The stories of the lives of the martyrs often fit into this category, of men and women who over the centuries have written the story of Christ in their blood. Most of us grew up hearing the stories of the early Church and the 'Christians being fed to the lions' - it is well documented even by pagan historians like Tacitus in the early second century. The persecution of the Church in Elizabethan times, during the French revolution and of course during our own Penal times are also well recorded. But many martyrs have died for the faith in the last century.
This month I want to remind ourselves of the silent witness of the Trappist (Cistercian) martyrs of Algeria who died in 1996. Christians will recognise the beauty and values of the Islam faith but will also know that some people within that worldwide creed have distorted its principles and warped its ideals. Such a contrast to the suicide bomber is the one who gives his life for the sake of the other.
'If it were ever to happen ... that I should be the victim of the terrorism that seems to be engulfing all the foreigners now 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.'
Fr. Christian de Chergé, prior of a Trappist monastery in Algeria, began a letter with these words and sealed the envelope with these: 'to be opened in the event of my death.' The letter was indeed opened three years later, after Christian and his fellow Trappists - seven men in all - had been killed by fundamentalist rebels in 1996. However, unlike other Christian martyrs these Trappists did not offer their lives for the conversion of their Muslim neighbours, but as a witness to the One God of all and for the cause of friendship among all God's people. For Fr. Christian at least it was the repayment of an ancient debt.
In 1958 when he was a young man of 21 he had served as a soldier fighting Algerian rebels in the brutal war of independence. One day, his party were ambushed and his life was saved by a friend who happened to be a devout Muslim. This man shielded him with his own body. This man's sacrifice, which Christian believed was prompted by religious faith, brought about his own conversion and eventually ordination to the priesthood and ultimately to the Trappist contemplative order.
Christian studied in Rome, and then asked to be assigned to a monastery dedicated to Our Lady in the Atlas Mountains near Algiers. Many French religious had fled the country in the wake of the war, but at the urging of the archbishop the Trappists had stayed on to offer a contemplative Christian presence among their Muslim neighbours.
The monks lived a traditional Trappist life of prayer and work, but they made a point of offering a place where Christians and Muslims could pray and talk together. A building in the monastery enclosure was offered for use as a mosque and so the 'sound of chapel bells mixed with the Muslim call to prayer.' This group was called 'Ribat el Salam' or the 'bond of peace'.
To many of their neighbours they were trusted and respected. But to others, the Trappists were foreign 'infidels' - as one dispatch put it 'they live with the people and draw them away from the divine path, inciting them to follow the Gospel.'
By 1993 the country was on the verge of anarchy and an ultimatum was given to all foreigners to leave the country, but the monks decided to stay. They also declined any military protection which was offered. It was at this time that Fr. de Chergé wrote his last testament. The months progressed and several priests and women religious were killed. Still the monks remained.
'For us it is a journey of faith into the future and of sharing the present with our neighbours who have always been very closely bound to us. Now all that is left for us is to give our blood to follow Christ to the end.' That end came in 1996 on 21 May when rebels invaded the monastery compound and seized the monks and marched them into the mountains. A few weeks later a note was sent: 'We have slit the throats of the seven monks. Glory to God!' The heads were discovered the next day and they were buried in the small cemetery at the monastery.
De Chergé's family remembered his letter and opened it and discovered his prayer of forgiveness for his murderers: 'For me Islam and Algeria ... are body and soul.' Indeed, Christian was so concerned that his eventual death might be a stumbling block to the dialogue he had helped to establish: 'I do not see 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.'
He offered thanks for all his friends and family. But he reserved his final words for his murderer:
'You too, my last minute friend, you who know not what you do. Yes, for you too I wish this thank you, and this adieu which is of your planning. May we be granted to meet each other again, happy thieves, in paradise, should it please God, the Father of both of us. Amen!http://nunraw.blogspot.com/2010/05/atlas-martyrs-anniversary.htmlLinkback:
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