Abhishiktananda’s Theology of Awakening Fausto Gianfreda, S.J. Abstract: The author examines the thought of the French Benedictine theologian Henri Le Saux, He went to India and, after a life-changing experience of advaita—the nonduality of ultimate reality—Le Saux took the Sanskrit name Abhishiktananda and proceeded to explore in his many writings the relationship between Hindu and Catholic accounts of spiritual practice and the nature of the divine. He wrote of the necessity of Christian advaita and identified as the ideal Jesus’ constant awareness of being one with God. He urged priests to become spiritual teachers who could “lead souls to an awakening of the Father in Christ.”
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1. Introduction
bhishiktananda (the French Benedictine Henri Le Saux, 1910–73) was a true theologian. The words he spoke were born of the silence of contemplation. He criticized Christian theology and its effort to speculate on and systematize deep mysteries. Nevertheless, in his books about the relationship between Christian faith and Hinduism, he tried to explain the meaning of his own spiritual journey. His diary is full of theological reflections on the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Church and the sacraments. In trying to explain—first of all to himself and then to others—the results of his spiritual research, he developed his own Christian theology in dialogue with his experience of Hinduism. Abhishiktananda wrote twelve books, many articles and thousands of letters. His Spiritual Diary is a testimony to his struggles, contradictions and tensions. Marie-Madeleine Davy writes of the mystical contradiction of a man who belonged to silence and at the same time wrote about his experience: Henri Le Saux celebrated silence by means of words, in the manner of Simeon the Theologian, whose writings seem prolific in the extreme, or in the manner of Meister Eckhart, who scolded theologians for talking ISSUE
8, OCTOBER 2008
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