University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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THE REDWOOD 23 most important in the century. He installed himself in Paris with an aunt, a Madame Moitesseir, a woman of rank and refinement and great wealth, it Avas here that Charles wrote a famous work to which the highest praise was given. This book showed in him a ready talent for self-expression. It was said that he could have become a great literary artist had he so desired. But now he preferred to be of use in a different way; and this disposition marked his later life. A love of science had enveloped him and developed within him, and had changed him into a serious, thinking man. Besides there was in him a gravity born of desert experience. Charles had communed with stars, the circling sil- ence, space, quiet. To hear constantly around him invocations to God, the Arabs prostrate five times a day with heads turned toward the East, and the name of Allah constantly repeated about him — what perturbation must have arisen within him, an outcast, a foreigner to this God. It must have made a tremendous impression upon him, for he began to study pagan philosophy; and when he found that it could give him nothing, he began to reflect. All his family were Catholics and all about — then he met the Abbe Huvelin. The Abbe Huvelin was the pastor of St. Augustine ' s in Paris, a sweet, humble, gentle old soul, with the reputation of a saint. He had a wonderful knowledge of human infirmities, and had a great number of penitents. It is related that he said in simplifying a phrase of Bossuet : ' ' Sorrow gives us charm. He spoke of the Church as a widow, and uttered this idea: Jesus is the Man of Sorrows, because He is the Son of man, and man is only Sorrow. Sorrow accompanies us to the grave ; she purifies lis, ennobles us, gives us charm. It is because she is our inseparable companion that Jesus wished to make her His companion. ' ' It was Abbe Huvelin that gave to Charles de Poucauld his second Holy Communion. He was now thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the Holy Ghost and set sail for the Holy Lands, here to seek solitude in more perfect communion, not with the elements, but with God alone. When his conversion had become complete he sought some religious order and upon the advice of his confessor chose the Trappists of Our Lady of the Snows. The Trappists are noted for the austerity of their life. The commun- ity of Our Lady of the Snows is marked by rigorous simplicity, and have their monastery in the mountains of Languedoe in the Alps. It was to this place that Charles de Foucauld repaired and it was here that he was admitted under the name of Brother Marie Alberich. Here he Avas obliged to perform such menial tasks as sweeping and washing floors and picking small stones out of the earth. Here he had time to do a little spiritual reading and was for a while content, until a desire grew in him for more absolute silence. Tn order to obtain it he left for Alexandrette, in Syria, and entered the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, In a letter he pic- tures the mountain people about the monastery as brigands and says, It is for me to make the future of these people. The real future is the life eternal; this one is only a short trial preparing for the one that is to come. We are

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22 THE REDWOOD Charles de Foucauld By Vincent O ' Donnell, ' 25. STRANGE child of his age he was, feeling deeply its newer aspira- tions, assimilating its highest culture, rejoicing in its fuller life. Saints and martyrs have been called divine artists in the moral order , the order which transcends all others. In this blessed com- pany Charles de Foucauld can be rightfully numbered, for he repre- sents the highest perfection of character discernible among men of our Charles was born of a family singularly dedicated to God, and yet he was at one time an agnostic. Countless Foucaulds had lived in the service of God. One had been a Crusader in the army of St. Louis and had died for him be- neath the walls of Jerusalem. Still another had fought alongside the holy Jean d ' Arc. A list of his illustrious progenitors stretched back to 970. Perhaps it was the urge of Noblesse oblige that carried Charles de Foucauld, soldier, scholar, scientist, explorer, monk, priest, hermit of the Sahara, through a period of darkness of unbelief into one of radiant holiness and exalted sanctity. As a young man he too had received his first Holy Communion with the customary devotion and yet in a few years he was to lose a precious posses- sion. While attending school at Nancy he was deprived of his faith in God. From then on for thirteen years he travelled the road of the unbeliever. Now a vain, egotistical, slothful, sinning man like another Prodigal he squandered a patrimony. At the age of twenty-four, in 1880, as lieutenant of the Fourth Hussars, he was ordered to Algeria. This was a decisive point in his career, for during his stay in Africa was born a love of the great solitude of the desert. By rea- son of a rather disgraceful personal affair he was ordered to leave his regi- ment, but returned to it during a time of military stress. He acquitted him- self nobly and came out of the campaign unscathed in body; and yet Africa had seared his mind, and worked a spell on him. Whatever else he did from that day onward he was certainly born to in- habit the Orient. His was the vocation of the East which comes, as someone has said, not from the love of the brilliant sunlight, but rather from the love of infinite silences, of limitless space, of the unforseen, and of the primitive in life, and rarely does the world as we know it appeal to them again. Yet Charles de Foucauld still had no faith in God. Obeying an impulse natural to an active young man enamoured of the wilderness he decided to exp lore the hitherto unexplored region of Morocco, a country into which no Christian had ever penetrated and returned alive. The enterprise was bold and perilous. He went disguised as an Arab, and with but one companion, a Jewish guide. He was very successful in his endeavor, and was awarded a gold medal by the Geographical Society in Paris. His discoveries were hailed as the

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24 THE REDWOOD the successors of the first apostles and the first evangelists. The word is much, but example, love and prayer are a thousand times more. Let us give them the example of a perfect life. Let us love them with that love which cannot fail to win love. hi another letter he wrote: ' Holy Communion is my sustenance, my all. My unworthiness is infinite. In February Brother Alberic made his first vows. The other brothers in the monastery regarded him as a saint, so great was his piety. Each night he allowed himself but two hours of sleep. Yet he desired something more severe even than the severe rule of the Trappists. What he really sought was utter abjection. He dreamed of founding an order whose rule would be modelled as closely as possible on the life of Our Lord in Nazareth. What the Trappists could not give him he hoped to find in solitary desert meditation. But here he was persuaded to become a priest because he could then say mass, and that would mean more graces for the world. He went back to France and in two months was ordained to the priest- hood, in June, 1901, at Viviers. He soon set sail for his beloved Africa, and was received by the Bishop of Sahara, who gave him permission to establish himself in the south of the Province of Oran, close to Morocco. The people had never before possessed a priest to minister to them. They Avere among the most abandoned in all the world. Here indeed Charles de Foucauld could find utter abjection. He built a chapel with the help of a !V v natives. Around this Little build- ing a wall Avas constructed, and he began thenceforth to lead an almost clois- tered life. His cloister soon became the stopping place for travellers, for nomads; and with him they could trust their burdens and wealth of worldly goods. His life was not passed in peace, however, for insurrections were constantly occuring in nearby Beni-Abes and farther off in the desert. Wishing to pene- trate into the less civilized country of Hoggar he left with a detail of soldiers, and in September, 1905, celebrated his first mass in Tamarasset, a native village in Haggar. The people were called Taurags and were a white race with most peculiar customs. They were very wild, their slaves did all the work, and Father de Foucauld wrote : I am preparing the way for others, who, I hope Mali come. I am praying to Our Lord to send them. The ignorance of the people is so great that they can scarce distinguish right from wrong, and the family life is so loose and immoral that the children grow up haphazard with- out moral precept or example. Their most serious fault, however, is their pride. Like Arabs and all the people of the desert, they consider themselves superior to all other races on earth. European inventions, automobiles, air- ships, etc., impress them not at all. They consider a camel more interesting and useful than an automobile. Father de Foucauld performed the work of a missionary in this field for a long time, although he insisted that he was but a hermit. In 1916, during