Installed since 2021 on the Cézallier plateau, in Cantal, François Cassingena-Trévedy, 65, describes it as his promised land. “I like its silence, this enormous emptiness, it is another world. I live at 900 meters of altitude in a mountain thorn, an exposed terrain where the peasant world survives. »
This Catholic monk, also a writer and lecturer – remotely – at the Catholic Institute of Paris, wants to incarnate there, become a native. “I was not born there, but there I was reborn”he assures.
The religious, who previously spent twenty-five years at the abbey of Saint-Martin de Ligugé (Vienna), south of Poitiers, now works for free as an agricultural worker, with several Cantal farmers who turn to him. “The priest-worker, this employee inserted in professional life, continues to be for me an ideal of existenceexplains. I like peasants, their naivety, their soft toughness. I share with them a great human profession. I have no proselytizing intention, I am here a bit like Father Charles de Foucauld. [1858-1916, officier devenu religieux en Algérie] He was among the Tuareg. »
“Suffering of the peasants”
From this rustic, open-air existence, Brother François produced a thick logbook in three volumes, the last of which, god’s peasant (Albin Michel, 240 pages, 21.90 euros), He was released on September 4. He mixes his hard daily life and his contemplation of nature with his love for the Gregorian liturgy (VIIImy century) and his knowledge of the fathers of the Church, the authors of the first eight centuries of our era whose biblical commentaries have influenced Christian doctrine to this day – François Cassingena-Trévedy signed in particular two reference translations of the hymns of Saint Ephrem, a Syrian mystical poet of the 4th century.my century (Cerf, 2001 and 2006).
” With god’s peasantI wanted to offer readers the face of an incarnate God, who has nothing manitou or policeHe explains in his calm voice, while stroking his graying beard. I am a social loner and not a hermit. My happiness is possible at the cost of retirement and resignation, but my friendships with farmers represent a true path of wisdom. »
The reader of god’s peasant Follow François Cassingena-Trévedy through his days in the village of Sainte-Anastasie, with 148 registered inhabitants. “ At 6 in the morning, alone in my oratory, I celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours and the Eucharistic Liturgy. Then I take off the white awning and put on my agricultural overalls and boots to work in my garden. » And, in the afternoon, he usually goes – on foot or hitchhiking – to nearby farms that need him: With his khaki green backpack and military pants with pockets, you’d mistake him for a hiker.
You have 67.07% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
