Cardinal Aron Jean-Marie Lustiger: Chosen by God

Summary:

The son of Polish Jews who arrived in France at the beginning of the 20th century, Aron Lustiger discovered the Bible and the Gospel on his own at the age of 12, reading them in secret and immediately grasping the continuity and unity between the Old Testament and the New. His parents were not observant Jews, but the prevailing anti-Semitism of his time made him keenly aware of his Jewish identity.

The family moved to Orléans at the start of the Second World War.  On Holy Thursday and Good Friday in 1940, he entered the cathedral without really knowing why. There was no service going on, but he sensed that Christ was the Messiah promised to Israel - and therefore to him too - and that this truth had to be proclaimed. So he felt called to be a priest, in accordance to the name he had received at birth (Aaron the priest of the Old Testament the brother of Moses), and asked to be baptised in the Catholic faith.

Although reluctant, his parents accepted, hoping to spare him discrimination and persecution. And at the end of August, shortly before his 14th birthday, in recently occupied France (the German occupation had started in June of that year) the young Aron chose to "put on Christ" (Galatians 3:27) by adding John and Mary to his name. He was to be known as "Jean-Marie" in the Catholic circles he now belonged to.

His mother remained in Paris to run the family business, was denounced as a Jew, interned at Drancy and deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered. After taking the baccalaureate examination, which he prepared for at the minor seminary near Paris, Jean-Marie went into hiding to the south of France in 1944 with his father, and joined the Christian resistance movements against Nazism. After the Liberation of France, he enrolled at the Sorbonne university. Fortunately, not all of his teachers were rigidly anti-modern as was the case during the Belle Époque, ignoring the Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud that were dominant in the culture at the time. Some of them (such as Jean Daniélou and Louis Bouyer) even promoted the biblical, patristic and liturgical revivals that would make Vatican II possible and enthral Jean-Marie Lustiger, who at the same time updated his knowledge of philosophy and the humanities at the Sorbonne. He graduated from the Sorbonne with a literature degree; entered the seminary of the Carmelite fathers in Paris, and later the Institut Catholique de Paris. He was ordained a priest in 1954. His first assignments was as a student chaplain in Paris at a time when the universities were filled to capacity following the Second World War. It was here, during the first decade of his priestly ministry, that his student interactions instilled a particular zeal for young people in the Church. He first was assistant to Fr. Maxime Charles at the Richelieu Center, which trains university chaplains and counsels lay teachers and students of the grandes écoles, then succeeded him in 1959, retaining his great insights: introduction to theology, the history of Christianity and the thinking of Congar, Chenu, de Lubac, Fessard and Balthasar; well-prepared ceremonies; spiritual retreats; pilgrimages to Chartres, the Holy Land, Assisi and Avila; large gatherings and public debates... But he had to manage the massive increase in student numbers, which led to the creation of new campuses and therefore chaplaincies: Jussieu, Censier, Nanterre, etc.

It was also the time of Vatican II, and the Sorbonne chaplaincy applied the Council's reforms with conviction, having largely anticipated them. In May 68, Georges Pompidou, France's Prime Minister, asked Fr. Lustiger to explain the student revolt to him: Lustiger saw it as a sign of dissatisfaction with the economic growth of the period known as the "Thirty Glorious Years", which Communism (divided between Stalinists and leftists) was unable to take advantage of.

In 1969, after fifteen years at the Sorbonne, Fr. Lustiger accepted the responsibility of a parish: he became the parish priest of Sainte-Jeanne de Chantal at Porte de Saint-Cloud in Paris, after spending the summer backpacking around the United States and watching the first steps of a man on the Moon live on television with his hosts at the time.

In his parish, he mobilized, trained and organized the available lay people so that they could play their part in evangelization. He completely remodelled the interior of his church in a resolutely contemporary style, calling on artist friends such as Jean Touret. With the help of his young organist, Henri Paget, he composed songs whose words were taken from the Scriptures in accordance to the liturgical calendar, so that the faithful could "ruminate" on the Word of God rather than express feelings, however pious. His sermons, meditated on at length but never written out in advance, were soon recorded and transcribed by parishioners who wanted to absorb and share them. He agreed to revise a selection of these homilies so that they could be published in 1978 by the French publishing house Fayard under the title Sermons of a Parish Priest in Paris.

In early summer 1979, however, after ten years at Sainte-Jeanne de Chantal, he wondered what the next step would be for him. At once serene in his fidelity to the doctrine and discipline of the Church, and daring in pastoral, liturgical and aesthetic terms, he had annoyed traditionalists and progressives alike, whom he had not hesitated to criticize openly. At that point he envisioned going to the Holy Land to live as a hermit, or to work as a gardener in a convent.

He was therefore surprised to be offered to shepherd the diocese of Orléans - the city of his baptism! - to succeed Bishop Riobé, the controversial apostle of pacifism. This unexpected offer was made by the papal nuncio in Paris, Mgr Righi-Lambertini, who recognized the correct and energetic positions taken by this extraordinary parish priest. This appointment was probably supported by the auxiliary bishop of Paris, Daniel Pézeril, one of the few intellectuals among the capital's clergy, who was present in 1948 when Georges Bernanos was dying, and who also discerned great potential in this hard-to-categorize priest.

Lustiger then wrote a personal letter to the newly elected John Paul II, asking whether the Pope had been properly informed about his irreversible Jewishness, about what Orléans meant to him, about his differences with his confreres... The answer was not long in coming: yes, all this had been taken into account; and no, there was no reason to question the choice made.

Jean-Marie Lustiger became Bishop of Orléans at the end of 1979. By opening a seminary, he had just enough time to go against the grain of what was generally being done elsewhere, where seminaries were being closed for lack of candidates: he founded a new seminary for training priests, bypassing the existing arrangements. It was a leap of faith: he saw the need to focus on the ministerial priesthood, essential to the sacraments, which, in the words of Father de Lubac, "make the Church".

He had been in Orleans for just over a year, when at the very beginning of 1981, he was asked to return to Paris to take over from Cardinal Marty, who had reached the age of retirement. A successor was hard to find. The matter came to the attention of John Paul II, who decided to send the same cardinal he had just sent to Orléans. Did he remember Fr Lustiger's letter of July 1979? Did he see Lustiger's reply to the questionnaire sent to all the parish priests in Paris to define the challenges facing their next archbishop and, more generally, the Church in France? Had he read the Sermons of a Parish Priest of Paris? In any case, the Pope prayed a lot about this choice, as his secretary Mgr Dziwisz later told Cardinal Lustiger.

The fact remains that, back in Paris, Jean-Marie Lustiger put into practice the principles he had been able to establish and test during his studies, as a youth chaplain, in his parish, and in Orléans - but this time on the much larger scale of an urban and nationally prominent archdiocese with a potentially international impact. He set his focus on the liturgy, which molds and expresses the faith; the training of priests and of lay people; theological work based on Scripture and Tradition, free from philosophical allegiance; creation of communication tools and independent use of the media; dialogue with politicians and with contemporary culture; interventions in ethical debates; large conferences, etc.

His new important position of course opened new avenues. His elevation to the cardinalate in 1983 was merely the formalization of the status associated with the rank. But it also fostered a special relationship with John Paul II, for whom Jean-Marie Lustiger had the admiring affection of a younger brother and who was quick to welcome him whenever he went to Rome for dicastery meetings. These visits to the Vatican also allowed for reciprocal relations and invitations with Cardinal Ratzinger and with archbishops from major cities around the world.

Being a cardinal also prevented Aron Jean-Marie Lustiger from remaining discreet about his Jewish identity. He realized that he was now called upon to embrace it fully and become personally involved in mutual recognition and dialogue between the Chosen People and the Catholic Church. And he succeeded in overcoming the initial prejudices of the most intransigent rabbis.

Finally, he learned patience and humility, especially with the priests he was now called to shepherd and and with whom he sometimes felt at odds. Most of them, however, now came from the seminary he had designed. At age 75, he tended his resignation, in accordance with the rule, but the Pope encouraged him to remain in his role, like him, until the end. However, at the beginning of 2005, the deterioration of his vocal cords, which limited him enormously, led him to retire, after having obtained from John Paul II, shortly before that pope's death, to appoint André Vingt-Trois as his succcessor. The latter had been his vicar at Sainte-Jeanne de Chantal and his auxiliary bishop.

Lustiger's retirement was short-lived: he was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2006 and died a year later at the Jeanne Garnier palliative care home, which he himself had founded. He is buried in the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, where the plaque in his memory, which he himself wrote, survived the fire in April 2019.

Beyond reasons to believe:

God never fails to give the Church the pastors it needs. In the words of Maurice Druon, former Permanent Secretary of the Académie française, at Cardinal Lustiger's funeral, he was "the son not of chance, but of exception".

Going further:

Choosing God, Chosen by God: Conversations With Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, interviews by Jean-Louis Missika and Dominique Wolton, Ignatius Pr;  First American edition January 1, 1991 (French original title (French original title Le Choix de Dieu, Éditions de Fallois, 1987)

More information:

• The Promise by Jean-Marie Lustiger, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (October 15, 2007)
• Dare to Live, by Jean-Marie Lustiger, Crossroad Pub Co; 1st US -1st Printing edition (January 1, 1988)

• Dare To Believe: Addresses, Sermons, Interviews, 1981-1984 by Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger (Author), Nelly Marans (Translator), Maurice Couve de Murville (Translator)

• Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger on Christians and Jews, by Jean-Marie Lustiger, Paulist Press (March 22, 2013)