Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.—John 12:24
There has always been a tension in Christianity over how to view martyrdom. Most Christian writers and teachers over the centuries agree that it is not something to be sought after. In “A Man for All Seasons” Robert Bolt has St. Thomas More affirming the fact that our natural instincts in cases of mortal danger lead to “flight.” The saintly lawyer (no, the term is not an oxymoron) then goes over how he planned to use all of his skills as a barrister to avoid having his head separated from his body over the “King’s business.” But he concedes that a time comes when all the legal dodging and weaving can’t keep a person from standing firm in his or her faith, even if it means death, when no means of escape are available. Catholics have generally held martyrs up as examples to follow, where as some Protestants are less enthusiastic. I read a book on the early Church written by a member of the Calvinist-Reform tradition who thought the martyrs of the first centuries had, in many cases, needlessly forfeited their lives.
In the recent French movie, “Of God’s and Men,” based on true events, a community of Trappist monks in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria faces the prospect of death if they stay in their monastery. The country is experiencing a civil war, with Islamist terrorists on one side and an increasingly mistrusting government on the other. After much debate and internal dissention, the community makes the decision to stay. They have become a part of the fabric of the local village, which grew up around the monastery and stay, out of solidarity with the people. In his review of the film, which was positive overall, Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize winning film critic, concludes that the monks made the wrong choice. He states that it was egoism for them to believe that their work could only be accomplished in that one place, and that their superior, Br. Christian, should have had the humility to lead his men to safety. If they had left they could have certainly continued their fruitful service elsewhere. Because of their choice other, equally needy, people were deprived of whatever years of service they would have had left, or so goes Mr. Ebert’s reasoning.
I was taken aback by this appraisal, to say the least. I could see someone thinking the monks foolish for their decision, but egotistical and prideful? I agree that there was no moral obligation for the monks to stay; it’s questionable how much their presence served to shield the village from the violence enveloping the country. But I believe that Mr. Ebert makes an error in focusing on the importance of the work the monks did, particularly that of the one who is a medical doctor. They are Trappists, and their vocation is to prayer and their goal is a contemplative union with God. Their call is to be an eschatological sign; a sign of the world to come. The life of prayer, radical poverty, and fraternal union that they follow is meant to be a prophetic action pointing to a reality beyond this one. That they may tend to the sick and cloth the poor are a natural extension of their baptismal vocation, but is not at the heart of the life they were called to as contemplatives. Their value, for lack of a better term, is not in what they do but rather in that they are.
On a deeper level the humility that all Christians are called to, but especially priests and religious, is to understand that the work we take up is not our own. Ultimately the responsibility lies with God. We come, we serve and then we move on; eventually we die and it’s the Holy Spirit that supplies the rest. This is exemplified in the Acts of the Apostles. St. Peter, the chief of the Apostles, is invisible after the fifteenth chapter and the book ends without any mention of his or St. Paul’s fate. This was the author’s way of letting us know that as great as these two pillars of the Church were, the success of the mission didn’t lie in their efforts or end with their deaths, but continues still in the work of the Holy Spirit active in the Church as a body.
This does not mean that the monks didn't bear a serious responsibility for their actions. God’s will must be discerned and cooperated with, and just because the monks concluded that His will was for them to stay doesn’t mean they necessarily got it right. We pray, discuss, bring it to authority if we must, and pray some more, them make a decision. Only time will tell if we are right or wrong. In the case of these monks they believed, after deep discernment, that they were fulfilling their vocation to be signs of God’s Kingdom in a concrete way, in a place where that concept's meaning had been perverted by hate and violence. I don't see that as egotistical or prideful.
Mr. Ebert is right, in that the movie itself avoids some of the tougher questions that could have been asked about the political situation that led to the turmoil, such as the legacy of French colonization. It could have also taken a more critical look at the monks own motivations for staying. There is no doubt that the ones who want to stay are presented as the “good guys” and the ones who want to leave are held in somewhat mild contempt, until they “see the light.” But in judging the real life situation to conclude that they made the wrong choice on moral grounds is hard for me to accept. As I wrote earlier, if they had left I don’t believe they would have been accused of moral cowardice. But I don’t believe we would be writing books or making movies about them either. In a world where justice is dispensed from the barrel of a gun, to quote Mao, and our worth as people is too often based on what we can do or earn, these men have captured people’s imaginations because they didn't do the willful or practical thing. Because they chose to allow themselves to die, like the proverbial grain of wheat, these men have bore spiritual fruit, arguably beyond what they could have accomplished by pulling up steaks and moving somewhere else.
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