Last Sunday, the monks watched the movie "Of Gods and Men", the story of our brothers in Algeria. These good monks gave their lives in solidarity with their Muslim neighbors also terrorized by the violence that erupted in Algeria in the mid nineties. It is not often one sees a movie made about Trappist monks. Rarer still that such a film would win the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It's not a particularly pleasant movie to watch. One participates in the agonizing circumstances which cost the monks their lives. Whoever advised the producer of the film was right on with the details of how a small community of monks behaves and how they look—a little scruffy. The terse words shared between brothers at moments, even an instance of profanity . . . it's all a very realistic portrayal of imperfect monks living together. The psychological ordeal of each of the monks is rendered very graphically. The monks could have left when the violence started escalating. Many watching the movie will wonder why they stayed. The logic is so NOT the logic of this world! Roger Ebert, reviewing the movie, seemed a little irritated at the monks. Calculating the age of each monk, he computed the number of years of service each might have offered the church and their Muslim neighbors had they fled with their lives. I was perplexed reading this. Does Mr. Ebert believe the challenge facing our Trappist brothers could have been resolved by arithmetic? Sure, had they done their math, the monks would have fled, but what a confusing and disheartening fracture this would have been in their relationship with their neighbors! The Muslims in the neighborhood were also being terrorized—a young girl stabbed to death in public because she was dressed improperly. These people also wanted to flee the terror but could not. What sort of witness would it have been for the "poor" monks to avail themselves of their connections with Western privilege and wealth to flee to a safer place? Is it what Jesus would have done? Is it what Jesus did? I guess you can only really appreciate the luminous truth revealed in this movie if you watch it with the eyes of faith. The truth is the monks prevailed and prevailed gloriously. Their death was miserable, small, obscure . . . probably mentally and physically torturous. But they were the winners because they held fast to the gospel of love and didn't retaliate, but loved and forgave their torturers and so manifested in their lives the Life that is Divine. To the person of faith, something sacred and awesome is affirmed by this film. That was the experience of my brothers and I on Sunday. When the movie ended, the lights came on—a dozen or so monks, rubbed their eyes, stretched, and dispersed. Nobody spoke.

Father Raphael