Charles de Foucauld

TCRnews Musings

His biographers say that while in the desert Charles de Foucauld was so impressed by the love of God shown by Muslims that he was for a time tempted to convert. But ultimately he chose not to. I suspect the reason he did not was one thing only: the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. In all the major monotheistic religions, other than in Christianity, God remains in His High Heaven, is "totally other" even as human beings suffer in time and space. Only in Christianity does God come to man in the most intimate way, "pitching his tent" (jn 1:14) among us, assuming the responsibility for His creation, even after Adam's fall, though not its guilt. He came ----to save. He took our guilt and the punishment of The Law upon Himself vicariously so that we might become "free" (Jn 8:32) and taught us how to live, to love and to heal. The Incarnation, re-presented at every liturgy of the Eucharist through time,
bridged the abyss which would seem to separate God and man---most intimately of all in the Passion wherein God suffered "with us" for our redemption. This is doubtless why Charles de Foucauld, and we, with him, remain Catholic despite all of the follies and sins of the Church's children through time. The Church is His Body. This is the Good News which changes everything. And now all things have become New and the ultimate victory over evil and the Nihil. (Phillipians 2:5-10).