Nuit de feu: Christian de Chergé and Prayer with the Other

A quarter of an hour after Compline, return to the chapel…Silence of the evening, this beach at the shore of the Word where all the words and sounds of the day come to break like waves.

Shadow of the night, in the shadow of a Presence entrusted to the vigilance of the flickering lamp at the sanctuary.

Prayer of abandonment, prostrate between the altar and the tabernacle: "Seek the Lord while He may be found, call Him while He is near," said the prophet Isaiah (liturgy of that day).

And then this other presence which approaches softly, unusual.

You were there, too, both against the same altar, a brother kneeling, prostrate.

The silence continues. A long time.

A murmur rises from the depths, then grows louder, tearing itself from some abyss, like a peaceful spring, and at the same time irresistible:

'ALLAH! "God." 'ALLAH 'AKBAR "The All-Great." Sigh. "God." Again and again this sigh, like the child who feeds and who only stops for a moment to catch a breath before asking for more; the sighs of one who knows insatiable prayer, and who is not satisfied to be there, turns, so small, towards the All-Other.

Silence. Then you turned toward me: "Pray for me." Another silence, you wait.¹

This is how Christian de Chergé begins his account of a night of shared prayer with two Muslim guests at the Cistercian monastery of Our Lady of Atlas, Algeria, during Ramadan 1975.

When Bruno Chenu included this account in a collection of de Chergé's writings published in 2010, he gave it the title Nuit de feu (Night of Fire) recalling the visionary experience of Blaise Pascal and its centrality in reorienting Pascal's life. For Christian de Chergé, the experience of shared prayer on this night was less a reorientation than a confirmation of his vocation. Nonetheless, this experience echoed through the remaining twenty years of his life.

In 1996, along with six other monks from the Cistercian monastery at Tibhirine, Christian de Chergé was kidnapped and subsequently killed, probably at the hands of Islamic terrorists. The story of this monastery, its presence in an increasingly dangerous and hostile environment, and particularly the decision of the community to remain in Tibhirine alongside their Muslim neighbors, is the subject of Xavier Beauvois' 2010 film, Of Gods and Men (Des hommes et des dieux). The film is true to the story of the Tibhirine monks: indeed many of the key pieces of dialogue draw directly on surviving texts. The film was timely for France, indeed the West, still struggling with its colonial past, and for a world desperately needing a more nuanced understanding of Islam.

The work of the leader of this small monastic community, Christian de Chergé, is becoming better known in the English speaking world. An English translation of Christian Salenson's fine 2009 monograph, Christian de Chergé: une théologie de l'espérance (Christian de Chergé: a Theology of Hope), was published by Cistercian Publications in 2012. De Chergé left a significant body of writings, primarily arising from his life as a member, and later leader, of this monastic community. His chapter talks and homilies, some letters, reports and other addresses have been published in French. A handful of de Chergé's chapter talks have been translated into English in Cistercian Studies.² I hope that much more will be translated. De Chergé's work deserves to be read beyond the Francophone world. Here I simply offer a taste of Christian de Chergé's writing on prayer, and particularly prayer with the other. In fact, prayer with the Muslim other was at the heart of de Chergé's monastic vocation and, ultimately, that of his community. So before turning to his writing on prayer, it is worth being aware of the formative early experiences that contributed to the evolution of his vocation and his theology of prayer.

FORMATIVE EXPERIENCES

De Chergé's connection with Algeria, and with Muslims, began in his early childhood: his family spent three years in Algeria, where his father was posted during World...