“I have a life as a priest-worker, or a peasant monk, and I know myself”

After forty years of monastic life in community, you have chosen to settle in Sainte-Anastasie, a small village in Cantal. For what ?

Vocation is not a box. It is a path: “Go to the country that I will show you,” hears Abraham, the “Father of the Believers”, when God calls him (Gn 12, 1). During a lifetime, we think, suffer, works. I tried to be faithful to something deep that animated me.

What ideal had launched on this road?

The appeal of beauty. The beauty of the Word of God, of the liturgy. The familiarity with the Fathers of the Church, the Christian tradition. A powerful, intellectual and spiritual appeal. I entered the monastery directly after my studies at the École normale supérieure: I had no youth. I don’t regret anything.

What happened next?

At the beginning, everything seems to go without saying. Dogmas, for example. But there is the darkness of faith. We come up against questions, to doubt. And then, the church has changed. After the great momentum of Vatican II and its sometimes awkward implementation, there was the current great withdrawal. All this counts.

All this counts… how?

I do not see my life as a career to succeed, but rather as the torrent which encounters stones, obstacles, and goes on its way, continues. “The truth will make you free,” reads Jean’s Gospel (8, 32). So some will say “Father François is not faithful”. But I find the epic of our freedom beautiful: “Go to the country that I will show you. »»

Mine has taken this path. I have a canonical hermit status, even if I have a social life like I never got it! I like to remember this Lord’s order in Simon: “advance offshore” (Lk 5, 4). The open wide for me now is the mountain, the Cézallier plateau where I established myself. I am a man in space. I am not made for confinements, neither intellectual nor spiritual.

What have you kept from your monastic identity?

I kept the essential: the liturgical part -I sing all the offices throughout the day and I celebrate the Eucharist; the share of solitude of celibacy; Poverty: I lead a simple life, without car, neither TV nor distractions; The daily reading of the Scriptures. And my community, these are my peasant neighbors.

A community life without its inevitable friction, when the other requires questioning?

Those who live together must support tensions, yes. And, I have to wear solitude, do my shopping, cooking, cleaning, my garden, considering old age and death.

What do you live?

I live from my teaching salary in theology at the Catholic Institute of Paris – I teach remotely, via video. And at the Institute of Religious Sciences in Auvergne, in Clermont-Ferrand, in face-to-face.

The turning point you took you asked for a long inner work, a fight?

I experienced interior erosion. The demolition of an entire official landscape learned, the collapse of security, very reassuring words. This is how I heard the call “goes to the country that I will show you”. Yes, accepting the immense stranger is a struggle. There is no life without struggle, even if we would have everything to be happy. We come up against ourselves, for constraints, to others.

The account of the temptations of Jesus read in the liturgy the first Sunday of Lent evokes for me this crossing of the darkness of life, with the word of God: “Your word is the light of my steps, the lamp of my route. (PS 118, 105). Every day, I read a chapter of writing in Hebrew, and a chapter in Greek. It is unshakable. But the fight is not all of life. There are enough fighters like this! The engine of life is life, light, joy, peace.

But you go so far as to question certain dogmatic formulations of the Church’s faith?

Dogmas are shining faith. They reassure. Nevertheless, it is necessary to question them. The 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea, this year, should be the occasion for a rereading of the church confession of faith according to the famous Credo of Nice-Constantinople. Instead, a formula is not easy to understand: “consubstantial to the father”. God is not learned by heart: He gives himself to meet and live.

Too coded language?

It is an atmosphere of tension, of theological regression, which is involved. When the holidays come, the Sunday assemblies see a sociologically very different audience arriving from “Aboriginal”. The risk of sociological, even political ghettoization is great. Far from Pope Francis’ call to go to the outskirts.

What does Christ follow for you today?

To be with Christ is to be with others. Emmanuel, which means “Dieu-Avec-ours”, is a name for Christ (Mt 1, 23). He became flesh and lived among us, he became similar to men. Well, this “incarnation” is not only for Christ, it is a life path for each of us. The ecclesiastics, sometimes, are not similar enough to people. Fortunately, this was not always the case.

Those of here tell me about known priests “in the old days”, who visited them, who went hunting with them. It marked them a lot. They feel like they are finding something with me – who is not their priest. I render services in the parishes, famous for masses, burials, and prepare sacraments. I am struck to see how touched they are touched by what we are going to visit them, to be interested in their lives.

Your happiness is out of every page, or almost, Peasant of God, Your last book. Really ?

I found an austere, healthy life balance. Holy too, I think. Harsh, manual. I give hands in the farms every day. My monastic habit is my work combination. Yesterday, I went to milk in Allanche, then I spent a delicious evening with the young peasants who welcomed me. Tomorrow, I will go a little further, in Molèdes: I was called to share daily work and meals. I became someone in the country. I feel the cow. I have a life as a priest-wormman, or a monk-paysan, and I know myself.

The first names of your neighbors punctuate your newspaper.

You also call animals, and modest plants – Le Mélilot, La Scabieuse…

We forget to look at what we have in front of you.

Who are you for those around you?

A brother and a similar. A priest too. This is important here. A priest a little like those of the past, who knew everyone and remained for many years on their parish. The fact that I work questions too. I think everyone would win that many priests have a footing in the world of work, at some point in their lives.

Your preaching carries the trace of your journey?

I no longer write my homilies. In the past, I have made books … If I have had a kind of attachment to my intellectual work, I have detached myself, like many other things. I let myself be driven by the biblical text. I’m trying to have a fair word. A word of hope that encourages to seek to be with Christ. We only know God by Christ: “He who saw me saw the Father” (Jn 14, 9). I add: Who sees ordinary people sees Christ. God is inaccessible outside these relationships. You can so easily make God a great manitou, or a gendarme. I became an atheist in relation to lots of images of God. It is the beauty of our human relationships, their truth, which makes us happy.

Which Gospel do you preach?

A gospel of presence, sharing, silence. Of a lot of things … God is close, present not as a judge, not as an obligation or as a god of catechism. I draw from what is very modestly Christic in my existence … after the erosion of what was fake. I also receive a lot from what people bring me. They convert me, in a way.

Present God, close. Does the word providence make sense to you?

I do not like this word, which supported a whole philosophy of God’s action in the world. When we see what some are going through, it is difficult to talk about Providence. But I read a coherence in everything that happened to me to lead me where I am. It makes sense.