The Legacy of Charles de Foucauld

Extract

This stimulating and provocative book is an adaptation of the latest French edition of Au Coeur des Masses, for which Willard Hill deserves to be congratulated, because the reader is hardly conscious that the greater part of the text is a translation. It is definitely a book which ought to be on the shelves of every religious community, and read aloud in every refectory. But, like the disciples of Charles de Foucauld themselves, there is nothing violent about these seeds blown from the Sahara. They might be compared to a spiritual atomic bomb, likely to have far-reaching effects on the religious state in years to come. In a long introductory chapter Pere Voillaume sets forth what are the ideals of the Little Brothers of Jesus. These may be summed up as trying to live as poor religious, and contributing to the Church's invisible apostolate by ‘entering into Jesus's work of redemption', through prayer and sacrifice; what is more, without any enclosure—small groups actually ‘inserted’ into the world of the poor, sharing the hard life of that world.