The book is good, though it’s easy to get lost in the
numerous persons and groups that provide the framework for understanding the lives and deaths
of the monks.
But in Kiser's book, I came across a reference to a retreat that the prior,
Christian De Chergé, gave just weeks before he was kidnapped.
He spoke of five pillars of peace which I found helpful –
not just for understanding what peace is but also as five pillars for mission.
Today I found the talk in La esperanza invincible [Unconquerable Hope],
a book I bought a while ago but never got around to read. Here’s my translation
of Dom Christian’s summary of the five pillars of peace:
I believe that without these five pillars no peace is possible. But peace is, above all, a gift of God. It is given to us. We do not say that peace doesn’t exist; it is there. Simply, we must work to let it emerge:Patience – PatiencePoverty – PauvretéPresence – PrésencePrayer – PrièrePardon /Forgiveness – PardonIt just so happens that Forgiveness is the first name of God in the [Muslim] litany of the 99 [names of God], Ar Rahman. And Patience is the last of the 99, Es Sabour. But God Himself is poor, God Himself is present, and God Himself is prayer.Here is the peace which God give. Not as the peace the world gives.
That was what the monastery of Our Lady of Atlas in
Tibhurine, Algeria, tried to live.
I think they also have a lot to say to me, a missionary in
Honduras.
Patience is definitely needed. How many times have I felt the
need for patience when I’m waiting for someone to show up or when I can’t
understand what someone is saying. But I also need patience in relation to
myself – my failures, my cultural faux
pas, my faulty Spanish, and more. Patience helps me put things in
perspective, not jumping as quickly to conclusions that are based in my
background as a privileged inhabitant of this planet.
Poverty: In an extremely poor country, I can never be poor or
seen as poor, but I can try to live a slightly austere life. Being a vegetarian
helps. If I weren’t, the people would kill a chicken every time I visited a
village, even though they themselves might eat meat less than five times a
month. But taking small portions (partly because I can’t eat as much as many of
these hard working people do) is also a part of trying to be closer to the
poor. But, above all, poverty means recognizing the dignity and capacities of
the poor. I may have more education, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I
really know more than many people I work with. We can learn together – sharing
strengths and filling up each others’ weaknesses.
Presence is central. I am not here to save Honduras. I am here
to accompany the people – in their joys and sorrows, in their struggles and
their victories. That doesn’t mean I don’t have projects that I work on or that
I don’t use my education and training in my work with educational projects. It
does mean that I work to see that the people here, especially those poor and
marginalized, become the protagonists of their life and work.
Prayer is absolutely needed. I need to pray to let my life be
based in a relationship with the God of Love, who became flesh as a poor man in
a country suffering oppression. Without a vision like this, I don’t think I’d
be able to live with such faith and joy.
Pardon: At times
I have to ask forgiveness due to my cultural ineptness. But I also need to
learn to forgive when I see something as a snub, when it really may just be
that my cultural expectations are not likely be met by a different. Forgiveness
reminds me that we all are incomplete and need forgiveness. In this I remember
Hannah Arendt’s analysis of forgiveness in The Human Condition: forgiveness
breaks the chain of the irreversibility past and enables us to act. We are not
bound by what happened; we can go forward – and we can let others go forward.
These are just some preliminary thoughts, inspired by a
martyr. I need to pray and reflect on these words since I believe they can help
us understand better what real mission means.
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