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What makes a man give up worldly pleasures and ambitions for a life of heroic virtue and self-denial? For Charles de Foucauld, the French priest and missionary who was beatified this year on Pentecost Sunday, it was the realization that he was loved by God, whose very existence he had doubted.
The discovery set his heart aflame with love. Charles developed an intense prayer life and spent four years in Nazareth, praying before the Eucharist and meditating on the events of Jesus’ life. From there, he traveled to the Sahara to live as a contemplative witness to the Arab and Muslim nomads of Tamanrasset. He was living out his calling there when he was murdered in 1916.
The following Scripture meditations come from the prayer journal that Charles de Foucauld kept during his Nazareth years. He wrote them as aids to his prayer, with no thought of publication. In some, he wrote as if Jesus were speaking directly to him, and in others, he recorded his own observations and desires. As you read these reflections, you will see why John Paul II called Blessed Charles a teacher of prayer: He “invites…
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