It's December 1st again. This year it's the first Sunday of Advent, but it's a day that will always draw my mind and my soul to the memory of this great heart burning in the desert, who poured out his life's blood 98 years ago today.
Blessed Charles de Foucauld sought Jesus by dwelling in the midst of the poorest and most forgotten peoples, and dedicating himself to their service. He lived as the presence of the love of Jesus among the desert nomads at the margins of the Islamic world.
He took the lowest place and became the servant of everyone, calling himself the "little brother" of Jesus, and in his lonely and obscure death he sowed in that mountainous desert the seeds of those ways of witnessing to God that we are searching for today. We must follow him by seeking Jesus in prayer and love, in the Eucharist and in the face of every human person.
He took the lowest place and became the servant of everyone, calling himself the "little brother" of Jesus, and in his lonely and obscure death he sowed in that mountainous desert the seeds of those ways of witnessing to God that we are searching for today. We must follow him by seeking Jesus in prayer and love, in the Eucharist and in the face of every human person.
"We are all children of the Most High. All of us: the poorest, the most outcast, a newborn child, a decrepit old person, the least intelligent human being, the most abject, an idiot, a fool, a sometimes sinner, the greatest sinner, the most ignorant, the last of the last, the one most physically and morally repugnant - all children of God and sons and daughters of the Most High. We should hold all human beings in high esteem. We should love all humankind, for they are all children of God."
-- Blessed Charles de Foucauld
