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The Franciscan Institute - Thadee Matura

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56 pages

English

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This essay addresses a formidable subject, rarely treated today. It is a matte rof knowing what "experience" of God can reach a human being, whether he or she seeks God without knowing it or naming God, or that he or she affirms, as a Christian believer, God's historical manifestation in Jesus Christ. Once the symbols, the words, the images, the concepts, the rites, are passed, can we join a je ne sais quoi of the reality of God, and how? In a language that combines theological rigor and poetic approach, the book addresses the search and desire of God, with its pathways, its nights, and what can be glimpsed at the end of all these steps. Without being a "confession" or a testimony, this personal, and therefore partial, itinerary is rooted in many experiences of past and present. It is addressed to those who, by human paths and from the bottom of their faith, seek the face of the God of Jesus Christ, present, close, but always stealth behind darkness, the faithful companion of the mystics.

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Christian Church

Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	The Franciscan Institute
Date de parution	29 août 2018
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781576594223
Langue	English

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THADDÉE MATURA, OFM
AN ARDENT ABSENCE
A PPROACHES T O THE E XPERIENCE OF G OD
Translated by Pacelli Millane, OSC
Edited by Athena and Jean-François Godet-Calogeras
F RANCISCAN I NSTITUTE P UBLICATIONS 2018
Published in the United States
by Franciscan Institute Publications
St. Bonaventure University, St. Bonaventure, NY 14778
© 2018 Franciscan Institute Publications,
St. Bonaventure University
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover Art by by Arcabas, “Les Pèlerins d’Emmaüs – L’issue”
© Cartus, Photo Allegret 38380
Cover Design by Jill M. Smith
ISBN: 978-1-57659-421-6
eISBN: 978-1-57659-422-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018948923
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Franciscan Institute Publications makes every effort to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials in the publishing of its books. This book is printed on acid-free, recycled paper that is FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified.
It is printed with soy-based ink.
DEDICATION
A multitude of thanks to our brother, Thaddée Matura,
on the 75th anniversary of his Franciscan profession,
for his sharing with the Poor Clares
throughout many years,
his challenge to us to be truly contemplative,
and his gift to me of this text to be translated.
My gratitude also to Athena and Jean-François Godet-Calogeras
for their reading and correction of this text.
Pacelli Millane, OSC
T ABLE OF C ONTENTS
Preface
Foreword
I. Of Experience and of Desire
By What Right?
By Which Title?
What I Know of God
… And of the Human Person
Of Experience
Of the Desire for God
II. The Paths
Beginning the Journey
1. The Human Paths
The Path of Self
The Path of the Brother
The Path of History
The Path of the Universe
2. The Paths of Faith
The Scripture or the Word Which Reveals
The Sacrament
3. Experience and Memory
4. Necessary and Disappointing Mediations
III. Beyond the Paths
The Day, the Night
1. Going Beyond the Illusions
2. The Experience of the Threshold
Some Parables
Who, Therefore, is God?
Wound from an Unfulfilled Desire
3. Beyond All Experience: Most High Love
IV. The Ultimate Depths
Pour trouver Dieu il faut être heureux
Car ceux qui par détresse l’inventent
Vont trop vite et cherchent trop peu
L’intimité de son absence ardente.
R. M. Rilke Poèmes et Dédicaces (1920-1926)
To find God one must be happy
Because those who out of distress invent God,
Go too fast and search too little
The intimacy of God’s ardent absence.
R. M. Rilke Poèmes et Dédicaces (1920-1926)
PREFACE
How good it is, how sweet it is For brothers to be together in unity! Psalm 133
As I was preparing to write this preface, those words from Psalm 133 came to my mind and began to sing in my head. Memories of happy moments. It happened several times in the nineteen seventies and eighties. I was spending times of retreat, vacation, or study with a small community of Franciscan brothers in Grambois, a small village in the heart of the Lubéron in Provence, France. Thaddée Matura was part of that community. And often, when we were gathering at the table to eat together, he would lead us in singing that psalm in French, Qu’il est bon, qu’il est doux pour des frères de vivre ensemble et d’être unis!
Remembering those moments led me to reflect on the bond of a long and deep friendship between Thaddée Matura and myself. A friendship interspersed with many encounters, work together, and books. And I suddenly realized that not only do I have all the books Thaddée wrote, but they are all autographed because he gave or sent them to me. In his own words, we are “brothers and companions in the same quest.”
I met Thaddée Matura in Taizé in August 1969. I was coming back from my first pilgrimage to Assisi, and he had just come back from Japan. I was at the time a young high school teacher who had been infected by the Franciscan virus when discovering and avidly reading the writings of my patron saint, Francis of Assisi. Thaddée was part of an international Franciscan community living in the village of Taizé, France, and in dialogue with the monastic Lutheran community there. I knew he was a biblical scholar and a theologian. I had read and enjoyed his book Celibacy and Community: The Gospel Foundations for Religious Life . 1 Then, I discovered that he was also a Franciscan scholar, burning with the same passion for the writings of Francis of Assisi that had recently been ignited in me. I did not know at the time that our paths would continue to cross, and that a deep friendship would grow.
A few years later, when I had myself become intensely involved in Franciscan studies, we met again, working together in various programs and workshops. I realized that what was bringing us close to each other was not only the passion for the writings of Francis of Assisi, but particularly their link to the Gospel, the way they were making the Good News of Jesus alive again. One cannot truly understand Francis without Jesus, and Francis helps understand Jesus. For Franciscans, they are inseparable. That is what Thaddée expressed beautifully in The Gospel Life of Francis of Assisi Today . 2 The fire of the Gospel was alive in Francis and is still contagious nowadays. Being a philologist as well as a medievalist, I have always enjoyed Thaddée’s exegetical work on the Gospel texts. It stimulated my own research and study. His scholarly Gospel Radicalism study 3 inspired me to do similar research on the writings of Francis and Clare of Assisi. I am grateful for Thaddée’s inspiration as well as for his constant encouragement.
Thaddée Matura can also be an efficient project manager. Convinced that the writings of Francis of Assisi deserved a place in the prestigious series Sources chrétiennes, he took the initiative to gather a small team of scholars, including me, and produce an erudite edition of Francis’ writings with critical Latin text, French translation, introductions, notes and index. 4 The preparation of that volume gave us the opportunity to work more closely together on those texts we cherish. The experience did not stop there. Thaddée thought that the writings of Clare of Assisi also deserved to figure in the Sources chrétiennes. Again, he made it happen. 5 And again with the spiritual writings of Angela of Foligno. 6
Years passed. At the beginning of 1997, Thaddée sent me what was then his latest book, fruit of more than three decades of studies and a sabbatical year in Jerusalem: a thorough introduction to Francis’ message as expressed in his writings. 7 In the note accompanying that great book—truly a companion to the writings of Francis, Thaddée had these warm words: “I think you will find your way in it.…” Indeed, after all our work together, all our conversations on those cherished writings, I certainly found my way in Thaddée’s exegesis, especially in the section on God and humanity: Francis’ theology, his Christian journey and view of the world, his actuality. All that unites us beyond the distances.
In 1209, Francis of Assisi went to Rome with a few companions to seek and obtain Pope Innocent III’s confirmation of their way to live according to the Gospel. The approach of the anniversary of that foundational event inspired Thaddée to reflect on Francis’ heritage—the life of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the experience of God, spiritual freedom, poverty and the poor, but also to reflect on Francis’ heirs eight hundred years later. 8 Critical and lucid, Thaddée’s reflection is also the expression of his own Franciscan experience and of his love of the wide Franciscan family.
The book I am now prefacing, An Ardent Absence, was first published in French in 1988. 9 Thaddée wanted it to be a testament, that is, a personal testimony on the human experience of God, on his own experience of God. As he explains in his foreword, the title was inspired by a short poem, in French, by the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke. That short poem, a quatrain, is quoted at the opening of this book: Pour trouver Dieu il faut être heureux Car ceux qui par détresse l’inventent Vont trop vite et cherchent trop peu L’intimité de son absence ardente. To find God one must be happy Because those who out of distress invent God Go too fast and search too little The intimacy of God’s ardent absence . 10
Here the philologist in me cannot resist, and plays, in the best meaning of the word, with absence and presence. Actually, both words refer to the same reality: an existence, a being. The difference is in the prefix: ab- away from, and pre- in front of. But present or absent, the being is, exists. And this is true of all relationships. The friendship that beautifully grew over the years between Thaddée and me has known a lot of physical absence, because of physical distances. As Thaddée wrote to me one day, those physical distances “create a certain ‘absence,’ but what is part of our common experience is always there. We just have to remember it so that it arises to our consciousness and that we give thanks for the ties that are henceforth part of what we are.”
Relation to God, relation to others, are at the core of our human condition. “To believe in God to believe in humanity,” that is the call that Francis of Assisi has been addressing to the whole world for eight hundred years, a call of which Thaddée continues to be a gentle herald. 11 Happy and blessed are those who hear it, understand it, and live it.
I feel grateful, humbled and privileged to be called “brother and old companion on the journey” by Thaddée. Yes, ours is a long journey of friendship and fraternitas, a journey toward God and toward our brothers and sisters.
Jean-François Godet-Calogeras The Franciscan Institute Saint Bonaventure University
_____________________________
1 Célibat et communauté.