de Bethune Father Bernard de Give

The Way of Friendship

Father Bernard de Give (1913-2020)

This article first appeared in in Collectanea Cisterciencia (2020, n° 2) and is published here with permission.

When Father Bernard entered Scourmont Abbey, he was almost 60 years old and had already spent 41 years in the Society of Jesus. At the time of his death, at almost 106 years of age, he had completed 89 years of religious life.

The reason we remember Father Bernard with such gratitude, however, is not because he broke records for longevity! Rather, we are inspired by the depth of his spirituality and his lifelong dedication to beauty, learning, and friendship.

Throughout his life we see constants, and in particular a great capacity to harmonize very diverse, if not apparently contradictory, fields. His formation and his constant work as a philologist went hand in hand with his love for and extensive writing of poetry. His specialization in Greek and Latin literature never prevented him from being passionate about the East. In fact, what most animated him in all of his endeavors was encountering someone or something that was different. He loved to bear witness to the possibility of a mutually enriching encounter between people who held seemingly irreconcilable positions.

Michel de Give was born in the Belgian city of Liege in 1913. He entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in 1931 and followed the traditional thirteen-year-long spiritual and academic formation program of the Jesuits. In 1946, two years after his ordination to the priesthood, he was sent to India and Sri Lanka, where he taught mainly Latin and European philosophy in Kurseong, Kandy, Ranchi, Sitagarha, and Maduré. During all these years as a missionary, he had little in-depth contact with Hindus and Buddhists, but he could hardly have avoided sensing the intense presence of these religious traditions.

Returning to Belgium in 1955, he continued his work as a philologist and wrote a Latin grammar that is still used in schools today. The memory of his long stay in India, however, continued to haunt him. He had been so struck by the contrasts and misunderstandings between the West and the East that he wanted to study what, on the contrary, linked these two worlds. He therefore undertook a doctoral program in the area of classical philology and began researching the relationship between the West and the East in antiquity. He spent a year at Oxford where met Asian students, including one of the preeminent teachers of Tibetan Buddhism and a major figure in the dissemination of Buddhism in the West, Chögyam Trungpa. In the introduction to his thesis, he explained his motivation for undertaking doctoral studies, writing that he had been painfully surprised by the absence of a real dialogue between the religions he had been in contact with (in India) and Christianity, as well as by the lack of understanding between Western and Indian culture. With this opportunity to devote himself to a more in-depth study of both, he could not bring himself to build a watertight partition between them, and even less to sacrifice his deep interest in the values proper to each of them.

His thesis, entitled The Relationship between India and the West, from the Origins to the Reign of Asoka[1]is a careful and thorough work that sheds light on an extremely complex field. There is, to my knowledge, no other work on this subject that is as comprehensive.

After forty-one years in the Society of Jesus, Father Michel de Give asked to end his life as a Trappist at Scourmont Abbey in Belgium. There he received the name Bernard and lived there for another 48 years. When he took this step in 1972, he noticed that there was a certain effervescence within the monastic order, thanks to several monks who were involved in the encounter of religions. We think in particular of Fathers Henri Le Saux, Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths, and Cornelius Tholens, all contemporaries of Father Bernard.

Father Bernard soon put his many skills at the service of this movement in the Church. In 1977, he took part in the meeting, in Loppem that gave rise to what was to become Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (DIM·MID) and became a major actor in this movement. He drew up what he modestly entitled Bibliography of initiation to Eastern religions.[2] It contained 1500 entries.

Above all, he made a point of seeking out places of dialogue throughout Europe, showing a predilection for Tibetan Buddhist centers from Scotland to Spain. He visited every one of them and offered words of encouragement. He was especially drawn to Kagyu Ling in Burgundy, where he met Kalu Rinpoche and studied Tibetan.

He also traveled to Tibet, Nepal, and India to meet Tibetan monks there and was very grateful to his superiors who supported his deep commitment to this dialogue. In a book published in 2010,[3]he describes these encounters and evokes their fruits. The Dali Lama wrote the preface, noting that the many encounters made by Father Bernard did not lead to any compromises of his faith, but rather to mutual enrichment through the creation of deep friendships.

Friendship was indeed Father Bernard’s special way of participating in interreligious dialogue. His admiration and kindness were radiant, and the followers of other religious traditions, especially the Buddhist monks he met, were touched by his graciousness. But, as he writes at the beginning of this Trappist Meeting Monks from Tibet, "The author of these lines, while having developed a real sympathy for the Dharma and its adherents, is not a Buddhist, nor even a seeker.”[4] He had no desire to be initiated into oriental spiritual methods, as other Christians engaged in interreligious dialogue did.

The pioneers mentioned above chose to immerse themselves in another spiritual tradition and to attempt an intra-religious dialogue. But this is not the only way. One can only wonder what Thomas Merton, who died at the age of fifty-three, would have done if, like Father Bernard, he had lived another fifty-three years—in which case, he would still have been with us in 2020! Still, the way chosen by our Bernard—respectful knowledge and especially friendship—allowed him to make great progress in interreligious exchange. His witness is important.

We still need to evoke one last trait of Father Bernard's personality, his poetic leanings. Throughout his life, he felt the need to express what he was feeling in verse. Alongside scholarly texts and detailed reports, he never ceased noting his furtive impressions or, at times, grandiose insights. He began writing poetry in the 1930s. His inspiration never ceased, and he became even more creative after 2013, when his confreres offered him a collection of his poetry for his 100^th birthday.[5] It seems that when he realized just how much he had already written, his inspiration was renewed, so much so that by 2015 he had a new collection of poetry ready for publication.

A few months before his death, he was still at work on a text entitled 'Mysteries':

What does he still hope for in a new life?

It is truly into the unknown that he is descending.

Mystery that transforms flesh and blood,

Turned towards the East while awaiting the dawn.

Translated by William Skudlarek

Notes

[1]Les Rapports de l’Inde et de l’Occident, des origines au règne d’Asoka (Paris, Les Indes savantes, 2005).

[

2]Edited and published by A.I.M., 7 rue d’Issy, F 92170 Vanves, no date..

[3]Trappist Meeting Monks from Tibet (Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2010). Reviewed in Dilatato Corde, Vol. 1, No. 1.

[4] Ibid., p. xx

[5] Quand l’âme chante, poèmes (Scourmont: Cahier Scourmontois, 2013)

Pierre-François de Béthune, monk of Clerlande and prior of the community, was the first General Secretary of DIMMID. His most recent book is A la rencontre des religions :Nouvelles dimension de la foi (Bayard 2015), translated into English: Welcoming Other Religions: A New Dimension of the Christian Faith (Liturgical Press, 2016).