Christian de Chergé – a reflection for Holy Week
I expect that some of you here may be wondering who Christian de Chergéis. A few of you though may know of him from watching the remarkable film ‘Of Gods and Men’ that told the story of a Cistercian community called Tibhirine living in the Atlas mountains of Algeria. Christian de Chergé was the prior of that community. Seven of the monks at Tibhirine including Christian de Chergéwere abducted by terrorists and it seems killed either by them, or perhaps by Algerian troops, in May 1996.
I want to talk briefly about Christian de Chergé and the experiences that shaped him before spending slightly longer exploring his distinctive charism, the particular gifts that God had given to him for the encouragement of the faith of the church, and especially for its dialogue with Islam.
Christian de Chergé was born in1936 into a military family. From the age of 5 he lived for some years in Algeria and was moved by early encounters with the muslim people. He told of his curiosity as a child at seeing muslims at prayer. His mother told him that they too were praying to God and he reflected later that ‘I have always known that the God of Islam and the God of Jesus Christ do not make two’.
He returned to Algeria on national service in 1959 during the Algerian war of independence. During that time he developed a friendship with Mohammed, a simple, illiterate, devout muslim, and they would talk about God and prayer. De Chergé was a seminarian by this time. The conversations were important to both parties and they described them as ‘digging together their own well’. De Chergé tells that at one point he teased Mohammed by asking him ‘And at the bottom of our well, what shall we find? Muslim water or Christian water?’ Mohammed replied ‘Come on now, we’ve spent all this time walking together, and you’re still asking me this question1 You know very well that at the bottom of that well, what we’ll find is God’s water!’
Mohammed had faced death threats for his cooperation with the French colonial power. One day Christian de Chergé found his own life under threat in a military skirmish and Mohammed intervened explaining de Chergé’s attachment to Algeria and to the Muslim people. The next day Mohammed, a father of ten children, was found dead beside his own well. His death was a foundational experience for de Chergé. He wrote: ‘In the blood of this friend, I came to know that my call to follow Christ would have to be lived out, sooner or later, in the very country in which I received the token of the greatest love of all.’
After completing his studies at the Institut Catholique in Paris and then in Rome where he learned Arabic, De Chergé joined the Cistercian order first at the abbey of Aiguebelle in the south of France and then at Tibhirine in Algeria. In 1984 he became Prior of the community. The life of the monastic community was given to the daily rhythm of corporate prayer, to personal meditation, to study, toagriculture, to hospitality and to supporting their Muslim neighbours. In the turbulence and conflicts of Algeria they sought to build peace by prayer and practical action, to transform the image of colonial Catholicism that made relations with the people and leaders of the country so difficult. They entered into a profound dialogue with Islam and established relationships of trust with a Sufi Brotherhood. They wanted to help the wider Roman Catholic church reflect on the significance of Islam in the providence of God. It is tragic, but not perhaps surprising, that their efforts were misunderstood and that they became trapped in the crossfire of the Algerian civil war. They wondered whether to leave the country but stayed because of their commitment to the Algerian people.
De Chergé wrote at this time a letter to be opened only after his death. It said: ‘If it should happen one day – and it could be today – that I become a victim of the terrorism that now seems 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 Algeria; and that they accept that the sole Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure.
I would like, when the time comes, to have a space of clearness that would allow me to beg forgiveness of God and of my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who will strike me down.
I could not desire such a death; it seems to me important to state this: How could I rejoice if the Algerian people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder?’
God gives to every person a portion of his truth. Some people journey more deeply into their personal truth and display it in their lives. Christian de Chergé’s journey helps us to understand more deeply the nature of God and helps us see more clearly the purposes of God for his beloved people the followers of Islam. Putting it in that language may come as a shock to those who have been formed and shaped by reading the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. We are accustomed to think of God’s people as the Jews, or as the new people of the church that the Holy Spirit forms to follow Jesus, to be the body of Christ. But what if God also has an abiding concern for Muslims, and indeed for Hindus and Buddhists? God is calling every human being to be obedient to him, to fulfil the image of God in which they are made. For Christians this need not mean toning down our beliefs, Christian dialogue with other faith traditions starts from the premise that the fullness of God was revealed in Jesus – and yet, we can learn more about the God we worship, and even about Jesus, by attending to the prayer of believers who live out their experience of God in a different way.
Christin de Chergé was an explorer of such paths. He helps us to think about the Christian God not as a faith over and against other faiths, but as a faith learning to explore together with other believers the worship of the one God. Let me give three examples of how de Chergé can enrich our thinking about God.
The first concerns the word mercy. De Chergé wrote: ‘We cannot confess as Christians the entire overwhelming richness of mercy if we are unable to listen with thanksgiving to those who confess it as the central mystery of their own faith life.’ Mercy is a word used by Christians, Jews and Muslims, to talk about God. For Jews it is connected with two Hebrew words, hesed and rahamim. Hesed speaks of the goodness of God and the steadfast love that he establishes as his covenant with the people of Israel. Rahamim is a maternal word denoting the deep bond that connects a mother to her child. This love is unmerited, freely given. For Christians mercy is exemplified by the parable of the prodigal son, or the love of the Father who searches for us and waits for us when we are far off mistaken and lost, and who welcomes us home with joy and celebration. Muslims know that the mercy of God is deeply embedded in the pages of the Qu’ran. The opening Sura runs ‘In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy! Praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy, Master of the Day of Judgement. It is you we worship; it is You we ask for help…’ So, de Chergé argues, it must be together that we search for the model of mercy in God himself, God who is beyond all words. We each bring the riches of our tradition to that search.
The second theological insight comes from the experience that de Chergé had of his life having been saved by his friend Mohammed. For De Chergé the love of God could be no different than that which he had experienced of one person having freely laid down his life for another. The action of Mohammed made real for him the self-offering of Jesus upon the cross. And so he came to speak of the actions of Mohammed in Eucharistic terms. Here is part of an address that he gave at the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday, 20 years ago, in 1995:
He loved me to the end, to the end of me, to the end of him… He loved me in his way, which is not mine. He loved me graciously, gratuitously… I might perhaps have liked it to be more discreet, less solemn. He loved me as I do not know how to love: this simplicity, this self-forgetting, this humble service without self-gratification, without any self-regard. He loved me with the benevolent but inexorable authority of a father, and also with the indulgent and somewhat nervous tenderness of a mother.
In this address it is unclear whether the love is of his friend Mohammed or of Jesus, perhaps of both, and we are forced to consider whether the paradigm of self-forgetting love is the characterofGod and cuts across all the different expressions of religious faith.
The final point I want to draw out is about the hope of Christians and Muslims. Both believe that God calls them to a life that is not limited to this world although they may express the afterlife in different terms. Both believe that their life here on earth will prepare them for life with God. De Chergé writes: ‘Day after day I learn… that the plan of God for Christianity and Islam remains constant: to invite us both to the table of sinners.’ The outcome of the different paths cannot be known, they are different paths, but in the practice of faith there can be sharing, mutual respect and understanding.
Talking of the hope of Christians and Muslims cannot be done only at the theoretical level. Although we may pray for each other and trust that in God’s providence we seek the mercy of the one God, we cannot reconcile with our minds the beliefs of Muslims and the beliefs of Christians. What we can do is to seek dialogue in the present and to accept that we don’t fully know what God has in store for us. In this shared hope there is a reticence about claiming too much knowledge of the purposes of God; the act of mutual conversation, of mutual conversion is sufficient.
What de Chergé would assert is that hope must be founded on sacrifice. He saw that sacrifice in the life of Jesus andhe received it from Mohammed. He believed that the same sacrifice is found in all the saints, whether Christian or Muslim, who give their life that another may live. That is authentic witness to the kingdom of heaven, the paradise to come.
The final words of de Chergé’s testament written at the end of 1993 say this:
‘And also you, mu last-minute friend, who will not have known what you were doing: yes, I want to thank you and this goodbye to be a “God-bless” for you, too, because in god’s face I see yours. May we meet again as happy thieves in paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both. Amen! Inshallah!’
John Clarke – Maundy Thursday 2015