Catholic Sensibility

I’d like to join Todd’s reflection on the documents of Vatican II. But, after this past week’s terrorism, I want to first reflect on the life of Brother Henri Vergès (I will be indebted to the work of Brother Martin McGhee, OSB). The Anglican Diocese of London’s webpage includes a prayer to Christ for those who are suffering that ends: “We ask that through your ministry of love and life, wounds of body and spirit may be healed and that in You people will find peace with God and peace with one another, for your truth and mercy's sake. Amen.” Brother Henri’s life might show us the true depths of that prayer. Henri was the son of a farmer in the French Pyrenees. He took final vows as a Marist in 1952 and desired to become a missionary. His superiors finally asked him to join the community in Algiers, where he arrived on August 6, 1969. After a great deal of bloodshed, France had officially left Algeria in 1962. 900,000 Christians also departed, leaving only a tiny remnant behind. As Br McGhee writes of Henri, “His challenge was to ‘reveal the face of Christ’ to his Muslim brothers and sisters in a country undergoing the birth pangs of independence after 132 years of French domination.” At first, Henri served as headmaster of a diocesan school. There was a community of five Marist brothers, but nearly all of the students and staff were Muslim. Proselytism was unthinkable. Henri had to witness to the Gospel through everyday actions – by showing a disciplined life of daily prayer, spiritual reading, and study. Another brother wrote that Henri’s life was marked by the virtues of “service, joy, simplicity, Marian piety, faith, dedication, humility.” Henri cultivated such a life, in his words, “so that these young people may sense through me a Presence which loves them and which calls them to be their best selves. … Christ must shine through us. The fifth Gospel which everyone can read is the Gospel of our lives.” At the very least, Henri thought, his witness could help the Algerian people “hold on to its personality and to its faith in the one God.” The Algerian government eventually nationalized all the Catholic schools in 1976, and, with one other brother, Henri applied to teach in the national school system. He was given a post in the small town of Sour-El-Ghozlane, 75 miles from Algiers. Eventually, his fellow brother left, and Henri was alone, “truly immersed in the humble life of the Algerian people.” As he wrote, “All the exterior trappings of power have disappeared: we are simply servants of everyone, without any more human security than in the past, but happy to find ourselves in the midst of a less well off population than in the capital. Our concern? To be a humble presence which witnesses to the Lord Jesus with whom we try, too imperfectly, to be in communion more and more, a presence which maintains and develops dialogue with our Algerian Muslim brothers, in a reciprocal discovery of our respective values.” Although he was living in solitude, Henri had been shaped by life in community, which had taught him that, “Rather than just tolerating others, we must try to find God’s gift to each individual so that we can marvel at it.” Henri tried to find God’s gift in his Muslim brothers and sisters. Henri had learned Arabic and possessed a good knowledge of the Koran. He thus had a deep respect for Muslim culture, which enabled him to develop an authentic sympathy and openness. Henri also knew that one could not engage in any religious dialogue without a profound sense of the truth, along with a desire to submit to the will of God. Henri saw that Muslims were attracted to him when they saw him pray, when they sensed the “mystery living in him.” As for himself, Henri wrote about his participation in an interfaith group, “His Spirit is there … It is He who, on occasion, makes our hearts beat as one. A deepening for me, in this contact with the Islam of the people, of the meaning of prayer, of the sovereignty of God and of brotherly welcome.” After twelve years, Brother Henri’s teaching contract was not renewed; he came back to Algiers and began to run a library and a social center. Over 1,000 students belonged to this library, where they found a place of peace and quiet. Many of them were from disadvantaged families; a majority of them were female. In his writings, Brother McGhee says, Henri kept mentioning the word “disponsibilite”: Henri was committed to being wherever the Holy Spirit and his order meant for him to be. Henri wrote, “The complete initiative must be left in the hands of the Lord, while trying without worry to discern His will in all circumstances and committing myself to it with all the potential which he has given to me. To be completely focused on what is given to me. To be completed focused on what it is given to me to live here and now.” So, when the fundamentalist Armed Islamic Group, entangled in civil war with the government, warned all foreigners to leave in December, 1993, Henri stayed. On Sunday, May 8, 1994, Henri was with Sister Paul-Hélène, who assisted him in his work. Three young fundamentalists were also there, disguised as policemen. One shot Henri in the face, and another shot Sister Paul-Hélène in the back of the neck. Henri had held out his hand to his murderer. At Tibhirine, a Cistercian monastery 40 miles from Algiers, Fr Christophe wrote in his diary about the martyrdoms; death had now become part and parcel of his own daily life. A month later, Fr Christophe wrote, “there is turbulence in the choir” and began to pray for the grace to overcome his own feelings of anger and desire for revenge. He remembered that, when he received the Eucharist, he was drinking “the Blood of non-violence.” “Your victory, Jesus, is not easy in me, in us. I am sure, Love: you win.” Fr Christophe’s throat was cut on May 21, 1996. The Bishop of Oran, Monsignor Pierre Claverie, OP, had angrily condemned the assassinations of Henri and Paul-Hélène. He too was expecting death. On August 1, 1996, he returned to Oran from Algiers and was met at the airport by a Muslim friend, Mohammed Bouchikhi, who had earlier found refuge with his siblings in Bishop Pierre’s presbytery. Mohammed had told Bishop Pierre, “I know that I am going to die but I am going to come because I love you.” There was a powerful explosion as the two crossed the threshold of the bishop’s house. Their blood, Muslim and Christian, was mingled together in death. May we remember all of them as we pray to Christ, “We ask that through your ministry of love and life, wounds of body and spirit may be healed and that in You people will find peace with God and peace with one another, for your truth and mercy's sake. Amen.”