“I see death as a beautiful encounter, a celebration where the night will no longer exist, where the night will be white because in addition to Vadim, Barclay, Gérard Philipe, and all the rare beings who I miss terribly, I will see God face to face, he of whom I spoke so badly but whom I sought so much! We are passing through and in everything we must consider the end! », said Robert Hossein to me, during our interviews on faith, published four years ago. Victim of the coronavirus, the great actor, director, director and screenwriter, left us on the last day of this terrible year 2020, marked by a pandemic which sowed the death of tens of thousands of people. While we are still subject to draconian rules of social distancing, would this convert inhabited by the desire for God and passionate about human fraternity leave us a message for 2021? I am convinced of this, having had the honor of being his friend and of collecting his ultimate confidences. From our long exchanges, it emerges that his conversion resembled a “long walk made of falls and bruises”. “Thank you, he said, don’t talk about sudden conversion, I’m going to get angry, I hate those who trade in their “conversion”, going to sell their books from conference to conference under the pretext of testifying… I believe that God acts in us patiently , in time, in small steps. »
“I like the image of the balloon rising because we let go of ballast: we have to lighten up to gain availability to others and to the divine work. »
Everything began for him with a departure experienced as a rebirth when, in his forties, he went to create a popular theater in Reims, leaving behind him a life of society life. Convinced, like Dostoyevsky, that beauty in art will save the world, he wanted to put culture within everyone’s reach, so that it would open hearts. “My seven years in Reims were a break with the superficial life I had before in Paris. Every day crossing the smile of the angel of the cathedral, I understood that God believed in me, and even that he lived in me; I tasted his interior presence, I put myself at his disposal”, he told me. With Candice, his wife whose deep life of faith led him to ask for baptism at the age of more than 50, in 1980, he walked intensely in a spiritual perspective. “I like the image of the balloon rising because we let go of ballast: we have to lighten up to gain availability to others and to the divine work. So I advanced towards baptism, to let Christ strip me of myself and simplify me, take all the space so that I fully become a man, son of God, like him. »
Candice and Robert talked a lot about Charles de Foucauld, “this debauched soldier who made orgies before leaving for the desert, among the most distant and the poorest, for the love of all humanity”. Touched by the example of kindness and humility of Charles de Foucauld, Robert Hossein also wanted “to love to the extreme”. He understood that it was in the theater that he had to continue to exercise his gifts “to awaken people’s sense of transcendence”. Thus was born his desire to stage the life of Jesus, to “bringing the Gospel of Christ into the public arena, outside parish circles”. “There was an urgent need to get the Good Lord out of the sacristies where the Church’s adversaries had locked him up for two centuries, with the tragic complicity of certain clerics who were more attached to the value of their embroidered chasubles than to the person of Christ. , this nomad dressed like everyone else whose smile heals hearts even before he speaks”, launched Hossein in the tone of the prophets.
” Bringing the Gospel of Christ into the public arena, outside of parish circles (…) It was urgent to get the Good Lord out of the sacristies. »
A man named Jesus, in 1983, at the Palais des Sports in Paris, was a huge success with 700,000 spectators in nearly 200 performances – it is in the Guinness Book of Records – then it was Jesus was his name, in 1991, and jesus the resurrection in 2000, still at the Palais des Sports. With A woman named Mary, in Lourdes in 2011, Robert Hossein revived this show by adapting it to the message delivered by the Virgin to Bernadette, allowing thousands of sick people to experience the performance for free, while it was broadcast live on a public television channel on a Saturday night, at prime time. “To be a Christian is to be conquered by Christ and to be freed from the narrow framework of a single culture, a single religion, a single nation! My dream now is to put on an ecumenical show about Jesus, both in Rome and in Moscow, to show the will for reconciliation between Catholics and Orthodox,” he confided to me at the end of his life. He wrote about it ” a love letter “ to the pope, after Francis’ historic meeting with Patriarch Kirill in Cuba. His last energies were always directed towards this project.
Beyond the unforgettable shows that have uplifted our souls, Robert Hossein’s message is a call to promote universal fraternity, to bring out sources of love at the heart of our human relationships. His testament, which I have heard him repeat several times, can be found in these few words shouted out in Lourdes during the performance on Marie: “Let’s get out of our mediocrities, because if we don’t have the power to heal, we have the power to love, help and share, before it’s too late! »
To read :
I believe in man because I believe in God, by Robert Hossein, with François Vayne, Plon-Presses de la Renaissance, €14.90.