Fr. John-Mary: Father, the great news that the Apostles received was that Jesus who had been crucified, was resurrected. But for us, almost two thousand years later, that can appear as very far away. Where is this victory of Jesus in our lives, in today's world, which is a very wounded and very suffering world?

Fr. M.D. Philippe: This is true, and it is the main problem of the people of Israel which does not consider Jesus as the true Messiah: according to certain prophecies of the Old Testament, of Isaiah, of Ezekiel, the Messiah had to bring peace, a universal peace, but Israel sees that the struggles still continue. When I look carefully at what occurred at the beginning of the Church, I see that, very soon after Jesus' death, persecutions started. St. Paul died a martyr, St. Peter also, all the Apostles. Persecutions continue, they have always existed. Therefore, in a certain way, we could say: "you see clearly that Christ is not resurrected, because if he were truly resurrected, it wouldn't only be him, but it would be also all his members who would be in glory; if the head is resurrected, the members are also resurrected". Well, I think that we touch perhaps there one of the very special aspects of our Christian faith, of our Christian hope. We believe, in our Christian faith, that Christ is truly risen. Each year, on the feast of Easter, after this whole long preparation of Lent, we cry with all our strength: "Christ is risen, Alleluia". It is true that he is risen, but he didn't want to show his resurrection with shouts raised; he could have willed that from the Resurrection, our world, with its corruptibility, with its weaknesses, its fragilities, would end, and that there would then be a great general judgment. According to certain prophecies of the Old Testament, we truly have the impression that it should have been like that. And in the depths of our heart, we always desire that, if Christ is resurrected, he who is the head, then all those who believe in him are resurrected and therefore no longer ought to know death, but ought to live right away in Glory: "Today, you will be with me in Paradise", "you will be in my Kingdom". Jesus tells his apostles not to be afraid, since the Kingdom is given to us, since it is already in us. So, we ought to make this distinction which is difficult to do well, but this is part of the Wisdom of the Father over us. I think that this is what Jesus asked the Father in his Agony. I know that it is very difficult to interpret this passage of the Gospel, but when Jesus, during the Agony, asks the Father that his chalice pass, it is a very strong prayer coming from his wounded heart, from his heart which knows a deadly sadness. "Father, that this chalice pass from me; not my will, but yours". I think that we can say that Jesus never refused death, that Jesus never refused being the Savior of all humanity, but what he asks the Father, in this prayer of the Agony, is that the chalice pass from him. What is the chalice? It is that the death of Jesus carries with it the great mystery of the Compassion of Mary, and that the mystery of the Compassion carries with it the whole mystery of the Compassion of the Church. Through Mary, it is John, it is the whole Church which is attracted towards the mystery of Christ: the mystery of Christ crucified continues in the Church. The Eucharist gives us, in Glory, the mystery of Christ crucified, but it is this mystery of Christ crucified that we continue to live on earth. We would really like it to be finished, and certain spiritualities not only wish it, but even state it and say that we look too much at the Cross, and that we should only look at Glory. This would be a lack of realism. Jesus knew in his prayer that he could fully satisfy, on the level of justice, all the iniquity of the world, that he could save the world by his Cross, while offering himself, while offering his life; he alone could accomplish that by himself; he asked the Father to take away the chalice so that his mother wouldn't suffer at the Cross, so that John, the faithful disciple, might be spared, so that the whole faithful Church might be spared, and therefore each one of us to the extent that we want to be faithful disciples of Jesus. We all have a little of this homesickness of wanting to return to Eden; we all have this nostalgia of a triumphant and temporal messianism which would bring right away to us the Kingdom of God on earth. God, in his Wisdom, wanted something else. The Father, in his mercy and his love, wanted something else: he wanted Mary to be at the foot of the Cross and to live the mystery of the Compassion; he wanted John to receive as mother the one who suffers and who commiserates, and to receive this sorrowful virgin as mother; and he wanted the whole Church to continue to commiserate: the martyrs and each one of us in our present sufferings. Jesus wanted in his human heart for this to be avoided, and the Father wanted in his Father's love for us that we go as far as possible in our unity with Jesus; he wanted us to be united to Jesus, that we be tied to his heart, to his sacrifice. If Jesus had been the sole Redeemer, the only one, if the mystery of the Compassion hadn't taken place, if the Church had been exempted from all suffering, we would be saved children, but we wouldn't be friends. The mystery of the covenant of the husband and the wife which is the mystery of the Church would not be fully realized. A wife who does not commiserate with the sufferings of her husband is not a true wife. Love requires this reciprocity in joy and in suffering. This is why the Father wanted Mary to go to the end of her love for Jesus, to the end of this mystery of compassion; he wanted the whole Church and each one of us to live with and beside her this same mystery of love. The mystery of the Resurrection of Christ is really true. Jesus is living and glorious in his soul and in his body, and we have as witnesses all the apostles. Jesus appeared to the apostles, he appeared to a number of disciples, to the disciples of Emmaus, he appeared to a significant number of friends so that they might be his witnesses; we don't have any reason to refuse these testimonies which were given in such a strong way that St. Paul does not hesitate to say: "if Christ is not resurrected, vain is our faith," so much the mystery of the Resurrection is implied in the mystery of the Cross. The Cross cannot be a divine Wisdom without the mystery of the Resurrection, because the Cross shows us the victory of love in the heart of Jesus. If this victory of love remains hidden at the Cross, it bursts forth with the mystery of the Resurrection. It is in the mystery of the Resurrection that we see this full manifestation, in beauty, of the victory of love. This is why we ought to say that Christ is truly resurrected, that our Head, which is Christ, is resurrected, and by virtue of the fact that we are in faith, in hope, and in love, already resurrected. We have in us something - grace -, what is most vital in us:, which connects us to the mystery of the Resurrection of Christ. We ought to appear in the eyes of the world as victorious, even if we can't take any more, even if we are overwhelmed, even if, from outside, like at the Cross, the devil seems to be victorious. At the Cross, from the visible point of view, the devil seems to be victorious, he has overcome Jesus, he has condemned him to silence. From time to time, he does the same thing with us; "the disciples are not greater than their master", and therefore it is normal that we sometimes live this mystery where the victory is wholly interior, so that apparently it is as if the devil were victorious. This is the mystery of the Church: the Church of Christ can appear overcome under the weight of suffering, and the devil can appear victorious, but in reality, the Church is the Church of the crucified and glorious Christ. It is the Church of glory, a hidden glory, but a real glory; it is at the same time the Church of the Resurrection and the Church of the Cross, because we know that in order to enter this mystery of the Resurrection, we must go through the mystery of the Cross, for the disciple is not greater than the master. The Cross is the narrow gate, it is there that we fully accomplish the will of the Father. For the victory of love to fully manifest itself one day here on earth, we accept, in faith and in the poverty of hope, that this victory of the love of Christ for us be hidden and that the devil be apparently victorious. The book of Job shows us that in an astonishing way, as a prefiguration of the mystery of the Cross and of the mystery of the Church. It is therefore normal that while the temptation of despair seems so near; - we put our finger on it: we may say, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Jesus said that for us, so that we understand that this silence of God, this silence of the Father, is only apparent: in reality, it is then when we suffer the most, when we love the most and when the accepted suffering allows us to go very far in the gift of our whole self, it is then that the victory is the strongest and that we are tied to this mystery of the glory of Christ. In fact we feel it very well: it is when we are overwhelmed, when we can't take any more, very near to despair, that in our most intimate heart, we say:" he is living, he is living in me, and he is living in the poor man that I see and who is himself overwhelmed like me." It is through this poverty of the one who cannot take any more that the victory of love manifests itself the most, St. Paul says it. It is not through human power, human victory, that the victory of love manifests itself the most. It is through our fragilities, our instabilities, our weaknesses, that the victory of the love of the crucified one is the most real, the strongest. We ought to always have a very strong eschatological hope, this hope of the return of Christ. When we see today all the struggles of the Church, we understand why the Second Vatican Council is the Council of fraternal charity, the Council of mercy. Doesn't this Council announce the last week of the Church, when the Church no longer condemns, like Jesus during the last week, as it is shown by St. John; Christ no longer condemns during the last week; in the same way the Church condemns as little as possible, and at that moment accepts to live the mystery of the Cross. I deeply think that this is what we really live: this mystery of a divine renewal is the great victory of love through apparent weaknesses, defeats. I would even say that, although we touch upon certain moments of despair, at the level of our human psychology, there is something deeper in us: this victory of love which is the victory of Christ present in us.

Fr. John-Mary: Father, we know that you are the founder of a new religious community, the Congregation of St. John. Could you explain to us what is this congregation: why a new congregation in the Church when there are already many congregations? What is the proper characteristic of this community?

Fr. M.D. Phillipe: You belong to this community, and we have known each other for quite a long time. You have come to knock on the door of this very young community, and this is very mysterious. I am probably the last one who can speak of the birth of this Congregation, since I have been so much led by others as well as by events. As a Dominican I was sent to the University of Fribourg to teach philosophy, immediately following the end of the war in '45, on the Feast of Corpus Christi. Then, during the very difficult years, some French students came to Fribourg and, after some time, asked me if I could form them not only in philosophy, but even on a spiritual level. They were already somehow my spiritual sons. They asked me if they could gather in a little community, and on December 8, 1975, in the Abbey of Notre Dame of Lérins, facing a little icon of the Virgin Mary, we promised the Virgin Mary that we would remain united together. It was a covenant of fraternal charity in the heart of Mary. The community was born like that, in the heart of Mary, near this abbey that I love very much. This abbey is on the small island of St. Honorat and it is there where the first Christian monks came from the Middle East to Europe. We all remained faithful to this covenant, and we tried to set up a small community which could remain faithful to the Church. At that time the Dominicans could not receive us among them, so that I felt obliged to take full responsibility for the first seven brothers. I am not explaining here all the details, but that did not come about all by itself. I didn't have any project at all, but my hand was forced; the Holy Spirit forced my hand to such a degree that, one day, I asked Martha Robin: because I had seen all the difficulties. "Martha, do you think that it is truly from God, and that I ought to accept?", because I had seen all the difficulties. Martha, after having prayed, said to me: "Father, you must accept this request from your students, even if it is not convenient, even if you feel absolutely incapable of doing it". I felt absolutely incapable, because nothing had prepared me to be a founder; I had always been a professor of philosophy. I love the search for truth, but it is quite different from starting a Congregation! I was used to having students and having ties of friendship with them; I have always tried to have a true friendship with my students, because I believe that the search for truth cannot come about except in a deep friendship. I accepted, before God, to take responsibility for this small community, and then, it was with Our Lady of Lérins that it started. The Church accepted ad experimentum, in 1978, that the Father Abbot of the Monastery of Lérins be accountable for us. I brought him the students who had decided to be consecrated in a religious life, and the Father Abbot asked me to form them, so that in fact, it was he and myself who started together this little community. It grew very quickly. I only remember that, at the end of the second year, we were 15, and that there were 15 more brothers who were asking to enter! I said to Martha at that time; "Martha, it is impossible: 15 brothers to form 15 new ones!". Martha said to me: "it has to be done". So we started a little contemplative, doctrinal, monastic community open to an apostolate. And then, it has grown very quickly. In 1986, the Church recognized us as a Religious Institute under diocesan law, and we now number nearly 230.

Fr. John-Mary: What is the physiognomy, what are the activities of the Community? In which places does the Community have houses?

Fr. M.D. Philippe: In fact, there are two houses of formation in France. There are approximately 12 houses in France, 6 houses in the entire world, and Providence has led us to America; it is normal, since there were some Americans who had entered, so we founded a house in Laredo, in Texas, because the Bishop had the kindness to invite us. I think that this small monastery which was founded in Laredo represents well what our activities ought to be: a religious house of monastic, contemplative life, with young people totally consecrated to God, forming a small oasis of prayer open to apostolic life. Just beside the Monastery, there is a retreat house. I invite you all to come to this retreat house, because it is directly linked to our monastery and to our prayer. There, the Fathers can teach, receive and help. It is a monastic life open to an apostolic one.

This is very important because it is the spirit of Saint John, and it is for that reason that we call ourselves "Congregation of St. John". We would like to be faithful disciples of the heart of Jesus, to love the Eucharist as St. John loved it, to love the contemplative doctrine that Jesus taught us as John loved it; we would like to receive Mary as John himself received her, to be able to communicate to all those who are close to us all the treasures that Jesus gives us, to communicate them with the greatest simplicity, as children of God, as beloved sons of Christ, and as children of the Virgin Mary. Our world struggles so much that we need to have a great love of the heart of Christ, of the heart of Mary, of the Church.