Letter of August 5, 2005

20th Century Forgiveness
The Most Reverend Carl F. Mengeling, Bishop of Lansing
Almost every week during Jubilee 2000, the church celebrated a series of Jubilees that highlighted varied ways of the spirit in the life of the church.

On May 7, 2000 the Ecumenical Commemoration of Twentieth Century witnesses to the faith took place in the ancient Colosseum in Rome. The pope was joined by clergy from the Orthodox and other Christian Churches. They commemorated the three million believers killed for their faith in the last 100
years. Specific testimonies were given from all continents.

The last martyrs commemorated were the Seven Trappist Monks massacred in Algeria in 1996. The Prior of the monastery, Father Christian de Cherge was remembered for his profound words of forgiveness:

"In the century and the millennium just begun may the memory of theses brothers and sisters of ours remain always vivid. Indeed, may it grow still stronger! Let it be passed on from generation to generation, so that from it there may blossom a profound Christian renewal! Let it be guarded as a treasure of consummate value for the Christians of the new millennium, and
let it become the leaven for bringing all Christ’s disciples into full communion!

These brothers and sisters of ours in faith, to whom we turn today in gratitude and veneration, stand as a vast panorama of Christian humanity in the 20th century, a panorama of the Gospel of the Beatitudes, lived even to the shedding of blood.

"Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven" (Mt. 5:11-12). How well these words of Christ fit the countless witnesses to the faith in the last century, insulted and persecuted but never broken by the power of evil!

Where hatred seemed to corrupt the whole of life, leaving no escape from its logic, they proved that "love is stronger than death"."

The Holy Father read from the powerful testament of the Prior of the monastery. The monastery of Tobhirine was in the foothills of the Atlas mountains in Algeria. Father Christian de Cherge is one of the seven Trappist Monks killed in 1996. With a premonition, he addressed a letter to his family. It is a remarkable and deeply spiritual witness to faith and forgiveness. He forgives his assassin - "And you, the Friend of the final moment, who would not be aware of what you were doing. Yes I also say Thank You and this Adieu to you, in whom I see the face of God. And may we find each other, happy good thieves, in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of both of us."

During the night of March 27-28, 1996, the seven monks were abducted from their monastery by a radical faction of the ‘Armed Islamic Group’. They were brutally massacred on May 21. After their bodies were found on May 30, a funeral was celebrated in Algiers, and they rest in their Tobhirine Monastery cemetery.

Father Christian’s letter is already a spiritual classic. It is above all a testimony to forgiveness. Shining through are Jesus’ words from the Cross: "Father, forgive them; they know not what they are doing".

Father Christian’s Letter:

"If it should happen one day - and it could be today - that I become a victim of the terrorism which 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 this country;
to accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure;
to pray for me - for how should I be found worthy of such an offering!
to be able to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones that have been allowed to fall into the indifference of anonymity.

My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I am an accomplice in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, and even in that evil which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the times comes, to have enough lucidity to beg forgiveness of God and of my brothers and sisters in the human family, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the onewho would strike me down. I could not desire such a death. It seems to me important to state this. I don’t see, in fact, how I could rejoice if the people I love were indiscriminately accused of murder.

It would be too high a price to pay for what will be called, perhaps, the "grace of martyrdom" to owe this to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam. I know the contempt in which the Algerians as a whole can be held. I know, too, the caricatures of Islam which encourage a certain Islamism. It is too easy to give oneself a good conscience in identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideology of its extremists. For me, Algeria and Islam are something different: they are body and soul. I have proclaimed it enough. I think, seeing and knowing what I have received from them, finding here so often that direct line bringing the gospel that I learned at my mother’s knee, my very first church,finding it precisely in Algeria, and already in the reverence of believing Muslims.

My death, obviously, will appear to justify those who hastily judged me naive or idealistic: "Let him tell us now what he thinks of them!" But these must know that at last my most insistent curiosity will be satisfied. For this is what I shall be able to do, if God wills: immerse my gaze in that of the Father to contemplate with him his children of Islam as he sees them, all shining with the
glory of Christ, fruit of his Passion, filled with the gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness in playing with the differences. For this life lost, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God, who seems to have wished it entirely for the sake of that joy in and in spite of everything. In this thank-you where, once and for all, all is said about my life, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you, O my friends of this place, at the side of my mother and father, of my sisters and my brothers and their families - the hundredfold given as he had promised!

And you, too, my last-minute friend, who would not have known what you were doing; yes, for you too I say this thank-you and this a-diar- to commend you to the God in whose face I see yours. Andmay he grant to us to find each other, happy thieves, in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both. Amen! Inshallah!"

Algiers, 1 December 1993
Tobhirine, 1 January 1994
Christian