Vigils Reading – St Lucy

THE HISTORICAL MEETING POINT OF MARTYRDOM

AND MONASTICISM

From the writing of St Christian de Chergé4

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From the beginnings of Christian monasticism, there has been both

continuity and discontinuity between the monastic choice and martyrdom. As we

know, there is continuity in time: during the first centuries of persecutions there

were certainly vocations to the solitary life, dedicated to prayer and intercession

for all. It is easy to imagine John the Evangelist withdrawing into solitude and

inspiring followers. But the threat was there for them and for everyone, and there

was need to sustain believers’ courage and faith in that direct form of sequela

Christi—the offering of martyrdom—to which they left themselves exposed by the

very fact of being Christian. And there is discontinuity, because Constantine’s

“peace of the Church” was needed in order for monasticism to find its specific

place, when laxity and ease were quickly undermining the vitality of gospel

witness.

It was indeed the gospel that incited Anthony to “lose his life” in a way

different from the shedding of blood through “pagan” hatred. Paganism was not

dead; it transplanted itself in the Church, where “secularization” made rapid

headway. Anthony, therefore, would be “pursued” by the Word. He heard it and

embodied it by following it literally and on the spot. It happened as quickly as the

fall of the ax on the neck of Cecilia or Lucy. But for Anthony it was only the first

step of the Pasch, the passing over. It then took dozens of years for the letter to be

truly rewritten in terms of the spirit, in order to find, following Jesus’ example,

Cahier de Tibhirine 1, Abbaye Notre-Dame d’Aiguebelle, p. 449. Trans. Fr. Elias Dietz, OCSO.9

ways of combining time and eternity, the earth and the things above. Anthony and

many others instinctively returned to the place of the first Passover, the desert, for

this unique kind of martyrdom.

Earlier persecutions had singled out towns—and even big cities—to offer

the spectacle of faith to the crowds in the arenas as if it were a game. The

persecutions faded away, but the Adversary remained and continued to have his

fun. He, then, was the one to take on directly. Anthony’s combat was not against

people, pagans or not, but against the traditional Enemy of humankind, whom he

confronted as a solitary, confident that he could contribute to conquering him

where he is most rampant.

This flight from the spirit of the world and this fierce but humble solitude

will become, strangely enough, “the seeds of Christianity,” to use the phrase

Tertullian applied to the early martyrs. It is to this drop by drop spending of flesh

and blood in the desert that we must constantly return, in order to sustain the

specific fruitfulness of our lives here and now

4 Christian de Chergé, Dieu pour tout jour. Chapitres de Père Christian de Chergé à la communauté de Tibhirine [1986–1996], Les