Saint Charles de Foucauld
(1858-1916)
Feast: 1 December
Charles de Foucauld was born in 1858 in Strasbourg, France, into a Christian family. His mother was a devout Christian who planted the love of God in his heart and in the heart of his sister Marie from early childhood. Both his parents died when he was about six, which caused him great pain. His grandfather took care of him and surrounded him with love, kindness and tenderness. His grandfather died while Charles was still a young man, leaving him a large fortune. He went to Algeria for military service, and later his exploration of Morocco brought him great renown in the scientific world.
He spent his youth in great recklessness, drawn by the temptations and pleasures of life. So little by little he drifted away from God, yet at the same time, deep inside, he felt a painful emptiness and a profound sadness.
In North Africa he met Muslims and was struck by the way they prayed and prostrated themselves. Their faith in God shook him and led him to question his own faith.
When he returned to France, his friends and relatives welcomed him with great joy, like the return of the prodigal son, and this helped him return to the faith of his childhood. He kept repeating this prayer: “My God, if you exist, make me know you.”
He went to a parish priest, Abbé Huvelin, to learn more about Christianity. The priest asked him to kneel and make his confession, because what he truly needed was not knowledge or philosophy but a living encounter with God.
This encounter was Charles’s conversion, and it changed his whole life. From the moment he believed that God exists, he understood that he could not live for anything else. His religious vocation dates from the hour of his conversion.
With his spiritual director he looked for a way to give his whole life to God. He joined the Trappists in a very poor monastery at Akbès, in northern Syria, where he met local Christians who had endured great suffering and persecution because of their faith.
Through his contact with the Christian families living near the monastery, he saw their poor and difficult conditions, and he wanted his religious life to be closer to them, like the life of Jesus among his own people in Nazareth.
He went to Nazareth, where he was drawn to the simple, humble life of Jesus, in which the mystery of God and of his love for every person shines out, and he wanted this way to be the path of his own life. After being ordained a priest, and with his director’s help, he decided to go back and live in the Algerian desert among poor and marginalized tribes, as one of them.
In the silence of the desert he lived a life of prayer and contemplation, spending long hours before the Blessed Sacrament. He was always present as a brother and friend to everyone who knocked at his door. So Brother Charles opened a new path in religious life: a life that unites prayer and union with God with sharing people’s lives, especially the lives of the poor and abandoned. He lived a life of prayer and work, not cut off from the world, like the life of Jesus in Nazareth.
Brother Charles proclaimed universal brotherhood: a Frenchman living among Arabs and Tuareg, a Christian living among Muslims, a rich man living among the poor… In this way he broke down every barrier… He was killed at his hermitage in Tamanrasset on 1 December 1916.
Shortly after his death, spiritual communities appeared that drew on his spirituality and followed in his footsteps. Pope John Paul II declared him Venerable in 2001, and he was beatified in 2005 under Pope Benedict XVI. A miracle attributed to his intercession was then approved by Pope Francis, who canonized him on 15 May 2022.
One of his prayers: the Prayer of Abandonment
Father, I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures.
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul;
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands, without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.
Prepared by Rita of the Sawt el Rab team
