Opravy

Charles de Foucauld: Paris in 1886.

A young man can consistently be encountered in several churches of the city with a quiet strange prayer on his lips: “My God, if you exist, please let me recognize you!” This young man, Charles de Foucauld, descended from an aristocratic house and grew up in an religious unconcerned milieu after his parent's death.

He chose the military career and developed at the same time to a slob rushing into several delights.

But all these things didn't conformed to him, so that he often felt an interior emptiness.

A military mission in the Algerian desert changed his life.

Above all the sight of praying Muslims impressed him deeply.

After a adventurous expedition through Morocco, for that the ambitious officer got an high award, he came back to Paris.

Physically he was a famous and acclaimed explorer but interiorly he was agitated and full of questions.

In a church he was requested by a priest to confess and to put his life into God's hands.

Charles was deeply impressed by this experience and found the faith in God.

Because he was always going the whole hog he wanted to live completely for God.

The big discovery of his life was the secret of God's incarnation: The great God made himself little to be verge on the people.

As a result Charles wanted to imitate Christ’s' poor and concealed life: Firstly as a Trappist, then as a hermit in Nazareth and finally as a “monk and missionary” in the desert oft Algeria.

He ached to announce the evangelism of God's love but this announcement should happen less through words than through a concentrated life with the poor.

He spent the last 15 years of his life together with the Tuareg-Clan; He took this clan in his heart, has studied their language was regarded as a saint by the Muslims.

During the chaos of World War I many riots occurred in the South of the Sahara, in which Charles de Foucauld got shot by an agitated Bedouin.

He couldn't see his dream – the foundation of a new monastery – coming true.

The moribund grain of wheat though that is falling into the ground, brings great fruit.

Many years after his death the people felt inspired by his exemplary life followed by many foundations of new monasteries, which owe the “little brother” Charles their origin.