Distinguished French Photographer Reporter Becomes Orthodox Monk

In the Monastery of  St. Savva I was communicating with the language of the heart!

Here is the follow-up to an interview he gave for "Orthodox Truth," the famous French photographer Gérard Gascuel, who became Orthodox after a series of happy events starting with a professional visit to Mount Athos. Gerard, an artistic reporter, was sent by a Japanese newspaper to photograph Mount Athos and unexpectedly meets a monk who, without speaking a foreign language, chants him a hymn of the crucifixion of Christ and places him at the beginning of a road without return. He becomes a monk, then settled in Mount Athos and then departs for the monastery of Saint Savva in the Judean desert. In 1996, the French Father Jean starts a Skete in the name of St. Foy in the mountains of Cevennes in southern France, where he is currently practicing with another monk.

In the second part of the interview of the famous French reporter Gerard Gascuel who became a monk, Fr Nikolaos Douligeris, his official godfather, as Fr. Jean calls him, talks about their acquaintance with Mt. Athos and their friendship.

Father Nikolaos Douligeris helped translate the interview and spoke to us about his friendship with Father Jean. They met as laymen on Mt. Athos. Father Nikolaos remembers their encounter and describe it to us:

By the time I met him he had just donated his expensive cameras and had decided to become a monk. Even then, however, he continued to take photographs with much cheaper or even disposable cameras (with built-in film) that he bought every time he traveled around the world.  Of course his shots even then didn't lose anything from the look of what you might be looking at and seeing. That is, after all, his gift. A constant search for a living water that will quench his thirst.



Hidden beauty

And he searched for this water with all the strength of his soul, with all his being. Before reaching Mount Athos he had traveled all over the world. If you go to his official web site you will find photos from India, Burma, Egypt, China, Ethiopia, Japan, Russia, Bali, Cuba, Vietnam, Brazil. He was not like a tourist wherever he went. He wanted to live with the simple and the poor, to know God's people. He wanted to meet the "Hidden Beauty" behind the ugliness and pain that exists in the world, because that is the way that has led him and constantly leads him to God.

After this first meeting, on every pass from Athens to Mount Athos, Jerusalem, and elsewhere in the world, he spent and stayed at home for a few days. Our spiritual relationship also acquired an institutional character, since he became Orthodox in the church of Saint Andrew in Patissia, I was attended by Father Gabriel Chafos, my spiritual father. I became officially his godfather as he often likes to call me. I would say that he loved and singled out Father Gabriel (so did Father Gabriel himself) and honored him because he thought he was one of the people who influenced him decisively in his final decision to become Orthodox. By the way, Father Gabriel didn't speak English or French. Of course, Father John didn't speak a word  Greek.

The discussion revolved around the time when he learned to exist as a subordinate to his spiritual guide, Father Seraphim. I ask Father Jean how long he stayed in the monastery of Saint Savva but mostly if during that time the battles with his old self were unequal ...

 I stayed there for a total of three years. However, coming back to my place and I thought about how many things we had been deprived of: pens, flowers, absolutely no clouds, no books, no electricity ... Everything I took for granted was missing. When you miss something in the desert, you become obsessed.

The incident with coffee

One day, I was tempted to drink coffee. For two days, the thought of coffee did not let me rest, but on that particular day I was no longer suffering, I went to meet Elder: "Father I can no longer handle it, I miss coffee, I need it, I have to go to Jerusalem to buy it, otherwise I will become collapse. " Father Seraphim told me “It's not serious.” He goes to the warehouse, takes coffee, puts it in a bag, closes it - but how he closes it, that's the important thing. He closes it with tape and hands it to me formally. I bow and thank him. I go to my cell with pleasure. I boil water, but stop. Now that I have the coffee I will try to resist. And I did it without much effort: one day, two days, three days, ten days. I never drank coffee again.

"Fasting is by no means torture. Fasting digs a hole in us, for God to take root. "

Some time later I went to Paris and visited a doctor, on a health issue. "Listen, if you want to get cured, you have to obey me: "You're not allowed to drink coffee again," he told me. "I can't obey you because I don't drink coffee anymore" I replied. This made me realize that this medical advice was treating me as a toddler, giving me a command, forcing me to obey, when my spiritual father had treated us as an adult, he had given me freedom. If I wanted to renounce faith, to give up my cell for coffee, I could do it. So I realized that I didn't need coffee but something else. In the Judean wilderness - three hundred meters below sea level, with 40◦ in the shade - almost all the services take place at night, the laziness weathered. I was looking for something stimulant externally, but Father Seraphim revealed to me that the stimulant was within me. And one more thing: the monk lives ascetic, he lacks tenderness, affection. So it wasn't the need for coffee, but the lack of a friendly presence, that's what I had to deal with. Giving me a pound of coffee gave me the opportunity to embark on the great internal battle, to discover my real weaknesses. I took responsibility for the path I was taking, I was accountable to God.

In Orthodox tradition we are taught that the existence of a spiritual father constitutes spiritual health for the Christian. Yet for a man in the west, how feasible is it to catch the thread from where his ancestors had left it many years ago because of Renaissance?

Step by step I understood how a spiritual father works and I accepted it. The spiritual father, bringing forth the essential, lovingly causing internal struggles, always places his subordinate before God. In a mirror, you see yourself with his own eyes, you hear yourself in his words, you discover the unity that leads you to the unique. You realize that he really is the one who knows your weaknesses and humbly turns them into a power of holiness.

Without making him feel guilty, the Elder shows his subordinate what he is truly to God: to be and remain completely without becoming selfish, but to open himself with all that is in the Presence of God. We are used to saying that there are no more spiritual fathers and I am not tired of answering: there are no more submissive ones.

I wonder and ask directly the question "how he faced the physical constraints of ascetic life and fasting in which he was not accustomed.  Has he been bothered by the restriction of human freedom? ”And so comes Father Jean's structured response that seems to have clarified these things ...
If I make them for myself, then the restrictions cause sadness, but if my goal is the Presence of God, then they awaken me, they make me happy, because the goal makes sense. When a farmer prunes a tree, he does not do it to tear it down, but to force its juices to bear fruit. Fasting is by no means torture, it is the heart's surprise. Fasting digs a hole in us for God to take root. When fasting, I experience a lack so intense that my body is now screaming for hunger and thirst for God. There are, of course, more delicate fasts: thoughts, desires, objects, eyes. I fast with my will and remain free while fasting. When a monk is confronted with one of his weaknesses, his first reaction is positive, because he has been able to identify it. Without guilt, he confesses to his spiritual Father his weakness and states his desire to transform it: "Father, I know where unity has been broken, help me to make rectify."

Before we say goodbye, our translator, Father Nikolaos, confided in us a detail of the life of the Orthodox French priest who would constitute a "criminal" omission not to be recorded: Father Seraphim, Abbot and Spiritual Father of Father Jean in the monastery of St. Savva, did not speak a word of English or French, and Father Jean until today can not speak Greek. When we asked him, "but for three years you stayed there, how did you communicate?" Absolutely naturally he replied: "With the language of the heart."
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Sophia Chatzi
Published in the newspaper

ORTHODOXI ALITHIA, 13.02.2019