Before he was killed in Algeria's civil war in the 1990s, Dom Christian de Chergé, a Trappist monk, wrote a final testament:
My life is not worth more than any other—not less, not more. Nor am I an innocent child. I have lived long enough to know that I, too, am an accomplice of the evil that seems to prevail in the world around, even that which might lash out blindly at me. If the moment comes, I would hope to have the presence of mind, and the time, to ask for God’s pardon and for that of my fellowman, and, at the same time, to pardon in all sincerity he who would attack me.
Terrance W. Klein contemplates his message on the tenth anniversary of 9/11:
Dom Christian enunciated the deepest meaning of forgiveness. We forgive not only because God asks it of us, not only because we must find released from the burdens of hatred and revenge, but because we recognize that we are not innocent, that we, too, as Dom Christian wrote, are accomplices “of the evil that seems to prevail in the world around.” …
In the end, we must forgive, as Christ forgave from the cross, because we cannot allow ourselves, or our world, to be swept away in waves of hatred and sin. Standing fast for the good, accepting evil rather than returning it, is the only way the tides of injustice can be turned. We choose life rather than revenge, because choosing life can never be postponed. We can’t hate first and choose life later. Those paths diverge at the foot of the cross, in the very face of the God who is life.
Earlier discussion of the film, Of Gods And Men, based on the monks' lives here.
The Dish 