Not everyone has the chance - the grace - to meet a person who is almost resurrected. A group of Fondacio companions, mainly from the Ile de France but with a few regional delegates, experienced such an encounter at the Hermitage. Bernard Bastian, former moderator of the Puits de Jacob community, spoke in an exceptional way on the theme of Easter in our lives.
A first for Bernard Bastian: responding to an invitation from our community to the Hermitage site, " attracted by the father " (attracted by the Father) ... ... It was a pretty crazy decision (to come and go in one day from the outskirts of Strasbourg) for someone who admits to having been " sick for fifty years " and who truly went through death in 2009.
Indeed, the former moderator of the Jacob's Well community then experienced a very serious health ordeal, with a quadriplegia lasting several weeks and a coma lasting two months. He says he was saved by the prayer of the Church and the community that accompanied and supported him against all odds. Including his desire to " leave the boat " in the darkest hours.
Simple and vital consequences
His speech began with a sober reminder of these major events. In what followed, there were no soothing theological remarks, just words tempered in the fire of an extraordinary experience.
The essence of his teaching is about our identity as sons and daughters of the Father, in the image of the Son Jesus. And about the simple yet vital consequences implied by this positioning.
Moments of meditation and reflection on the Passion, in particular on the last words of Christ, allow us to deepen a " dying of sons and daughters "... Where the relationship of trust and filial abandonment is maintained until the end and allows this form of choice contrary to our only human logic.
"My life, no one takes it, it is I who give it" ... "Father, forgive them" ... "In your hands, my spirit" ...
It is impossible to give an exhaustive account of the richness of the day.
“A must-marry.”
Let us highlight some essential accents.
Bernard Bastian reminds us that our human growth proceeds by maturation and deployment and by mode of ruptures, of "deaths". It is sometimes a question of dying in order to live: to enter into life " even more real, personal, desired by God for each of his children. Each crack, breakage, gestation in our lives can be, in the Passover of Christ, seen, analyzed, accompanied as a new birth in which another aspect of ourselves is revealed. If we believe in Passover and in the resurrection, we cannot simply let ourselves be stopped by a form of death. ". Invitation to reread the intervention of Elijah with the Shumanite, of Jesus with the widow of Nain (2 Kings 4, Luke 7 ...).
A firm invitation also to " absolutely embrace the psychic plane of the evils encountered, but not to stop there ". Because it is a new life in our persons on the occasion of such crossings, which cause faults, ruptures, a singular fragility...
" The Lord creates. " It is a question of dying to oneself, to one's " prefabricated self " (our ego as seen by Maurice Zundel)...
Like cutting a diamond
Forgiveness, " Easter of Easters " is evoked, which opens another path of sons for us... ..." He who forgives grows because something of the human claim dies in him. Like a quantum leap of flesh and spirit...
Sometimes we have to agree to "die faster" to what is playing on us in order to live more like true sons and daughters!
Accept "docilely" what the ordeal will bring about as a salutary stripping down, like cutting a diamond...
Father Bastian also emphasizes how the "root", "matrix" sin amounts to refusing the paternity of our God the Father. Refusing to be a son, to receive one's origin from another ... The prodigal son (Luke 15) offers a very clear illustration of this. To be a disciple, on the other hand, is to be a son. It is therefore up to us to seize every opportunity to allow ourselves to be "sons".
Even at the hour of our earthly death, by letting ourselves "sink" into Christ's own death, having himself left this world entirely turned towards his Father, without resigning when everything became absurd...
In Mark 15, the centurion perceives it: " Truly, this man was the Son of God!"
Odile Foch
For our meditation
"Two towards the Father" ...
" It is by God that I am created, created mortal. Now, He is my Father. A father does not engender his child in order to kill him. If, by creation, He destines me to die, it is in order to make me born. (…) Jesus dies in his own the death of all men. I hope, I will die in the filial death of my Savior… He will take me into Himself and we will die together towards the Father. "
[Extracts from the homily of Father François-Xavier Durrwell, theologian, written by himself].
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