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In 1942, a group of Jesuits, including the future cardinals Jean Danielou and Henri de Lubac, created, or more exactly invented, a new series of books, to which they gave the title Sources Chrétiennes : Christian sources whence to derive spiritual food and, at the same time, sources of Christianity in which to find the Christian origins and roots of Europe. In the context of the German occupation of France and the persecution of the Jews supported by the French puppet government of Vichy, the first volume was symbolically the Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa, which ran into problems with the censorship. Concurrently the same group of Jesuits organized the spiritual resistance to Nazism through the clandestine publication Témoignage chrétien . The aim of the new series was to publish texts by the great Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church to demonstrate that the Christian intelligence did not abdicate in the fact of that regime. In 2006, 63 years later, the same series, conceived by the Jesuits and published by the publishing house of the Dominicans, the Editions du Cerf, hence the result of cooperation between two great religious congregations, published its 500th volume. That is a cultural, publishing, spiritual, ecclesial and also ecumenical event. The symbolic value, as in 1942, is very important: the 500th book in the series is the treatise De unitate Ecclesiae, written by Bishop Cyprian of Carthage, who wanted to bear witness – in the 3rd century, a time of persecution and crisis – to the unity of the Church willed by God. Sources Chrétiennes builds a bridge between East and West, through the diffusion of texts that represent an intellectual heritage that provided the foundation of Christian Europe and also a cultural heritage of humanity as a whole, through the vision of the human person transmitted by the Fathers. This series, which incorporates not only Greek and Latin authors, but also Syriac, Coptic and Armenian sources, permits us to see and understand our roots. The publication of the 500th volume in the series is also the occasion for important ecumenical events that underline the importance of the dual foundation of Christianity in the East and in the West, its ability to breath with both lungs, as Pope John Paul II repeatedly pointed out. In March, a first meeting was held in Paris with the Rev. Samuel Kobia, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC). On 17 June, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk will be in Lyon to visit the Institute of Sources Chrétiennes, which is responsible for the scientific preparation of the volumes, and to announce the start of the Russian translation of the books in the series with their full critical apparatus. It’s an important event in the history of the relations between the Christian Churches, and in the promotion of mutual knowledge between two worlds that have for too long been separated. It’s a major step towards understanding each other. Other events are planned in Moscow and Athens. The Greek translation is due to begin in 2007. The event is all the more important because the Fathers represent a secure basis not only for the knowledge of Christianity, but also to understand our own time which would like to sideline God. The Fathers are witnesses and masters of great actuality because they lived in a world in which they formed a minority, and even when the Roman Empire officially became Christian they were always forced to justify their faith. The 500 volumes of the Sources Chrétiennes enable us to trace our way back to the sources in order to found the future anew.
