Modern Monks in the Heart of the City
PARIS, OCT. 30, 2000 (ZENIT.org).- The monks and nuns of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem, celebrating their 25th anniversary, are a reminder that an age-old way of life is alive and well.
The 21st-century twist is that they harmonize a monastic life of prayer and asceticism with office work and business, even in big cities.
Their founder is Father Pierre-Marie Delfieux, whose initiative was approved by Cardinal François Marty, then archbishop of Paris. Father Delfieux explained: "We are citizens, men and women who live in the heart of the city; each one of us has a job as an employee with reduced time; we rent our homes. We do not have private property; we want to be poor like St. Francis."
After spending two years as a hermit in Assekrem, Algeria, in the Sahara, Father Delfieux, a former chaplain at the Sorbonne, decided to follow his mission in the heart of the city.
Inspired by Jesus' prayer, "Father, I do not pray that you take them out of the world, but that you free them from evil," the monks and nuns "work to take prayer to the city and the city to prayer, to create an oasis in the 'desert' of loneliness and unrest," Father Delfieux said.
Today, these "watchmen on the city's walls" number 150. About 60 are active in Paris. Others are in Strasbourg, Vezelay, Florence, Magdala and Lourdes-Ossun.
Within the next few days, a few nuns will establish themselves in St. Callixtus Church in Rome, and in Abraham's House in Jerusalem, across from the walls of the Old City. They also plan to establish themselves in St. Gilles Church in Brussels, Belgium, and in the famous Mont St. Michel abbey.
At 11 a.m. on Wednesday, the feast of All Saints, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, archbishop of Paris, will join the monks and nuns of the Jerusalem Fraternity in remembrance of the fraternity's first sung Mass on Nov, 1, 1975, under the cupola of the Church of St. Gervais in Paris.
The 150 members will attend the consecration of the Church's new altar and "will thank the Lord for all that he has allowed them to experience" over the past 25 years. In the afternoon, Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, will deliver an address on "Evangelization Through Beauty."
Since 1996, with the approval of Rome, the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem have become religious institutes that organize, administrate and finance themselves autonomously.
They maintain a direct link with their diocesan church, in line with the Second Vatican Council. In a spirit of communion the monks and nuns, whose average age is 35, reserve times and places for silence and prayer.
They meet in a church assigned to them three times a day for the Liturgy of the Hours. They sing lauds in the morning, meet for the Office of Readings during their lunch break, and have vespers and Mass in the evening.
Is this a difficult life? "Not as much as one thinks," Father Delfieux responds.
Most of the community's members are university graduates. Around them, some 20 lay fraternities have sprung up. Known as the Families of Jerusalem, they have about 800 members.
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Zenit - The World Seen From Rome
30. oktober 2000