Today at noon, the brothers of the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem gathered to mark the dies natalis (the day of his birth into heaven) of Father Marie-Joseph Lagrange, founder of the École, who died on 10 March 1938.

In view of the current emergency situation, the commemorative Mass was celebrated at noon in the shelter used by the community in the event of an alert. The celebration was presided over by the prior, Fr Stanisław Gurgul, and the homily in remembrance of the life and work of Father Lagrange was preached by Fr Olivier-Thomas Venard.

Behind the altar, a recently restored photographic portrait of Father Lagrange was displayed. It will soon be installed beside the side altar of Saint Jerome in the Basilica of Saint Stephen.

We also present here to our readers the full text of the homily delivered on this occasion. The text below is an English translation of the homily.

Homily of Fr Olivier-Thomas Venard OP

to honour the memory of our founder,
Fr Marie-Joseph Lagrange OP
10 March 2026, anniversary of his birth into heaven

Our prior, Fr Stanislaw Gurgul, wished that on this anniversary of his being called to God we should recall the memory of Fr Marie-Joseph Lagrange, the founder of our beloved École.

On this seventy-eighth anniversary of the death of Fr Marie-Joseph Lagrange: “Let us now praise famous men” (Sir 44:1), the panegyric of one whom we hope one day to see beatified and given as an example to the whole Church. Marie-Joseph Lagrange was a hero of science, of patience, of conscience and of trust.

At a time when various discoveries from the archaeological and historical sciences seemed to threaten the Christian tradition, Marie-Joseph Lagrange was first of all a hero of science. Rather than being content with arguments from authority — the weakest in what reason can attain — he decided to learn, to study and to research in order to answer questions where they arose: textual criticism, grammar and ancient history.

“Facts — let us look at the facts, and let us not forget that it is biblical facts which must prevail over our reasons of convenience and our habits of mind” (MH 82).

He cultivated the asceticism of study. Formed in Dominican life in the tradition of austere observance that Fr Cormier had impressed upon the Province of Toulouse, Fr Lagrange worried that in the convent of Jerusalem the austerities of rising in the night, fasting and abstinence were not possible. He discovered that the true asceticism is that which corresponds to one’s personal vocation.

During the retreat of 1895 he wrote the following in his journal:

“May I work only out of love, without any desire to learn what is not useful for salvation. […] Practise the discipline of the mind. Be very strict with regard to all useless reading — newspapers, journals… As far as possible, read with pen in hand for reviews or notes on Scripture, analyses that may be useful. And seek recreation in prayer.”

What a model for us!

The result was more than nineteen thousand printed pages, if my memory is correct, which our colleague and friend Fr Maurice Gilbert, an eminent Jesuit biblical scholar, read in their entirety as doctrinal censor for the cause of canonisation — as an act of penance, he said — for the persecutions that his Jesuit confrères inflicted upon the poor Fr Lagrange, and which would take too long to enumerate here.

For the results of his studies did not please everyone, particularly those who would have liked the work of a priest to be marked by the “pious sweeteners” he detested, dedicated as he was to establishing the “biblical facts”, sometimes surprising for those attached to pious legends, but necessary for the religion of the Incarnate Word, who himself said that he is the king of those who seek the truth.

In his own words:

“We would not wish that souls should be lost for refusing their assent to what the Church does not ask them to believe” (RB 6, 1897, 341–79).

In doing so he carried out discernments in every direction that have lost none of their relevance. It is enough to quote these few lines from his famous Historical Method, written more than 120 years ago:

“The first condition for practising a sound historical method is to ask of history only what it can give; and when one has measured its gaps and its insufficiencies […] one can only thank God for having placed Holy Scripture and the whole system of faith in a region that depends no more exclusively upon history than upon philosophy” (MH 15).

Marie-Joseph Lagrange was a hero of patience — of endurance and resilience: even after his death he endured persecution.

While Pope Leo XIII had encouraged him to found the École, his successors were suspicious and went so far as to forbid him to publish on certain subjects or to work in certain areas. Even when Pius XII paid tribute to the work of Fr Lagrange in his great biblical encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu, it was nevertheless without naming him.

To the point that Archbishop Sambi, former Apostolic Delegate in Israel-Palestine, once told us here that Fr Lagrange experienced the trial of living too early among people who died too late.

He lived these trials under the gaze of God, as mortifications that sanctified him. Let us listen again to his journal in 1897:

“In the apostolic and scholarly life one thinks one can dispense with many mortifications […], but Our Lord is accustomed to compensate for this by criticisms, reproaches and injustices from the world or even from religious: we must rejoice that he does not leave us without his Cross.”

In all these trials Fr Marie-Joseph was also a hero of conscience: he knew how to obey both the legitimate authorities of the Church and the imperatives of his conscience enlightened by his studies.

— The ecclesiastical authorities, because, as he himself writes:

“We follow an excellent method by practising criticism without ever losing sight of the authority of the Church, because the very rule of criticism is to take account of the milieu, and the Church is precisely the milieu in which Scripture appeared” (MH 19).

— And the authority of his conscience, for he never called true what he had established to be false, nor the reverse in order to please some ignorant authority; but neither did he disobey when that authority was legitimate: he left his work unpublished, or proposed to change his field of study.

What allowed him to stand on this narrow ridge of the true seekers of truth was his love for Christ, nourished by the liturgy.

Let us listen again, on page 2 of the first issue of the Revue biblique:

“I love to hear the Gospel sung by the deacon at the ambo, amid the clouds of incense: the words then penetrate my soul more deeply than when I encounter them in a journal discussion.”

The learning of Fr Lagrange was not the cold science of a forensic doctor dissecting the text on his table with little concern for the real Presence that pulses within it. It was a lived science, conscious of the consequences of his work for the souls of those less learned, whom he wished to strengthen in faith and in trust in God and in the Church.

For Fr Marie-Joseph Lagrange was finally a hero of trust: in Providence, in his brothers who would not abandon him (even the Blessed Fr Cormier, Master of the Order, severe though he was, defended him before St Pius X), and above all in Jesus, whose love was the fixed point of all his work.

The work of Fr Lagrange contains a secret that has still not been sufficiently emphasised: his safeguard against all relativism was not some bourgeois moderation against the “excesses” of criticism, but a profound conviction which he calls “the fundamental dogma of the divinity of Jesus” (MH 28), and which is a lived spiritual experience in the line of St Thomas Aquinas and the masters of the French school of spirituality.

When he speaks of it, his language becomes almost Anselmian:

“Religion aims to bring us closer to God; the most perfect is that which unites us to him most fully. When the union is such that the mind can conceive nothing more intimate, we have reached the absolute as far as man is capable of sharing in it. What our Catholic religion proposes for us to believe is that God united himself to the human race through the Incarnation, that he unites himself to us through the Eucharist and through grace, in order to unite us to himself in glory. It seems that it is enough to state these things to recognise that it is impossible to go further in the religious order” (cf. MH 5).

As a true Dominican, Fr Lagrange never separated prayer from study. During the last three years of his life, at Saint-Maximin, he would go before the grotto of Lourdes to recite the prayer “O Jesus living in Mary”, received from his teachers at Saint-Sulpice and placed at the beginning of his Gospel according to Saint Matthew:

“O Jesus living in Mary, come and live in your servants, in the spirit of your holiness, in the fullness of your strength, in the perfection of your ways, in the truth of your virtues, in the communion of your mysteries. Rule over every hostile power within us by your Spirit and for the glory of the Father. Amen.”

Fr Olivier-Thomas Venard OP

Prayer for the glorification of the Servant of God Fr Marie-Joseph Lagrange, in English

As of Monday 9 March, we are pleased to announce the gradual reopening of the library to non-resident researchers, subject to a commitment to comply strictly with the security instructions, in particular by proceeding immediately to the shelter as soon as the pre-alert is sounded.

Due to the state of emergency, the EBAF library is closed to non-residents.

It will reopen as soon as the security measures are lifted by the Home Front Command.

Thank you for your understanding.

JERUSALEM — As the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran early Saturday, the Dominican friars of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem received a government alert during morning prayer directing them to take shelter.

“So to make it short, to make short a long story, this morning we received an alert just getting out of the morning prayer,” said fr. Olivier Poquillon, OP, director of the École Biblique. “So here you have on your cell phone a system, the government is asking you to go to the shelter. So we went to the shelter all together.”

The alert followed what fr. Olivier described as “a preventive attack on Iran with the help of the US,” launched by the State of Israel amid fears of retaliation.

The École, located in East Jerusalem, houses approximately 50 people, including friars, Polish sisters, students and researchers from multiple countries. “It’s a big house with different backgrounds,” he said. Despite the escalation, the community continued its academic work. “We went down and we continued to study because here people are coming to study, to study the Bible.”

The escalation marks another chapter in what fr. Olivier called “the third year of this war,” following the October 7 attacks and the broader regional conflict. The École had recently resumed normal activity, hosting researchers and a canonical visitation by the Master of the Order.

Founded in the 19th century, the École has operated under multiple political authorities. “Our mission here in Jerusalem started in the 19th century. So it is the fourth government we are under,” he said. “We started under the Ottomans, then we had the British, then we had the Jordanians, and now we’ve got the state of Israel, but we are in East Jerusalem, meaning that according to international law, it is a Palestinian territory. So it’s a complex situation, like everything in the Middle East.”

‘Our side is the side of humanity’

Fr. Olivier emphasized that the community does not take political sides. “Often we are requested to take side by the different actors,” he said. “But as Christians, our side is the side of humanity, especially of the weakest. This is the social doctrine of the church.” While the École is “an academic institution, open to all with a French background,” he said, “we don’t want to take side on the political debate, but on the humanitarian and anthropological one.”

After three years of conflict, he acknowledged fatigue among the population. “Yes, it is a third year for us, so people are getting tired of it,” he said. “I guess many people would like the violence to end, but those people are not those in power, those who are deciding.”

The École’s response, he said, remains consistent with Dominican tradition. “Our mission in a world that is very much into emotions is to bring back reason,” he said. “This is very much the Dominican tradition… We are trying to continue to study the Bible, not to be an instrument of war, but to be a tool for peace.”

Study to build peace

He described the École’s library — which holds 460,000 volumes — as both a research center and, practically, a shelter. “I’m encouraging the students and the brothers to study in the library because the library is underground. So it’s a shelter in itself,” he said. “You are protected by the walls, by the earth, the earth of the Holy Land and by tons of books.”

The work of the École, he said, involves “confronting the text and the context. The text meaning the word that is incarnated into a place in a history.” He added that Jerusalem itself is a place marked by conflict: “He chose to incarnate himself… in this very place, not because it was pure and beautiful, but because it was in a way messy, because it was in the heart of a conflict.”

Regarding security, fr. Olivier said, “I don’t consider that the physical risk here at the Ecole is very high. We are taking all the necessary measures. We are following the advices given by the Israeli and consular authorities of all the countries we are related with.” He added, “Resilience could be a motto for the Ecole.”

Hope for the future

Hope, however, is difficult to measure in external terms. “If you look outside, the hope is quite limited,” he said. He noted that the École is responsible for major archaeological excavations in Gaza, where violence continues. “We are here a few kilometres from people who are deeply suffering,” he said, referring also to Christian communities in the West Bank.

“We don’t believe that violence can be defeated by violence,” he said. “We really believe that the enemy is the devil. The enemy is inside. It’s not outside of us.”

The community gathered for Mass in the shelter later in the day. “We decided to move the altar in the shelter and we did celebrate mass,” he said. Using a votive Mass “for the time of war,” they prayed “asking for peace and reconciliation.”

“Peace and reconciliation are starting inside, and it has to be a personal commitment before becoming a community one,” he said.

Stand with the École

Fr. Olivier asked for solidarity in prayer. “First of all, we really need your prayers, not your prayers for a small club of good guys. We are not better than the others,” he said. “But what we need is really to have a chain of prayer for the peace in the region.”

He also noted that supporters may contribute financially through the École’s website, ebaf.edu.

“Building communion inside the house in the Dominican community, also in the academic community with the believers, non-believers… and outside with Jews, Christians, Muslims,” he said, remains central to their mission. “We’ve got a common origin and a shared responsibility.”

As the region faces renewed violence following U.S.-Israeli strikes and Iranian retaliation, the École Biblique continues its academic and communal life — studying, praying, and maintaining what its director described as resilience amid uncertainty.

This article is reposted from the official website of the Order of Preachers.