the project @ saint pe

my home away from homelessness

I crashed at the desolate benedictine monastary in St Pe en Bigorre earlier in august. Relics of st peter are here, Keys formed out of the chains that bound him in prison in Rome. The madman tasked with rebuilding this enormous place, also a friend and dear brother, says devotion to the sacred heart began here in Saint Pe. He is convinced this devotion will return here again in a big way likely long after he has passed. My friends name is andre and, for some reason, he thinks im like a good omen for the whole place. And not without reason but not with reasons most people, even believers would accept. His reasons usually have to due with my manner of arrival. Something like: He is thinking about me and rarely does this and then I appear on the same day. I always show up without warning.

Andre has a wife and family in paris but spends a good portion of the year in saint pe, mananging all the construction, getting a small lebanese restaurant off the ground which was one of his ideas to finance the project. This time I showed up and the normal gate of entry was closed. I went to another entrance where I buzzed in and no one came. I tried the door and it was unlocked. And to Andre this miraculous entry—there have been others—was again confirmation that I am supposed to be welcome there. If the door wasn´t mistakenly left unlocked—and it never is—then I would have had to wait for hours for andres arrival before entering. Maybe I would have just walked on to Lourdes.

In any case, walking along the camino in the south of france, I stop here every year as its along, really the exquisitely beautiful stretch of the camino through the foothills of the Pyrenees between Lourdes and St Jean Pied de Port. Its a place where i’m always welcome, and the invitation has been there from the very start that I could live and pray there for as long as I please. I could keep a garden in the massive acreage behind the monastery. Who knows, I may someday. But as of right now its been a place I love to visit and a story I love to tell.

A Lebanese maronite parish out of Paris bought this place with no money to spare to refurbish it. zilch. the monastery is gigantic and it total disrepair. they also didnt even know who would be moving in to the place when they prepared it. Just that it should be dedicated to the sacred heart, and that it would be a place for the reunion of the orthodox and catholic churches. the brilliant thing about taking on way more than you can carry is that you have to learn to rely on God. my friend, andre, a parisian businessman who left everything to do this work, also has spared nothing of his own money toward this project, hes like “we are doing everything according to the bible, thats our blueprint. I just keep telling God if you dont want me to do this, then stop providing.” the cool thing is that he more than anyone else is the visionary, he has a perspicuous spiritual intuition, prophetic ones. Andre is extremely charismatic, following the movements of his heart, he’s learned to discern where God wants him and has wild stories of it always checking out.

I arrived in Lourdes for the very first time when they had just bought the property and they invited me to come explore the place with a group from the parish. Now, four years later a whole wing is almost done, they have volunteer groups coming in throughout the summer, they are acting in faith, God is providing, but they still cant see the whole picture.

Andre said his bishop told him he was the man for the project and he was nonplussed, he declined initially, then agreed when he persisted that it had to be him, but he had no clue what to do to make this work. To renovate the whole thing will cost 25 million, and they bought it with nothing to spare. Also its could house hundreds of monks. They could bring a few over from Lebanon but its a weird sales pitch for benefactors, what are we building here? what is it for exactly? God communicates to Andre only enough to keep him going, God provides only enough for the next step to be made.

In the scriptures, its St Paul who so delightfully wrestles with this foolish aspect of his discipleship. Its he who gets it the most because he is the least absurd of all the apostles. St Paul being an Apostle is in some sense the most predictable. He is a scholar, a zealot. And zealot scholars do tend to lose their minds from time to time and go off the handle preaching about unknown gods, fisherman however do not. And this worked towards the advantage of the fishermen, yet St Paul having persecuted Christians lent credence to his story. St Paul is also somehow the most magnanimous, and his shortcoming here, being so studied, seems to weigh upon him, it leaves him hungering to play the fool like the fishermen got to.

Through his mission to the gentiles, which was is truly foolish (how could he explain Jesus to those without knowledge of prophecy, the Law? It seems crazy, what would he say?), through his total surrender to providence, St Paul is granted his wish. He wished to renounce his advantage (he was trained as a pharisee to argue with Jews!). He renounced his eloquence and refined speech, and spoke to those with no knowledge of the scriptures he knew by heart. And he embraced this disadvantage. He made it his own. He made it his strength. He embraced all the trials and persecutions he faced unique to presenting the gospel amongst the pagans. And he loved renouncing his advantage because in all things he wanted to testify to this fundamental dynamic of the Incarnation. He wanted to imitate Jesus Christ and conquer by means of the power and foolishness of the cross.

^{I Cor I:18} For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹ For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

²⁰ Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. ²² Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God… ²⁷ But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸ God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹ so that no one may boast before him.

Look at this massive, decrepit Monastery in the picture below! I see St Paul´s foolishness in the project here. I see it in my friend Andre, who, after piling up small victory after small victory, is developing the mind of a giant killer. Not one who conquers through might but through his weakness and lack of resources, through his abandonment to God´s plan with no idea how things will work out. Through these weapons, just like Jesus Christ, Andre is winning hearts as one who conquers God´s way, through foolishness. This way no one can deny God´s power and provision. Andre didn´t long to do it this way like St Paul but he has learned to do it this way, and each year he seems more confident.

I visited last summer and they were a standstill, to keep going they needed another million and had nothing to spare. then andres brother died and he inherited a bunch of land and sold it all which more than covered what they needed for the next phase of the project. i just love seeing people who are all in like this, “i was born for this work“ he tells me. he’s going to start a confraternity to the sacred heart this year. he knows this place once was and soon will be a place of devotion to the sacred heart. So just like hes acted in faith with the construction project, andre is also working to correspond with the spiritual task God has given him. we were talking this visit and andre asks me if i am give the gift of tears praying before the blessed sacrament. I say no. he rebukes me and says i need to pray more. what a blessing to have a no nonsense friend like this! i love seeing people acting in almost blind faith like this church did. But after four years, seeing whats already happening and the stories of divine providence, its a much more compelling story than had they done something reasonable.

The apostles themselves probably wondered why Jesus chose fisherman and not scholars to proclaim the good news until they started preaching and realized what a strength it was. as I mentioned before, the fact they were fisherman made their message all the more incredible. scholars are capable of dreaming up any wild new doctrine, but fisherman proclaiming not just the Messiah, but God Incarnate, its so crazy it make their message more believable. Fisherman expounding the scriptures with such insight, its so absurd it has to be taken seriously.

People often mistake the saying credo ergo absurdam—”i believe because it is absurd”— of Tertullian as an excuse for irrationality or as implying that Christianity has an irrational character. Its not true. Tertullian is actually referencing aristotle’s logic, he was actually saying something quite rational and profound. In Aristotle’s Logic it says that humans only believe the absurd when it actually happens. The absurdity of the resurrection can only be believed when witnessed. We can offer rational proofs, we can articulate theories for why it is credible to believe, but the strongest proof for the absurd is testimony. The only real proof of the absurd that it happened. And we are all called to be that. Christians all should practice this sort of absurdity to commend the christian claim to others. Friendship with Jesus Christ itself is such an absurd claim that this absurdity often asks itself to be made actual in our lives to attest to it. Its the best way to explain and commend the absurdity of the Gospel itself.

The story at Saint Pe is one of those, My friend andre’s personal story is increasingly the same. And this absurdity made actual is the best sort of testimony we can give to the greatest absurdity that actually happened: the Incarnation and Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and his continual offering of Himself at Mass and His Divine Presence in the Blessed Sacrament. The imitation of christ from one angle is to be an absurdity happening, to testify to Emmanuel, God with Us.

The great part about that first meeting four years ago was that I arrived in Lourdes in the time of COVID confinement in the evening when no one was allowed outside. It was a ghost town and I asked Our Lady for a room. I figured, Its her town and she could swing that, and minutes later I saw a solitary man walking outside, taking his trash to a dumpster. I asked him if he had any idea of someone who might put me up. He sent me to the Lebanese Franciscan sisters. I rung and explained my situation and the sisters wanted to reject me. But my friend saw me, barefoot, with no money, and he told the sisters “he’s just like us! He has nothing. Let him stay.“ and they did. And were very gracious with me, Lebanese food! But its the grace of being in a dire situation, you start seeing yourself in others in the same dire situation and wanting to care for them. I was there to visit lourdes but ended up getting taken in by their mission here at Saint Pe. They invited me to visit and see the place before they had done a single repar or reconstruction. since then, its one of the only places I always have an open door. 12km from lourdes!

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