Distinguished French Photographer Reporter
Becomes Orthodox Monk
In the Monastery of St. Savva I was communicating with
the language of the heart!
Here is the follow-up to an interview he gave for
"Orthodox Truth," the famous French photographer Gérard Gascuel, who
became Orthodox after a series of happy events starting with a professional
visit to Mount Athos. Gerard, an artistic reporter, was sent by a Japanese
newspaper to photograph Mount Athos and unexpectedly meets a monk who, without
speaking a foreign language, chants him a hymn of the crucifixion of Christ and
places him at the beginning of a road without return. He becomes a monk, then
settled in Mount Athos and then departs for the monastery of Saint Savva in the
Judean desert. In 1996, the French Father Jean starts a skete in the name of
St. Foy in the mountains of Cevennes in southern France, where he is currently
practicing with another monk.
In the second part of the interview of the famous
French reporter Gerard Gascuel who became a monk, Fr Nikolaos Douligeris, his
official godfather, as Fr. ean calls him, talks about their acquaintance with
Mt. Athos and their friendship.
Father Nikolaos Douligeris helped translate the
interview and spoke to us about his friendship with Father Jean. They met as laymen
on Mt. Athos. Father Nikolaos remembers their encounter and describes it to us:
By the time I met him he had just donated his
expensive cameras and had decided to become a monk. Even then, however, he
continued to take photographs with much cheaper or even disposable cameras
(with built-in film) that he bought every time he traveled around the world. Of
course his shots even then didn't lose anything from the look of what you might
be looking at and seeing. That is, after all, his gift. A constant search for a
living water that will quench his thirst.
Hidden
beauty
And he searched for this water with all the strength
of his soul, with all his being. Before reaching Mount Athos he had traveled
all over the world. If you go to his official web site you will find photos
from India, Burma, Egypt, China, Ethiopia, Japan, Russia, Bali, Cuba, Vietnam,
Brazil. He was not like a tourist wherever he went. He wanted to live with the
simple and the poor, to know God's people. He wanted to meet the "Hidden Beauty"
behind the ugliness and pain that exists in the world, because that is the way
that has led him and constantly leads him to God.
After this first meeting, on every pass from Athens to
Mount Athos, Jerusalem, and elsewhere in the world, he spent and stayed at home
for a few days. Our spiritual relationship also acquired an institutional
character, since he became Orthodox in the church of Saint Andrew in Patissia,
I was attended by Father Gabriel Chafos, my spiritual father. I became
officially his godfather as he often likes to call me. I would say that he
loved and singled out Father Gabriel (so did Father Gabriel himself) and
honored him because he thought he was one of the people who influenced him
decisively in his final decision to become Orthodox.
By the way, Father Gabriel
didn't speak English or French. Of course, Father Jean didn't speak a word
Greek.
The discussion revolved around the time when he
learned to exist as a subordinate to his spiritual guide, Father Seraphim. I
ask Father Jean how long he stayed in the monastery of Saint Savva but mostly
if during that time the battles with his old self were unequal...
I stayed there for a total of three years. However,
coming back to my place and I thought about how many things we had been
deprived of: pens, flowers, absolutely no clouds, no books, no electricity ...
Everything I took for granted was missing. When you miss something in the
desert, you become obsessed.
The
incident with coffee
One day, I was tempted to drink coffee. For two days,
the thought of coffee did not let me rest, but on that particular day I was no
longer suffering, I went to meet Elder: "Father I can no longer handle it,
I miss coffee, I need it, I have to go to Jerusalem to buy it, otherwise I will
collapse. " Father Seraphim told me “It's not serious.” He goes to the
warehouse, takes coffee, puts it in a bag, closes it - but how he closes it,
that's the important thing. He closes it with tape and hands it to me formally.
I bow and thank him. I go to my cell with pleasure. I boil water, but stop. Now
that I have the coffee I will try to resist. And I did it without much effort:
one day, two days, three days, ten days. I never drank coffee again.
"Fasting
is by no means torture. Fasting digs a hole in us, for God to take root."
Some time later I went to Paris and visited a doctor,
on a health issue. "Listen, if you want to get cured, you have to obey me:
"You're not allowed to drink coffee again," he told me. "I can't
obey you because I don't drink coffee anymore" I replied. This made me
realize that this medical advice was treating me as a toddler, giving me a
command, forcing me to obey, when my spiritual father had treated us as an
adult, he had given me freedom. If I wanted to renounce faith, to give up my
cell for coffee, I could do it. So I realized that I didn't need coffee but
something else. In the Judean wilderness - three hundred meters below sea
level, with 40◦ in the shade - almost all the services take place at night, the
laziness weathered. I was looking for something stimulant externally, but
Father Seraphim revealed to me that the stimulant was within me. And one more
thing: the monk lives ascetic, he lacks tenderness, affection. So it wasn't the
need for coffee, but the lack of a friendly presence, that's what I had to deal
with. Giving me a pound of coffee gave me the opportunity to embark on the
great internal battle, to discover my real weaknesses. I took responsibility
for the path I was taking, I was accountable to God.
In Orthodox tradition we are taught that the existence
of a spiritual father constitutes spiritual health for the Christian. Yet for a
man in the west, how feasible is it to catch the thread from where his
ancestors had left it many years ago because of Renaissance?
Step by step I understood how a spiritual father works
and I accepted it. The spiritual father, bringing forth the essential, lovingly
causing internal struggles, always places his subordinate before God. In a
mirror, you see yourself with his own eyes, you hear yourself in his words, you
discover the unity that leads you to the Unique. You realize that he really is
the one who knows your weaknesses and humbly turns them into a power of
holiness.
Without making him feel guilty, the Elder shows his
subordinate what he is truly to God: to be and remain completely without
becoming selfish, but to open himself with all that is in the Presence of God.
We are used to saying that there are no more spiritual fathers and I am not
tired of answering: there are no more submissive ones.
I wonder and ask directly the question "how he
faced the physical constraints of ascetic life and fasting in which he was not
accustomed. Has he been bothered by the restriction of human freedom? ”And so
comes Father Jean's structured response that seems to have clarified these
things ...
If I make them for myself, then the restrictions cause
sadness, but if my goal is the Presence of God, then they awaken me, they make
me happy, because the goal makes sense. When a farmer prunes a tree, he does
not do it to tear it down, but to force its juices to bear fruit. Fasting is by
no means torture, it is the heart's surprise. Fasting
digs a hole in us for God to take root. When fasting, I
experience a lack so intense that my body is now screaming for hunger and
thirst for God. There are, of course, more delicate fasts: thoughts, desires,
objects, eyes. I fast with my will and remain free while fasting. When a monk
is confronted with one of his weaknesses, his first reaction is positive,
because he has been able to identify it. Without guilt, he confesses to his
spiritual Father his weakness and states his desire to transform it:
"Father, I know where unity has been broken, help me to make
rectify."
Before we say goodbye, our translator, Father
Nikolaos, confided in us a detail of the life of the Orthodox French priest who
would constitute a "criminal" omission not to be recorded: Father
Seraphim, Abbot and Spiritual Father of Father Jean in the monastery of St.
Savva, did not speak a word of English or French, and Father Jean until today
can not speak Greek. When we asked him, "but for three years you stayed there, how did you communicate?" Absolutely naturally he replied: "With
the language of the heart."
__________
Sophia
Chatzi
Published in the newspaper
ORTHODOXI ALITHIA, 13.02.2019
Published in the newspaper
ORTHODOXI ALITHIA, 13.02.2019
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου