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A unanimous tribute: The great Orthodox theologian Olivier Clement died

The new portal is the front line of the Catholic Church in France: the French historian and theologian Olivier Clement died in Paris January 15, 2009 at night at the age of 87 years. He was a member of the Council of Christian Churches in France (CECEF) and former member of the Joint Catholic-Orthodox.

In a statement released Jan. 16, the Assembly of Orthodox Bishops of France pays tribute to a "outstanding personality and endearing of Orthodoxy in France, Europe and around the world " says the website of the French bishops' conference.

Brother Alois, prior of the Taizé community, which Olivier Clement wrote book, stated in part: "The death of Olivier Clement touches us, the brothers of Taizé, to the depths of our hearts. It was a close friend. In his words during his visits to Taizé, or his books, he not only helped us to love orthodoxy, but he has nurtured our faith and our inner life. He was witness to a Communion place between East and West. "
He added: " When he met Brother Roger, the two men understood each so different yet almost without words, they had the same vision of a God who does not consider not humans but can only love ".

In Rome, the Catholic community of Sant'Egidio evokes another book of Olivier Clement recalling that" from its proximity Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras was born a monument of the spiritual literature of the twentieth century, "Dialogues with Athenagoras "Which is still a source of great spiritual wisdom.

love of divine beauty

Olivier Clement was a being par excellence" Philokalia "is a real love of divine beauty they seek and deciphered in the world and everyone in it and retranslated by a powerful theological and abundant, speaking in a poetic word fully rooted in the life and tradition of the Church " site is in the Orthodox press. This" philokalia " and poetry have crossed his meditations for the traditional Way of the Cross on Good Friday at the Colosseum in Rome, John Paul II entrusted to him.

View all in God's face man

This April 10, 1998, the Orthodox theologian had proposed meditations on the "face" and the place given to the Holy Women in the Gospels : they "major role", he wrote , except St. John , being "the only faithful, both the most exposed and more loving.

Olivier Clement associated the presence of women and the gesture of compassion Veronica , reproduced by runners Cross Franciscan tradition. He chose this phrase to Franciscan "run into the Catholic sensibility. " For an orthodox, "he explained , " enter the Franciscan spirituality of the Via Crucis was trying to emphasize the depth not only human but divine- human ".

He stopped then, at the sixth station, this gesture of Veronica "wiped Christ's face with a veil when it prints and sends to our churches as Sacred Faces of which shows impasto human face of God, so that now we can see God in everything man's face. "

Opening unlimited love

In meditation on Christ's face, he wrote: "We said then that a slave is" faceless " , and now the most beautiful son of man is more than the slave tortured seen that the less the torture. Thus it is identified with all the "faceless" in the world, those that strike to deface and steal their souls, those who have before them for hours, as computer screens, they we desire without love and the rich young cutthroat false ".

And about the gesture of Veronica and " face of God, "he continued : " Only a woman, a being of love and compassion, an act of mother or lover, has paid your face mask of sweat, blood, sputum. And now the holy-Face on Veronica's veil or whatever received a King of Edessa and the fire burned the shroud of the Spirit grows in our churches to teach us to detect, under so many masks, the face of man, in so many masks, the face of God " .

For the theologian, during the Passion of Christ, "God descends into evil voluntarily, in death - an evil, a death which he is not responsible, of which perhaps he n has not even the idea, said one contemporary theologian - to interpose between nothingness forever and we, to make us feel we do live at the bottom of things, there has not nothingness but love. " He continued: " God is revealed here not as an overwhelming fullness, which judges and condemns, but as the opening unlimited love without limit in respect of our freedom ".

friendship and prayer Finally, commenting on the ecumenical dimension of this meditation for several years entrusted by the pope in spiritual personalities of non-Catholics, he said: " on the road to Golgotha he can no longer be any separation. And if tensions continued in the formal dialogue, then he confided to Vatican Radio, with of "strong feelings of identity," he said there's always a place for reconciliation between Christians, "friendship" and "prayer". a current message, that the departure of Olivier Clement to the other side recalls with force at the commencement of the great Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

article Anita S. Bourdin