Charles de Foucauld

 

The last picture of Charles de Foucauld taken in 1914.

This Holy Failure was who we commemorated at Mass today.  He failed because he founded a religious community which attracted no members and had not converted a single Tuareg tribesman before he died.  He triumphed because his vision and spirituality inspired others years later to work for God in the desert, with the mentally ill and in the urban desert of the City.  he also had some fine phrases and thoughts.  Like this:

Prayer is just conversation with God: listening to him; speaking with him; gazing upon him in silence. The best prayer is the one in which there is the most love. Adoration, wordless admiration, that is the most eloquent form of prayer: that wordless admiration which contains the most passionate declaration of love. Charles de Foucauld.

 

Thanks be to God for Holy Failures.