Author: Rhys Tranter

Rhys Tranter is a writer based in Cardiff, Wales, UK. He is the author of Beckett's Late Stage (2018), and his work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, and a number of books and periodicals. He holds a BA, MA, and a PhD in English Literature.

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“You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince” (Ps 82:6-7)

Xavier Beauvois’s 2010 film, Of Gods and Men, begins with this ominous epitaph from the eighty-second psalm. It is to be a portent of the narrative’s themes of death and dignity, explored in conversation with the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.

Br Amédée (Jacques Herlin) and Br Luc (Michael Lonsdale)

The film is based on the true story of a community of Cistercian monks at the Monastery Notre-Dame de l’Atlas (Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas) in Tibhirine, Algeria. As you might imagine, my remarks here will reveal key details of the plot and references to the real historical events.

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Thomas Merton’s hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani

A beautiful day. We rise early. I head out into the rain and collect coffee and pastries.

Later, as the sun comes out, we go walking until late into the afternoon.

After Mass, we listen to the sounds of birds and traffic, and settle down for a quiet evening. I read this in Thomas Merton’s journals:

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A quiet evening reading from Tanquerey’s The Spiritual Life, first published in 1923:

“[The Psalter] is the most excellent of Prayer-books wherein we find in a language that always lives and never grows old, the most beautiful expressions of admiration, adoration, filial reverence, gratitude and love, together with the most ardent supplications, midst situations the most varied and trying […] To read and reread them, to ponder them and make their sentiments our own is surely a highly sanctifying occupation.”

— Adolphe Tanquerey, The Spiritual Life: A Treatise on Ascetical and Mystical Theology

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In the years leading up to my conversion, I gradually became fascinated by Thomas á Kempis’s devotional text, The Imitation of Christ. I encountered it first in the letters of the young Samuel Beckett, and next in the interviews of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, and then in all kinds of other unexpected places. Among them, this 1877 letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his beloved brother, Theo:

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Corresponding from distant Paris, Fr Huvelin offers spiritual advice to St Charles de Foucauld as he works as a gardener in Nazareth:

“Nourish yourself on the Psalms, which give such vivid expression to the feelings that feed the soul united to God or in search of him.”

— 13 May 1897, qtd. in Jean-Jacques Antier, Charles de Foucauld

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Holy Thursday

On Holy Thursday, we visit St Peter’s Square and enter St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. We spend time in prayer at the Altar of the Crucifixion of Saint Peter; at the Chapel of the Sacrament; and at the Tomb of Saint Peter the Apostle underneath the Main Altar (Saint Peter’s Baldachin).

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