CHARLES DE FOUCAULD: “WE WILL NEVER LOVE ENOUGH” Dear Friends: On December 1, 1916, just three hours before he was assassinated by a band of Senousite rebels, Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916) wrote a letter to his cousin, Marie de Bondy, penning what amounted to his spiritual testament: How true it is: we will never love enough . . . Foucauld was expressing, in French, what his remarkable, and seemingly forever anonymous, spiritual director, Fr. Henri Huvelin (1838-1910) had uttered in Latin, 6 years earlier, at the moment of his death: Nunquam amabo satis. This was more, much more than a pious sentiment for Foucauld: it was the definition of his whole life. Driven forward by an unquenchable, passionate love for Jesus, he became joyfully and painfully aware, the way only saints can, of the chasm between the Trinitarian Gods infinite love, and his own limited human capacity to reciprocate it. In his fairly prolific spiritual literature, he begins his meditations with: “Que Vous etes bon, mon Dieu, que Vous etes bon!”). Foucauld was born into the French aristocracy. Along with a vast fortune, he inherited a nobility title, Viscount of Foucauld. After (but not because!) secondary studies with the Jesuits, he lapsed into atheism. A brilliant military mind, he coursed (piling demerits upon demerits, once subject to military academic house arrest, on account of his womanizing, drinking and violations of regulations) his basic training at St Cyr (the French West Point), and then moved on to the school of cavalry at Samur. Sent to the French Sahara to help subjugate the ever-rebellious Tuareg tribes, he had what amounted, in his own words, his first touch of conversion: during a particularly fierce firefight with a band of rebels, he noticed that, suddenly, enemy fire ceased, as the devout Muslim rebels dropped their rifles to turn towards Mecca and pray. Years later, Foucauld recalled how touched he was by the fact that these fierce fighters were quite willing to be killed by enemy fire, than forsake a defining dimension of their faith. Here is something - he mused - or Someone, that they hold worth dying for. He always considered this moment a sort of first step of his conversion. He left the army, became the first European to explore Morocco, and his nuanced and remarkable accurate and detailed account of the people, geography, fauna and flora of the country earned him the first Gold Medal awarded by the French Geographical Society. But his restless heart lay elsewhere. He continued to attend his aunt’s aristocratic soirees at Paris. It was there that he happened to meet this remarkable person, a Hellenistic scholar of the highest rank, an doctoral graduate of the Ecole Normal Superior of France, Abbe Henri Houvelin (roll Harvard, Yale, Columbia, all the Ivy League schools, into one, throw in Georgetown, Northwestern, and other similar schools, and you might get an idea of how difficult it was to beadmitted to, not to mention graduate from, the Ecole Normal Superior).. But, what struck Foucault’s restless but hesitant mind was that, in this one man, a committed, intense, passionate faith converged with a brilliant mind, and an awesome witness to the power of Christ, whose Passion became incarnate in the torturous and afflicting infirmities Huvelin suffered from, all his life. On one crisp, clear morning, before breakfast, October 28, 1886, Charles de Foucauld made his way to the parish church of St. Augustine, where Huvelin was a second vicar. He found him hearing confessions (that confessional is kept in the Church’s museum today). He approached Huvelin, and told him: “Father, I lost my faith, when I was fifteen. I would like to discuss with you the proofs for faith, the validity of the Catholic faith . . . “Huvelin, an experienced and astute spiritual director, read through Foucault’s escapist dilettantism, and bellowed: “On your knees! Confess your sins!” Foucault recoiled and said: “But, Monsieur l’Abbe, I did not come here for that. I came to discuss, dialogue, and debate on the Catholic faith.” Relentlessly, Huvelin roared again: “On your knees! Confess your sins, and you will believe!” Huvelin, spiritual director to the embattled Catholic intelligentsia of anti-clericalist, 19th century France (among his directees, were Maurice Blondel, whose philosophy of “action” would influence Joseph Marechal’s Transcendental Thomism, and Henri Bremmond, the historian of the French Church) could easily discern that Foucauld’s fear of conversion was not a matter of trading scholastic syllogisms, or advancing compelling proofs for the existence of God, but a matter of conversion: once unburdened of his arrogance, self-centeredness, idolizing of pleasure and wealth, faith would come rushing in to fill the void.\ So, Foucauld bent his knees, confessed, and he felt a rush of faith, joy and meaning invading his soul at once. Years later, he would say: “From that moment on, I knew I could only live for God, for God alone” (“For the sake of God alone” would become the title of one his books). Foucauld’s life and works have been well-documented by his first biographer, Rene Bazin (“Charles de Foucauld – Explorateur du Maroc, Ermit du Sahara” ), and by Jean-Jacques Antier (“Charles de Foucauld”). Foucauld’s two volume-work, “Meditations sur les saints Evangiles,” has been a source of endless hours of spiritual meditation for me. BUT: His last words keep echoing down the years with their haunting sound: “We will never love enough.” How joyful, how provoking, how prophetic these words are! We might be tempted to interpret them as a sort of sad recognition of our limitations. Rather the contrary, I believe, they have a liberating power: it means we can always love more, and more, and more, and yet never achieve a surfeit a love! They keep reminding us that there is always room for more within the recesses of our heart: boundless, risky, hurting, vulnerable, joyful, passionate love for our spouses, children, friends and enemies, for the poor, the outcast, the victims of racism, the alien . . . for all. How much more can we love? Forever more! For that love will never be enough. Foucauld, a devout reader of St. John of the Cross, might have had in mind the Carmelite mystic’s musings in “The Spiritual Canticle,” Stanza 28: John ponders that the soul wishes to love the way she’s loved by God, but realizes its finitude. But, suffused by, and participating in, God’s boundless grace, the human spirit can indeed love the way he or she is loved: we become God by participation in grace (“Spiritual Canticle,” Stanza 39: 3, 5, 6), and thereby we can engage in the risky and joyful love of those whom society ignores, despises or hates. Foucauld remains a challenge for our opulent Catholic parishes and communities today, ever demanding, with annoying and upsetting insistence, that our love will never be enough, it will never reach its pleroma, that, thankfully, joyfully, we will never love enough, there will always be room for more, much more . . There, down the pathways of our existence, they are there, the hungry, the marginalized, the homeless, the poor, the alien, waiting for that surplus of love we are capable of:– “Come, love us, be not afraid (Is 41: 10), for love is of God, for God IS Love (1 Jn 4: 8, 16). How true it is, we will never love enough! Praise God! Oremus pro invicem. Sixto AT THE SUNSET OF OUR LIVES, WE WILL BE JUDGED BY LOVE St. John of the Cross Sayings of Light and Love, 59 WE WILL NEVER LOVE ENOUGH Bl. Charles de Foucauld Letter to Marie de Bondy, BLOG: sixtogarcia.wordpress/
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 14:55:11 +0000
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