Exploration in Mysticism and Religious Encounter: The Case of Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916)

The hidden life of Jesus at Nazareth as a paradigm for mystical encounter

Foucauld embodied a certain lucid hope for the religious other. Could this Christian discipleship lived among Muslims be allowed an epoché, that is to suspend or bracket the doctrinal and theological incompatibilities of the two faith traditions? In his encounter with Muslims, Foucauld illustrates ways in which the mystical intuition can negate wickedness and open an imponderable realm for welcoming the generosity and hospitality of the religious other. John Henry Newman believed that authentic Christian prophets and mystics are those, ‘who live in a way least thought of by others, the way chosen by Jesus of Nazareth, to make headway against all the power and wisdom of the world’. ² Foucauld in Tamanrasset lived, ‘in a way least thought of by others’, by combining a prophetic witness and the mystical dimension of religious encounter.

On December 1, 1916, Foucauld was shot dead in his hermitage by a young Tuareg in the confusion of a gun battle. Earlier on this fateful day, he had penned a letter to his friend Colonel Henry Laperinne, in which he seemed to be satisfied with his scholarly achievements. He had completed two volumes of Tuaregs’ poetry and proverbs ready for printing, and four volumes of his Tamashek-French dictionary. ³ Even though Foucauld died a tragic death, his life can count for a mystical expression of Christian-Muslim encounters. His was an attempt to live an authentic Christian discipleship in the context of religious and cultural otherness (une hospitalité Chrétienne nourrit aux sources de l’Islam).

Charles Eugene de Foucauld de Pontbriand was born into a Catholic aristocratic family in Strasbourg. Unfortunately, he was orphaned at the age of six. His devout grandfather, Colonel Beaudet de Morlet, raised him, but he rejected the Catholic faith as a teenager. He joined the French army and later left it to become a successful explorer and geographer. During his travels in North Africa, Foucauld was deeply touched by the devotion of ordinary people. Jewish and particularly Muslim religiosity led him to a dramatic return to his childhood Catholic faith in 1886. First, he joined a Trappist monastery Abbaye Notre-Dame des Neiges, in Ardèche, but in search of a more austere monastic life, he was transferred to the monastery of Akbes in Ottoman Syria. ⁴ In 1897, he left the monastic life altogether to become the gardener and sacristan of the Poor Clare Nuns in Nazareth, and later in Jerusalem. In 1901, he returned to France and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in Viviers.

His quest for an ideal life of poverty and abnegation led Charles to journey to Beni-Abbes, an Algerian oasis just south of the Atlas Mountains and close to the frontier. He intended to establish a monastic community which would offer hospitality to Christians, Muslims, Jews, or people with no religion. After 4 years, he was prompted by his friend Laperrine, to settle in Tamanrasset, where he lived the rest of his life. While Foucauld was a Trappist monk at Akbes monastery in Syria, he wrote a famous piece in 1896–1897. It is a meditation entitled the prayer of surrender:

My father, into your hands I commit my life

I entrust myself to you

I surrender to you

do with me as you please

Whatever you make of me, I am grateful

As long as your will is done in me, my God

As long as your will is done in all creatures

I wish for nothing else my God

I commit my soul into your hands

Because I love you

I give myself to you with infinite trust

Because you are my father ⁵

Since his return to his childhood faith, Charles was consumed by the absolute desire to surrender to God’s will. This meditation is first an unpretentious prayer of a son to a Father. Foucauld offers himself as an oblation, he shows absolute confidence in the Father’s will, and surrenders to his Father’s good pleasure. It is a prayer of thanksgiving and a declaration of unconditional love for his Father. This meditation seems to capture the heart of his vocation and spiritual path. The repetitions of, ‘my father,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘I surrender,’ ‘into your hands,’ ‘I love you’ etc. . . . convey a deep personal investment. It is a prayer of a simple-hearted penitent. Foucauld pours out his heartfelt feelings and complete trust in God. The parallel between Foucauld’s radical return to the Catholic faith and that of his spiritual heir, Louis Massignon, is striking. After years of frivolous living, both men showed an unusual zeal to embrace an authentic Christian discipleship. Even though, Massignon did not answer Foucauld’s invitation to join him in the desert, he was deeply influenced by the hermit of Tamanrasset. Massignon considered himself to be Foucauld’s protégé. ⁶

Also, one should keep in mind that Foucauld was a former military officer and an agnostic aristocratic Parisian. At this point in his life, however, he is searching for a life of utter humility and silence. His encounters with Muslims in North Africa had a profound effect on him. He was enthralled by Muslims’ constant remembrance of the beautiful names of God and their daily prostrations in prayer. Finally, the rhythm of the call to prayer during the day captivated his heart. He confessed to a friend, ‘Islam created in me a profound upheaval . . . the sight of this faith, of these souls living in the continual presence of God, made me catch a glimpse of something greater and more true than earthly occupations’. ⁷ Muslims’ devotional life was essential to Foucauld’s and Massignon’s spiritual awakening.

Foucauld’s sense of Catholic missiology was remarkable. At his death, he failed to convert a single Tuareg and did not have a successor nor a disciple. Massignon never arrived and Foucauld seemed unsuccessful in securing a model of evangelization which was contrary to the triumphant and militant missionary model of the 19th century. As Ariana Patey puts it, ‘His missionary work was based on the principle of silence; he did not believe in preaching but used himself as a vessel to bring Christ to the Muslims’. ⁸ He attempted to live a Catholicism which was not dominant, self-righteous and unfaithful to its own creeds. Nonetheless, he harboured the colonial idea of the superiority of Catholicism and French culture. Shortly after his death, an abundant literature developed in French Catholic circles to promote his life and thought. After the First World War (1914–1918), he was looked upon as an example for Catholics and someone who could help hatch a French Catholic renaissance.

Rene Bazin’s book, Charles de Foucauld: explorateur du Maroc et ermite au Sahara, laid the ground for Foucauld as a Catholic hero. ⁹ Bazin described Foucauld as a man in harmony and in opposition to his time. His return to Catholicism after years of agnosticism and his zeal to follow in the footsteps of Jesus found favour with a French audience. For many, Foucauld gave the French colonial conquest a surplus of humanity, a moral and religious legitimacy which mitigated its violent and dominant features. ¹⁰

His discipleship took the form of a religious life in reference, ‘to the mystery of Nazareth – the mystery of the Word of God assuming the life of the “little people,” who labour in the world and show forth respect, understanding and sensitivity’. ¹¹ Foucauld’s, ‘eremitic mission of sanctification’ did not include the building of hospitals, schools and churches. ¹² He came not to live among the rich and powerful but among the poorest of the poor in Muslim lands. Patey noted that, ‘aside from the Eucharist, he was dedicated to living silently within his enclosed hermitage, always offering hospitality and help, but dedicating his life to a strict ascetic regime to imitate Jesus’s hidden life at Nazareth’. ¹³

He was deeply impressed by the land and its inhabitants. Muslims played a key role in the blossoming of his spiritual vocation and the development of his religious awareness. Foucauld defined the hidden, quiet and silent life of Jesus of Nazareth in these terms:

Jesus came to Nazareth, the place of a hidden life, of ordinary life, of family life, of prayer, work, obscurity, silent virtues, practices with no witnesses other than God, his friends and neighbours. Nazareth is the place where most people direct their lives. We must infinitely respect the least of our brothers [and sisters]. Let us mingle with them. Let us be one of them to the extent that God wishes and let us treat them fraternally in order to have the honour and joy of being accepted as one of them. ¹⁴

Foucauld took seriously this hidden life of Jesus and used it as the paradigm of his spirituality among Muslims. Nazareth meant not just a hidden life lived in detachment from the world, not a life of isolation behind the walls of a monastery, but a life amid the poor of the world. He writes, ‘I am a monk, not a missionary, I am made for silence nor for speech . . . ’. ¹⁵ The mystery of Jesus at Nazareth was understood as an invitation to come and be, to dwell among others, to be seen first before being heard, to understand first before being understood. Paraphrasing St Francis, Foucauld notes, ‘my vocation is to shout the Gospel from the rooftops, not in words, but with my life’. ¹⁶ Foucauld embraced fully the example of the word incarnated among the Tuaregs. He learnt their language, befriended his neighbours and maintained close ties with the Muslim other.

Like the incarnate word in Nazareth, Charles de Foucauld lived in silence and humility, a poor man among the poor. The entire mystery of the incarnate word lies in this hidden friendship and presence. Patey writes:

De Foucauld’s understanding of sanctity as mission was influenced by his devotion to the hidden life of Jesus at Nazareth; he was struck by the idea that God could exist silently among men and bring about their sanctification. He was also influenced by the story of the Visitation, when a pregnant Mary visited Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.

Patey believes that Foucauld cultivated a personal sanctification as a method of his missionary work. ‘Through his eremitic mission of sanctification, he strove to make Christ a tangible reality for Muslims’. ¹⁷

Foucauld desired to be among those who were the furthest removed geographically and spiritually (i.e. the most abandoned). He seemed to lay upon himself the responsibility to care for those on the periphery, the sick and the lost. He wanted everyone who drew close to him to find a brother, ‘a universal little brother’. His obsessive missionary zeal is understood as urgent and obligatory. His will is to engage fully the task of being a witness to the gospel even to the ends of the earth. In Tamanrasset, he established a kind of fictive kinship with Muslims. He tried to accommodate the culture and faith of his hosts. Many among the Tuaregs regarded him as a friend and even as an extended member of their community. Foucauld wrote, ‘I would like to be sufficiently good that people would say, ‘If such is the servant, how must the Master be like?’ ¹⁸ A key aspect of Foucauldian spirituality was a prayerful attention to Tuaregs.

Prayer on behalf of the religious other as the locus of mystical rapprochement

Let us turn to a crucial point at the heart of Foucauld’s mystical encounter. In Tamanrasset, he celebrated the daily Eucharist in which he prayed for the Tuaregs, for their conversion or at least for their praeparatio evangelica. He kept the Blessed Sacrament in his cell as an unmistakable presence of Christ among Muslims. He wrote to a friend, ‘Does my presence do any good here? If it does not, the presence of the Blessed Sacrament most certainly does. Jesus cannot be in any place without radiating’. ¹⁹ What did it mean for Foucauld to pray or intercede for the Muslim other? Could Christians and Muslims pray for each other? Could prayer be a mystical meeting point? For the Jesuit priest Christiaan van Nispen tot Sevenaer, who lived most of his life in Egypt, prayer is a legitimate meeting venue. Praying together might not be possible liturgically, but prayer is a fundamental expression for both Christians and Muslims.

As long as prayer is not limited to its liturgical expressions, it could represent a real openness to the divine and to the religious other. Van Nispen wrote:

Prayer, as well as the entire spiritual life, can be a tangible place for an encounter between Christians and Muslims. A place of meeting does not erase the difference, but it offers an opportunity for both sides to walk towards the other and in so doing they walk towards God. ²⁰

Of course, we are confronted with Massignon’s and Mary Kahil’s notion of badaliyya, which means to take the place of the religious other or substitute for the other. Kahil defines badaliyya as follows: ‘Massignon and I, we made a vow. We offer ourselves for Muslims’ salvation. Not for them to convert but for God’s will to be done upon them and through them. We want to make ours their prayers and lives and offer them to the Lord’. ²¹ Foucauld was caught up in the same dynamic, a kind of mystical intuition and compassionate engagement with the Muslim other.

The idea of intercession for the religious other, particularly the Muslim other, not for conversion but for the will of God to be realized in them and through them, was not exactly Foucauldian. The hermit’s main hope was to prepare the ground for Tuaregs evangelization. He notes, ‘My little work goes on . . . preparatory work . . . I have not yet come to sowing. I am preparing the ground, others will sow, and others will reap’. ²² Unlike Massignon and Kahil, ²³ Foucauld’s prayers on behalf of the Tuaregs, particularly towards the end of life, were to prepare them for conversion.

Badaliyya is certainly open to criticism. Who are those Christians who believe they could pray and intercede for the Muslim other? It seems that Paul Heck in his article, ‘God’s Gift of Prayer to the Children of Abraham’ comes to our rescue. He remarks that there are common roots and ethical fruits of ritual prayer in Christianity and Islam. He writes, ‘for Christian and Muslim alike ritual prayer is a fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham that through him all families of the earth shall be blessed’. ²⁴ Prayer provides a common grammar for Foucauld and his hosts. The Tuaregs are fully aware that prayer is not to manipulate the divine order but to participate in it. In their own prayer, Tuaregs have a common yearning to be in God’s presence and through prayer to have their hearts recreated by God. Thus, in Islam, one of the goals of prayer is to be spiritually recreated in order to act as God’s vice-regent (khalifa) on earth with justice and mercy. Prayer affords Muslims’ and Christians’ access to life with God and the capacity for action on behalf of God’s promise to bless all the families of the earth through Abraham. ²⁵

Nostra Aetate recognizes that Muslims along with the Church adore the one God and that Muslims greatly worship Him in prayer. Through prayer there is an affinity, a kind of kinship and common purpose between the two faith traditions. Christians and Muslims speak of prayer as a gift from God, a way for humans to serve God. Both traditions believe that God established prayer as a meeting with Him that unleashes God’s mercy in the heart of believers. ²⁶ Heck’s arguments remind us that even though Foucauld’s prayers may have been paternalistic and presumptuous, they were genuine prayers of concern, occasions to be with and enter more fully in communion with the Muslim other. Regrettably, Foucauld’s concerns for the sanctification and salvation of the Tuaregs through prayer and silence were mixed up with France’s Catholicism and colonial ambitions.

Foucauld: a colonial saint or a universal brother?

There are 19 different congregations and associations in the Foucauldian spiritual family. Inspired by Foucauld’s life, the little brothers and sisters of Jesus are extraordinary men and women dedicated to living the hidden life of Jesus at Nazareth among Muslims. Their radical evangelical witness can hardly be reconciled with the controversial aspects of the monk-soldier of the Hoggar. God writes human salvation history in an unfathomable manner. Even Foucauld could serve as a vessel for the dispensation of grace. However, most historians agree that a case for canonization is inopportune.

Many biographies of the hermit of the Hoggar were written by Christians. Besides, Rene Bazin, Jean Francois Six’s Vie de Charles de Foucauld aujourd’hui in 1962 was a major success. ²⁷ In Six’s book, legend and myth were dropped and Foucauld appeared deeply human. The author portrayed Foucauld as a universal brother whose zeal for the gospel led him to the abandoned people of the Sahara. Six underplayed the hermit’s enthusiastic patriotism for colonial France and presented him as an example for French Catholics. Finally, Pierre Sourisseau’s Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916) is an ambitious and erudite historical biography. The author succeeds in presenting disturbing historical facts along Foucauld’s eremitic vocation. ²⁸

Most Christian biographers do not always separate hagiography proper to Christian martyrology from critical historical quest. In Charles de Foucauld: frère universel ou moine soldat, Jean-Marie Muller believes that the idea of a ‘universal brother’ and Foucauld’s rejection of colonial violence were inaccurate. The author accused Foucauld for supporting the repression of rebellious tribes of the Sahara. Muller denounced, ‘the deep nationalist and colonialist convictions of this Saharan hermit who defended total war against Germany during the Great War’. ²⁹ He notes that Foucauld failed to free himself from irreducible contradictions. The defence of France’s colonial ambitions were incompatible with radical evangelical values. ³⁰

Defeated and colonized Tuaregs found it even more appalling that this self-proclaimed universal brother believed in ‘la francisation et la christianisation des populations’. ³¹ The historian Ladji Ouattara, who wrote his thesis on the Tuaregs, insists that Foucauld’s legacy is, ‘inseparable from French colonial conquest of the Sahara’. In his articles Ouattara cites not only Jean-Marie Muller, but also Hélène Claudot-Hawad, who condemned Foucauld’s, ‘direct involvement in colonial military operations against the rebel tribes’ in Algeria, and André Bourgeot, who criticized Foucauld’s, ‘ideas in favour of disorganizing the Tuareg socio-political structures in order to obtain their surrender and submission’. ³²

These disturbing descriptions beg the following questions: what was Foucauld’s self-consciousness in the Sahara? What kind of relationship did he have with the Tuaregs? Was he a holy man (marabout), a colonial saint, a monk-soldier, a martyr or a pioneer of Christian-Muslim encounter? How did the language, culture and religion of the Tuaregs influence his eremitic vocation? What did the Tuaregs think of his religious practices of severe asceticism and celibacy? A biography written by a ‘Alī Merad, a Muslim and Algerian himself, offers an earnest approach to what he terms, ‘[a] Muslim’s view of Charles de Foucauld’. ³³ He notes, ‘It is in the land of Islam . . . that Charles de Foucauld felt, if not the irresistible outpouring of grace, at least the initial inner thrill that heralded the first movement of his soul toward the path of faith’. ³⁴ Muslims’ radical monotheism (tawḥīd) and sense of God’s providence (tawakkul) unsettled him deeply.

Foucauld chose to listen and observe quietly for years in order that from his long and pregnant silence would come forth a transparent Christian discipleship. In Tamanrasset, villagers called Foucauld a marabout (or a holy man). He wrote, ‘I want to accustom myself to all the inhabitants, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and non-believers, to look at me as their brother, their universal brother. Already they are calling this house ‘the fraternity house’ (khaoua) – about which I am delighted – and realizing that the poor have a brother here – not only the poor, but all men [and women]’. ³⁵ The Christian marabout was aware of the difficulty of his position and wondered, ‘Will [the Tuaregs] know how to distinguish between a soldier and a priest, to see us as servants of God, envoys of peace, universal brothers?’ ³⁶ Until his death, Foucauld sought to prepare the Saharan souls for the seed of the Gospel. According to Merad, Foucauld’s hope for the Tuaregs’ eventual conversion to Catholicism was simply unreasonable.

Like many holy and exemplary lives, ambiguity and mixed motives are constitutive of their legacy. Foucauld shared an eschatological hope for the religious other. His mystical intuition and compassionate engagement with the Muslim other are mixed with his human flaws and failings. Merad concludes, ‘Beyond the inevitable missteps and errors of judgment . . . there remains this exceptional human adventure that will continue to summon Muslim and Christian consciousness alike’. ³⁷ From 1905 to 1916, de Foucauld’s ascetical devotion, engagement with the Tuaregs, desire for authentic brotherhood, and constant effort to see and treat Muslims as neighbours cannot compensate for, ‘the colonial saint’ ulterior motives and actions. Merad asks wisely:

Under these circumstances, would it be too much to think that, although de Foucauld is a Christian, the hermit of the Sahara belongs in some way to Islam as well, since he chose a Muslim country for his last dwelling place? ³⁸