A reader has alerted me to the death of Dom André Louf, ocso. I hadn’t checked the website of the Order recently, but they only had a short death notice here, which was a bit surprising given his stature. He died on Monday and was buried on Wednesday in the abbey of  Mont des Cats in France. He was abbot of Mont des Cats for several decades, having become abbot in his thirties, and there are fascinating references in Thomas Merton’s journals about his correspondence with this young abbot. For decades he longed for the eremitical life, but his pleas to the General Chapter of the his Order to be allowed to step down as abbot in order to pursue this were consistently refused. Finally in the 1990s he was able to step down and retreat to a hermitage in the south of France where he applied himself to the Syrian Fathers, translating the second series of Saint Isaac’s treatises into French, among other things.

I reported on two conferences that he gave at a colloquium on the Syrian Fathers two years ago: a conference on Simeon of Taibouthèh and a presentation on the Liturgy of the Heart. This was the only time that I met him and although he didn’t seem particularly frail to me, people who had known him earlier commented that he had aged. Which, I suppose, he had every right to have done.

Dom André certainly had a great influence both within the Cistercian Order and beyond. He belonged to that generation of post-conciliar Catholic leaders who were involved in a genuine renewal and was also someone deeply influenced by Eastern Christianity. Several of his books have been translated into English, including  The Cistercian Way , Grace Can Do More: Spiritual Accompaniment & Spiritual Growth  and Teach Us to Pray . The most recent work of his that I read was a paper on humility, and the problems that contemporary westerners have with it, that he gave in Bose and that has been published as The Way of Humility . I don’t have it with me at the moment or else I would quote something from it – will do so again.

I was going to entitle this post “Rest in peace” and then realised that I had better get used to saying “Memory eternal.” I don’t know if there’s a theological difference, but it reminded me of the chapter that I have just read of Father Schmemann, and which I shall post on more fully soon, in which he speaks memory:

The remembrance of Christ is the entry into his love, making us brothers and neighbours, “brethren” in his ministry. His life and presence in us and “among” us is certified only by our love for each other and for all whom God has sent into, has included in our life, and this means above all in the remembrance of each other and in the commemoration of each other in Christ. Therefore, in bringing his sacrifice to the altar, we create the memory of each other, we identify each other as living in Christ and being united with him and in him.

In this commemoration there is no distinction between those who live and those who have fallen asleep, for God “is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Mt 22:32). …

Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist Sacrament of the Kingdom: Sacrament of the Kingdom. (Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988) 130.

Update:  In a comment Martin has drawn attention to a more extensive obituary on the Bose website.