THE LAST WORD Amen! In sh' Allah! One monk's last testament on the possibility of martyrdom and the forgiveness of his murderer Christian de Cherge
THE LAST WORD AMEN! IN SH' ALLAH! Christian de Cherge What follows is the testament of a Trappist priest killed by members of the Armed Islamic Group in Algeria in May 1996. The document was...
...But they ought to know that at last my pounding curiosity will be satisfied...
...And you, too, my last-minute friend, you who know not what you do...
...In sh' Allahl Dom Christian de Cherge, O.C.S.O., was the prior of Our Lady of Atlas Monastery in Tibherine, Algeria...
...I have proclaimed it loud and clear, I believe, to everyone who knows me, that I have found here the guiding line of the gospel that I learned at my mother's knee, my first church, here in Algeria, and in the respect of Muslim believers...
...It seems important to profess that...
...May we be granted to meet each other again, happy thieves, in paradise, should it please God, the Father of both of us...
...Nor is it worth any less...
...After his death, it was published in La Croix on May 28, 1996...
...I know, too, the caricature of Islam that is fostered by a certain Islamism...
...I have lived long enough to recognize that I am caught up as accomplice in the evil which, alas, seems to prevail in the world, even in that evil which might strike me blindly...
...That they pray for me: for how should I prove worthy of such an offering...
...For me, Islam and Algeria is something different, it is body and soul...
...At such a moment I would like to have enough lucidity left to beg God's pardon and that of all my fellow human beings, while pardoning with all my heart anyone who might have hurt me...
...The document was composed at the end of 1993, following the priest's previous abduction by the same group...
...If it were ever to happen- and it could happen any day-that I should be the victim of the terrorism that seems to be engulfing all the foreigners now 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...
...In all events, it no longer has the innocence of childhood...
...Yes, for you, too, I wish this thank you, and this adieu which is of your planning...
...I know full well the contempt in which Algerians generally are held...
...It is far more costly to pay the price of what might be called "the grace of martyrdom" than to owe one's life to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he professes to be acting in accord with what he believed in Islam...
...In fact, I do not see how I could rejoice that this people that I love should be globally blamed for my murder...
...That they accept that the unique Master of all life will be no stranger to such a brutal departure...
...Anticipating possible martyrdom, Father de Cherge sent the testament to his family...
...This life lost, totally mine, and totally theirs, I give thanks to God, who seems to have wanted it to be utterly so, for this joy, through and despite everything...
...My life has no greater worth than that of another...
...That they understand that such a death should be linked to so many others, equally violent, but which remain masked by the anonymity of indifference...
...He and six other Trappist monks were slain by terrorists in May 1996...
...My death would seem to justify those who dismiss me summarily as naive, as an idealist [saying]: "Let him say how he sees things now...
...It is all too easy to appease one's conscience by simply identifying this religious tradition with the all-or-nothingness of the extremists...
...For then I shall be able, if it pleases God, to steep my gaze in that which the Father has, to contemplate with him his Islamic children as he sees them, illuminated by the glory of Christ, by the fruits of his Passion, endowed with the gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will be forever to establish communion and to restore likeness, through playing on differences...
...Not that I would want to wish such a death...
...Within this thank you where, once and for all, all is said about my life, I include you, my friends of yesterday and of today, and you, my friends from here, along with my mother and my father, my sisters and my brothers and all who belong to them, [life] yielded a hundredfold as was promised...
...Amen...
Vol. 124 • January 1997 • No. 2
