December 1st 2011 - Feast Day of Blessed Charles de Foucauld

Excerpt from "All Saints" by Robert Ellsberg
December 1
Charles de Foucauld
Little Brother Jesus (1858-1916)

"I no longer want a monastery which is too secure.  I want a small monastery, like the house of a poor workman who is not sure if tomorrow he will find work and bread, who with all his being shares the suffering of the world."

Charles de Foucauld was born into an aristocratic family in Strasbourg in 1958.  An indifferent student and evidently possessed of a weak character, he sought a career in the army but was dismissed in 1881 as a result of his scandalous behavior.  The saving benefit from his military service was a fascination with the North African desert, to which he returned under the aegis of the French Geographical Society to undertake a dangerous exploration of Morocco.  It was there that the experience of Muslim piety helped prompt in Charles a dramatic recovery of his Catholic faith, changing his character and his life forever.  "As soon as I believed that there was a God," he later wrote, "I understood that I could not do anything other than live for him.  My religious vocation dates from the same moment as my faith."   ... (several paragraphs omitted)

"The whole of our existence, the whole of our lives should cry the Gospel from the rooftops... not by our words but by our lives."   ...

Shortly before his death Foucauld summarized his spirituality in a brief testament:

Jesus came to Nazareth, the place of the hidden life, of ordinary life, of family life, of prayer, work, obscurity, silent virtues, practiced with no witnesses other than God, his friends and neighbors.  Nazareth, the place where most people lead their lives.  We must infinitely respect the least of our brothers... let us mingle with them.  Let us be one of them to the extent that God wishes... and treat them fraternally in order to have the honor and joy of being accepted as one of them.