The funeral homily of Jean

We will no longer see him roaming this neighborhood with his voluntary stride, mane in the wind like the flamboyant steed he sang about in the ballad of the horse Mallet. He left this shore where we are and where we knew him to sail towards a shore both near and far, mysterious and known.

Jean-Paul weathered the storm of illness. Without the eyes of faith, faith triumphed over him forever. But at the time of this last passage, you chose to turn to the Church, the vessel of Peter, the apostle, to accompany him. And it is the Church, damaged, shaken, which takes the foaming water of the waves, which welcomes you this afternoon. It often seems incapable of guaranteeing us safe navigation in the face of the storms of our times and our personal lives. And yet, it does not leak! Jesus is asleep aft but can be awakened by the insistent prayer of those in the ship to calm the storm caused by the Ankou and the fear that accompanies it, as in this macabre dance of the chapel of Kernascléden.

John Paul’s childlike faith experienced many storms and Jesus could seem to be sleeping in the boat of his life. But this afternoon, our prayer can awaken Christ. He can help us to reread the life of Jean-Paul with His eyes as the Savior of every man and of the whole man.

We can remember that Jean-Paul sailed as a crew: there are those whose artistic talent and crowd animator made him known: Jean, Jean-Louis and all the other musicians of Tri Yann. And then there were also those crew members who were not in the spotlight but who were no less important to Jean-Paul: you, Rita, you, his family and his artist friends, technicians of the shadow, traveling companions… Not to mention the Breton people and all those who have vibrated to the sound of the soniou, the gwerziou that Jean-Paul has sung during all these years, all those who understand that belonging to a land, a country , is not made to withdraw into oneself but to be shared. Because human solidarity, and this is even more true from a Catholic Christian point of view, calls for giving: everything that is yours is mine and everything that is mine is yours. And when I sing Brittany, I sing the whole earth. “Brittany is universe” as Alan Stivell would say…

In this church, we can admire the superb works created by a great Breton artist of the 20th century: Jean FREOUR. He was a painter and sculptor. He was decorated with the ermine collar like Jean-Paul.

He was a member of the seiz vreur, a school of Breton artists who wanted to unite their art and their Christian faith. Jean explained to me one day what constituted for him the Breton soul. It was a paradox illustrated by the granite stone. This is rough and rough in its natural state but can become very soft when polished. Jean-Paul illustrated this well. A committed man, capable of bloodshed when we touched on values ​​that mattered to him, a perfectionist and sometimes uncompromising for the love of his profession as an artist, he also showed himself to be deeply humble and generous, particularly with those who had known the painful experience from jail. His recognizable voice among a thousand, soft, warm and pure moved deeply, especially when he harmoniously handled the rise in the heights and the power. He liked to combine the “joyful sadness” that often fills our Celtic soul nostalgic for a lost paradise…

This paradox uniting two aspects of his personality was inscribed in his double first name whose patron saints represent two very different characters and models of holiness: Saint John and Saint Paul. John, the mystical apostle who bends over the heart of Christ to receive from it the treasures of gentleness and humility. Paul, the adventurous missionary, who turned resolutely towards the pagans of his time to share with them his treasure, the Gospel of Salvation, without denying any of his Jewish roots.

In this paradox, Jean-Paul was undoubtedly able to find himself while seeking to articulate his love of Brittany, – of all Brittany, brittophone and welsh, that which awaits its reunification, from Ouessant to Clisson, of its language and its culture long despised and fought against, and his desire for universal fraternity which gave him a taste for enrichment from elsewhere.

The philosopher Simone WEIL described this dynamic very well, I quote her:

“Rooting is perhaps the most important and most misunderstood need of the human soul. It is one of the most difficult to define. A human being has a root through his real, active and natural participation in the existence of a community which keeps alive certain treasures of the past and certain presentiments of the future. Natural participation that is to say brought automatically by the place, the birth, the profession, the entourage. Every human being needs to have multiple roots. He needs to receive almost all of his moral, intellectual and spiritual life through the mediums of which he is a natural part. Exchanges of influence between very different backgrounds are no less essential than taking root in the natural environment. But a given environment must receive an external influence not as a contribution, but as a stimulus which makes its own life more intense. It should feed on external contributions only after having digested them, and the individuals who compose it should only receive them through it. When a painter of real value goes to a museum, his originality is confirmed. It must be the same for the various populations of the terrestrial globe and the different social environments. »

Rootedness therefore inscribes the human person both in the history and future of a community (horizontal and vertical axis but also diagonal through school or work) and in its own history and its own future (horizontal, diagonal and vertical axis).

Rootedness allows us to deploy our originality from within ourselves, that is to say what makes each person a unique and creative person, within a group where we have our place. This was true for Jean-Paul in his family, in Tri Yann’s group.

The awareness of our originality contributes powerfully to the consistency of our being and to its deployment.

This is how works of art are born, as Rilke explains to the young man who asks him how one becomes a poet: a work of art arises as a necessity (“I cannot do otherwise”) from the moment where one is sufficiently nourished by one’s environment and connected to one’s inner source.

This interior life is the prerequisite for the spiritual life which can in turn unfold in a religious life when we take the immanent and transcendent act of faith that we are made to live for others and for the Wholly Other.

Dear Jean-Paul, you sang with your companions, in May 1985, during a famous concert held in the Paul Fort hall, the ballad of the horse Mallet… from which I retain these phrases which resonate particularly on this day of your putting into Heaven, that that we will sing with faith and hope presently: Ar Baradoz.

Silver horse, flaming steed, reborn in the new century that awaits you,

John Paul, may the Lord welcome you, you flamboyant steed, and may the eternal life that the Risen Christ promises us open before you! For, we also believe, those who have fallen asleep, God, through Jesus, will take them with him.

May you sing a new song for the Lord! A song that would be called: The city that I loved so much: it will no longer be Orvault but the heavenly Jerusalem.

Kerc’hfaou
Di Gwener 23 a viz Kerzu 2022