Shadow and light belong together. Together shadow and light bring forth the inherent beauty of all that they touch…They, together, are like a paint brush on nature and upon our hearts! The Cross is the backdrop of the Resurrection. Resurrected life is not separate from the self-gift, first the self-gift of Christ and then we follow, the offering of our very lives. The Cross, the symbol of unconditional love, imbues the Resurrection with eternal life, the full, eternal life of God which will never end. This fourth Sunday of Easter is ‘Good Shepherd’ Sunday, where we hear that the Good Shepherd gives his life for his sheep, even the ‘lost’ one who strays. On May 8th we had the anniversary of the martyrs of Atlas. In a recent book of the writings of Christian de Chergé, translated into English, there is a brief essay titled “A Constancy of Love”. Christian stands in the stream of those saints who went before him. He writes: “I was rereading an instruction of Saint Jane de Chantel to her daughters: ‘Neither Saint Basil nor most of our holy Fathers and pillars of the Church were martyred. Why? I believe it is because there is a martyrdom called the Martyrdom of love, through which God, sustaining the life of his servants, men and women, that they may work for His glory, renders them martyrs and confessors at the same time’” (Christian de Chergé Spiritual Writings, p.29-30).
Christian refers again to St. Jane de Chantel who “was then asked how long this martyrdom would last? Her response: ‘From the moment we give ourselves to God unreservedly until our death. However, this has to be understood in relation to generous hearts that, without holding anything back, are faithful to love’” (p.30). The text adds that those of weak and inconstant hearts God does not make martyrs of them. Martyrs of love: we are given a choice, constancy or inconstancy in loving? And the context for this loving is the monastic community. The Easter community is the one whose daily walk is under the image of martyrdom, for the sake of love, for the sake of building up the body of Christ that we form. This does not mean that we have to be perfect…conversion includes this dying for love’s sake. What Christian is stressing is the word ‘constancy’…to be constant in loving our sisters and brothers, no matter what conflict or differences we face in our relations. We will falter but we can always return to what is most essential in this pilgrimage to God…open to conversion, ready to have our heart broken open for God’s sake, for Divine love to grow and expand.
Within the Resurrection is the martyrdom of love. He, who is the Way, the Truth, the Life, goes ahead of us. His embodied Love, his martyrdom of Love meets us, leads us each step of the way into resurrected life. Christian’s words on the constancy of love were given during an Advent talk in 1995, months before he died. In his homily for the Easter vigil of 1994, he uses also the image of martyrdom but adding the word hope, the ‘martyrdom of hope’. Here is what he says: “It seems to me that today we receive an additional call to the ‘martyrdom’ to which we are destined, one of HOPE. Oh! It is neither glorious nor brilliant. It takes the exact shape of all the dimensions of daily life. It has always defined the monastic state: step by step, drop by drop, word by word, elbow to elbow…and this must be started again and again in a regimented life, every morning, into every night, and we must continue to meditate, to correct, to discern, above all to wait. This is the path by which ‘he goes before us,’ ‘from beginning to beginning, by beginnings that have no end…’ to speak like our father Saint Gregory of Nyssa” (p.90). In these words of Christian, we get an incarnate meaning of the word ‘hope’…It is not rootless, and it does not mean the absence of fear or doubt. The martyrdom of hope holds in check, contains the fear or doubt that can emerge.
Two images: love and hope, qualified with the word ‘martyrdom’: martyrdom of love, martyrdom of hope: this is a profound way to describe the Easter community and especially a monastic community. Let us then strive to be constant in hope and constant in love in all that we live together.
Sr. Kathy DeVico, Abbess
Chapter Talk – Fourth Sunday of Easter – May 11, 2025, cycle-C
