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The legacy of Francois Libermann.

Article Excerpt
Francois Marie Paul Libermann, the second founder of the Holy Ghost Fathers (today, the Spiritans), was born on April 12,1802, in Saverne, Alsace. He was the fifth son of Lazar Libermann, a rabbi, who registered this son as Jacob. Ultra-Orthodox, the rabbi spoke only Hebrew and Yiddish. Jacob attended the local Jewish school but received rigorous training in the Bible and the Talmud from his father. At the age of twenty Jacob went to Metz to earn his diploma as a rabbi. It was his first contact with the world outside the Saverne synagogue. His interaction with liberals and conservatives in the Jewish community in Metz caused his previously unconditional trust in his father's wisdom to be deeply shaken. Secretly, he learned French and Latin. A further shock was that David Drach, a rabbi who was a close friend of the family, became a Christian. This news was followed by that of the conversion of his revered elder brother Samson and then of other prominent Jews. He read Rousseau's novel Emile and retained only a vague kind of deism.

Ignorant of this change in Jacob, his father let him go to Paris to complete his studies under its chief rabbi. In reality, however, Jacob was looking for a secular job. There he met his brothers Samuel and Felix, both also just converted, as well as Drach. They advised him to go to Stanislas College to study the Catholic faith. Alone one day in a bare attic room, he threw himself on his knees and, close to despair, prayed: "God of my fathers, I beseech you to enlighten me on the true religion. If it is the Christian faith, let me know; if that faith is false, take me far away from it." Later he wrote, "Our Lord, who is close to those who invoke him from the bottom of their heart, answered my prayer. At once I saw the truth, and faith penetrated my mind and heart." (1) He was baptized Francois Marie Paul six weeks later. When his father heard about the apostasy of his most beloved son, he tore his vestments and sent a fulminating condemnation that caused Francois to weep, but not to surrender; "I am a Christian!" he cried.

Francois always continued to see his relationship to God as he had learned it from his orthodox father: you stand as a sentry before God, waiting to act as he wills. The pious Jew, says Martin Buber, "lives in the consciousness that the proper place for his encounter with God lies in the ever-changing situations of life.... Again and again, the pious Jew hears God's voice in a different way in the language spoken by unforeseen and changed situations." The text goes on to say that a believing Jew does not silence God under the pretext that God has already spoken before in a different way; he does not hide from God's voice behind a model of life and works undertaken before in obedience to that voice, but he always remains in an attitude of unconditional availability before God. (2) Thus the dynamic Judeo-Christian charism that Libermann was to bestow on his followers may be formulated as follows: evangelical...