Latest in an occasional series of prayers by Christians of ages past. Previous entry here; complete list of entries here.
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,
surrender myself into your hands,
without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.
Blessed Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916),
Priest, Martyr, Missionary to Muslims
Charles de Foucauld was born into an aristocratic French family in Strasbourg and, by his own account, lived an idle and dissolute youth. Yet, he inspired the formation of over a dozen religious communities and associations. He was venerated by Pope John Paul II in April 2001 and beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on 13 November 2005.
Baptised as an infant, de Foucauld renounced the faith at age 15. He later flunked out of school and was dishonourably discharged from the French army. After growing tired of his debauched and licentious existence, he became one of the first explorers of Morocco, at the time a territory so hostile to foreigners that he travelled in disguise for months.
Upon returning to France, his cousin Marie de Bondy gently prodded him about his skepticism. In 1886, he decided to approach a priest for religious instruction.
What follows is from a 1979 Christianity Today article by Dr Klaus Bockmühl, Professor of Theology and Ethics at Regent College until his passing in 1989. (The article is not available online, unfortunately, so no link.)
The priest whom he approached about lessons, however, with a sudden spiritual insight led him into the confessional, asked him to confess his sins, then invited him to the eucharist. That day de Foucauld became reconciled with God.
De Foucauld found more. As with Peter and Paul, he experienced both salvation and calling together. He wrote: "As soon as I came to believe there was a God I saw I could not do anything except live for him. Faith and the religious vocation came to me at the same hour."
Charles lived in several Trappist houses for the next decade, and then moved to Nazareth to live as a hermit. After returning to France for ordination in 1901, he went to the French Sahara, where he dwelled for the rest of his life.
Based near the Moroccan-Algerian border, he lived among the nomadic Tuaregs, who knew him as “the follower of Jesus”. He learned their language, translated the Gospel, and read it to them. He devoted himself to their service, visiting and caring for the sick, showing hospitality, and offering counsel as requested. He also used money sent from France to buy food for them and redeem those taken into slavery. In letters to friends in France, he denounced slavery as “an injustice, a monstrous immorality”.
The contrast between the poverty of North Africa and the affluence of France made plain to Charles that materialism and secularism were overpowering the Christian West. Thus he wrote:
"We need to return to the Gospel. If we do not live out of the Gospel, Jesus does not live in us. We must return to Christian simplicity. What impressed me most during the few days I spent in France, having been abroad for nineteen years is the growing taste for expensive luxury which . . . becomes a natural habit of all classes of society, especially the middle classes and even of good Christian families. And with it goes a carelessness and rage for worldly and frivolous amusement that is absolutely out of place in difficult times like ours, in times of persecution, and in no way consistent with the Christian life. The peril is in us and not in our adversaries. Our enemies at best can help us to victories. . . . Return to the Gospel, that is the cure which we all stand in need of."
In that regard, apparently, nothing has improved since a century ago. The spiritual vacuum he saw at the heart of Western civilisation has indeed become worse.
Dr Bockmühl wrote about Charles de Foucauld to challenge Christianity Today’s evangelical Protestant audience. He sought to encourage evangelicals to read pre-Reformation saints and to take seriously the examples of post-Reformation Catholic figures. He presented Charles de Foucauld as a case in point, calling him a “saint for our day”.
Our time, noisy and affluent, finds it difficult to handle his challenge. But evangelicals need to be set aflame with the fire that burned in Charles de Foucauld, when from the desert he wrote to a friend: "I am infinitely weak. But however I examine myself, I find no other desire in me than this one: Thy Kingdom Come! Hallowed be Thy Name!"
Charles was shot to death by a passing band of Muslim marauders on 1 December 1916 at Tamanrasset, Algeria. He is considered a martyr of the Church.
Within twenty years of Charles’s death, his example had inspired the foundation of the orders of the “Little Brothers of Jesus” and “Little Sisters of Jesus”. They live and work among the poor of Europe, North Africa, and elsewhere.
Above quotations, except for prayer, from: Klaus Bockmühl, “Saint for Our Day: Charles de Foucauld”. Christianity Today, 5 January 1979.
Source of prayer: Praying With the Saints, by Woodeene Koenig-Bricker.
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