It has been about 1 month since I watched the movie Of Gods And Men. (Thanks for the recommendation, Kyle!) I wish I was more eloquent and better able to fully describe the beauty of this film. This is the story of a small group of Trappist monks living in Algeria who were murdered in 1996. I felt this movie did an amazing job showing their love for the Algerian people as well as the internal struggles they each wrestled with: the desire to live, the desire to remain true to the calling God had given them, the desire to remain obedient in the face of death. I was struck by the words of one of the monks, Christian de Chergé, and found a copy of one of his final letters. I've included it below. It is lengthy, but if you have a moment to read it, I would encourage you to do so. Let me know what you think!
Christian de Chergé
If it should happen one day—and it could be today—that I
become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the
foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family,
to remember that my life was given to God and to this country. I ask them to
accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal
departure. I ask them to pray for me: for how could I be found worthy of such
an offering? I ask them to be able to associate such a death with the many
other deaths that were just as violent, but forgotten through indifference and
anonymity.
My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less
value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long
enough to know that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the
world, even in that which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the time
comes, to have a clear space which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God and
of all my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my
heart the one who would strike me down.
I could not desire such a death. It seems to me important to
state this. I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice if this people I love
were to be accused indiscriminately of my murder. It would be to pay too dearly
for what will, perhaps, be called "the grace of martyrdom," to owe it
to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he says he is acting in
fidelity to what he believes to be Islam. I know the scorn with which Algerians
as a whole can be regarded. I know also the caricature of Islam which a certain
kind of Islamism encourages. It is too easy to give oneself a good conscience
by identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideologies of the
extremists. For me, Algeria and Islam are something different; they are a body
and a soul. I have proclaimed this often enough, I believe, in the sure
knowledge of what I have received in Algeria, in the respect of believing
Muslims—finding there so often that true strand of the Gospel I learned at my
mother's knee, my very first Church.
My death, clearly, will appear to justify those who hastily
judged me naive or idealistic: "Let him tell us now what he thinks of
it!" But these people must realize that my most avid curiosity will then
be satisfied. This is what I shall be able to do, if God wills—immerse my gaze
in that of the Father, to contemplate with him his children of Islam just as he
sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of his Passion,
filled with the Gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to
establish communion and to refashion the likeness, delighting in the
differences.
For this life given up, totally mine and totally theirs, I
thank God who seems to have wished it entirely for the sake of that joy in
everything and in spite of everything. In this "thank you," which is
said for everything in my life from now on, I certainly include you, friends of
yesterday and today, and you my friends of this place, along with my mother and
father, my brothers and sisters and their families—the hundred-fold granted as
was promised!
And you also, the friend of my final moment, who would not
be aware of what you were doing. Yes, for you also I wish this "thank
you"—and this —to commend you to the God whose face I see in
yours.
And may we find each other, happy "good thieves,"
in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both. Amen.
Translated by the Monks of Mount Saint Bernard Abbey,
Leicester, England.
The air was hot and sticky. My clothes were soaked through with sweat from the combination of humidity and the long hike before me. The beauty of the dense jungle around me was a welcomed distraction from the temporary discomfort of the heat. I followed the small group of North Americans and Guatemalans along the trail that would lead us to a remote Guatemalan village where the kids carried water in jars balanced on their heads. (But not so remote that you couldn't find a fútbol field nearby.)
