Another Chevrot: The Woman at the Well: "The Well of Life"

Scepter Publishers, which also published/sells my book Supremacy and Survival, publishes several works by Monsignor Georges Chevrot (1879-1958). He was pastor of Saint Francis Xavier from 1930 to 1958 (priests have long tenures there!) and preached during Lent at Notre Dame de Paris in 1938, 1939, and 1940 and received the Medaille de la Resistance Francaise for his efforts during German occupation of Paris during World War II. 

I've now purchased/read three of his works: The Beatitudes: How God Saves Us, The Easter Impact: How the Resurrection Restores and Strengthens Our Faith, and The Well of Life.

I recommended The Beatitudes for the Son Rise Morning Show's Summer reading lists in June last year, and mentioned The Easter Impact earlier this month!

In The Well of Life, Monsignor Chevrot goes through the story of the woman at well of Sychar verse by verse, offering commentary on the dialogue between Our Lord and Saint Photina. As Scepter describes it:

This book leads the reader to understand in a deeper way the meaning of the unusual encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacobs’ well. It starts in a casual conversation between a thirsty traveler and a woman engaged in the ordinary work of drawing water from the town well. From her questions about the “living water” that the Lord tries to explain, her soul’s blind and ignorant condition is only penetrated by Jesus’ straightforward questioning about her married life. In her sincerity she freely admits the truth. In short order she enthusiastically reaches out to her entire village, bringing them rushing to the feet of Christ and to their conversion to his message of universal salvation.

Chevrot adds further commentary and details which show that something extraordinarily new is taking place. Sinful but repentant people, not only the faithful and justified, are now also entrusted with spreading the new kingdom of Christ. In other words, everyone is called to holiness. Salvation is not only for the just, but also for the world’s low lifes. The book’s 24 chapters tackle prejudice, of what use is religion, not being scandalized, confession of sins, Christian obedience, optimism, witnessing in ordinary circumstances to Christ, and the experience of faith and how it changes peoples and societies.

Originally translated from French and published in English by Scepter in the 1950s. This book is newly edited and released again after an absence of 60 years.

Table of Contents, including chapters, subheads, and quotations:

Introduction

1. Tired (John 4:6)

    A School of Humility

2. Providential Meetings (John 4:7)

    Freeing Ourselves from Evil

3. The First Steps (John 4:7)

    Penetrating Souls

4. Prejudice (4:9)

5. The Gift of God (4:10)

6. Who It Is (4:10):

    In Jesus Christ, the two natures form a single person in such a unity that the solder which joins them cannot be seen. Jesus is fully God and also fully man. He teaches us both the human knowledge of God, and the divine knowledge of man, in showing man as God conceives him and wishes him to be. Christ is our brother without sin, you will object. Yes, without sin, because it is not essential to sin in order to be a man. . . . As man, he can reveal to us what we are, not because he was a good and just man whom the admiration of his fellows later defined but because he is God made man. . . .

    How consoling it is to consider our humanity through him!

(cf. Pope St. Leo the Great on the Incarnation)

    The Duty of the Normal Man

    Knowing Our True Selves

7. Our Need for God (4:11-14)

8. What Good is Religion? (4:15)

    Source of Progress

    Cooperation with God's Gifts

9. The Knowledge of Sin (4:16-19)

     Advancing Toward Sanctity

10. The New Worship (4:20-22)

    Photina points to Mount Gerizim on which the temple of Manassas had been built. Even after the Jewish high priest John Hyrcanus had destroyed it, the Samaritans had continued to come to this place to offer ritual sacrifice.

11. Unity in Truth (4:22)

    No compromise

12. Adoration in Spirit and in Truth (4:23-24)

13. The Messiah's Work (4:25-26)

    Apostolate is Not Optional

14. Do Not Be Shocked (4:27)

15. God's Pardon (4:28-30)

16. Confession of Our Sins (4:29)

    Confession . . . satisfies man's nature and God's rights at the same time. . . . This is why Jesus brought the forgiveness of heaven to earth and left it there.  

    Proof of Regret

    Perfection is a drawn-out business.    
17. Our Reason for Living (4:31-34)

    Principle of Unity

18. Christian Obedience (4:34)

    A Higher Plane

19. Christian Optimism (4:35)

    Apostles in the World

20. Sowers and Reapers (4:36-38)

    God Chooses Us to Help Him

21. Witnesses to Christ (4:39)

    The unexpected conversion of the village of Sichar made an unforgettable impression on the disciples.

22. Prayer and Faith (4:40-41)

23. Experience of the Faith (4:42)

    Personal Influence of Jesus

24. The Savior of the World (4:42)

    Interior Reform

    Personal Sin

Epilogue: The Supreme Testimony

    (the martyrdom of St. Photina and her sons Joseph and Victor celebrated on March 20)

    

I finished the book on March 20! I recommend The Well of Life highly: it offers scriptural exegesis, doctrinal instruction, and spiritual counsel.

Preview: Summer Reading Suggestions on Monday

Some regulars on the Son Rise Morning Show have been offering their summer reading suggestions and I offered to make mine on Monday, June 30. As usual, I'll be on the air about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here

I have two novels and one spiritual reading book to recommend.

The first novel is The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of the Anne of Avonlea novels. It's kind of a Cinderella story. Valency, a spinster, finally leaves her family home (because she's been told she's dying), takes care of a young girl dying of tuberculosis (who's been ostracized by the community), and then asks a man, Barney Snaith (whom her family suspect of some horrible past) to marry her. He marries her, perhaps out of pity--she does tell him she loves him--knowing she has but a year to live, as the doctor wrote to her.

"The Blue Castle" has been Valency's imaginary refuge within her family life, where she's been the drudge and disappointment because of her spinsterhood, and she finds that refuge with Barney as they become friends and grow to love each other. Her other great pleasure has been reading books about nature by John Foster, whom Barney rejects as an expert. 

Montgomery fills the book with descriptions of the forest and wildlife surrounding Valency's real Blue Castle, a cabin on an island in a lake, a refuge for both of them.

I won't give away the denouement of course, but it was a moving novel for me to read, especially as it depicted marital love growing from friendship--and a couple who can enjoy sitting together in silent companionship.

The second novel is The Dry Wood by Caryll Houselander, better known as a spiritual writer and mystic. It is part of the Catholic Women Writers series from the Catholic University of America Press. It is her only novel "set in a post-war London Docklands parish. There a motley group of lost souls are mourning the death of their saintly priest and hoping for the miraculous healing of a vulnerable child whose gentleness in the face of suffering brings conversion to them all in surprising and unexpected ways."

As the editors of the series, Bonnie Lander Johnson and Julia Meszaros, comment in the introduction, The Dry Wood is both very experimental and very Catholic: you can almost smell the incense and hear the bells when Houselander describes a Benediction service (one detail: the congregation watching the altar server light each of the candles on the Altar with great attention!). After starting one story about the deceased parish priest and hopes for the cure of child with painful birth defects, she starts telling about new characters with new plots and incidents. There's more exposition and description than action in some ways, but the narrative still drives forward.

If you've read some of Houselander's spiritual writing, you'll recognize her characteristic insight that we should see Christ's image in everyone, not just those who seem virtuous or pious. One character, Rose O'Shane, works hard, practices great charity, but also drinks a bit too much; she could be judged as not worthy of regard, but Houselander reveals her holiness and helps us see the Christ in her. It's beautifully written and I can't be tempted to share the ending because I haven't finished it as of today.

The spiritual work I recommend is by an author, Pere Georges Chevrot of Paris, I just discovered this Easter when a friend and I read and discussed The Easter Impact: How the Resurrection Restores and Strengthens Our Faith. So I obtained and just finished The Beatitudes: How God Saves Us:

This is a revised edition of The Eight Beatitudes, published by Scepter Dublin in 1959.

Our duty as Christians is not only to recognize the deep spiritual needs of our world today, but to help solve them through our own dedication to the Beatitudes. This new edition of French author George Chevrot’s THE BEATITUDES lays out in dramatic detail the extraordinary impact that the message of Jesus Christ had on the first witnesses to his public preaching which became known as the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus calmly lays out a radical program of personal reform, contrary to every experience and teaching up to then. Happiness comes to those who do not seek themselves, but the needs of others. We should not seek to be happy, but blessed, and the key lies in direct service to others.

Above all other considerations, the Beatitudes impose a program of personal struggle which represents the foundation of Christian life. Only when these teachings are lived will society also reflect that Christian life.

In the chapter on "Blessed are the peacemakers", Chevrot offers this fascinating connection: "The seventh Beatitude is like a touchstone which will join the Sermon on the Mount with the Discourse after the Last Supper . . . " (p. 123) as he explicates " . . . the peacemaking mission with which he entrusted us". (p.124) Chevrot matches two of Jesus's statements which we can think are contradictory:

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you." (John 14:27) AND "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:24). 

Then Chevrot points out, He didn't say he brought "war" instead of "peace". He said He brought a "sword": the efforts, choices, and renunciations that will cost us to create peace. Because peace doesn't mean the absence of conflict: it may take some conflict to create peace.

And in the chapter on the Eighth Beatitude, there's an incredible passage on Pilate's "Ecce Homo" presentation, as the Procurator believes Jesus is innocent, but the Elites countermand his attempt at mercy!

As my friend and I agreed when we read The Easter Impact, Chevrot offers unique insights in the support of practical counsel for the Christian life.