The Catholic Weekly 5 July 2020

catholicweekly.com.au 13 5, July, 2020 FEATURE tians venerate him and re- joice at his upcoming canon- isation, and one of the proofs of that is the large diffusion of his prayer of abandonment, faithfully and universally prayed, especially by those who accompany the dying and the sick.” A LIFE BETWEEN SHAD- OWS AND LIGHT Something like a modern St Augustine, de Foucauld walked a rocky road to the faith. Born in Strasbourg (northeastern France) in 1858, he became an orphan at 6 and was raised by his grandpar- ents. Although he received a Catholic education, he lost his faith in his teens and became deeply interested in pagan and atheist thinkers. He chose to embrace a mil- itary career and entered the prestigious Saint-Cyr Military Academy. During his time as a commissioned officer his life was that of an undisciplined hedonist, divided between a compulsive search for pleas- ure of the senses and a quest for meaningfulness. The turning point occurred when he left the army to go on expeditions in the Maghreb region of northwest Africa. There, the vibrant faith he saw among the Muslim communi- ties put the question of tran- scendence back at the centre of his life. Back in Paris, through his beloved cousin Marie de Bon- dy — in whom he saw the face of holiness —he slowly reem- braced the Catholic faith of his childhood during the summer of 1886. The reading of Elevations sur lesMystères by a prominent Catholic theologian Jacques- Bénigne Bossuet intensified his new inclination towards virtue, which would grow thanks to his encounter with Father Henri Huvelin, curate of the famous Parisian Church of St Augustin, who gave him religious instruction and be- came his spiritual director. This slow and deep intel- lectual path was decisive for Charles’ vocation, which ma- tured throughout several years of contemplative research, especially in Nazareth, in the Holy Land, but also with the Trappists of France and Syria, until his ordination in 1901. “He had a complicated life, made of shadows and light, and his canonisation makes us rediscover what has been at the heart of the life of this saint, what gave meaning to his life and from where he drew the faith and charity that drove him,” Fr Ardura said. SCHOOL OF NAZARETH According to Fr Ardura, one of the most important aspects of de Foucauld’s spirituality is that he wanted to imitate Jesus’ life in Nazareth, to live according to the spirit of the Holy Family, with a spirit of submission to God, humility and poverty. While highlighting, in turn, this very pronounced attach- ment to Christ’s life in Naza- reth as a key element to under- stand his spirituality, Pierre Sourisseau mentioned two other pillars: the major role given to the Eucharistic cele- bration and Real Presence (he was himself deprived of the possibility to celebrate Mass for a long period of time in the desert), as well as the Chris- tian presence and the testi- mony of the Gospel among populations ignorant of the Catholic faith. “He claims loud and clear the meaning of the greatness and absoluteness of God; he makes concrete the mysteries of salvation in Jesus Christ and that of love, a received gift to be transmitted,” Sourisseau said, highlighting how much de Foucauld’s thought could help address the great issues of the 21st Century. “From the sense of univer- sal brotherhood and therefore dialogue for peace and reso- lution conflict, the preference for the poor and underprivi- leged, the promotion of peo- ple according to what will be further formulated in Paul VI’s encyclical PopulorumProgres- sio , are all aspects that chart a course to respond to today’s stakes.” COHERENCE OF LIFE Several biographers have noted that de Foucauld spared no effort to reach people far away from the Church and didn’t hesitate to put his considerable education and learning at the service of his faith and the announcement of the Good News. Living among the Tuareg of Tamanrasset, located in the Hoggar mountains deep in the arid Sahara desert of South- ern Algeria, he began soon after his arrival to translate the Gospel into the Tuareg lan- guage and published the first bilingual Tuareg-French dic- tionary. He also reproduced thousands of lines of Tuareg poetry. His research is still re- garded as groundbreaking. The last known photo of Blessed Charles de Foucauld. The former French cavalry officer will be canonised after the coronavirus pan- demic has subsided. PHOTO:WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/PUBLIC DOMAIN Blessed Charles de Foucauld, pictured in an undated photo. PHOTO: CNS PHOTO/COURTESY OF I.MEDIA Appeal reveals legal suicide flaws THE CASE of a Queens- land man who lost an ap- peal against his convic- tions for encouraging his wife to suicide reveals the difficulty in detect- ing pressure on someone who requests to die, say pro-life advocates. GrahamRobertMorant is serving 10 years in pris- on for encouraging and aiding his wife to suicide in November 2014. Three judges of the Queensland Court of Ap- peal were unanimous in dismissing his appeal against his convictions and sentence for coun- selling his wife Jennifer Morant to commit suicide and helping her to pur- chase equipment to do so. “The offence was com- mitted against a woman who was vulnerable to the appellant’s induce- ments. His actions were premeditated, calculat- ed and were done for fi- nancial gain,” they said handing down their de- cision on 19 June. Ian MacAllan, the so- licitor who prepared Ms Morant’s Will and Deed of irrevocable nomina- tion making Mr Morant the sole beneficiary of his wife’s life insurance pol- icies worth $1.4 million before she died, said that he met with Ms Morant privately and did not de- tect that she was being unduly influenced by Mr Morant. The Director of the pro- life organisation Hope, Branka Van der Linden, said the case demon- strates the difficulties of detecting coercion, and therefore the inherent dangers in legalising eu- thanasia and assisted su- icide. The issue is under de- bate inQueenslandwhich in May saw the Premier Annastacia Palaszsczuk delay a push for assisted dying laws until after the state’s October election. “Would Mr Morant have got away with his crime if euthanasia and assisted suicide had been legal in Queensland?” asked Ms Van der Linden. “His victim’s lawyer did not detect any coercion. “How much better would a doctor be at de- ciding whether someone is being manipulated or pressured to take their own life? “No law is able to safe- guard against subtle, con- sistent pressure on some- one to request to die. “The only way to pro- tect our loved ones is to not legalise killing in the first place.” “Charles de Foucauld is a man who is taken seri- ously because he lived, in his everyday life, the very content of his faith,” Fr Ardura said, adding that “his whole life opens us to the meaning of universal brotherhood.” “There has always been a great coherence between what he believed, pro- fessed and what he lived, and we definitely need these kinds of testimonies of the Gospel nowadays.” A NEWAPPROACH TO EVANGELISATION Because he lived in the conflict-torn context of the French colonisation of Algeria, the temptation is great for present-day de- tractors to reduce him to a white coloniser. The fact that he was also a former cavalry officer is often used to portray him as some sort of apostle of colonisation. Yet the reading of his writings, correspondence and the testimonies of those who knew him show a different reality. According to biographer Sourisseau, his military-in- stalled values gave him an “eminent sense of dedica- tion, not at the service of violence, but that of order and life in society.” In addition to becom- ing notorious for his active fight against slavery in Beni Abbes (near the Moroccan border), where he spent three years before reach- ing the region of Hoggar, he worked tirelessly for the common good, according to what seemed to be the greatest priorities for local populations. “Struck by physical and moral misery of the popu- lations he [encountered], he promoted settled ways of life over nomadism, work over rezzous (raids to pillage) and an organisa- tion of society through law, which are all aspects that are quite strange to coloni- alist ideology,” Sourisseau said. In the same way, Fou- cauld’s dialogue with Mus- lims was never invasive, nor naïve. Aware of the limits of traditional evan- gelisation with the Tuareg, whose faith was deeply rooted, he developed an original form of apostolate based on personal rela- tionship. “He starts with friend- ship and exchange, accord- ing to the personal path of each of his interlocutors, showing charity without proselytism,” Sourisseau said. In a letter to the then-ap- ostolic prefect of Sahara, the famous hermit defined his anthropological ecclesi- ology by saying that he had not to “preach Jesus but to prepare his predication,” by radiating the beauty of Christianity through his work and goodness. Blessed Charles lived his life following the steps of Christ with this intention: “Loving God, loving people is my whole life; may it al- ways be my whole life. This is what I hope for.” - WWW.NCREGISTER.COM Into the desert: the Hermitage of Blessed Charles de Foucauld is seen on a hilltop at Gebirge in the arid Hoggar mountains of Algeria’s Sahara Desert. PHOTO:THOMAS GOISQUE