Life Began at Forty: the Second Conversion of Francis Libermann Cssp
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection François-Marie-Paul Libermann Collection Spiritan Collection 2005 Life Began at Forty: The Second Conversion of Francis Libermann CSSp Bernard Kelly Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/libermann-collection Recommended Citation Kelly, B. (2005). Life Began at Forty: The Second Conversion of Francis Libermann CSSp. Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/libermann-collection/57 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Spiritan Collection at Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in François-Marie-Paul Libermann Collection by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. Life Began at Forty.qxd 18/04/2005 19:05 Page I Bernard A. Kelly CSSp LIFE BEGAN AT FORTY The Second Conversion of Francis Libermann CSSp At the age of 37 Francis Libermann was almost completely defeated. Rejected by his own Jewish people because of his conversion to Christianity, he had been turned down for ordination to the priesthood by the Archbishop of Paris due to recurring attacks of epilepsy. An alternative career as novicemaster to the Eudist Congregation at Rennes held promise of a new dawn but in reality became a dark night. But then all changed. He accepted the challenge presented by two fellow students Frederick Le Vavasseur and Eugene Tisserant to set up a society to care for the spiritual and material well-being of the oppressed people of the black race. Fr Bernard A. Kelly of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost tells how its spiritual father, Francis Libermann, emerged from 'the shadow of darkness’ to become the inspiration and organiser of a spiritual movement which now claims over 3,000 committed members and cares for the spiritual needs of people in more than 50 countries. Life Began at Forty.qxd 18/04/2005 19:05 Page II SPIRITAN ROOTS SERIES Vol. I. Life Began at Forty The Second Conversion of Francis Libermann CSSp by Bernard A. Kelly CSSp Life Began at Forty.qxd 18/04/2005 19:05 Page III Life Began at Forty The Second Conversion of Francis Libermann CSSp Bernard A. Kelly CSSp Paraclete Press Dublin & London Life Began at Forty.qxd 18/04/2005 19:05 Page IV To Tim and Fred, who enabled me to recognise all my other brothers and sisters. Paraclete Press, 169 Booterstown Avenue, Co. Dublin. Tel: 01-881789 First published by Paraclete Press 1983 Second edition 2005 ISBN 0 946639 00 0 Copyright © Bernard Kelly 1983 Made and printed in Ireland by Hard Copy Ltd, Dublin. Typeset in Times Roman by Leaders Phototypesetting, Swords, Co. Dublin Life Began at Forty.qxd 18/04/2005 19:05 Page V "I tell you in the presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ who knows better than I the truth of what I say that I am like a piece of worm- eaten wood. It can do no more than smoulder in the fire so that it neither enlightens nor warms anyone. I am like a paralytic who wants to move but cannot" Rennes, 1839 (L.S. 11,293). "The man who generously and manfully takes on a life of perfect self-denial will come to know both profound peace and a burning zeal. He will be a thousand times happier than those who allow themselves to be dominated by material things. Divine grace will renew and strengthen him and he will find a consolation unknown to those who fear to lose the comfort of this world. Our Divine Lord has promised a hundredfold to him who keeps his heart fixed on God and keeps created things in second place. All who have tried it have found the truth of these promises of Eternal Truth" Instructions for Missionaries (1851) in Ecrits Spirituels, (Paris, 1891), 47 5-6. Life Began at Forty.qxd 18/04/2005 19:05 Page VI TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . .viii CHAPTER ONE. OBSERVANCE AND REVOLT . .1 Jews In France . .1 Life In Saverne . .5 Studies At Metz . .11 TWO. CONFUSION AND CONVERSION . .17 The Road To Paris . .18 Conversion . .23 THREE. PEACE AND FRAGILITY . .29 Saint-Sulpice: The Spirit And The Men . .29 Peace That Surpasses All Understanding . .35 Epilepsy . .44 FOUR. SUCCESS AND FAILURE . .55 Libermann At Issy . .56 Libermann At Rennes . .68 FIVE. "FRANCHIR LE PAS" . .81 Conversion . .81 Second Conversion . .86 Libermann's Experience Of Second Conversion . .90 SIX. EPILOGUE . .109 Francis Libermann 1840-1852 . .109 Reflection on Libermann's later years . .116 SEVEN. CONCLUSION . .123 Libermann: A Portrait . .123 Libermann And Second Conversion Today . .128 NOTES . .135 BIBLIOGRAPHY . .143 APPENDIX: Some Events In the Life Of Francis Libermann . .146 Life Began at Forty.qxd 18/04/2005 19:05 Page VII Life Began at Forty.qxd 18/04/2005 19:05 Page VIII Introduction If one searches for an example of someone who failed to cope with a profound sense of inner defeat in his middle years, one does not have far to travel. One instance occurs in Peter Shaffer's play, Amadeus. The play is about Mozart, but especially it is about the lesser known Antonio Salieri (1750-1825) who came from a small town in Lombardy. Son of a merchant, he had bargaining in his blood, but his great passion was music. "By twelve I was stumbling about in the countryside, humming my arias and anthems to the Lord. My only desire was to join all the composers who had celebrated His glory through the long Italian past. Every Sunday, I saw Him in church, staring down at me from the mouldering wall. Understand I don't mean Christ. The Christs of Lombardy are simpering sillies with lambkins on their sleeves. No. I mean an old candle-smoked God in a mulberry robe, staring at the world with dealers' eyes. Tradesmen had put Him there. Those eyes made bargains — real and irreversible. 'You give me so — I'll give you so. No more: no less.'"1 When Salieri was sixteen, he made a bargain with God. If he could but become a famous composer, he would honour God with his music all his life. He went to Venice to study music, then to Vienna, where he became the Court Composer at the age of 24. The arrival of Mozart provoked a crisis of faith in Salieri, who took God to task for bestowing musical genius on this swaggering youngster, Mozart, while he, serious, earnest, dedicated, had been less favoured. To get back at God, now addressed as the Unjust One, Salieri, from his official position, thwarted the career of Mozart. This did not bring him happiness. "The gulf that separates me from other men is exact. I was created a pair of ears and nothing else. The God I acknowledge lives, for example, in bars thirty-four to forty-four of Mozart's Masonic Funeral Music. To most people He is non-existent. Therefore I am ever the despair of all who seek to improve the world ... All around me men hunger for general rights: I hunger only for particular notes. They seek liberty for all: I long only for slavery. To be owned — ordered — exhausted by an Absolute. Music. This was denied me, and Life Began at Forty.qxd 18/04/2005 19:05 Page IX LIFE BEGAN AT FORTY with it all meaning. Finally I do not care if I live in satin or a sack; if I am ruler or ruled; or even abuser or abused. If I cannot be Mozart, I do not wish to be anything ... Now I go to become a ghost myself. I will stand in the shadow, and into your tormented ears as you come here in your turns, and fail — and hear the taunting of unachievable undismissable God — I will whisper my name: Salieri — Patron Saint of Mediocrities. And in the depth of your downcastness, you can pray to Me. Secret Salieri. And I will forgive you. Vi saluto."2 In this play I felt I was meeting the man who bargained with God; the man who bitterly resented God's arrangement of things and, belonging to management himself, felt that some backroom moves were called for to restore a proper balance; the man who hated mediocrity but at the end of life's struggle acknowledged himself its patron saint — and felt sure he would not want for clients. I met the ordinary, the average, the unexceptional, all walking easily in the corridors of power. Among them, only Salieri had to face up to the fact of Mozart's genius. Only he recognised it. His religious life, that is to say his continuing negotiations with God, was thrown into a turmoil. Faced with a God who insisted on keeping His mystery and His advantage by sudden, unexpected moves, Salieri felt cheated. He searched his heart and could not find surrender, but only anger and revolt. Salieri strikes a sympathetic chord in us because we are familiar with his feeling of exasperation. Clinging to the bargain of our youth should not lead to this feeling of defeat. How were we to know that the stakes were going to be raised to the limit? Second conversion is rare but it happened in the life of Francis Libermann. The concept of "second conversion" has been developed most effectively by the Jesuit spiritual writer Louis Lallemant. Louis Lallemant entered the Society of Jesus at Nancy, France in 1605.3 Subsequently, he became Master of Novices and then for three years director of the second novitiate — tertianship — at Rouen from 1626. He made a lasting impression in this post. It was at Rouen that he elaborated his theory on second conversion.