by Nicolas Diat
The short note ends with a moving prayer by Father Jérôme, a monk of Sept-Fons: “During my life you have held me by the hand, O my Mother. Could it be that at this hour I feel your fingers loosen and your hand let go of me? Certainly not! If your sovereign hand were leaving my hand, it would undoubtedly be to take a fold of your mantle and cover me with it. Mother of my long journey and Mother at my ultimate moment, yes, wrap me in the fall of your mantle during this short moment, after which, sure of having passed through the gate, I will suddenly let go, to make you hear my laughter. The laughter of a child, who laughs, who laughs, because, with the help of his Mother, he has achieved all.”
Tucked away in the valleys of Bourbonnais Sologne, a small countryside of moors and wild ponds, not far from the city of Moulins, the abbey, which belongs to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, has not forgotten anything about the brief life of this young man who would not have had time to live. Sept-Fons is one of the most important abbeys in France. Eighty-five monks, often young, occupy these beautiful eighteenth-century buildings. The long white façades run around a series of large courtyards. Behind, the fields extend up to the banks of the Loire.
During our meeting, the Father Abbot, Dom Patrick Olive, remembered without difficulty the painful twists and turns of the brain tumor. In the month of December 1989, the Berlin wall had just fallen, history was advancing with giant steps, and Brother Théophane, unknown to all, was leaving the world, carried away by a final respiratory crisis.
When he died, the community felt like they were falling off a high cliff. How could it be imagined that the glioblastoma, as the doctors called this cancer, would end by having the last word? The power of faith did not prevent the rejection of death. The conviction of the monks was beautiful and bold. Dom Patrick did not want to doubt. God would answer his prayer. One day, however, he had to accept the facts. Brother Théophane was not being healed, his illness was getting irreversibly worse, and death was approaching. Dom Patrick said humbly: “I understood then that God’s plans were not ours. He does not run the world as men imagine.”
The young man from Lorrain entered the monastery in December 1983. He remained a monk for six years at Sept-Fons. It was in coming to visit his brother, who would become Brother Sebastien, that he discovered the place for the first time.
At the end of the intensely hot month of June 1986, he had two strange fainting spells. The Father Abbot asked Brother Samuel to accompany Brother Théophane to the Clermont-Ferrand hospital for an x-ray. The verdict was terrible. Brother Théophane had an aggressive cancer, a malicious poison that would soon destroy his most fundamental abilities. Today, as in the time of Brother Théophane, science is incapable of eliminating this evil.
The doctor thought his life expectancy would not exceed eighteen months. Dom Patrick was in the cloister when he learned the news. In shock, he almost lost his balance and fell to the ground.
At his return, Brother Théophane asked the Father Abbot if he was willing to keep him at the monastery. Dom Patrick did not hesitate for a second. The love and faith of the community were the two strongest crutches that allowed him to walk the designated path of death.
As long as the illness did not change the personality of Brother Théophane, he demonstrated unfailing willpower. But he had to get used to the daily life of the very sick, because the tumor was rapidly expanding its control. Whole days in bed, bedpans, violent headaches, the tyranny of ever-increasing medications punctuated his days.
From the beginning of his cancer, a facial paralysis disfigured him. Then, in October 1986, he began long and grueling radiation therapy at the Moulins hospital. Every day, a monk crossed the Allier countryside to drive him to the small radiology clinic. At the end of several weeks, coming back from a session, Brother Théophane passed his hand through his hair. A tuft of it remained in his fingers. The young patient was shocked but tried hard not to show it.
The radiation had an efficaciousness that surpassed all hopes. Between January 1987 and April 1989, Brother Théophane experienced a remission. He could resume his path. Dom Patrick believed that complete recovery was near.
One day, shortly before his death, Father Jérôme had said to the master of novices, Father Nicholas: “Brother Théophane is solid. Hold him fast, you will make of him a great monk!” The young Trappist was pure.
During the last months of his life, the monks often heard him reciting a poem of Verlaine that he knew in its entirety, “My Recurring Dream”:
I often have a strange and searing dream
About an unknown woman whom I love
And who loves me. Never quite the same
Nor someone else, she loves, she understands me.
Yes, she understands; the pity is
For her alone my heart is obvious,
Simple for her alone who brings to life
My dead face running with her tears.
Is she dark, auburn, blond? I don’t know.
Her name? It echoes
Soft as names of loved ones gone for good.1
By reciting these verses, he felt his memory was not slipping away from him. This was reassuring to him.
At the end of December 1988, Brother Théophane suddenly became anxious. But the medical tests were good, and no one was worried about it.
After the 1989 Easter holidays, the master of novices realized he had difficulties putting his thoughts down on paper. He became incapable of writing straight. His irrational fears were growing stronger and stronger. Dom Patrick asked the doctors to examine him again. The verdict of the scan showed no mercy. Brother Théophane was lost, the tumor had made rapid progress. Hope was becoming an illusion. He was a condemned man.
The monks did not give up. For eight months, they worked to try to save him, organized, hurried, attentive, hardworking bees, in an exhausting cycle.
Brother Théophane wanted to stay as long as possible in the dormitorium. He waited to be at the limits of exhaustion to move into the infirmary. His particular rhythm of life could create difficulties for the other monks. Some were openly annoyed by it without fear of revealing unattractive selfishness.
On June 24, 1989, Brother Théophane pronounced the vows of his solemn profession. Less than six months before his death, he was singing solo, surrounded by the whole community, the traditional verse: “Receive me, Lord, according to your word and I shall live; do not disappoint me in my hope.”
The fight against cancer, the progress toward death, did not undermine the monk’s thirst for freedom. Quite the contrary, he went for a walk barefoot in the fields, lay down in the fresh grass, and dreamed of great voyages to the end of the world.
In Qui cherchait Théophane (Who was seeking Théophane),2 the book that Father Samuel devoted to him, a passage describes the emotions and desires of a young man of his time: “He needs some relaxation, and we know he is a music lover. So, we give him a tape recorder and cassettes. To the great surprise of the purists, Brother Théophane reconnects with the singers of his youth: Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Simon and Garfunkel each share the infatuations and distastes of the patient in turn.”
Ruthless, violent, the cancer wanted to win the game. The doctors were prescribing large doses of cortisone to fight against the edema that had formed in his brain. The face of Brother Théophane was deformed and bloated. The charming young man, slender, with poetic looks, became puffy.
One July afternoon, awaking from a nap, Brother Théophane did not recognize his room. Everything in the room was new to him. The color of the sheets, the icon hanging on the wall, the alarm clock on the nightstand were foreign to him. These symptoms marked the prelude to a major crisis. Brother Théophane was delirious, and the fever kept climbing. The monks took turns by his bedside trying to refresh his body, which had become so hot. Fortunately, the night was calmer, and the patient recovered little by little.
How could Brother Théophane not rebel against the injustice of his life, which had been torn to pie
ces? Despite the sufferings, the immense fears, he never complained. He confronted the cruelty of evil with the radicalism of faith.
In the final months, his personality had altered. The monks hardly recognized the enthusiastic, conscientious, and determined young man from Lorrain whom they had loved. He was losing his short-term memory. His sleeping was haphazard. For the brothers, the turns of keeping vigil in his room became a little way of the cross.
At the end of the summer of 1989, tests showed a pulmonary infection. Brother Théophane again set off for the Moulins hospital. The monks were not yet finished with traveling through the wise and deep countryside. In the evening, in the car that passed through the villages with the bucolic names they knew so well—Chevagnes, Garnat-sur-Engièvre, Dompierre-sur-Besbre—to return to Sept-Fons, the Trappists found a little peace in the heartbreaking beauty of the autumn lights that were falling into the fields and the undergrowth. The colors were in unison with the storms in their hearts.
Every week, Brother Théophane was a little more fragile. In this disjointed life, between the monastery and the hospital, he was losing his last points of reference. At the approach of All Saints’ Day, the Father Abbot realized that Brother Théophane would not get better. He decided to bring him back for good. On November 11, 1989, after several epileptic seizures, he returned to his home.
The young monk had another trial in store. He became nearly blind. The monks quickly perceived it and respected this extraordinary humility. The patient was reaching the summit of a mountain after a hard climb. Soon the final bend was in view: Brother Théophane lost his speech.
From then on, the religious did not know precisely what his level of consciousness was. A painful infection required the infirmarians to bandage the eyes of the patient. Death was approaching. Brother Théophane was on the path to eternity like an outlaw who climbs the scaffold.
Breathing difficulties were leaving him like a dismantled puppet, the body broken, without breath. His eating was becoming problematic because he could not stop choking. On December 7, 1989, around seven in the evening, a stroke quickly carried him away. Outside, the church bells were ringing for Compline.
The final attack had deformed his face. Then, a few moments after death, in an instant, he recovered the beauty of his youth. Brother Théophane became again forever a young man with a fair, fierce, passionate complexion.
In his book, Father Samuel talks about some of the heartbreaking and luminous moments that followed the death of the monk:
On December 9th, while I was praying near the body, in the silent church, at the time when the community is in the refectory, I heard a small footstep: a child, a very young boy from Brother Théophane’s family, had finished his meal and was approaching. After giving me a big smile, he unzipped his parka to take out his brother’s wallet that we had just given him (the youngest, even more proud, had had the knife!). He took from an interior pocket a corded rosary that had the same origin, and, very devotedly, he knelt down. It was very moving to take in, in a single glance, the face of the young monk and that of the child, opposite him, who was praying. But little by little, emotion overcame the child; the tragedy of the scene outweighed the joys of the gift. Heavy silent tears were rolling down his face. Embarrassed, I changed places to draw closer to him. Happily, Brother Sebastien arrived. He picked up his brother under the arms, put him on his feet, heartily embraced him, shook off the sadness in a flash, and made a smile return in its place.
Twenty-eight years later, the Father Abbot remains convinced that the death of Brother Théophane reveals a divine teaching. For him, in carrying away a monk in the prime of life, God wants to show men that he is the only Lord of life and that men are not masters of their death. He has his reasons, and it is not given to us to understand them.
If the young Trappists of Sept-Fons were shocked by the death of their brother, through the sorrows and tears, they felt they were closer to God. “He comes to look for us like he went to pick up the lost sheep”, explains Dom Patrick. “In the cemetery, we ask the Father to place us on his shoulders to carry us to heaven. We made the same request of him the day of our solemn profession. There is a thread that connects this commitment with the prayers of the final moments.”
After the death, the infirmarians dressed the brother in his cowled robe and his scapular. They took him to the church, where he stayed two days. During those hours, the prayer of the monks never ceased.
At Sept-Fons, the rites surrounding death are recorded in the Livre des us (Book of customs). In the Cistercian tradition, from the death throes to the cemetery, the sick person who is leaving the world is never alone. The monks are present to ease his suffering. They guide him in his crossing to the other shore; they watch over him after his death, and they carry him into the earth.
The prayer of the dying is sweet and soothing. When the hour turns critical, the sacristans ring the bells in a special way so that the monks can quickly get to the infirmary. Sometimes a brother dies during the recitation of prayers, in the middle of the readings and the litanies.
Right after the death, the monks sing the Subvenite: “Come to his assistance, Saints of God. Hasten to meet him, Angels of the Lord. Receive his soul, offer it now in the sight of the Most High. Christ has called you. May he now welcome you, and may the Angels lead you to Abraham. Welcome his soul, offer it in the sight of the Most High. Lord, give him eternal rest; and may perpetual light shine upon him. Offer his soul in the sight of the Most High.”
In a Trappist monastery, the deceased is buried without a coffin. The monks leave the cemetery when the body is covered with the earth that will be his last cloak while waiting for the resurrection. Before returning to the church, leaving behind them the body of their brother, the monks prostrate themselves, repeating the invocation three times: “Domine, miserere super peccatore.” They stay a long moment with their heads bowed to the ground. The Trappists call this final gesture of prayer the “prostration on our knuckles”. It comes from Clunesian funeral traditions codified in the thirteenth century.
At the burial of Brother Théophane, the Father Abbot said this particularly evocative prayer: “Lord, it is great boldness for a mortal who is ashes and dust to recommend to you, our Lord and God, another mortal, ashes and dust. But, sure of your love, we implore you with faith: while the earth receives that which comes from the earth, welcome to the true homeland, near Abraham your friend, the one you have just taken from this world. Spare him from the fire of Gehenna, let him not suffer any harm, but, flooded with your joy, let him find rest in you. Let him not receive punishment for his faults, but let him taste the sweetness of your forgiveness. Let him rise again, a new creature, and join the host of saints who take their place at your right hand so as to receive the crown, when this world comes to an end, and let the light of the kingdom shine forth for all. We ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” The last sentence of the Father Abbot, at the end of a long ceremony, resounded with a simple and joyful echo: “Let us go and keep before God the memory of our brother.” In procession, the community then left the cemetery of Sept-Fons, which resembles a little forest dotted with worn and skeletal crosses.
When I came to see him in April 2017, Dom Patrick was going through an unusual experience. The community had lost five brothers in the space of a few months. The first one in this dark series died on November 10, 2016, and the last on April 2, 2017. With the precision and calm from which he never deviates, Dom Patrick spoke to me of these special times: “At the last burial, when I returned from the cemetery, I asked God to give us a little rest. Since I became Father Abbot, I have never experienced such a storm. The community should accept this beautiful mystery. In 1997, we had buried a brother in the afternoon, then a second was dead the following morning. God often calls in groups.”
During the course of his life at Sept-Fons, Dom Patrick was struck by the long and painful agony of one of the brothers. From the moment when the monks began to watch over the brother, the
y did not leave him for thirty-seven days. In fact, the Trappist tradition desires that a priest be at the side of the dying at all times.
In 1970, there were not enough religious at Sept-Fons to watch over the patient for so long a time. The young monks had to take part in the vigils. Dom Patrick was twenty-three years old. One week before the death, he was in the infirmary room. He was saying a rosary watching an elderly father who was not able to die. He was suffering a lot. His breath was short, and he groaned in pain. In those times, the infirmarians gave few painkillers. Dom Patrick was impressed: “I told myself that one day I would be in his position. I was already wondering if I would have his courage.”
Since his abbatial election, Dom Patrick has seen forty-two monks die. All died in peace: “In the Gospels,” he tells me, “the kingdom of heaven is promised to men who separate themselves from the riches and goods of the world. Saint Mark even states that we will have a hundredfold here on earth. How can we know what this hundredfold signifies? A good death is a part of the hundredfold. The prayer and the presence of the brothers help the dying monks a great deal. They make the final hours peaceful.”
In the mid-1970s, Dom Patrick had the care of an old priest at the end of life. This monk was a colossus, with a strong personality and who freely expressed his thoughts. He had entered Sept-Fons in 1909. When Dom Patrick was a novice, he had been his assistant as an electrician. He knew nothing about his new work, and he was often chastised. Dom Patrick wondered if he would be able to help him in this final trial. But the sickness had completely pacified him. He allowed himself to be led with a docility that the monks had never experienced in him.