Charles de Foucauld is the figure who teaches Catholics about the
true nature of Christian martyrdom, too often distorted into a
“persecutionism” ideology. Brother Michael Davide Semeraro, a Benedictine monk and spiritual teacher, looks at the experience of the “Little Brother” and his legacy, from an original perspective, 100 years on from his death.
As Semeraro explains in his book “Charles de Foucauld. Explorer and Prophet of a Universal Brotherhood” (San Paolo Editions, 2016), De Foucauld is relevant as a figure in today’s ecclesial climate: many see the Church’s relationship with Islam as problematic if not hostile.
Brother Charles’ experience is useful in reconsidering the sense and profound meaning of Christian martyrdom: “In his case, it simply lived in him there was no need to look for the executioner. This is the only way to escape the vicious cycle of revenge and enter the world of the Gospel. A Christian martyr doesn’t need an executioner: what counts is the willingness to give one’s life completely,” the Benedictine explained to Vatican Insider.
This is where the subtle difference lies, separating the experiences of martyrs from those who use them as a pretext for defending an identity or as a trigger for indignation campaigns of a cultural-political nature.
Too often today, martyrdom undergoes a kind of “genetic modification”, when the suffering of faithful is exploited for power or business-related reasons. Or when the reaction to this suffering leads simply to “rights being claimed”, claims which remain confined within an “Amnesty-style” Church.
“What Charles de Foucauld represents in the history of the Church is a point of no return: his prophesy fell in the Sahara desert like an evangelical grain of sand on 1 December 2016. It opened up new paths well before the Second Vatican Council became aware of it,” Semeraro explains.
The Benedictine monk mentions references to Benedict of Nursia and St. Francis of Assisi in Foucauld’s life: “From the Benedictine tradition which he was exposed to as a Trappist, he conserved the contemplative aspect of attention to God and the other brothers. Francis of Assisi inspired in him a passion for a perpetual return to the Gospel sine glossa and the condition of minority, which always drives one to make the first and unconditional step towards the other.”
And while, for the Saint of Assisi, the journey to the Saladin’s tent was an important moment in his spiritual journey, “for Charles de Foucauld, his encounter with Islam was an appeal to the inner being and transcendence. It was the Muslims and their habit of praying before the Almighty that led him to rediscover his baptismal faith.”
And so the military-geographical explorer turns into a “human explorer” who seeks to put himself in the shoes of the other with genuine humility. It is a process of becoming a tabula rasa: “The first step is learning from others and learning the language of others in order to understand their life, emotions, desires, their way of perceiving the mystery of life, with all its joys and tribulations. Brother Charles writes in his diary: to do the soul some good, we must talk to them and in order to talk about the good God and spiritual things, we need to be able to speak a language well.”
“In this sense, Brother Charles refers back to the intuition of great missionaries such as Cyril, Methodius and Matteo Ricci,” Semeraro continues. “This is why he learns the language of the Tuareg people, he prepares dictionaries and collects poetry that communicates the wisdom of these people.”
In his relationships with others he does not start off by thinking that he holds the key to the truth: “The truth is a person, Jesus Christ, and it is only by learning to speak and act like he does and being attentive to the needs of others that allows us to be recognised and loved, in a way.”
Decades later, this way of thinking and acting was repeated in Tibhirine, in the Trappist monks who were killed at the Abbey of Our Lady of Atlas in 1996. According to Semeraro, in the third millennium, after the attack on the Twin Towers and the terrorist attacks in Europe, Brother Charles’ experience can help Christians “looking at the presence of ‘others’ with eyes of faith, delegitimise what many see as a clash with Islamic civilisation”.
One of Brother Charles’ strong and significant messages regards the approach taken towards Islam: “Today’s Blessed is a testimony to complete adherence to the Gospel by exposing himself unilaterally - in other words, regardless of reciprocity - to his fraternal relationship with Muslims,
In the deep depths of the Algerian desert, where he lived his earthly life, Brother Charles read the Gospel and worshipped the presence of God in the Eucharist, not protect himself behind the armour of a strong and contrasting identity but in order to open himself up to an increasingly universal fraternity.