Charles de Foucauld and England

Extract

During our stay in England last summer, we were constantly struck by the fact that when people—both priests and laymen—would ask, as they often did, what Order we belonged to, there would be no reaction if we said, ‘The Little Brothers of Jesus’; but if one of us were to add, ‘The Little Brothers of Father de Foucauld’, faces would immediately light up and we could see, much to our gratification, what a familiar figure this hermit of the Sahara was to our inquirers—the hermit who was murdered there in the desert in 1916, after a life completely given to God, and at the same time to the most destitute of mankind, in imitation of his Lord and Brother’s life at Nazareth. We were therefore led to conclude that, while, thanks to various writings—the most recent of which is, I believe. Desert Calling by Anne Fremantle—Father de Foucauld himself was far from unknown in England, it was not yet generally realised among English Catholics that he had given birth to a rapidly growing spiritual family, the ‘Little Brothers of Jesus’ and the ‘Little Sisters of Jesus’.

It is true that Father de Foucauld was a rather unusual kind of founder. As far back as 1905 he knew, as he wrote, that ‘Jesus wishes me to work for the establishment of this double family ... in supplication, in self-immolation; by dying to myself, sanctifying myself—by loving him, in short’; and he did so for twenty years, meanwhile drafting as many as four successive Rules for his ‘little brothers and sisters’ to come. He however waited in vain for his first disciple to appear, and died without having been able to achieve this most cherished of his human desires. ‘A grain of wheat must fall into the ground and die’, he would repeat, ‘but I am still alive!’ And, in fact, it was only seventeen years after his death that the ‘Little Brothers’ came into existence.