Francis Libermann:
Reviver of the Dream
For some people the future doesn't bear thinking about. It is a threatening, stifling darkness with no way out. This is how it seemed to Francis Libermann the day he was crossing the bridge near Notre Dame in Paris and felt the urge to throw himself into the Seine.
Losing and Finding God
Named Jacob by his father, the rabbi of Saverne in Alsace, he went through an identity crisis at the Talmudic School. He gave up the practice of his Jewish religion, rejected the world view inherited from his father and fashioned his own. He rejected all organised religion as well as any intervention of God in history.
He went to Paris flushed with the excitement of new discovery, but the excitement did not last. The practical demands of daily living brought an ache for something more. Jacob decided to pray again and God moved back into his life in spectacular fashion. He now had a new sense of the closeness of God, which never left him.
Jacob
became a Catholic, chose Francis as his baptismal name and entered
the seminary of Saint Sulpice. There the loving presence of Jesus
became his horizon of hope, which remained in place through daring
achievements and cruel disappointments. His father, whom he dearly
loved, found out about his conversion and wrote him a letter of
bitter reproach which reduced him to tears.
Soon after his arrival in Saint Sulpice at the age of 25 Francis was afflicted by epilepsy, which at that time put priestly ordination out of reach. Rather than dismiss him, the seminary authorities offered him a place in their house at Issy. Through no fault of his own he had become a charity case, marginalized, marked out by misfortune. At any moment he was in danger of losing control of himself to a grand mal seizure. Accepting this setback took more out of him than he was prepared to admit. His horizon of hope was the worse for wear, but it still enabled him to choose life that day he crossed the Seine.
Libermann was a survivor. He endured the great sorrow of family separation, but did not give in. He was crucified by illness, but did not despair. He faced the sorrow of having seven of the first eight missionaries he sent to Africa die and refused to crumble under accusations that all he was doing was sending Frenchmen to their deaths. And when he seemed completely washed up, he was on the threshold of the work that would take everyone by surprise. When God wanted a missionary leader Libermann was still around - with the special qualities that had developed in the dark days: courage and compassion.
