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Jesus A Dialogue with the Saviour

Meg: This is the second book by Lev Gilette, a monk of the eastern orthodox church, who once was a Benedictine. The first one was "A Day with Jesus".

Again, the profoundly prayerful text is posted here for an example. We learn this only by doing our own dialogue with Our Lord.

Introduction by Louis Bouyer. Then, the introduction by the Monk of the Eastern Church.

Among all the books which are published every day, we should consider as priceless those which renew for us our acquaintance with Jesus. Such books are rare. Not because a great deal is not written about Him. But because even the most scholarly research of the historian, the most profound speculations of the theologian, to say nothing of art and literature, often prove incapable of revealing Him.

The bulk of the commentaries is such that one is tempted to bow to them without even catching a glimpse of their content. And it must be avowed that when we approach them nevertheless, too often they burden us and bar our way to Him much more than they open it for us.

A book which does not confine itself to speaking about Jesus, which does not make us dizzy from a lot of tittle-tattle serving only to distract us from speaking to Him ourselves and all the more from hearing Him, is a very rare thing indeed. Yet it seems that such a book has just appeared.

It is a marvelous book originally published in French by the monks of Chevetogne, that dual-rite monastery in Belgium dedicated to the reunion of Christendom, and whose founder Dom Lambert Beauduin has only recently gone to his reward.

This little volume does not even bear the author’s name. We are only told that a monk of the Eastern Church wrote it.

But as soon as you open these pages, you will experience the same impression as you would on opening a vessel of sacred chrism in an Eastern Rite Church. You are surrounded by a heavenly fragrance whose freshness, purity and simplicity are retained in the most exquisite, indivisible mixture of countless flowers.

Some forty short meditations, without any apparent order, recapture the words and scenes of the Gospel. There is no eloquence, no dissertation, no evocation whatever to bog them down. Rather, we find always a direct contact with the soul of the Saviour who speaks to the soul of the reader. “Follow thou Me!” This statement, about which the anonymous writer of these pages has some very decisive words, pervades everything he says.

This contemplative monk has meditated and lived the Gospel (he himself intimates this to the reader) in the holy places of Judea, all along the roads of Galilee. But do not think that he is going to waste his time and ours in some romantic evocation! By simply following, as he does, the steps of Christ, he has been helped (and he helps us) to rediscover that very springing forth of the Word who touches hearts and pierces through them. From a stony heart which belongs to all ages of sinful humanity, He recreates that heart of flesh of which Ezechiel speaks.

We suspect at every page, almost at every line, a refined culture in the one who, though stripped of everything, though poor with Christ who made Himself poor, speaks in such a way (without ever raising his voice) – with such a discreet voice that Jesus Himself does not have to reject it in order to speak to us directly. The language which is so wonderfully dense and transparent is sufficient to prove it. Very quickly one becomes aware that this man has read every book. Yet these books could not hold him back, because through them, as through all things and beyond all things, he was only looking for the One whose call he had heard and which he makes us hear too.

Our pretentious and complicated apostolates create for us the false impression that the man of today cannot hear Christ without all kinds of explanations, rearrangements and especially without endless preparation. Here we have a solitary who is able to make every man hear Christ from the very first word, simply by taking His own words again, but taking them from lips where only the name of Jesus has succeeded in saying everything.

Cast aside all your ponderous, wordy books and read this one. As soon as you have opened it, your whole house, as the Gospel says, will be filled with the odor of sweetness.

Louis Bouyer, Cong. Or.

To You, Lord Jesus, I humbly dedicate these thoughts which have developed during the course of so many years, on the very roads which you have travelled in the days of Your earthly life and in the very city in which You suffered. They are the fruit of Jerusalem and of the Sea of Galilee and the fruit of almost a whole lifetime.

Why add a drop of water to that ocean of books which speak about You? I shall venture to say in all simplicity: it is because I felt that You were telling me, also, to speak about You. “Return to thy house and tell them . . .” And the possessed man whom You cured in the country of the Gerasenes went away and began to announce everything You did for him and how You had pity on him.

It was my hope that, by sharing with others what had been given to me, I would perhaps help a few souls. I have tried to say, in stuttering language, what becomes clear to me when I fixed my gaze on You and what I seemed to hear when I became silent in order to hear Your voice.

There are many things which one could expect to find here but of which I have not spoken. I only wanted to describe, O my Saviour, a few aspects of Your face, a few moments of personal conversation with You, a few phases of a very personal experience. I could not, I would not aspire to anything else. I sometimes had the impression – I ought to say it only with trepidation – that certain words, certain ideas came to me from a distance and from a height far beyond me. Lord, have pity on a poor sinner who has ventured to speak about You without having cleansed his lips with the flaming coal.

I know that my words are of no value, are nothing. The only result I wish for is to touch a few souls and to lead them to You. Lord, lead those who will read my words to the point where abandoning these pages, they will open again, or perhaps for the first time, Your Gospel, - to the point where in silence they will allow Your word to enter their hearts.