Andre Louf OCSO

In memoriam
Dom André Louf, OCSO
(1929-2010)

Dom André Louf died on July 12, and was buried two days later in the monastery where he had entered as an eighteen-year-old. We knew that he had recently been moved from the South of France to a hospital in Bailleul, near the abbey of Mont-des-Cats. His end was in sight. Now it has come.


A fatherly friend, abbot and hermit, a creative writer and an excellent translator, a spiritual director and an inspiration for so many persons, an ardent ecumenist, engaged in dialogue with Orthodox Christians in particular, he has departed from us. A diamond with many facets, the radiance of his richly talented personality extended far beyond monastic circles. Even the Université catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve recognized his authority by awarding him the degree of doctor honoris causa in 1994 (cf. Coll. Cist. 56 – 1994, p. 215-226). Throughout his entire life, he was drawn to the public marketplace just as strongly as to the barren solitude of the desert. He chose and he was chosen. A man of good taste, he never sought the banal, but rather what was unique. More than once in his life, things turned out differently than he had hoped. His early inclination to the life of a hermit suddenly took a very different turn when, at 33 years of age, he was chosen to be abbot of his community. After ten years of being superior, he thought he could turn in his resignation, but the Abbot General of the Order thought differently about the matter. When he finally could retire in 1997 – after having been abbot for 35 years – he hoped to become a Carthusian, but his request was not granted... A community of Benedictines in the South of France did issue him an invitation though: he could live in a hermitage on the edge of their community. The stable of a donkey which had died was renovated to become his hermitage....   




There, in Saint Lioba Monastery in Simiane-Collongue, near Marseille, he proved himself to be an industrious translator: he made the complete works of Ruusbroec available in French, with a special sensitivity for the idioms employed by the Flemish mystic. Then it was Isaac the Syrian’s turn. That’s where Dom André did pioneering work in cooperation with Br. Sabino Chialà of the Monastery of Bose, translating unpublished texts for the first time into French. He also translated an entire study of Isaac which had been written in Russian by his Orthodox friend, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev. Everything that he translated has not yet been published. Additional works will appear posthumously, including his translation of the writings of another still unpublished Syrian Father, Simeon of Taybutheh, from the 8th century.  


A few years ago, Stéphane Delberghe published several conversations with Dom André (A La Grâce De Dieu [With the Grace of God] - Entretiens Avec Stéphane Delberghe, Fidelite, 2002) which were promptly translated into Dutch (Met Gods genade, Lannoo, 2002). Leo Fijen (of the Dutch Catholic television series, Kruispunt [Crossroads]), together with his entire camera crew, succeeded in penetrating the walls of Dom André’s hermitage, and interviewing him. These are quite recent images of the man: he let them see everything, offhand. Nonetheless, the things which no one is able to film still remained hidden. He told how he got up every night and just sat there, praying, with or without a book, with or without words, for two or three hours. Secretum meum mihi. My secret is my own.... 


The interior path which this exceptional figure followed within the spiritual landscape of the West, falling and getting up again, with love and with suffering, marked by disillusionment and temptations from without as well as from within, continues to be more hidden than revealed. He was a seeker who encouraged other seekers, as though we of our generation were standing at the beginning of the road. “Even we Trappists don’t know what Vigils are anymore; we have to rediscover it, by trial and error.” As a seeker, he – who, as abbot, got up at night and played the organ in the abbey church – ran aground more than once in his magnanimity and was then forced to retrace his steps. His early notions about Trappist life were heroic: the more exertion, sweat, and tears, the better. Until his body began to give him little signals of complete exhaustion. This was the beginning of a deep questioning. Will grace get a chance in an oh so generous little life? The turning tide became a radical reconciliation with the poorest of what is truly human. “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” That word of Jesus breathed new life into no one in our generation with as much power as it did Dom André. His many articles concerning spiritual direction depart time and time again from that single insight: don’t expect it from your own efforts, but let yourself love by means of the Love which before all is. Such an intuition opened the way to the Syrian Fathers, and especially to Isaac the Syrian and later to Simeon the Graceful (d-Taybutheh). Just two years ago, he spoke in Ghent about this Simeon, and the last citation which he shared there, as a seal, endorsing the whole, concerned this theme, so dear to him:
“The prayer of a sinner with a crushed and broken heart, whose conscience is humbled whenever it reminds him of his faults and weaknesses, is better than the prayer of an arrogant righteous person, puffed up whenever he thinks of himself, haughtily sitting on his high horse, grandiloquent because he imagines himself to have reached a certain spiritual state. Whenever a sinner becomes aware of his weaknesses and begins to feel contrition, he is righteous. But whenever a righteous person becomes convinced of his own righteousness in conscience, then he is a sinner.”  


His many talents could be a source of difficulties, and he admitted that. He was sent to Rome to study Scripture. He became an exegete, but his exegetical formation and the knowledge of several ancient languages turned the Scriptures into a study book, full of linguistic riddles. He got stuck. The monk’s true lectio divina didn’t work for him anymore. To his great joy, he was then entrusted with editing the periodical Collectanea Cisterciensa. This introduced him to the world of St. Bernard and William of St. Thierry. Here he once again discovered that other way of relating to the words of Scripture, as revelation, as an event. Just before that, his reading of Karl Barth (Dogmatik I) had given him a jolt: the Word of God is a penetration, a fertilization, of the heart of the person who listens. Many of his musings and reflections on the Word of God spring forth from that powerful intuition.
His very first publication, Heer, leer ons bidden (Lannoo, 1971; translated into more than ten languages, including the English, Teach us to Pray, Franciscan Herald Press, 1974) gives witness to this discovery. He himself admitted that, as abbot, he had little time left for reading, especially exegetical literature. He did give a homily to the community each week, on Sunday. That was customary in Mont-des-Cats (on Sundays, but not on feast days). “I prepare that well. I place myself under the Word and I share with my brothers where I am spiritually at that moment.” For me, this is still one of the most striking definitions of what a homily can be. Friends collected these homilies and they were translated into Dutch as well as other languages.   


It was right in the middle of the Second Vatican Council when he became abbot. The entire Order, as well as each monastery, was being invited to furnish the liturgy with new forms and additional languages, not to mention new music. Standing amid the breakers, he reflected long and hard on what liturgy was and still could be today in the life of a monk, writing frequently on these topics. Here too, he was especially inspired by the Syrian texts,where they speak of the temple of the heart. His thoughts circled around that interiority, the indwelling of the Spirit with His inspirations, celebrating with a tranquil mind until the prayer is united with the spirit, burbling up continually in a poor, broken heart. He was familiar with Eastern hesychasm, but he had also rediscovered old texts within the Western tradition which place the house of God nowhere other than in the heart, free of any intruding thoughts or cares from outside. In his most synthetic presentation of monastic life, La voie cistercienne. A l’école de l’amour (Desclée de Brouwer, 1979; translated into English as The Cistercian Way, Cistercian Studies Series 76, Kalamazoo, 1989), he elaborated on these themes, citing an entire dialogue, anonymously preserved from the 12th century, about “the interior mansion” (“De Domo Interiori seu De Conscientia” : pp. 108-117 of the French edition; pp. 102-108 of the English edition). In his last public conference, which was in Ghent in June 2008, he played on this very theme: The Liturgy of the Heart. The Interior Person. His presentation, late in the evening, was especially powerful, as if he were giving his last testament and valedictory address (see Heiliging [Hallowing], 2008, pp. 80-96). 


He lived his ecumenism from his heart as well. He was deeply convinced that, if we could proceed at the level of a crushed and broken heart, the encounter with Orthodoxy would bring “the one undivided Church” (Olivier Clément) back to life, in anticipation of the day when we might also be able to share the holy bread and wine in our sacramental life. His pilgrimage to Mt. Athos and Romania in 1969 had gifted him with such an experience in a most exceptional way. No matter how great the separation, ecclesiastically and dogmatically, a mutual spiritual experience nonetheless seemed to be possible, namely at that moment when Dom André himself asked a father for spiritual direction. After hesitating, the other submitted to this moment of grace and the Western monk received a word of light from his Eastern father which, as he later confessed, continued to accompany him throughout his entire life.
Poverty, humility, a crushed and broken heart, contrition: his attention became increasingly focused in that direction. If at times he was an exceptionally well-informed authority figure in the realm of Church politics, within the Order and even outside the Order, such interests faded away with the years. His center of gravity had shifted, as was to be seen in the images on Kruispunt [Crossroads] with Leo Fijen. Those who were privileged to be near him during the past few years could notice how he would sometimes be quite confused, but without that ever causing him to lose his smile. What is significant about his life as a whole is that his path, willed or unwilled, brought him to that peace of heart and that poverty of spirit which he had proclaimed, time and time again, in all his works during the course of more than forty years. He died as a poor man, a “poor fool” as Guido Gezelle described himself, but deeply reconciled with the most miserable aspects of his humanness. 


A great master, a beacon for countless persons, has exchanged his cell and his hermitage for the heavenly community of the poor, the holy. That which he sought and called upon, every night anew, as the luminously radiant abyss of Mercy, he may now behold “face to face.” And we believe that even now, just as in the past, and freer than ever, he will be interceding for us, the poor man for all the poor.

Br. Benoît Standaert, OSB