Love, faith and Jesus in the writings of Charles de Foucauld collected by Father Sapienza

Thoughts extracted from his numerous writings: in the book ‘Charles de Foucauld brother of the last’ (Edizioni Viverein) Father Leonardo Sapienza edited a selection of texts by reading which “we have only to let ourselves be infected by the experience of Brother Charles of Jesus in a sincere and tireless search for the absolute and in ardent love for the living person of Jesus Christ “. The texts are collected in different chapters divided by theme: friendship, love of God for man, love of man for God, love of neighbor (mercy – meekness), chastity (virginity), conversion, cross (pain, mortification, suffering), desert (silence, solitude), spiritual direction (priesthood), detachment (abjection, humility), Eucharist (mass, adoration), evangelization, faith (trust), universal brotherhood, joy, imitation of Jesus, work, death, obedience, poverty (poor), prayer (contemplation), simplicity (spirit of childhood and abandonment), hope, witness (example, apostolate). Finally, a chapter that collects several quotes entitled ‘This is how they spoke of De Foucauld’. “There is a very evident holiness of some men, but there is also the unknown holiness of everyday life: it is the one witnessed by Charles de Foucauld, who wanted to imitate the example of the hidden life of Jesus in Nazareth – we read in the presentation of the volume – Brother Charles tried to manifest the Gospel in a laborious and hidden way, in the silence in which God demonstrates his presence in the form of a ‘ light breeze ‘. He, who wanted to’ cry out the Gospel with life ‘, demonstrated that simple gestures can speak of Jesus “. Here then, among his words, an invitation:” Become their friends, love them and be loved , bring them to virtue, and from virtue and good will to all truth, live to save them. Here is the program: love, love, goodness, goodness “, wrote Brother Charles. “Love, obey, imitate … Love Jesus, obey him, imitate him – he stated instead in a passage of ‘Spiritual Works’ ed. Pauline – Obedience will put you in those states in which he wants you: in them, imitate him. all cases, imitate him. Outside his imitation there is no perfection. And for you, in a very particular way, his imitation is your vocation, your duty, your obligation of all the moments of your life. presides over your whole life, it is the direction of your life “.