulnerability Coupled with mankind’s responsibility. In Face of God, the vulnerability of his love.

An advance of love under cover of mankind’s freedom. Here, liberty is an extraordinary place where God and mankind come together, and face each other –face to face too in a tenderness between the transcendental and the limited.

A God, eternally beginning, with a “miracle in advance” on and for mankind… © Pierre DERUAZ, Prier 15 jours avec Charles Péguy, Nouvelle Cité (2004). www.nouvellecite.fr.

1- Two weeks praying with Charles Péguy 2- “miracle d’avance”, Charles Péguy, Œuvres poétiques complètes, Ed. Gallimard - p. 603 1- Charles Péguy, Œuvres poétiques complètes, Ed. Gallimard - p. 603

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Christian Training Echo of a Symposium

From Teilhard to Etty Hillesum Now here is a surprising title! For, apart from the fact that the writings of both of them are today enjoying a revival of interest, nothing at first view seems to justify a parallel between the austere Jesuit known all around the world and this young resourceful Jewish girl, of rather wayward sexuality, who would be murdered in Auschwitz at the age of 29. Such however was the theme of a symposium organised last September at the spiritual Centre RocEstello (in Provence) by the Association of Friends of Teilhard de Chardin.

Jean-Pierre Nave, ccn

President of the Association of Friends of Etty Hillesum.

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In a brilliant exposé, Gérard Donnadieu, honorary president of this association and professor of Fundamental Theology at the Paris Cathedral School, set out to show that the anthropology of Teilhard de Chardin could help to understand more deeply the rather extraordinary spiritual journey which this young lady would experience in the few months preceding her deportation. 1

“What is Man, that you should think of him?” Ps 8, 5 Father Teilhard de Chardin would bring to this question the answer we all know, by progressively elaborating a vision of Man tied to the concept of a planetary evolution. Man would be the “thinking arrow” of an irresistible movement driven by and ending in this “Omega point” which the theologian identifies with the Cosmic Christ, who is waiting for us at the end of history, on an earth which has become “the Body of the One who is and the One who is coming.”

With the awakening of introspective consciousness, the earth has entered into a new age: the multiplication of links between humans, and the growing progression of planetary interconnections finish by creating a common Thought, a “noosphere”, a sort of gigantic web of relationships in which everything is held in a more and more dense manner. But, far from opening into an anonymous fusion of individuals into one great undifferentiated whole, the process requires

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a being-more which differentiates individuals and personalises them more and more.

Fr Teilhard was able to discern the lines of strength, the future perspectives, the exhilarating hopes of this evolution – but also the possible risks and the impasses.

Sexual otherness as foundation If Teilhard de Chardin was not a feminist in the contemporary sense of the term, for him the human being is inseparably man and woman.

To fulfil themselves, every individual must experience this otherness which is the condition of all fruitfulness. Teilhard recognised it explicitly for himself towards the end of his life: “Nothing has been developed in me except under the watch and under the influence of a woman.” 2 And several great feminine friendships were to play a determining role in the elaboration of his thought.

an training training an training Because she had discovered that the world is full of God, Etty Hillesum refused to hate. She bore a benevolent gaze on every man and every woman she met, and even the enemy remained for her someone worthy of respect and love. “If I love people so terribly, it’s because in each of them I love a little bit of you, my God.” 5

Etty, our sister

So, Teilhard’s anthropology, founded on sexual otherness, is personalist and “evolutionary.”

Etty Hillesum in the footsteps of Teilhard Taking up once again these three aspects, one could strive to show how Etty Hillesum managed to follow this path of humanisation in such an accelerated mode.

Onto a model of humanity poorly inclined to welcome Transcendence (she said she was inhabited by an “all-consuming greed”), there came to be grafted an extraordinary experience of the Absolute which stripped away, bit by bit, the “old self” and made her converge towards the divine Omega point.

Through a process of interior healing, guided by a most unlikely therapist, she learnt to be reconciled with herself, to accept herself just as she was, to consent to the inescapable. Finally, she freely chose to dedicate the last days of her life to bringing tenderness and love to her brothers and sisters in deportation.

With Etty Hillesum, we find ourselves at the very heart of the spirituality developed by Teilhard in The Divine Medium.

This book, which bore the subtitle “for

those who love the world”, affirms that the conciliation between the Universal (Cosmic) and the Spiritual, the progression towards the Omega point, depends exclusively on Man’s capacity to love, of that love capable of transforming everything into a source of light, even the “rubbish-scraps of existence” and other “passivities of dying away”. For Etty too, life is full of meaning in its very absurdity, “for the little ability we have to make a place there for everything and bring it whole and complete into oneself in its unity.” 3 The attitude of offering which the young woman would arrive at had as its departure point an experience of sexual otherness: experienced at first in a very carnal love which was purified little by little until it became for her the path of maturation, of detachment and of fruitfulness. “The true union”, wrote Teilhard in The Feminine Eternal, “is the one which spiritualises… True fruitfulness is that which brings beings together in the generation of the Spirit.”

And on the day her friend died, Etty wrote in her diary: “It’s you who have set free inside me what energies I possess… You were the mediator between God and me, and now you, the mediator, have gone and my path leads from now on straight to God…”. 4

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In her youth and by the way she behaved, she anticipated what was to become the disenchanted future of our European societies. And the emergence in the young woman of a process of new spiritualisation can give us great reason for hope.

Like those of Teilhard de Chardin, Etty Hillesum’s words are words for today, kindly words for this world which God has so loved (St John), words of freedom and of hope decluttered from all dogmatic rigidity and suited to holding the attention of our contemporaries.

Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) and Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) Gérard Donnadieu concluded his lecture by comparing the fate of these two women approximately the same age: In Etty’s era, another woman, liberated like her and a brilliant intellectual, was going to become the oracle of progress and the liberation of morals. Flattered, showered with honours, before she died she wrote her memoirs (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter), the last volume of which ends with a terrible acknowledgement of failure: ‘In the end, I was duped.’ Leaving from the same starting point, what contrasting journeys and what a difference at the arrival! It is not for us to judge the French philosopher, but might we nevertheless ask ourselves the question: “Which of the two women chose the better part?” v 1- Lecture by Gérard Donnadieu, online on the website of the Association of Friends of Etty Hillesum: www.amisdettyhillesum.fr 2- The Heart of the Matter, text composed in 1950 and reissued in Volume 13 of the Complete Works, p.72 3- Diary, 4.6.1942 4- Diary,15.9.1942 5- Diary,15.9.1942

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DANCING FOR GOD

“Don’t be afraid to MOVE YOUR BODY FOR JESUS, even your little toe!”

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In many religious traditions, the body is intimately linked to prayer. Thus Jews sway to and fro while reciting the psalms. Many Orthodox prayers are sung. Mixing voice with movement certainly makes prayer more dynamic and embodies it better. Thus I address the Lord with what he’s given me, my body.

My body, or rather the body the Lord has given me, allows me to accomplish a multitude of actions: taking, holding, walking, running, dancing, praying, and also resting, lying down, sleeping, staying awake. So the body is an instrument of an action or inaction.

In our relationship with God, it has the same function; my body can be animated in movement and, at another time, remain static at rest.

PRAYING THOUGH DANCE OR DANCING THROUGH PRAYER? Whenever I sing, play or dance for my Lord, a certain power is released. The voice which releases the song, like the sound which comes out of a musical instrument, can touch hearts.

When I say The Lord’s Prayer, standing up or kneeling down, I put my weight on parts of my body (feet or knees). So this is how gestures, words and prayers learnt off by heart can allow us to enter into a relationship with God. The “action” song, which can sometimes seem simple and childish, tends to help us stop focusing on ourselves, giving us freedom and detachment in relation to the actions. This “action” song is a sort of introduction to the subject, a more relaxed way to reach God. We forget ourselves. On several occasions I’ve had this experience at prayer meetings, where dancing at the beginning and end has caused my heart to overflow with joy.

Jewish dancing, even if it demands a certain technical skill, tells us something about God’s beauty in light, airy and collective movements.

And then the dances of praise that are created or revived include gestures or movements inspired by God Most High:

sometimes a finger pointing to Heaven, upturned palms or a clenched fist are going to touch us or mean we’re in God’s presence.1 Even during more personal prayer times, the Holy Spirit may sometimes move us to make a gesture: lie down, kneel down… It’s another way of saying to the Lord, “Here I am and I acknowledge Your Majesty.”

“Either praise precedes the gift of the body, or the gift of the body leads into praise.”

For me, either praise precedes the gift of the body, or the gift of the body leads into praise. But, in any case, praise is first of all a question of position. We choose to praise (give thanks to the Lord for what he is, what he does and says) and we choose our position from which to do it.

Whatever our state, let’s see things through: open our mouths to praise, and, alone or with others, join in the dancing which irritates us or which we can’t master. All that is going to enable God’s grace to come and be with us. It’s important to understand that there are multiple obstacles to praise: tiredness, stress, a lack of suppleness in the body, a poor memory… But everything is possible with the Lord.

CREATION AND DIVINE INSPIRATION !

For me, when it comes to creating a choreography, it’s the relationship with the Lord which counts the most. It’s when I am myself praising or in silent prayer that all or part of the choreographies come to mind. It’s not me who’s

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Lidwine BIYOUDI, ccn.

Serving through dance.

Primary school teacher in Villeurbanne. doing anything directly at that moment, but it’s my relationship with Christ which is at the origin of the gesture. Later, I’ll link together the gestures and complete them. Gestures allow me to be with Christ; dancing helps me to be closer to him. Words or silence aren’t enough. In this creative work, you can use different types of music, from hip-hop to Indian or African dances. Anything is possible; what’s essential is the Spirit within us.

God transcends the beauty of the gesture and technique in so much as we’re offering our dance to the Most High; it’s a total action of grace as in the case of King David, who, wearing a simple linen loincloth, danced freely in front of God’s ark.2 Our audience is the Lord! And, before him, we are sincere, respectful and full of joy. Hip-swinging, for example, is toned down; it doesn’t mean the same thing and it isn’t as wild as in a nightclub.

“Don’t be afraid to move your body for Jesus, even your little toe!” 3 Don’t look at yourself, don’t compare yourself to anybody else. Be yourself and the Lord will do marvellous things with what you are, with what you do and give.

1- Hillsong « None but Jesus » www.youtube.com 2- 1 Chroniques 13, 8 ; 1 Chroniques 15, 29 ; 2 Samuel 6, 12-23.

3- Revival Glory, Ruth Ward Heflin (chapter on dancing)

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testimonies

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Emmanuelle, 22 “It was apparent very early on that I’d been born with an innate sense of rhythm! So I quickly decided to develop this talent through diverse styles of dancing. Encountering the Lord and being asked to serve through dance at the Welcome to Paradise festival allowed me to try praise through dance.

Through dancing, my prayer times have thus taken on an intensity which I hadn’t experienced before. Indeed, for me dancing is a way of expressing and exteriorising what I am and what I feel.

So when, for example, my thoughts or feelings overwhelm me, I rush to find a place where I can dance.

Praise leads me to stop focusing on myself, to allow full expression to my body to praise God. I therefore have the impression that I’m giving back to him all that I am, that I’m returning this gift to him, and that I’m really praising him for and through what I am. It’s the supreme way for the being that I am to be in a relationship with the Creator.”

Timothée, 25 “In the Bible there’s a passage that I’ve always found particularly touching. It’s in 2 Samuel, chapter 6, verses 14 and 15: “Wearing a linen loincloth, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might, while he and all Israel were bringing up the Ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets.”

For me, dancing means using all the means I’ve been given to express the joy God has filled me with.

Indeed, when I’m dancing, I’m no longer concerned about what others think of me, like David before the Ark, because what counts at that moment is no longer the image I give, but the joy I want to communicate. I think that dancing has a strong apostolic significance because it allows me to show that my faith in Jesus Christ fills me with joy and happiness. Dancing also changes me because it’s an activity which engages me and requires me to position myself in relation to praise itself, most especially perhaps when I don’t feel like praising God. If singing is like praying twice, then dancing is like praying three times!”

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Johan, 26 “I love dancing. It’s a really good way of praising God. For me, praising through dance very often means personal moments of dancing, where I can express with my body what I can’t find the words to tell him. I can bring out all that is inside me, my worries, my requests, my thanks… what can be said in a classic prayer, but which takes on a new dimension, because you’re praying with your whole body, and that goes beyond words.

It can also mean more rehearsed group dances, like liturgical dances or choreographies which open up the dancing to others. Through our dancing, it’s a little bit of God that we give to others.”

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Tudual, 22 “I think that dancing has changed how I pray and praise. When I used to praise and sing to God, sometimes words weren’t sufficient to express how much he meant to me.

Dancing and raising my arms in the air for God are now part of my prayer and praise, because they allow me to adore the Lord with all that I am, with my whole being.

I can really express the joy that he gives me on a daily basis. At gatherings of young people, I’ve also been able to dance to choreographies during prayer times. These dances have allowed me to dance for God, for others and for myself.

For God because it’s for him that I was there in the first place; for others, because dancing can help some people to move into prayer more easily; and finally for myself, because, as well as the joy of dancing and doing something beautiful for the Lord, the time spent with the other dancers to prepare the choreography forges genuine links of fraternity and unity. Dancing brings me closer to God and fills me with joy.”

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14-18s

• WE CHOOSE LIFE ! : 28th February1st March in Angers, 7th-8th March in Lyon (Hautecombe), 14th-15th March in Paris, 21st-22nd March in Marseille, for students and young professionals aged 18-30. Two days to learn how to make choices in your studies, relationships and calling in the light of the Holy Spirit.

• CELEBRATE EASTER AT HAUTECOMBE & CHARTRES: 4th-6th April. A weekend to celebrate the risen Christ together!

• YOUNG PROFESSIONALS FORUM for 22 to 33 year olds, God, my job and me...: 8th-10th May in Marseille.

With J-P Cottet, Director of Innovation at Orange, H. de Boisredon, CEO of Armor, The Most Reverend Pontier, etc. Workshops: Personal development, Conflict, Power, Finding our own identity, Stress, Justice and humanity, etc.

To sign up: forumjeunespro.com

• TREVI - ASSISE PILGRIMAGE: 21st26th April: In the footsteps of St Francis, a pilgrimage to equip ourselves and to allow ourselves to be transformed through walking.

• REGIONAL WEEKENDS: weekends near where you live to get together and build genuine friendships, to take spiritual time out and to relax in praise and celebration!

Each weekend has its own theme: Family - an instruction manual, Dare to believe - dare to live, Friends come first, All on fire - all ablaze…

Paris : 17th-18th Jan & 14th-15th March Lyon: 6th-7th Dec, 17th-18th Jan,

14th-15th March Eastern Region: 21st-22nd March Western Region: 17th-18th January Southern Region: 14th-15th February Brittany: 28th Feb-1st March • 14-18 FELLOWSHIP: monthly meetings to explore further what you experience during the weekends (friendship, sharing, prayer, relaxation).

In Paris, Lyon, Nantes, Angers, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Lille, Reims, Grenoble, Marseille, Sophia-Antipolis…

• SO DELICIOUS PARTY: A party just before the holidays for relaxing and celebrating. At 8pm on Saturday 13th Dec at H4, 10 rue Henri IV, 69002 Lyon.

• LIVING IN THE SPIRIT W/E: 23rd24th May in Paris (Tigery). A weekend to allow the Holy Spirit to equip and renew you.

• Many other suggestions: young people’s mass, praise evenings, young professionals evenings, training evenings, fellowships, calling group, etc.

• Secretary’s office for 18-30s: 01 47 74 93 73 or 06 30 14 06 96 jeunes.france@chemin-neuf.org www.jeunes.chemin-neuf.fr

• INFORMATION and SIGNING UP at the 14-18 secretary’s office: 04 78 15 07 98 or 06 61 61 02 72 14-18ans@chemin-neuf.org www.14-18ans.chemin-neuf.fr

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Life in the Community

A world tour

our next stop:

MAURITIUS This time, the next stop in our “World Tour” makes us land on a small dot in the middle of the Indian Ocean: Mauritius, one of the islands of the Mascarene archipelago. A location, as one local historian puts it so well, where all the different races and all the colours found on earth meet.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE COUNTRY The Arabs discovered Mauritius in the 16th century and the Portuguese were next to visit the island. Mauritius was then “rediscovered” by the Dutch in 1664 and they gave the island the name of Mauritius, after Maurice of Nassau, Stathouder of The Netherlands. However, local and natural perils – cyclones, floods, invasion by rats – had the better of the hardy Dutch settlers who abandoned the island in February 1710.

The island became French in 1715 and they called it ‘Isle de France’. The king handed over the island to the East India Company who took possession of the island in 1721. A mass was celebrated on 18 October 1721 by the chaplain of the frigate to commemorate the event. The first mass said on Mauritian soil!

Fr. Pierre LASLANDES,

Chemin Neuf Community THE COUNTRY’S MOTTO: “Stella Clavisque Maris Indici” WHICH TRANSLATES AS: “THE STAR AND KEY OF THE INDIAN OCEAN” CAPITAL CITY: PORT LOUIS INDEPENDENCE DAY: 12 MARch CURRENCY: MAURITIAN RUPEE (1€ = 41 roupies) AREA: 1 865 KM2 POPULATION: 1,192 Million OFFICIAL LANGUAGE: ENGLISH SPOKEN LANGUAGES: French widely spoken, and Creole patois spoken by all. Oriental languages are also spoken as a part of the mosaic of its existing population

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At the beginning of the 19th century, relations between France under Napoleon and England had deteriorated so much that England decided to take possession of the island - which the British did in December 1810.

Thus the island became British and was renamed Mauritius; it remained a British colony up to 1968 when it became independent. On 12 March 1992, Mauritius acquired the status of a Republic with a designated president vested with purely honorific powers. The country is a member of the British Commonwealth but is also a signatory to a number of geo-political and economic treaties within the African region.

Population and religion Mauritius may claim to have a ‘rainbow’ population. The French settlers who were the first to stay in Mauritius brought with them slaves of African and Malagasy origin who make up the creole population, as it is known. When slavery was abolished in 1835, the island turned to Indian indentured labour (Hindus and Muslims) who, eventually, decided to stay in Mauritius. Over the years, a small Chinese-Mauritian community also settled in Mauritius and made up the rest of the population.

On the basis of the religions present, Mauritius is 51% Hindus; 28% Catholics; 17% Muslims; 4% others, - being other Christian denominations and Buddhists. v

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THE CHEMIN NEUF COMMUNITY IN MAURITIUS The Community was received within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Port Louis in 1992. The very first Cana session took place in 1988 and François and Laurence Cartier were present. Soon afterwards, discussions were held with a view to continue the work of the Community and its establishment within, and at the service of, the local catholic diocese.

This establishment came to fruition in 1992 when a house was given for the use of the Community for-free by the diocese. This house, known as La Confiance House, accommodated the first members living as a life fraternity, Fr. Jacques Monfort and a couple, JeanPierre and Hélene Carosin.

In 1998, Fr. Pierre Laslandes was sent on a mission to the island and the circumstances were such that the Holy Spirit led him to deposit his suitcase there for good and to cancel his return ticket to France! Rather like Pope Francis who, since his nomination, did not return to his diocese in Buenos Aires! Thus, Fr. Pierre started to serve and organise a parish which had just been entrusted to the Community. In effect, as from that year, the bishop, Mgr. Piat decided to entrust to the Community the parish

of St Augustin, located in Black River on the west coast. In this parish, a second life fraternity of the Community on the island was created, made up of two priests together with families and celibate members, without leaving out the JETs (Young people on a mission abroad).

In addition, the Community put into place some parish missionary fraternities and 17 parishioners responded positively to the invitation to form such fraternities.

The Community is very pleased with this initiative and remains confident that will bear its fruits to each and everyone.

Since 2007, at the Foyer de l’Unité in Souillac, there exists a partnership in line with the wishes of the Bishop and those responsible for the two communities, the Foyers de Charité and the Chemin Neuf Community. Fr. Pierre Laslandes from the Chemin Neuf Community is the new resident priest.

Today, seventy people are committed as members of the Community in Mauritius. They include three priests, three consecrated celibate sisters, twentysix couples and some single members.

The Community is encompassed by those who have joined the Communion

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and who total 110. The Community is concerned to achieve a good adaptation and integration into the culture of the Church and Mauritian society. One finds among members of Community, representatives of all Christian layers or classes of our rainbow nation!

As part of its training programme for the Christians of Mauritius, the Community organises sessions which are open to all: l for couples and families: (Cana Family & Cana Welcome) l for young people aged 14 – 18 and 18 – 30: (Jericho retreat, Alpha Youth Course and retreats in secondary schools) l for adult training (Alpha Course, Emmaus Cycle, Net for God…) l for people who are now single having experienced a separation or divorce: (Cana Hope) l for internal self-healing: (Anamnesis, Siloam Cycle).

The Community is happy and grateful that it is able in this way to be at the service of the church in Mauritius, in close and fraternal links with the pastoral mission of our Diocese and with our Bishop. v

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Life in the Community A testimony

Happy 100 Christmas to you, th

Lisie Fabre « To live for more than 100 years, there’s something to thank God for! I never thought I’d live so long. I really believed I would die shortly after my husband André did. It never occurred to me that I would outlive him for so long.

And yet for another 12 years I was able to serve the Community in Marseilles, at the parish of St Pierre to start with, and then at the Roucas Retreat Centre. As I got frailer I realized that I could no longer be of service to the Community in a material way, and also I wanted to help my son Hilaire. I would have liked to have stayed more involved but I could no longer do so.

I’ve now reached the point where life’s stages are shorter. Each month I see my strength decline. I tell myself that I will soon depart this earth and I’d like to know what I could do to help those I shall leave behind. The Community is in God’s hands, my family also, and I am certain that the Lord is present to each person, to the Community and to my children.

One thing that strikes me is that my children are now so open to people of other countries and other mentalities.

This helps me to grow as a person because I used to have a somewhat “clannish” mentality. And now I can let go of my “clans” and discover the joy of praying every day with “strangers”. It feels to me as if the space around me is getting bigger. It’s turned out quite

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differently from what I had imagined – that I would become closed in on myself. Indeed it’s quite the opposite!

Let me give you an example: for a while now I have been praying the Lord’s Prayer differently. I see myself as being next to Jesus, and He joins me in saying: “Our Father…”. And the other people who are there join us both.

So there’s been a change in my experience of the presence of God and the spiritual presence of other people. And every day I spend an hour or so listening to the news so that I can better understand our world and intercede for it.

I’m aware that I’ve made mistakes in my life. Not so much because I wanted my own way, but because I lacked knowledge, trust, or sometimes courage. It’s clearly much too late now to fix them.

But all the same I feel a need to be purified so that I can truly let myself fall into the arms of the Lord Jesus, with total, absolutely total trust. Of course I thank the Lord that He has been at work in my life and has led me. It is all His doing, not mine.

I have always had the feeling of being “accompanied”. Throughout my childhood and adolescence I had friends and cousins the same age as me, both boys and girls. At one stage I had to give up my studies in order to help my mother who had tuberculosis. Two of my brothers also had it. So I dropped my studies. I would have liked to have been a history teacher. But in all honesty I can say that I have never regretted having

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had to change my plans because, you see, I said to myself: “This is the path meant for me.”

There were many times when we had difficulties to endure, but I now see that it is the normal way of things. There was the time, for instance, when I was wondering whether or not to marry André. I had reason to hesitate. I knew that my father strongly disapproved of our relationship. But one thing that I was certain about was that it was the Lord who had brought us together. That was a very strong conviction. It happened in Lyons.

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I have always had the feeling of being “accompanied”.

Some friends were holding a reception in the afternoon. André and I found ourselves face to face, between the door to the dining room and the door to the living room: so between two doors, in this large Lyons flat. We could not have avoided each other. André introduced himself then said : “Surely you must be Louise Isaac.” I said: ”Yes!” Louise Isaac was indeed my name.

That same evening some other friends gave a ball. André did not like dancing but I loved it. At the ball we ended up staying together the whole time! Afterwards I desperately wanted to know more about the man I had just met.

André had arranged to meet me two weeks later. He was a journalist and he was to interview the cardinal archbishop of Paris who was stopping in Lyons on his return from Senegal. André told me: “If you want to see me again I will be leaving the cardinal’s at 5 o’clock.”

And so, without hesitation, keen as I was to know more about this man, I went to take the funicular railway up to Fourvière. I arrived at the last moment just as the doors were closing. I stepped into one of the two carriages and the train left. At that point a very young man I didn’t know, dressed as a seminarian, walked across the carriage to face me and said: “Mademoiselle, if you persist with your project you will experience very great things. But also very hard ones.”

When we got to St Just station he turned and left the carriage. I arrived at Fourvière’s esplanade just as André

was leaving the cardinal’s residence.

Obviously I was quite shaken by the encounter I had just had. It seemed as if the Lord was telling me: “This is your path. It won’t be an easy path. You will experience exceptional joys but also sufferings.”

Truly I can thank the Lord that I have always been accompanied. Always.

Right now I am accompanied by my Community brothers and sisters who are elderly like me. There are six of us elderly ones, all at the end of our life.

We telephone each other and we pray for one another.

The Community is one of my greatest joys. I could never have imagined all that has happened. I thought that Laurent was destined to become a good graduate engineer…

During my first pregnancy I got very ill due to a kidney infection. I had to stay two months at the Lyons protestant clinic at La Croix Rousse. While I was there Mary Nova, who is my cousin on both sides, came to spend the night with me, because I had been told: “You need to get rid of the child and all will be well; the infection will go.” So Mary and I prayed all night. When morning came I said: “Certainly not. Either I will live with the child, or I will die with the child.” So there! In the end the child lived and two months later the infection had gone.

point I weighed a mere 35 kg. They told me: “You need to be very careful!” And lo and behold I fell pregnant with Laurent! Then I cried for two whole days as I told myself how careless I’d been because I was not fully fit. As I cried a lot the Lord came to my help. On the third day I understood. I went up to attend mass in the village at 7.30am and I promised to do so every day for that child.

So every morning I walked for a good half hour up a narrow twisting and rocky path to go to mass, and I walked back the same way.

And so Laurent was born! It happened on a Saturday before Easter.

We need to trust that the Lord will always show us the path and will always answer us. We need to have complete trust in Him. » v This interview was carried out by Valentine Hodara, ccn

After my little Veronique was born I was but a shadow of myself. I had always had a strong constitution but at that

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David Mampouya: an itinerary towards ‘diaconia’* and repent. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come into him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” (cf. Revelations,3, 19b-20) During this retreat, I made the decision to ask to be baptized in the Roman Catholic Church; I had an inner conviction that this would be the path of my intimate relationship with Christ and the ground which would enable me to bear fruit. My mother warmly encouraged me to fulfil my desire.

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I was born in Brazzaville-Congo in 1964 and I am married to Ludmila whom I met in Russia when I was studying there. My spiritual journey bears the mark of my mother who was an officer in the Salvation Army. Whenever she could, she would share with us a biblical text that had moved her. I often saw her praying when she was at work in the fields. She was fond of repeating the phrase: “The sun shines on the good and the wicked alike”!

My wife, a member of the Orthodox Church, was influenced by her grandmother who taught her the value of life, the message she transmitted is summed up in the words of Patrice de la Tour du Pin: “Every man is a sacred story, man is in the image of God”.

At Brazzaville, I was troubled by doubts as to which path I should take on my ecclesial journey. Whenever I attended a Catholic mass, I experienced an extraordinary awareness of the presence of the Lord.

At the same time, I continued to go to the Salvation Army services. I felt that I had become like “a reed continually swaying in the wind”. Sister Chantal Lebouteiller, a French nun on a mission in the Congo, had organized an ecumenical bible group to help Christians of different denominations to share the Word of God. Each week we lived, shared, prayed about, and came to a deeper understanding of, this Word.

In the course of a silent retreat, I heard the Lord calling : “You are neither hot nor cold”…. “(Come), be zealous therefore

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FOI • N°43

After a two-year period of instruction in the faith, I left for Russia to study agronomy, a situation which meant putting my undertaking to one side for a time. Then, I came to Paris to do my doctorate and it was in Paris that I had the joy of receiving baptism. It took place at Easter 1997 in the parish of St. Denys de la Chapelle (18th.district of Paris) There had been a before and an after! One of the fruits of the baptism was the religious celebration of our marriage.

The first calls for me to take up the office of deacon came very soon after my baptism, from several parishioners and from a number of deacons! However, the first thought of my wife and myself was to consider our mutual desire to work in the Chemin Neuf community. During the time spent along the community path, I was very involved in the life of the parish. I did not think about the diaconate again until the day in November 2008 when Father Laurent Fabre, the Leader of our community, questioned me about the idea.

As a couple we prayed about the matter.

I also took time trying to see things more clearly with my spiritual guide. And it was in 2009, during the Great Exercises of Saint Ignatius that I was able to answer “Yes” to the call. As I prayed, I had the certainty that “Christ gave all and kept back nothing for himself”.(1) In practice, we pursued our training and our discerning in the diocese of Belley Ars d’acord and then in Chambéry. Taking this

• December 2014 - January - February 2015

training with my wife was a wonderful time for our couple to experience family unity and it gave us a better understanding of the Church. I am still impressed by the welcome given to my Orthodox wife during the various encounters. Along the way the perspective of becoming a sign of communion between the Chemin Neuf community and the local church, between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches gradually emerged.

The ordination took place last October 18th in the cathedral at Chambéry.

The beauty and profundity of the prayers, but also the diversity of the participants were overwhelming. The ministers of other Churches, present at the ceremony, prayed for Ludmila and me. It was a very momentous occasion for us.

Archbishop Ballot confirmed me in the mission of inter-diocesan Delegate for ecumenical pastoral work, a mission to be carried out even more in the spirit of service. At Hautecombe Abbey my function will include the diaconia of the liturgy and of the word and of charity, working especially with people who live alone or who are suffering, in nearby villages, and also with the young people who come for periods of training at the abbey.

May the Lord grant me grace to listen to the Holy Spirit, to the world, and to stay always dressed for service among my brothers. v 1- reference to the words of Benedict XVI: “Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away and he gives all”.

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Portrait

Portrait Angélique Kastendeuch “My name is Angélique Kastendeuch, I am 28 years old. My family are believers but not regular church-goers. I was baptized and made my first communion as a child because my parents wished me to do so. I always felt that I would like to go to church but never really tried to go.

One morning, during the summer holidays, I was moved by the NEED to set out on the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela.

It was deeply felt and inexplicable. Within two months I had made arrangements for the journey, taken a month’s vacation and was ready to set out alone.

As the kilometres went by, I felt myself coming alive again and I entered into a real relationship with the Lord. I sensed that he was at my side. Emotion overcame me each time I went into a church, at each mass, each communion…When I reached Compostela, I was able to kiss the Apostle’s statue, the incentive behind my walking for so many days. But my journey was not finished. I went on as far as Cape Finisterra, “the lands’ end” and there I swam in the ocean and I burnt the clothes I had been wearing before putting on a new dress.

For me it was like a second baptism and the beginning of a new life into which I could venture with the presence of the Lord.

During the 28 days and some 886 kilometres of walking, I had been able to ask His forgiveness and to thank Him. When I came home I felt cleansed, pure, eager to continue on this path on a firm new basis, grounded in faith. Today, I am still walking but I am no longer alone, I walk hand in hand with the Lord.”

FOI • N°43

• December 2014 - January - February 2015

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