Dear Friends,

  It is Tuesday afternoon here, 3 PM, the 15th of April.  The sun shines brightly and April shower clouds loom nearby but no rain has fallen here so far.  The temperature must be about the high 70s or low 80s, just perfect. I would prefer to write what I will be writing tomorrow, the 16th, but I have a big meeting to go to in the city tomorrow afternoon (all morning is given to the four retreatants I am with--what stories I am hearing!!) and will not have the time then to write.
  Why is tomorrow so important to me?  Because this April 16 marks three years to the day when the inspiration to come to East Africa was given to me.  It was so obviously something God did to me; there isn't a shadow of a doubt about that!  In the moment it happened I was so surprised and had the sense that it was of God, but it took me an overnight before I realized that truly this was of God and it had to be taken seriously. It began a revolution of unprecedented thoughts in me.  I have to tell you how it happened. I tell the story because it makes God so real, so tangible, so surprising and more readily appreciated as truly kind and generous.  I also tell the story because I am close to 8 months since I arrived here and it is the first anniversary of this watershed moment in my life .  It is so much on my mind.  On top of it all, this is Holy Week with our pondering a story of tragic love and victory over violence and death, a story that never gets old.
   It was on the afternoon of Saturday, April 16, 2011 that I and a friend went to the Royal Oak Main movie theatre to see "Of Gods and Men."  It was the day before Palm Sunday and four weeks to the day since I had led the funeral for my mother.  I knew just enough about the movie's main theme to know that it was the kind of movie that would fit with my own efforts to stay in the spirit of Lent and especially get ready for Holy Week that was beginning at sundown that evening.
  The movie concerns a group of French monks who had established a monastery in northern Algeria during the 1970s.  It was located at the edge of a small Muslim village.  They had come not to convert these people but rather witness to the presence of Christ to them.  The movie opens with some scenes showing  how well the monks were received in the village, of how the people had depended on them even for immediate medical care and some spontaneous "counseling" by one of the monks for a 13-14 year old girl who wanted to talk with one of the monks about her being forced into an arranged marriage.  The dialogue between them is priceless!  As the story of the film unfolds, you learn about a jihadist group coming into Algeria to challenge the established government and military and announcing that all foreigners had four weeks to leave the country or they would be killed.  Soon you witness a bit of a scene in which 12 Croatian workers near the monastery and known by the monks had had their throats slit and left in the open for all to see.  There is, then, much fear throughout the village and increased government-military presence.  The movie then focuses in on the life of the monks and their reactions to this threat.  You see then much debate among them as to whether they would stay in Algeria or leave.  There are numerous scenes from a number of community deliberations on this question.  You hear voices of fear and voices of calm, lots of reasons cited for leaving and some for staying.  At the same time you witness some scenes of their praying in common the Liturgy of the Hours (morning prayer and vespers) and then praying the Eucharist as well.  All of this  is so done so very well.  Most authentic!!
   On Christmas day about a half dozen jihadists come unannounced to the monastery and the Prior of the community, Fr. Christian de Cherge, meets them at the front door. The head of the jihadists  introduces himself and his group.   Fr. Christian calmly states that he and the other monks do not side with either group, that they will not bear arms nor even strive to defend themselves, that it is the feast of the birth of the Savior, the Prince of Peace, and the monks welcome them in His name.  It soon is revealed that one of the jihadists is wounded and needs medical care.  The commander asks for medical aid and Fr. Christian welcomes him; the fighter is tended to, and the jihadists leave.
   Months go by while the monks continue to debate/discern what are they are to do.  In the film Fr. Christian is remarkable for how he stands in the midst of his fellow monks and holds the center, a place of peace and clarity of mind to help the monks listen to each other and  finally come to a communal decision that is in keeping with how God calls them to be.  They all decide to stay.  For them it is the only authentic response in light of their vocations and what they had vowed.  They would stay with the people and continue to witness to Christ despite the tension and how this left them quite vulnerable. They saw the people themselves as vulnerable.  To leave would be to abandon them.  It would especially be a failure to trust Christ and the Father. This became clear to them through their prayer and in all their discussing the two options.
   One of the most moving scenes of the whole movie is a moment when they receive a visiting monk who brings with him some much appreciated French red wine for all of them to enjoy.  This leads to a scene where they are all sitting around a table, drinking red wine and listening to a beautiful piece of music from Tchaikovsky played on a cassette tape recorder.  It is clearly an allusion to the Last Supper and their enjoying the companionship in Christ that has held them together in what you know is one of their final moments. Like Christ they had set their hearts on a common choice, to stay, and this moment was their ratifying their choice.  It was an agape moment, echoes of the meal Jesus had with His disciples.
  During these months, from December of 1994 till January of 1996 the monks live in this situation until on January 21 they were suddenly visited by the jihadists.  Two hid under beds and escaped while the other seven, including Christian, the community Prior, were kidnapped and taken away into the snowy mountains.  Months passed without knowledge of their fate. The movie ends with  a statement that they had all been executed.
  Later, it was learned that the government had chased the jihadists to a barn and on May 21 from a helicopter unloaded a hail of bullets into the barn.  In the process the monks were also killed since the jihadists were holding the monks with them. The monks were buried on June 4  after their corpses had been beheaded by the government to make it look like the jihadists had murdered them.  Many of the Muslims in the village of the monastery grieved their deaths and attended the Christian funeral.  Christian, some two years before his death, wrote a letter to his parents and siblings back in France and said that he thought it a good chance that he would die in the terrible conflict that had come upon Algeria. He was thanking God for having the opportunity, unworthy as he was, to lay down his life for a people and a land he had come to love. He said that he forgave ahead of time his assassin who he said he presumed was doing what he thought was right in killing him and looked forward to the day that the assassin and he  would be in heaven together as brothers forever; he also said that he prayed to be able to see the Muslim people as God sees them, with the light of Christ (yes, the light of Christ!) shining from them.
  Well, my friends, it was all I could do not to cry aloud during the movie.  I wept and wept through most of the movie while saying so many times, "I want to love like these men loved. I want to give to God like these people did."  I spent so much energy holding in my emotions.  It would have been terribly embarrassing for me to cry out, even though there were not that many people in the movie house.   I had a headache following the movie--no wonder!
  What these men did as a group of brothers dedicated to God was to live through the same dilemma and agony that Jesus suffered through when He was in the Garden of Gethsemani, struggling over whether He would stay and be captured and crucified or leave before the soldiers came to arrest Him.  For me a second title for the movie could have been--"Gethsemani Relived".
  Then it was during my drive back to UD Mercy where I was living at the time (I was on sabbatical from Manresa) that the big surprise came.  Alone with my thoughts and feelings regarding the film, I began to think "East Africa."  This thought came gently and stayed with me while driving from Royal Oak down Woodward Ave and west on Six Mile to the university.  All that time I am quite abstracted from the night lights along the streets and my hunger for a good dinner.  Never before had I thought such thoughts. The novelty of it all caught my attention.  I recalled that I no longer had to stay close to my mother in her dying state.  She was now with God.  I thought I didn't have to stay in the USA for anything, not even for my siblings nor for Manresa, but that I was free to consider this and was amazed by it all.  Nothing came to me as an objection.  I felt an amazing freedom and sense of being taken off my feet!  I could hardly believe what was happening.  I looked at myself as someone new, with possibilities that took away my breath.  In the days that followed through Holy Week and the Easter season I continued to feel the peace and sense of being taken up by God and shown a new life that was being offered, not commanded, but invited to choose.  Never did I feel compelled or ordered.  It always had the feel of a respectful invitation that I was free to decline. But really, how could I decline,especially in light of who was offering it!  And I knew without a doubt from whom this offer was coming.  How could I decline?  He means too much to me, too much to turn Him down.  It later dawned on me that I could never preach the same nor teach some of my favorite themes if I were to decline this offer, to withdraw and cite my age or some other excuse.  With the invitation came the security of knowing that everything I would need to act on this would be given, that I had nothing to fear or worry about.  Somehow all would be provided.  So 5 months later I told my provincial about this experience and he said that during the coming summer he wanted me to travel to East Africa, see the places I might be serving at, make my 8-day retreat while there, and then let him know whether this was still right for me.
  Well, even before I left I was 99.9% sure of this, but I did as he asked me to do, and I came back to the States and Manresa confirmed that this was it, that I was to begin preparing to say 'goodbye' and hand over to others the leadership of programs I had led and let go of a rich, wonderful life I had experienced at Manresa for the last 19 year. It took me a yer to do that!  In some moments it all seemed like a make-believe situation; at times I would have a moment of total wonderment at what had happened (and I still have such moments here in Kenya at times, remarking to myself that I am in Africa and not in the States!)
  While preparing to come to Kenya I had thought many times of dying here a violent death, and at numerous times since I arrived I have thought the same... that the longings I felt during the movie to love like those men had loved would sweep over me and feel totally right deep inside.  I am not suicidal, but there is something indescribably beautiful about knowing Him as the greatest find of your life, the "pearl of great price" as it prompts you to go and sell everything you have in order to have it.  Many people think you are crazy, over the top or over the edge, yet this kind of relationship, this kind of love contains its own logic that makes it all supremely sensible.  There comes a time that one who has been hit with such a gift doesn't give two hoots about what others think.  It is so obvious that it is gift, and totally unearned.  No one is ever worthy of such, but wow, when it is given, you are changed forever.  It sometimes makes you sound like a fool, yes, a fool for Christ, as St. Paul talks about.  But when you are found by this amazing grace, this surprising blessing, then you live with a new perspective, a new lease on life.  You seem forever young and it doesn't matter anymore whether you are alive in this world or with Him in the next.  In either case, you are with Him and that is all that matters.
  Sometime last week one of our Jesuits was murdered in Homs, Syria.  He had served both Christians and Muslims living in that area for a long time.  It has been 30 years since he has been in Syria.  With the training of a psychotherapist, he was especially helpful to the people of that area.  Dutch by nationality, he was 75 years old and considered well the danger of staying there.  Like the monks in Algeria, he chose to stay and suffered the loss of his life last week. He was dragged out of his Jesuit residence by masked men (cowards) and shot twice in the face. I honestly felt envy for the opportunity that was his to live for Christ the way he did and especially to lay down his life for Christ in the way he did.  I mean what I say. I envy him in the grace that was given to him to love Christ this deeply and without reservation. The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius hold out to the person making them such desires toward Christ, to choose to offer yourself totally, even to ask that you be chosen for such if it would bring God greater glory than your living on and not suffering so.
   This is not masochism, this is love that much of the world does not understand.  It is something it runs from and calls crazy, stupid.  But when Jesus the Christ is this real for you, when the Father lets you really meet Him and discover the riches of His heart, of His person, then this all makes supreme sense . . . not that one does not feel fear of violence and dying so, but there is something so blessed to still offer yourself to God from a level deeper and stronger than the fear.
   I wish all of you who read this a blessings-filled Holy Week and a Spirit-filled Easter season.  May spring come to you quickly; we are slowly moving into autumn with nights that are rather chilly.  Great sleeping weather and a beautiful sky with the Paschal moon and Mars in the evening, eastern sky to admire.

Bernie Owens