WELCOME TO OUR LADY OF VICTORIES ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
Charles de Foucauld a new saint for today
This Sunday, May 15, 2022 Charles de Foucauld, known as Brother Charles of Jesus, who was beatified by Benedict XVI on November 13 2005, will end his journey towards the altar and will be proclaimed a saint, as the Holy See recognized a new miracle through his intercession, as approved by Pope Francis.
His gift was to discover God in everyday, ordinary life. His meditation grew to became a charism, his charism gave birth to twenty groups, and today over 13,000 members world-wide live his spirituality. Blessed Charles entered into intimacy with his Beloved Trinitarian God. His love bore fruit in one of the most arid desert places of the world. His hidden almost hermitical life was not a way to avoid people. It was a way that enabled him to embrace any person as a brother or sister.
Founding a religious order was an unfulfilled desire in his lifetime. He died during a raid, shot by someone claiming to deliver mail. Was this an ignoble death or the culmination of a life of holiness? It was love that defined his life so that his death became a martyrdom of love. “Love doesn’t consist in feeling that we love but in wanting to love,” he wrote, “when you want to love above all else, you do in fact love above all else.”
For Charles living a life with Jesus as Nazareth meant simplicity of life, prayer, listening, humble work and humility. It was the way to be really useful to others as a “universal brother.” His spiritual director agreed that “Nazareth is a house that you build in your heart, or better still, it’s a house that you allow the hands of Jesus…to build inside of you.” Even if Nazareth is a little house, it has rooms for lots of people!
Saint Charles de Foucauld’s Prayer of Abandonment, is one of the most beautiful prayers of faith, trust and surrender.
Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures.
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul;
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands,
without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.
Amen
His gift was to discover God in everyday, ordinary life. His meditation grew to became a charism, his charism gave birth to twenty groups, and today over 13,000 members world-wide live his spirituality. Blessed Charles entered into intimacy with his Beloved Trinitarian God. His love bore fruit in one of the most arid desert places of the world. His hidden almost hermitical life was not a way to avoid people. It was a way that enabled him to embrace any person as a brother or sister.
Founding a religious order was an unfulfilled desire in his lifetime. He died during a raid, shot by someone claiming to deliver mail. Was this an ignoble death or the culmination of a life of holiness? It was love that defined his life so that his death became a martyrdom of love. “Love doesn’t consist in feeling that we love but in wanting to love,” he wrote, “when you want to love above all else, you do in fact love above all else.”
For Charles living a life with Jesus as Nazareth meant simplicity of life, prayer, listening, humble work and humility. It was the way to be really useful to others as a “universal brother.” His spiritual director agreed that “Nazareth is a house that you build in your heart, or better still, it’s a house that you allow the hands of Jesus…to build inside of you.” Even if Nazareth is a little house, it has rooms for lots of people!
Saint Charles de Foucauld’s Prayer of Abandonment, is one of the most beautiful prayers of faith, trust and surrender.
Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures.
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul;
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands,
without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.
Amen
