12 minute read
Novena to St Joseph
The Monks of Tibhirine
By Fr Jim O’Connell, mhm
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The 7 monks and the other Algerian martyrs - including the Bishop The monastery cemetery in Tibherine
The award-winning French film “Of Gods and Men” (2010) movingly portrays the true story of seven Trappist monks who were murdered in Algeria. The monks of Tibhirine in the Abbey of Our Lady at the foot of the Atlas Mountains knew they were likely to be killed if they remained in the monastery. It was during the Algerian Civil War, and they had been threatened by terrorists, but they decided to stay despite the danger. They had come to Algeria not to convert Muslims but to live among them and be friends with them. They had a simple life and did their best to serve the poor in the community around the monastery. Since 1938, when the monastery was founded, they and their Muslim neighbours had lived peacefully together. The monks called the Algerian army “our brothers of the plain” and the rebels “our brothers of the mountains” in hopes that one day there would be peace. But this was not to be and there was pressure on the monks to side with the Islamist guerrillas or the Algerian government. They managed not to back either side but knew they were in grave danger.
On the night of March 27, 1996, soon after midnight, around twenty men attacked the monastery and kidnapped seven monks. Two other monks escaped being kidnapped, but were unable to contact police until the next morning because the phone lines had been cut. Two months later, a fundamentalist Islamic group claimed that the monks had been beheaded after the kidnapping. Others claimed the monks were killed by an Algerian air force airstrike and beheaded afterwards. Nobody knows exactly what happened. Their heads were recovered on the 30th of May and buried at the monastery. Their bodies have never been found. The two monks who were not kidnapped, Fr Jean-Pierre and Fr Amédée, escaped because they were at the front of the monastery when the guerrillas arrived. “There was no noise. There was nothing remarkable,” Jean Pierre said about that night of the kidnapping. He was the night porter at the main door of the Monastery, and would have been the first to encounter the kidnappers if they came in that way, but they entered through the basement. He was not aware of anything happening. It was hours later that he and Amédée found out what had unfolded after midnight. Some months after the monks were abducted, Bishop Pierre Claverie of the Diocese of Oran was killed along with his driver. Seven people were convicted of these killings and sentenced to death. The Catholic Church of Algeria succeeded in having their death sentences commuted.
Their memory lives on
In January 2018, Pope Francis declared the Bishop a martyr, together with the seven Trappist monks, and 11 other religious men and women from France, Spain, Tunisia and Belgium. They were beatified on December 8, 2018. Because of the film, “Of Gods and Men”, the monks’ story has become well-known. The Notre Dame de L’Atlas Monastery is now in Midelt, Morocco. In this city, in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, Fr Jean Pierre and Fr Amédée re-established a community after the killing of their fellow monks. A small number of monks from other countries joined them. There are lots of memories and reminders of the past in the new monastery. A painting in the abbey chapel depicts the slain monks from Tibhirine in prayer. A memorial to them shows their portraits. The
monks who gave their lives for peace and friendship are gone but their memory lives on in the new monastery at Midelt.
Fr Amédée died in 2008 and Fr Jean Pierre died at the age of 98 on November 21, 2021 – the Feast of Christ the King. Over the years, he had asked himself: “Why had the Lord allowed me to stay alive?”. He concluded that the Lord wanted him to witness to the events of Tibhirine and make known the experience of communion with the Muslims: “we lived this communion in prayer; we got up at night to pray at the same time when our Muslim neighbours were awakened for their prayers. The monastery bells rang and the Muslims never asked us to silence them. We respected each other in the very heart of our common vocation: to adore God”.
Before the kidnapping and murder of the monks, the monastery prior, Father Christian de Chergé, had written a letter, which is now known as his ‘Spiritual Testament.’ He saw the monastery’s basic calling in Algeria’s Muslim environment to be ‘a praying community among a praying people’. For him, the Muslims were people of God too. In his Testament he wrote movingly: “My death, obviously, will appear to confirm those who hastily judged me naive or idealistic. But these must know that this is what I shall be able to do, if God wills: immerse my gaze in that of the Father, to contemplate with Him the children of Islam as He sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, filled with the Gift of the Spirit whose secret joy will always be to establish communion.
When the time comes, I would like to be able to have that stroke of lucidity which would permit me to ask forgiveness of God and of my brothers in humanity, forgiving wholeheartedly, at the same time, whoever my killer might be. May we meet each other again in paradise, should it please God.”
Pope Francis kisses the hand of Fr Jean-Pierre in 2018
Painting in Midelt Monastery showing the seven monks who were martyred
Easter - Song of the Earth
[From: Horizons of Hope (page 122) - by Fr Daniel O’Leary]
(This article invites us to be aware of what is happening in the world of nature. With the coming of Spring, new life is emerging; it is taking place before our eyes with the appearance of snow drops, crocuses, and lots of green shoots, as they spring up from the damp cold earth. We can see God’s power and presence at work – that same power that we celebrate at Easter in the Resurrection of Christ.)
On a dark chilly evening in early March, I was walking home through a small park in Crosby with my shopping. Impossible to miss, I stared at the sudden appearance of the crocuses - violet, white and blue - translucent in the shadows, staked out like a rosary between tree trunks. Overnight, from drab patches of lifeless leaves and muck, something beautifully fragile and life-giving had soundlessly emerged. Pope Francis is sensitive to this phenomenon of early Spring. It mirrors something of Easter for him: “When all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force. In the midst of darkness, something new always springs to life, and sooner or later produces fruit. On the land life breaks through, stubbornly yet invincibly. Each day in our world beauty is born anew. Such is the power of resurrection.”
In his challenging book Nostos, Irish mystic John Moriarty reflects on the unexpected epiphanies he noticed around him as he walked through muddy patches in the meadow near his Kerry home. He wondered
how those ‘hints of heaven’ could emerge from such a drab place. ‘How could something so yellow as a buttercup come up out of soggy brown earth?’ he asked. ‘How could something so purple as an orchid and so perfect as a cowslip come up out of it?’ ‘Where does the colour and perfection come from? and what else is down there? What else am I walking on? To me to inhale the fragrance of a primrose, down to the soles of my feet, is a Eucharist. Only then can I walk beautifully on the earth without hurting it. Right here in our own hill meadow, I can walk in paradise.”
God is always coming to be
To walk in paradise in our own fields. Pope Francis asks whether we can carry this treasure of insight safely in our distorted perception – that heaven is here, always present, growing like the seed, struggling to flourish anew in an indifferent environment? God is always coming to be in everything that happens: “The resurrection is already secretly woven into the fabric of history.” Easter is not about escaping into heaven; it is about recognising this evolving earth as God’s body and our true home. Resurrection does not sweep us away to a painless place but reveals the redemption in our suffering now. The lost paradise is regained in the soil of our fields and in the seasons of our souls. There is no sin, loss, betrayal, shame or despair that is final. Somehow or other, in the end, all is harvest.
The Spirit of Easter is utterly free, utterly beyond our control. It is the deepest meaning of all our experiences, of everything that exists. It is in the tenderness of touch. It lives in the darkness of despair, in the glimmer of hope. It parts the veil, it rolls away the stone, it changes the focus, and it transforms our way of understanding ourselves and our world – in this world. To quote Richard Rohr: “The Risen Christ meets the disciples back at their jobs, the women in their very human grief, two men walking along a road, and first of all a very human friend, Mary of Magdala. He does not leave this world. He re-enters it as it is and reveals its radiance.” Everywhere accessible but contained nowhere. God cannot be confined any more to people of a certain race or religion. Where life itself is, God is. The energy of being is the breath of God. Incarnate in the heart of flesh, the divine heart beats.
Easter Vigil celebrates two revelations
In the words of Pope Francis: “There is no Catholic God. There is God, and I believe in the Incarnation. This is my Being. And there is a spark of it in everyone.” And in everything. When contemplated lovingly, a crocus in the mud can transform our understanding of God. The magnificent Easter Vigil celebrates two revelations – the first is God’s incarnate presence in nature from the very beginning, the second is the full, final and definitive incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. The stirrings of life in the darkness of the earth fills Pope Francis with a unique insight into the meaning of Easter energy. He senses the impulse that runs through all creation. Nothing that happens is unimportant or irredeemable.
Resurrection is what we were created for. But we remain blind to its wonder, deaf to its transforming power. God’s energy flows through everything. The landscape does not change but our eyes do. We watch for the small hourly miracles deepened and defined against eternal meaning. Easter emphasises the utter earthiness of divinity – and the divinity of each daily act.
God's presence and energy flows through all of nature
Springing up from the earth - new life - resurrection
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