BLESSED CHARLES DE FOUCAULD

PATRON FOR THE YEAR

Rome, October 20, 2006

My dear Missionaries,

Blessed Charles de Foucauld will be our Congregation’s special protector for 2007. He was a contemporary of our Founder and still exercises an enormous attraction for men and women who strive to imitate his example and radical discipleship of Christ.

We live in an era when the Church is becoming a minority in countries that were traditionally Christian but at the same time there is a growing awareness in the Church of the need for humble, evangelical witness free of arrogance: the need for people living hidden lives, people who live and proclaim the Gospel on the fringes of society, people who live in extreme or paradoxical situations. Blessed Charles was certainly a Christian who understood and proclaimed the Gospel with the eloquence of silence, the strength of weakness and the wisdom of the folly of the Cross.

De Foucauld had not always been a “perfect” man – on the contrary for many years his life was anything but traditionally Christian. He was a man of his times with so many weaknesses and shortcomings, but one day he encountered God and there was a revolution. Immediately he embraced a distinctive sort of holiness that was original and definitive and never looked back. Still today his life dares us to forsake our rigidity, abandon our spiritual comfort zone and confront the same challenges with no guarantee we can overcome them. His witness moves us to re-examine much of our life and mission and to make a firm commitment to the pursuit of holiness. This is especially fitting in this first year of our Two-Year Project when all our efforts are directed to this goal.

As much as possible this reflection will use Blessed Charles’ own words: these words will describe his life, his relationship with Jesus and his process of discernment and consecration to the Lord as a Missionary among the Saharan Tuareg. It is up to us to absorb the lessons of his life and holiness.

1. Brief historical-biographical outline of the life of the “Universal Brother”

Blessed Charles de Foucauld (Brother Charles of Jesus) was born into a noble family in Strasbourg, France on September 15, 1858. The deep religiosity of his mother marked his early childhood. Madame de Foucauld taught her two children, Charles and Marie, well: they learned the path of mercy more through her actions than her words and her memory remained indelibly impressed on her children. She died on March 13, 1864 at the early age of 34 and on August 9, that same year, her husband died. The two orphans were given to the care of their paternal grandfather, a retired 70 year-old colonel. Charles was only six years old.

At the age of sixteen Charles lost his faith and remained indifferent to religion for twelve years. Everyone thought of him as a pleasure-seeking devotee of the easy life – who in spite of all appearances was still capable of constancy and strength of will in a crisis.

In 1878 he entered the army as a Second Lieutenant and left for Africa where France was colonizing Algeria. He later left the army and began the exploration of Morocco (1883-1884) a dangerous endeavor, traveling 3,000 km disguised as a Rabbi. He discovered the sacred law of hospitality among both Muslims and Jews. It was disconcerting to discover strangers treating him as a friend. One result of his trip was an important geographical study of the country for which he was awarded a golden medal from the Geographic Society.

The Morocco expedition brought about a profound change in Charles. He encountered Muslims “who lived continually in the presence of God” and this “disturbed him enormously.” He wrote, “The sight of these souls who live in the continuous presence of God led me to see something bigger and more authentic than my worldly concerns.” The question of God was an immediate result of this experience: “My God, if you exist, let me know you.”

He returned to France where he was received with warmth and affection by the family of his devout sister. He began immediately his quest to know God and sought out a priest for instruction. With the help of Abbé Henri Huvelin he found God again in October 1886 at the age of 28. “Once I believed God existed I could only live for him.”

A pilgrimage to the Holy Land showed him his vocation: to follow and imitate Jesus’ life in Nazareth. He lived in Trappist monasteries for seven years – first at Our Lady of the Snows and then at Akbès in Syria. Later he went to live near the Poor Clares in Nazareth where he led a life of prayer, solitude and great poverty. He was ordained to the priesthood at the age of 43 (1901) in the diocese of Viviers. He was given permission to live in the Algerian desert first at Beni Abbés among the very poor and then further south in Tamanrasset with the Hoggar Tuareg.

His dream was to share this life with others and he wrote several Rules. He believed that anyone anywhere could live “life of Nazareth.”

On the evening of December 1, 1916 his hermitage was raided and a young man killed him – shooting him in the head. Blessed Charles wanted to be buried in Hoggar but several years later – April 18, 1929 – his remains were taken to El-Golea, 1,000 km to the north, 950 km from Algiers. His heart was left in an urn in Tamanrasset. The place where this “universal Tuareg” rests is an austere location near the first church the White Fathers built in the Sahara. He strove to demonstrate a universal brotherhood that went beyond any religious and national allegiance.

2. Walking on the Waters

To understand Blessed Charles we must never lose sight of his total obsession with God. As he himself once said: “Once I believed God existed I knew that I could only live for him. My religious vocation was born at the same time as my faith: God is great! Between what is God and all that is not God there is an enormous difference.” He carried out his radical decision to follow Christ in distinct stages: he visited the holy places, he sought Trappist austerity and became a humble servant in Nazareth. For himself he sought out prayer, poverty and penance; to others he gave the treasure of that love burning in his heart. After ordination (1901) and the experience of Beni Abbés he went to live in Tamanrasset (1905) deep in the Sahara; there he devoted his life to the Tuareg.

He chose a “new way” of living his vocation – one we might consider a paradox. He was a monk without a monastery, a teacher without students, a hermit living in the midst of people and bringing them Jesus, a Founder who wrote several Rules but only after his death would new Religious Families follow him.

The greatest paradox, however, was that he followed exactly in the footsteps of Jesus. His witness of holiness for the Church and the world involves a singular form of “discipleship” – something we might call a synthesis of opposing ideas: contemplation and action, solitary retreat with God and unconditional service of our brothers, the annihilation of the Cross and fraternal friendship, heroism in life and indifference to death. His conversion was an eruption of God into his life that created the overwhelming need to proclaim God to others. He was in love with Jesus, he wanted to follow, imitate and proclaim him everywhere and always.

3. Discernment, a guarantee of fidelity to the will of God

A life marked by decisive “choices”

Each stage of Blessed Charles’ life involved a change of direction in the ongoing realization of his vocation. Step by step the initial calling reached maturity through a series of transitions and changes; while his vocation evolved it remained faithful to its initial inspiration.

In 1886 he chose to offer himself entirely to God, to live for Jesus Christ. He embraced the Trappist life but after a few years left the Trappists and went to live near the Poor Clares in Nazareth. He prepared himself for ordination and planned to go to the most remote and abandoned regions to make Christ present. He went to the desert, deep into the Sahara and eventually immolated himself totally.

Discerning the will of God

His search for a life that imitated perfectly the life of Jesus of Nazareth was neither easy nor quick. He accepted the burden and attraction of a quest – never completed – according to his own lights. One recognizes the Will of God by paying close attention to the promptings of the Spirit but the Spirit neither forces nor relieves the individual of responsibility.

His process of discernment was marked by a radical love of the Lord, and a determination to conform entirely to the Lord. He was always mindful of the absolute gift he had received and committed to respond with the total offering of himself to the Lord.

Listening to the Word of God

The Word re-created the feelings of the Lord in his heart. It made him attentive and able to perceive the will of the Father. It gave him the light and strength of the Spirit which were both necessary to carry out the Word’s saving mission through his distinctive vocation. Through intelligence and sensitivity Blessed Charles entered a vital relationship with Jesus and applied a program born of the Word in his daily life.

Knowing himself

Blessed Charles showed himself capable of pursuing the difficult path of self-knowledge. He understood the rich and mysterious realm of his own strengths and limitations and knew that God never called him to something beyond his abilities. His writings reveal a delicate understanding of his own emotions: he records diligently the feelings of joy, peace, fatigue, trouble that he experienced at various periods. We know that analyzing one’s feelings is an important and unavoidable part of serious discernment.

“Love does not consist in feeling in love – rather it involves willing to love: when one wills to love one is in love … Jesus’ love for us was demonstrated so abundantly that we can believe it without feeling it. To feel that we love Him and that He loves us would be paradise, but here on earth paradise is not to be found – except in rare moments, on rare occasions.” It is indispensable that our feelings conform to those of Christ (Cf. Phil. 2,5) if we are to understand history as He sees it, if we are to rejoice in what pleases him and suffer when something afflicts Him (Cf. Rom 12,2). He exercised his imagination with the Jesus of the Gospels. In this way he refined his perception, created a Christ-like interior life and acquired a genuine spiritual sense.

Understanding history

Blessed Charles believed that God’s Will was revealed where charity required an understanding and response to people’s changing needs: the living and breathing demands of the time and place in which he lived. “One must go there – not to the holiest of places but to the place where souls are in greatest need.” So he went beyond the narrow limits of his own program and was always ready to respond to the needs perceived by those responsible for pastoral care.

Spiritual direction

When Charles de Foucauld began his search for God the saw faith as a rational certainty: “This religion cannot be folly … perhaps it is the truth … We must study this religion: we must find a professor of religion, an educated priest and see what happens and if we should believe what he has to say.” He immediately set out to find a “mentor” and found one in Father Henri Huvelin. He had no intention of making a confession he was simply interested in information about the Catholic religion. Later during one of his retreats speaking of God and his spiritual mentor he wrote: “You have placed me in the care of this holy man and I have remained there. You have led me by his hand from a time without grace to grace. I asked for religion lessons and he had me kneel and make my confession. Then he had me go to communion […] From that time forward I have received one grace after another.” The elderly priest led him forward with a certain hand. He was a man of God, a man of prayer as de Foucauld would later say.

Holiness is enormously attractive to people. Charles considered submission to his spiritual director as a guarantee of safety in his arduous search for the Will of God. In his letters he reveals his feelings and makes an effort to open up his soul. He professes himself willing to do or renounce whatever the director proposes. He closes all his letters with a promise of obedience and an act of abandonment to the director’s judgment.

Ready for continuing conversion

Foucauld’s radical conversion makes a profound impression. He breaks with the past and is determined to place himself at the service of God. He was never a man of half-measures. He was always eager to go right to the end in anything he did. This was certainly true of his conversion: “We don’t believe in a half-way reformation or a half-way conversion. This is impossible we must achieve total conversion or nothing.” It was a question of moving from one’s individual willfulness to the total and free embrace of God’s program. “Everything moves me to conversion, everything sings the need for holiness, everything shouts at me that if I do not reach the goal I seek it is my own fault, my own most grievous fault and I must hurry to conversion.”

There was but one model for his conversion: Jesus. “Follow me, me alone … Don’t come to Bethany to see me and Lazarus, come to see me alone… Ask me what I was doing, study the Scriptures, look at the saints – not to follow them but to see how they followed me. Take from each of them whatever you think comes from me, whatever is imitating me … follow me, me, me alone.”

From this time on Charles had but one desire: to respond to God’s love. He was governed by his enormous need to follow Christ: “I love Our Lord, Jesus Christ, I love him and I cannot lead a life different from his.”

4. A radical and prophetic spirituality

The very heart of Blessed Charles de Foucauld’s spirituality is what he calls the “spirituality of Nazareth.” Nazareth is a place, an experience and a symbol in his spirituality. Serious students of his spirituality unanimously agree that life as a “little brother of Jesus in Nazareth” is the constant inspiration of his vocation adventure and the unifying factor in his process of growth in the Church. To be a little brother of Jesus means giving one’s life to a theological relationship that finds expression in a fraternal life with the Lord for the sake of others.

These are the fundamental elements of the spirituality of “Nazareth”:

Imitation of “our most beloved Lord, Jesus”

“Anyone who seeks to live the spirituality of Nazareth must ask himself at every moment – what would Jesus think, say or do in my place and then do it. He must always strive to be more like Our Lord Jesus whose life in Nazareth provides a model and example to be followed in every circumstance.” From the moment of his conversion Blessed Charles was given the grace of an intimate friendship with Christ – so much so that he had but one desire: to be like Him. De Foucauld himself asserts this in one of his meditations five months before his death: “Always in the last place: ‘When you are invited to a banquet always sit in the last place.’ This is what He himself did throughout the banquet of life and He did it right up to His death.”

Eucharistic Adoration

The Eucharist marked him from the very onset of his conversion and it always remained the focus of his prayer. He spent long hours in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament in the company of his “well-loved brother and Lord, Jesus.” His priestly vocation gradually evolved in the presence of the Eucharist; he wanted to offer this “divine banquet … to the lame, the blind, the poor, in short to all those souls who had no priest.” He built and decorated the chapel at Beni Abbés himself. He drew a picture of Christ opening his arms to welcome, embrace and call all men while giving Himself to them. He spent long hours day and night there in adoration and meditation. He lived with the Lord in his house and carried on long conversations with Him – friend to friend. This conversation lasted long into the night and on his travels across the desert.

Preferential option for the poor

“The option for the very poorest will be our life’s task. We will devote all our efforts primarily to the conversion of those who are spiritually poor, isolated, blind – the most abandoned souls, the most desperate sheep.”

A few days after his arrival in Beni Abbés he became aware of its material and moral destitution and decided that his first task would be “helping the slaves” whom people treated so badly. His second task was to offer hospitality to poor travelers. Finally he would teach the little children who were left to their own devices all day long.

To make the poor an option is not the same as loving the poor. Making them an option involves living in their midst and offering them constructive, critical and committed love. Blessed Charles was convinced that one need more than great love for the poor; one’s love must involve the poor and create a stable alliance with them. He made a personal vow in the presence of his confessor that he would never possess more for his own use than any poor worker might have. He nourished the desire to found a new Congregation that would “live as close as possible the life of Our Lord; living entirely with the work of one’s hands […] possessing nothing […] living in small groups […] living primarily in non-Christian lands.”

Love for the Church

“An inviolable attachment to the Bride of Jesus, the Church in which He lives. He is her soul and He loves her like his bride […] attachment to all that comes from her, her institutions, her rites, her ministers […] attachment to the Holy Father her head and His representative. I pray very much for the Holy Father and for his intentions […] the more one loves the Church the more one possesses the Holy Spirit who gives her life. The more one loves the Church the more one loves Him whose body she is, Our Lord Jesus.”

Obedience to spiritual director

“The choice of a spiritual director is of the utmost importance – the student will reflect the teacher. He must be a devout, prudent, educated and experienced person. Once we have prayed earnestly to God and made a choice we must entrust ourselves to his care, seek his advice and follow it.”

Blessed Charles de Foucauld always maintained a profound and loyal relationship with his spiritual director, Abbé Henri Huvelin. It was the relationship of a son to his father. When Abbé Huvelin died Charles wrote to a friend that his spiritual father was steeped in the love of Jesus to the very depths of his being.

Prayer and contemplative fruitfulness

“Anyone who wants to follow the spirituality of Nazareth will embrace the work of the local Church and do all he can to be useful according to his vocation. This he will do along with his solidarity for those in the most difficult situations of mission and fraternal collaboration.”

Charles was convinced that success did not always depend on action. There were results that came from the contemplative life of those who strove to live the spirit of Nazareth: an in-depth, concrete reality in the here and now that emphasized the importance of fraternal relations and the gratuity of the gift.

This was something he experienced continually as he lived the “life of Nazareth” with the most isolated of nomads and the most destitute of people in Beni Abbés. In 1911 he moved to Asekrem because it was a caravan station and gave him a chance to get to know the Tuareg and develop a deep friendship with them.

Liberating evangelization

“Anyone who wants to follow the spirituality of Nazareth must realize that it is the foundation of his existence whether he be in the desert or in the missionary apostolate. What this means is that there can be no apostolate without Nazareth, no desert without Nazareth and no Nazareth without the desert and the apostolate.”

For a Christian to be genuinely involved anywhere on earth De Foucauld believes he must act as God acts; he learns from the Gospels to accept and appreciate whatever is good or particular in every people and culture.

5. A saint close to us

“Jesus, only Jesus, Jesus in all things, Jesus always.”

Blessed Charles was convinced that Jesus had to be the very center of our lives; we must delight in knowing Him, in being seduced by Him, following and imitating Him, carrying our cross after Him. We must let him speak the truth about our lives, our desires, our plans and our history even if it leads to martyrdom – something Blessed Charles did not exclude. “Think that you must die as a martyr stripped of everything, stretched out on the ground, naked, unrecognizable, covered with blood and wounds, violently and tragically killed … and desire it today.” This is what happened to him “violently and tragically killed,” as he had always hoped so that he could be like Jesus even in death.

“To be charitable, meek and humble with everyone: this is what we learn from Jesus.”

Like Blessed Charles we must find a new way to live as the Church, the sacrament of salvation for mankind. First of all through evangelical brotherhood; this not just a brotherhood of love around and with Jesus it is a brotherhood that does charity both within and without. Its supreme precept is “make the salvation of one’s neighbor as well as one’s own the great task of life.”

This ideal can only be achieved when we can “see a brother in every human being.” If we live superficially we will be only superficially open to others. If we live from the depths of our being where God is found we will be profoundly open to others; we will see them as brothers and sons of the same Father.

We are called to live a community life that recognizes and appreciates that ordinary, every-day life is where we will work out our sanctification. Our sanctification finds expression through a deep love of God in our work and our closeness to people. This will make our life more like that of Jesus during his thirty years in Nazareth. He teaches us not to avoid the ordinariness of daily life to seek out extraordinary experiences. It is only when we learn to live our “ordinary” life lovingly and in an “extraordinary” manner that our relationships will become more just, true, fraternal and overflowing with humanity and tenderness towards others.

“Read and re-read ceaselessly the Holy Gospel”

Blessed Charles found God in the Gospels. The Gospel - meditated, studied, absorbed and lived - marked his vocation quest and the whole of his spiritual life up to death. He nourished a great love of the Gospel. He saw it not as a study of laws and precepts but as an encounter with “the spouse, the betrothed, the beloved.” Through this encounter he could “please the Lord, be agreeable to him, serve him, glorify him, comfort him as one would want to do in everything.” Community life, the process of discipleship with its ways, criteria, decisions and values must pass muster with the Word. “Read and re-read ceaselessly the Holy Gospel to keep Jesus’ acts, words and thoughts ever in mind. In this way we will think, speak and act as Jesus; we will follow the example and teaching of Jesus and not the ways of the world into which we fall all too easily once we stop gazing on our Divine Model.”

In the life of every missionary community the primacy of the Gospel is like the seed sown in darkness and silence that bears fruit and becomes abundant nourishment for those who hunger.

“Become all things to all people in order to give everything to Jesus”

This must be another distinguishing characteristic of our life. Our life, like that of Jesus Christ, must be a gift to all men especially the poor with whom Jesus so closely identified (Cf. Matt 25,31-46). From the perspective of Blessed Charles’ teaching and witness we are called to see the value of the weakness of our missionary endeavor and the evangelical efficacy of the poor means at our disposal. “The means available to Him (Jesus) in his crib, in Nazareth, on the cross were: poverty, abjection, humiliation, abandonment, persecution, suffering – the cross. These are our weapons and those of the Divine Spouse who calls us to continue His life. He is the only lover, the only spouse, the only Savior, the only wisdom and the only truth…”

“Becoming another living and working Mary”

“I propose to persevere and work to turn myself into Mary, to become another living and working Mary.”

Through Blessed Charles’ Marian experience our way of working and living in the midst of people finds an additional reason to carry out that “motherly” and “missionary” consolation we learned from our Blessed Founder.

I conclude this first part of my reflection on the rich life-example and teaching of Blessed Charles de Foucauld by entrusting the Congregation and each one of us to his protection, to that of Our Lady, the Consolata and to Blessed Joseph Allamano. I greet you from my heart and hope that we each make swift progress on the path of holiness.

Father Aquiléo Fiorentini, IMC

Superior General