All Is Grace_ A Ragamuffin Memoir - Brennan Manning [24]
Later, Dominique learned he had inoperable cancer and asked permission to relocate from Saint-Rémy to Paris, where he had close family and relatives. In a move totally unsurprising to those of us who knew him, he took a job as a night watchman in a nearby factory, 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., the graveyard shift. The story goes that as Dominique would travel home each morning following his shift, he would visit the park across the street from his house, an area filled with what society calls “the riffraff”: winos, the old and young and homeless, losers. My good friend traded in his old habit for a new one, that of passing out candy to the least of these, listening to their stories, and always leaving them with good news, words I’d heard a hundred times: “Jesus Christ is crazy about you. He loves you just as you are, not as you should be.”
One morning marked the end of Dominique’s graveyard shifts. Friends discovered his body on the floor of his flat. The cause of death was determined to be a heart attack. I believe, however, that Dominique died of just the opposite—his was a heart surrender. Here was a man who had surrendered, who had given pieces of his heart to others for a lifetime: a good word here, a gentle touch there, an encouragement always. Dominique’s journal was found with this final entry:
All that is not the love of God has no meaning for me. I can truthfully say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my word and witness. If He wants it to, my life will bear fruit through my prayers and sacrifices. But the usefulness of my life is His concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that.
In Little Brothers fashion, Dominique’s body was transported down to Saint-Rémy, no embalming. His body was then laid out on a table with a candle at each end. The best phrase I can think of to describe the number of people who came to pay their respects and honor this man is “a great throng.” Two of the Little Brothers constructed a simple coffin out of wood, and Dominique’s earthly body was buried.
Many times over the years I’ve wondered why I had the privilege of being friends with Dominique Voillaume, of having my life tenderized by this unsung hero, of being one of thousands at his wake to pause momentarily between the borders of candles and look upon his face. I don’t completely know. I do know that his message to me—“It’s okay not to be okay”—was a seed that germinated in my later preaching ministry; in fact, it informed everything I wrote and spoke about for more than forty years. Some people might say the line “God loves you as you are, not as you should be” is synonymous with the name Brennan Manning. I would say they’re right, but they should know that the truth behind those words was impressed upon me by the life of a man who had experienced it himself. I do know that much. But beyond that, je ne comprends pas—I don’t understand.
Notes
1 Jean-Jacques Antier, Charles de Foucauld (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999), 104.
2 Carlo Carretto, Letters from the Desert (New York: Orbis, 2002), xi.
10
After almost two years with the Little Brothers of Jesus in Europe, my internal resistance was too much. I had reached my “80 percent,” and it was time to move on to more. I wrote a letter to the Little Brothers, trying to describe my decision. The leader at the time was a generous man named Rene Page. He told me that my letter moved him, and he invited me to the headquarters in Marseille. He also invited four of my closest friends from our novitiate year. We spent a week in prayer and discernment, asking God to reveal my future life in Christ. On the seventh day, we reached a unanimous answer. Ministry was to be a vital dimension in my life, and to neglect it by staying with the Little Brothers would be to run the risk of never becoming myself. To this day, I am so glad I was surrounded by others who could confirm that decision. In contrast to other big decisions I’d made, like entering the