The video was of the French monks in Algeria some few years ago who lived near a small settlement and enjoyed a close relationship with the local – mainly Muslim – people. Their peaceful life was interrupted by the political unrest the country lived through in the 1990s and they knew there was a good chance of the violence reaching them. They received clear messages that they faced death if they stayed on.
The video describes their struggle to decide what to do. What did the Lord want of them? To take the ‘wise’ course of withdrawing for a while, until times were calm again? Or to stay with the people who had nowhere to go. We see them deliberating among themselves. Some opt to go, others to stay. In their divided mind they decide to give themselves more time. Meanwhile pressures from the army as well as the guerrillas mount to force them out.
In the final deliberation they all decide to stay and one of them quotes the words used also by Fr Gerry Pieper at Kangaire (Mount Darwin) in 1978 when he too faced death if he stayed: ‘how could I ever again read the words of John chapter 10 if I leave?’ He was referring to verse 12, ‘the hired man, since he is not the shepherd and the sheep do not belong to him, abandons the sheep as soon as he sees the wolf coming and runs away.’ So Gerry stayed and the monks stayed. They could have easily avoided death but they faced it instead.
Life is so precious. It is such a gift and we cling to it with all our might. What frame of mind, therefore, is a person in when he or she moves towards death, as it were, rather than fleeing from it? Is it not due to a faithfulness way beyond the ‘call of duty’?
It arises from a sense that the relationship I have with the people among whom I live overrides all personal feelings of thinking only of myself. The solidarity I experience with people is so strong that I cannot walk away from them.
It is easy to say that this is exactly what Jesus did – ‘I lay down my life of my own free will’ (John10:17) – but it is important not to jump to Jesus’ example before we have felt within ourselves the weight of the terrible choice; to go or to stay. And to recognise that we do have the power to stay. It is an awesome thought that we are capable of choosing death for the sake of others when we could so easily avoid it.
Post published in: Faith