Subject: Fw: Blog Atlas Martyrs anniversary 21 May 2010
Date: Thursday, 20 May, 2010, 16:19
Dear, William,
Thank you for the loving commemoration of the Atlas Martyrs.
Within the hour, the beautiful memorial card and seven red roses were delivered by mail from the florist.
The flowers and words (made up of pure extracts from Fr Martin McGee's book, drawn together and ordered for presentation), you have sent, powerfully express the continuing presence of the Cistercian Monks of Tibhirine.
We will be united in the Mass tomorrow morning for memory of our Brothers of Atlas; Fr. Christian de Chergé, Br. Luc Dochier, Fr. Christophe Lebreton, Br. Paul Favre-Miville, Br. Michel Fleury, Fr. Bruno Lemarchand, and Fr. Célestin Ringeard.
…
Donald.
THE ATLAS MARTYRS
The Algerian Martyrs and the “Sacrament of Encounter”
To commemorate the deaths of the Seven Atlas Martyrs, this series of extracts from the exceptional book by Fr. Martin McGee, OSB, “Christian Martyrs for a Muslim People”, presents a short reflection on the issues that faced the brothers of Tibhirine and how the sacrifice of their lives and those of the other martyrs brought new meaning to the mission of the Church of Algeria. (Published 2008 Paulist Press ISBN 978-0-8091-4539-3)
Martyrdom of love
The witness of the nineteen Algerian martyrs in the 1990s is so powerful because it speaks of nineteen lives given for others out of love. These martyrs, all members of religious orders, knowingly assumed martyrdom out of love for their Muslim brothers and sisters, out of solidarity with them in their suffering. The Vatican II Church sent out martyrs to serve a non-Christian people, and these priests and religious felt bound by the same fidelity as if their people were Christian. The immense family of God’s children for whom one can lay down one’s life goes beyond all confessional, cultural, or ethnic barriers.
Universal dialogue of salvation
The Archbishop of Algiers, Msgr. Teissier reflects: “The love of God is universal. There is therefore a dialogue of salvation to be undertaken with all the peoples of the earth. This “universal dialogue of salvation” is necessary for the Church herself, who would be unfaithful to her mission if she wasn’t its servant”. He points out that what was peculiar to these Algerian martyrs was that they had sacrificed their lives “not so as to avoid renouncing directly their faith, nor to defend a Christian community, but through fidelity to a Muslim people.” They were martyrs of charity.
The influence of Tibhirine
As well as wishing to show solidarity with the villagers, a second reason for the monks of Tibhirine to stay was their wish to show solidarity with the beleaguered Christian Church in Algeria . “Nine hundred thousand Christians who suddenly disappear is an apocalype for the church. If Tibhirine remains, the Church is saved.” These words were spoken by Cardinal Duval in Rome in 1963 when closure of Notre-Dame de l’Atlas was under consideration. He knew that the Christian Church in Algeria would lose heart without the inspiration that a contemplative community like Tibhirine provided, a community whose raison d’être was not apostolic work but prayer and community life. Not only is a monastic community essential for the well-being of the Christian Church, but it is also a way of life that Muslims instinctively understand and respect.
The faithfulness of Tibhirine
The monastic life, with its emphasis on the Opus Dei, is a witness easily understood by Islam, a religion that stresses the transcendence of God and our duty of worshipping him. In the faithfulness of the Tibhirine monks to worship, their neighbours could recognize a strong link with their own communal practice of praying five times a day. Since the start of the civil war in 1992, the relationship between the monastery and its Muslim neighbours had grown closer than ever. This relationship was a powerful example of the Christian-Muslim dialogue of daily life. Through living in prayer, silence, and friendship, side by side with their Muslim brothers and sisters, they had overcome the barriers of hate and mistrust between Christian and Muslim.
Sacredness of human life
All foreigners in Algeria had been put under sentence of death in 1993 by the GIA, an Islamic armed group, with the real prospect of assassination by the fundamentalists. If the monks were to leave Tibhirine in the face of the threat to their lives, would it not be to allow violence and intimidation to have the final word? Msgr. Teissier was himself well placed to meditate on this difficult question of prudence versus evangelical solidarity. In a reflection he writes that we need to respect the sacredness of human life and not risk it for ideological reasons: “But how can one renounce risking one’s life for people with whom one is in solidarity? It is so much in harmony with what we meet in the life of Jesus and with what we celebrate in the Eucharist… We are all placed in an exceptional situation where it is necessary to run the risk of dying on account of the ties which God has given us with brothers and sisters with whom we have drawn close on account of the Gospel. All our Algerian friends run the same risk. Many other Christians worldwide also live in similar circumstances. What is perhaps special to our case is that our ties of fidelity have been established with Muslims. Now that is precisely the special vocation of our Algerian Church .”
Sacrament of encounter
They were facing the difficult question that keeps coming up in the contemporary Church in Algeria and which was equally alive for Charles de Foucauld in his time: How does a Christian live out his beliefs in a Muslim Society? What does the Gospel have to say to a Muslim culture? And perhaps the new issue that Msgr. Teissier and others are grappling with, namely, the structural powerlessness of the Church. The mission of the Church in Algeria is less a matter of having big institutions and more a matter of being with the people. As Msgr. Teissier puts it: “Thus gradually we all grew in the conviction that the Algerian Church was the Church of Algeria, that is to say a reality in a relationship with a Muslim society and finding its raison d’être in this relationship. The Church wasn’t an end in itself as would be the case of a Chaplaincy serving only its own members. But Christians were united in a specific vocation of establishing an evangelical relationship with a Muslim people”. This new approach or emphasis on encounter, what the Church in Algeria calls the “sacrament of encounter”, is much more demanding of the missionary, as the quality of his own life becomes the key to the proclamation of the Gospel. The effectiveness of this sacrament depends on the transparency of Christ’s presence and love in the individual Christian and in his community.
Witness in weakness and service
The Algerian Church has learned to live in weakness. From being the Church of a colonial power, she has become a Church of a faithful remnant, powerless and at the service of a Muslim country. The Church in Algeria and its nineteen martyrs have absorbed the teaching of Vatican II and its return to gospel values in our relationships with other religions. In the sacrament of encounter, a new realization of what unites Christians and Muslims has been discovered, a realization that through the power of the Spirit at work in our common humanity we can reach out to each other. The nineteen lives offered out of love for their Muslim neighbours witness to the depth of friendship and love that Christians and Muslims can have for each other. In this love lies a sure hope for the future.
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