ADDRESS GIVEN BY BROTHER JEAN-PIERRE-MARIE,
PRIOR GENERAL OF THE BROTHERS OF ST. JOHN,
AT THE FUNERAL MASS OF FATHER PHILIPPE
2nd SEPTEMBER 2006, LYONS

Here is the address given by Brother Jean-Pierre-Marie, Prior General of the Brothers of Saint John, during the funeral mass of Father Philippe.

Dear Father Marie-Dominique,

We have heard so many beautiful things about you today.
Thank you! Yes, as our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, said as he welcomed you to Rome on our pilgrimage of thanksgiving last February, we too would like to say again, “Thank you Father Philippe; thank you for what you have done!” and to add, as he did, “dear Father”!

“Happy are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of God” (Mt 5:3).

This beatitude of the poor, which leads on to all the other beatitudes, gives us a light for this last moment of farewell, a moment that leaves us so impoverished, but it also sheds a light upon your whole life in our midst. Your presence was so rich and so fruitful during these thirty years of the foundation of our Family of Saint John. Yet over and above your attentive and penetrating intelligence, which understood and ordered things, even the most complex situations, so well, and over and above your human heart, so generous and giving, tender towards all and especially towards the smallest and weakest, you had only one desire: to contemplate the Bridegroom and to step aside to make room for him, so that all glory be given to Him – to Him and to His Mother. Just like the beloved disciple – whose name, John, does not even appear in his Gospel, and whose only wealth was to follow his divine Master faithfully, all the way to the Cross – running without stopping, you opened up for us the way to Jesus’ Heart and to faith in His Resurrection.
“Thank you, Father Philippe; thank you for what you have done!”

You, our founder, explored for us, as a watchman and as a witness, the narrow path which is John’s holiness. You didn’t like us to speak about you; you were both too humble and too lucid: “No one can receive anything except what has been given him from heaven” (Jn 3:27). As you walked ahead of us, you guided us onto the Way, Christ, who requires us to leave everything in order to receive the happiness of the Gospel. John and his writings were your light for welcoming Jesus, the Friend, for allowing yourself be loved by Him, for receiving His Revelation, and for becoming in turn a son of light yourself, and thus begetting other sons of light.

More alive now than all of us here and, in a certain sense, closer to each of us, you continue to point out John to us as our companion in trials, our father in faith, hope and love. The heritage you leave us is immense; it is the heritage of John, the disciple who reclined upon the Lord’s breast at the Last Supper, sharing in his Master’s secrets so as to transmit them to the whole world. With fervour you poured over the mystery of the Word of light made flesh to bring us back to the Father, so as to unveil it for us, to enable us to understand and to love the revealed wonders, to teach us to let ourselves be loved. Now you step aside so that Christ Himself may increase in the heart of each one of us. Your faithfulness in “following the Lamb wherever He goes” (Rev. 14:4), in dwelling in Love and in loving in Light, as Jesus loves us, is a witness, a call and a gift. We receive it for ourselves, for the Church and for those men and women who are wounded and who thirst for Mercy. Men and women today thirst to be loved and to receive the light of Love; help us, Father, to pass on to them the witness of the beloved apostle.

“Thank you Father Philippe; thank you for what you have done!”

Without counting the cost, you gave all you had for this world that forgets God. I can’t help thinking of an ancient text from the writings of a saint – a Cistercian sister in the Middle Ages (*). She received the grace of experiencing what the Apostle had lived during the Last Supper as he reclined upon Our Lord’s heart, and she wrote in her book of Revelations this surprising statement confided to her by the evangelist: “My mission,” he told her, “was to write for the Church in her early days, and to make known to her the words of the uncreated Word, such that, until the end of the world, the human intelligence may be nourished by them, albeit without fully understanding them. But the fullness of the sweetness contained in the beatings of the Divine Heart is reserved for the end times, so that the world, grown old and cold in love of God, may once again be warmed”.

Dear Father, your untiring apostolic activity, which took you all over the five continents, was indeed that of warming up our world once again, giving it hope again, comforting it in its trials, and reminding it that it is made for Life, for peace and for joy in God. Constantly coming back to the contemplation of Christ’s wounded Heart, from which you drew your strength, you became a witness to that Heart, in the light of the three wisdoms, trusting in the strength of the truth, which reveals itself only in love.

As our father St John received Christ’s last desire during Eastertide – “if I want him to remain until I come” (Jn 21) – you waited for His return, and you mobilized us in faith to welcome Him. And as the elderly St John, living in this ardent expectation, wrote in his first letter: “Beloved, let us love one another” (1 Jn 4:7) you, Father, always urged us on to this fraternal love, which alone will prepare the way for Jesus’ return.

“Thank you, Father Philippe; thank you for what you have done!” Thank you for having given us St John to be our father; thank you for having given humanity the light of hope which shines forth from his Gospel.

You were well aware of the fragility of humanity today, of our fragility, but it never frightened you; your trust in the Virgin Mary, our Mother, led you to dare to be merciful. As a father you taught us to receive her from Jesus Crucified and to take her into our home. With you, we ask her to keep us faithful unto the end, and with you we sing her Magnificat.

“Thank you, Father Philippe; thank you for what you have done!”

(*) Saint Gertrude of Helfta