Charles de Foucauld: In the Footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth

Charles de Foucauld was born in 1858 into a Catholic family of French aristocrats residing on the border between France and Germany. By age six, Charles was orphaned, and by the time he was 12, he and his grandfather were forced to flee their home under threat of invasion by the Germans. In those years Charles was greatly troubled. By age 15 he had lost all faith, partly because of the cultural climate of religious skepticism and emphasis on science as the highest truth. As a young man, Charles sought pleasure and adventure, spending a year in Morocco among the outcast Jews and Muslims. After coming home to France, he was more mature, but still searching. Eventually he rediscovered Catholicism and in 1890 joined a Trappist monastery. He was ordained a priest in 1901. The Foucauld biography written by Annie of Jesus provides much detail on those early years, but focuses primarily on the story of his time among the Taureg, an Islamic people in the Sahara Desert. Several general observations come to the fore, in particular that Charles came back to Jesus understanding that the Lord had been waiting not to forgive him, that was a given, but to heal him. The pleasure-seeking activities in his early years left him lost and empty. Living in humility and poverty among the Taureg, working to overcome the injustice they suffered, preparing lexicons and translations of their language, were fulfilling. Though Charles's story was long ago and far away, it has the power to inspire people who experience loss and emptiness in our own culture.