Holy Land: 100th anniversary of the death of Charles de Foucauld
On October 31st, in Nazareth, Israel, the year of the 100th anniversary of the death of Blessed Charles de Foucauld (September 15, 1858 to December 1, 1916) opened, according to the website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The opening date of the year, October 31, 2015, commemorates the conversion of Charles of Jesus at the end of October in 1886.
Charles de Foucauld (Br. Charles of Jesus) was born in Strasbourg, France, on September 15, 1858. He was orphaned at the age of six and raised together with his sister Marie by their grandfather. As an adolescent he fell away from the Faith. He went on a perilous expedition in Morocco (1883–1884) which awoke in him the question of God, and he prayed, “My God, if Thou dost exist, make me know Thee.” Back in France, surrounded by his profoundly Christian family and guided by Fr. Henri Huvelin, he returned to God in October 1886. He was 28 years old. “As soon as I believed that there was a God, I understood that I could not do otherwise than live entirely for Him.” A pilgrimage to the Holy Land revealed to him his vocation: follow Jesus in his life of Nazareth. He spent seven years with the Trappists (as Br. Marie-Alberic) at Notre-Dame des Neiges in Ardeche, then in Akbes near Aleppo, Syria. He then lived alone in prayer and adoration near the Poor Clares of Nazareth. Ordained a priest at the age of 43 (1901), he went to Beni-Abbes in the Sahara, then to Tamanrasset among the Touaregs of Hoggar. He wanted each person who approached him to consider him as a brother, “the universal brother.” He wanted to “proclaim the Gospel through his whole life;” “I would like to be so good that people could say, ‘If this is the servant, what then must his Master be?” On the evening of December 1, 1916, he was killed by a band that had surrounded his house.
This is an opportunity to recall the “Prayer of Abandonment of Fr. Charles de Foucauld,” taken from his Meditations on the Gospel on the Chief Virtues, probably written towards the end of his time at the Abbey of Akbes, in 1896:
“Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit…
This was the dying prayer of our Master, our Beloved… may it be ours… And may it be not only the prayer of our last instant, but the prayer of our every instant: my Father, into Thy hands I commend myself; my Father, I trust in Thee; my Father, I abandon myself to Thee; my Father, do with me what pleases Thee; whatever Thou dost with me, I thank Thee; I am thankful for everything; I am ready for anything; I accept everything; I thank Thee for everything; may Thy will be done in me, my God, may Thy will be done in all Thy creatures, in all Thy children, in all those that Thy heart loves, I desire no more than this, my God; into Thy hands I commend my soul; I give it to Thee, my God, with all the love of my heart, because I love Thee, and my love bids me give myself and put myself into Thy hands without reserve; I place myself in Thy hands with infinite confidence, for Thou art my Father.”
(Sources: kipa-apic.ch–PLJ–Vatican–Charles de Foucauld–DICI no. 325, 11-20-2015)
