My God, If You Exist, Make Me Know You.
“The love of God, the love for one’s neighbor…
All religion is found there…
How to get to that point?
Not in a day since it is perfection itself:
it is the goal we must always aim for,
which we must unceasingly try to reach
and that we will only attain in heaven.”
Charles Eugèn Vicomte de Foucauld de Pontbriand
Approaching December 1, it’s time to celebrate a man who wouldn’t make it with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s band of merry men (fewer and fewer women allowed or wanted) and their muy macho sodality. (Father Flynn almost used “fraternity,” but he so deep prizes his sixty-five years as a Sigma Chi and attributes the origins of his priesthood to a Sigma Chi experience that he would not sully the word in this essay.)
Hegseth is marching out a phantasmagoric firing squad for the careers of men and women who have dedicated their lives (and the lives of their spouses and children who suffer the permanent, emotional chickenpox-like scares of uprooted-again-itis), ‘cause Pete thinks they’re too… Too whatever Pete thinks they’re too…
Don’t tell the Secretary of Defense and his Oval Office boss that the guy was a vicomte – a member of European (French) nobility; they’d stumble over each other trying to kiss his never-in-fashion, almost certainly dirty robe.
Why December 1…
It’s a day for honoring (we deliberately chose not to write “celebrating”) a man too bearded, too skinny, too dirty, too accepting, (we won’t write “too Christian,” because that’s a given) for genuine “service” in Hegseth’s version of the United States Coast Guard, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Space Force. (We almost forgot that he spoke several languages and wrote a translation of the Gospels and a four-volume dictionary of the language of a nomadic people - probably another disqualifier for Herseth et al.)
About the guy…
With ancestry tracing to the Crusades – a source of pride among French nobility - and born into an aristocratic family in Strasbourg, France in 1858, the lineage of Charles Eugèn Vicomte de Foucauld de Pontbriand included Catholic martyrs of the “September massacres” of the French Revolution. He was orphaned by age six, placed in the care of his paternal grandmother, who died very shortly thereafter, and reared by his devout maternal grandparents, Colonel Beaudet de Morlet and his wife..
The Franco-Prussian war resulted in a brief dislocation of the family to Switzerland; back in France, by age fifteen he moved from doubt and questioning to agnosticism:
“I remained twelve years without denying or believing anything, despairing of the truth and not even believing in God. There was no convincing proof…
“At 17 I was totally selfish, full of vanity and irreverence, engulfed by a desire for what is evil. I was running wild…
“I was in the dark. I no longer saw either God or men: There was only me.”
As a teenager, he rebelled against the strict discipline of the Jesuit-run Sainte-Genevieve school; before being expelled in 1876 for being "lazy and undisciplined,” he abandoned all religious practices and dedicated himself to "completely enjoy that which is pleasant to the mind and body." He later described himself at this point in his life as “all selfishness, all impiousness, all evil desire….”
The Vicomte was no dummy; he was admitted 82nd of 412 to the Saint-Cyr Military Academy (often referred to as “Saint-Cyr”), where the motto was “Ils s'instruisent pour vaincre” – “They study to vanquish” or more freely “Training for victory” - and graduated 333rd out of a class of 386.
Graduation and the death of his grandfather left the young de Foucauld with a substantial inheritance, an extravagant lifestyle and searching. He entered the French cavalry school at Saumur and was eventually assigned to the 4th Regiment of the Chasseurs d’Afrique, a light cavalry corps of the Armee d’Afrique (Army of Africa) in 1891. The Army was not too keen on the idea of his mistress joining him in the barracks and, because he refused to give up Mimi, he resigned, only to break-up with Mimi and reenlist because his unit was headed to Tunisia. When the Army refused his request to strike out on his own and explore Morocco, he quit again - “At least in that way I will be able to learn something and not waste my time.”
Morocco at that time was forbidden territory for Europeans; after fifteen months of preparation and in the company of his Jewish guide Mordechai, the young explorer embarked on his risky trek of exploration.
“I disguised myself from Tangiers onwards… I pretended I was an Israelite… my costume was that of Moroccan Jews, my religion, theirs, my name, Rabbi Joseph. I prayed and I sang in the Synagogue. Parents pleaded with me to bless their children…
“To those who wanted to know where I was from, sometimes I responded Jerusalem, sometimes Moscow, and sometimes Algiers… If someone were to ask the reason for my trip? To Muslims I would reply that, I was a mendicant rabbi going begging from town to town; to Jews, a pious Israelite who had come to Morocco despite the fatigue and danger, so as to inquire about the condition of his brothers…. My whole itinerary was recorded with readings from a compass and barometer.”
The itinerant “Israelite” began travelling Morocco, becoming an increasingly serious student of the geography and cultures of North Africa.
The French aristocrat-beggar arrived barefoot, emaciated and covered with dirt at the Algerian border crossing in May 23, 1884. “It was hard, but very interesting, and I survived.” After travelling roughly 1,900 miles in an almost unknown country, he returned to France and began preparing for the publication of Voyage au Maroc, his detailed accounts of the geography and cultures he encountered. His manuscript earned the 1885 gold medal from the Societe de Geographie de Paris.
Der Mensch Tracht, Un Gott Lacht.
Man plans and God laughs.
A Yiddish proverb
“At the beginning of October of the year 1886,… while in Paris getting my journey to Morocco published, I found myself in the company of people who were highly intelligent, highly virtuous and highly Christian. At the same time, an extremely strong interior grace was pushing me. Even though I wasn’t a believer I started going to Church. It was the only place where I felt at ease and I would spend long hours there repeating this strange prayer: ‘My God, if you exist, allow me know you!’”
His cousin Marie de Bondy –
“A beautiful soul assisted you [God], but by her silence, her gentleness, her goodness, her perfection…you attracted me by the beauty of this soul… You then inspired me with this thought: ‘Since this soul is so intelligent, the religion in which she believes cannot be folly.’”
In short order, de Foucauld was introduced to Father Henri Huvelin, who – almost instantaneously - required a confession and return to the sacraments and demanded a three year wait before de Foucauld could pursue life in a Roman Catholic religious order. In de Foucauld-esque-style, the explorer set his sights on the Trappists – essentially the second strictest order in the Catholic Church. (They ain’t called “the Cistercians of the Strict Observance” for nothin.) But Huvelin insisted on a extended wait, which began with a pilgrimage to Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
The former member of the French camel corps in North Africa entered in the Trappist monastery at Ardeche, France on January 15, 1890, but, again, there was an internal itch: “We [the monastery] are poor in material goods, but not as poor as was our Lord, not as poor as I was in Morocco, not as poor as St. Francis.” In late January 1897, with permission from the Trappist Superior General, he left the monastery bound for Nazareth, where he lived as a laborer and gardener in the monastery of the Poor Clares (a community of nuns founded in 1212 by St. Clare, influenced by St. Francis of Assisi). His ambition – perhaps a vision or dream – was to found a community of men with whom he could share “a very simple rule, apt to give to a few pious souls a family life.” He went so far as to write the “Rule of the Little Brothers,” but no one elected to join him. “It is only when I am a priest and there is an oratory [chapel] around which we can come together, that I will be able to have a few companions,” he reasoned.
Returning to France in August 1900 he found Father Huvelin in agreement with his June 9, 1901 ordination to priesthood at the Trappist Abbey of Akbes.
The Irish have a way of describing the then forty-three-year-old newly ordained, former aristocrat, onetime French cavalryman: “Full of himself.”
He returned to Morocco – Beni-Abbes – on October 28, 1901 determined to establish a monastic community offering hospitality to all members of the Abrahamic religions and people of no religion, adopted the religious name “Charles of God,” built a small hermitage, and referred to those he hope would join his “fraternity” as “Little Brothers of Jesus.”
A great idea, but no one was biting.
“Knowing by experience that no people were more abandoned than the Muslims of Morocco and the Algerian Sahara, I requested and obtained permission to go to Beni Abbès, a little oasis in the Algerian Sahara on the boarders of Morocco…
“From 4.30 am to 8.30 pm, I never stop talking and receiving people: slaves, the poor, the sick, soldiers, travelers and the curious…”
In Beni Abbes he discovered slavery. He was scandalized.
“When the government commits a grave injustice against those for whom we are in a certain measure responsible, we should tell them about it, for we do not have the right to be ‘sleeping watchmen,’ ‘mute dogs” or ‘apathetic shepherds.’”
In January 1904, after a former army comrade invited him to live among the Taureg people of Algeria, he accepted. Charles of God moved to southern Algeria and the Tuareg people in Tamanrasset; he shared their lives and hardships, while conducting a ten-year study of their culture, traditions and language; he successfully translated the Four Gospels to Tuareg and completed four volumes of a dictionary that would be published after his death.
“For the moment I am a nomad, going from camp to camp, trying to build up familiarity, trust and friendship. This nomadic life has the advantage of allowing me to see a lot of people and get to know the country…
“The country almost always lacks water and pastureland and so the Tuaregs have to break up into small groups and spread out so as to feed and water their flocks. They live in very small groups, a tent here, a few tents there. You find them almost everywhere, but they are very rarely together…
“I cannot say that I desire death. In the past I had longed for it but now I see so much good that needs to be done, so many souls without a shepherd, that more than anything else, I would like to do a little good…”
In late 1916, the hermit who began his days with the prayer “Lord, one more day to love you” made a prescient diary entry:
“450 km from here, the French fort of Djanet has been invaded by more than a thousand Senoussists armed with a canon and rifles. After their success the Senoussists have an open road to come here. Nothing can stop them except God.”
(SOME BACKGROUND: Founded in Mecca in 1837, the Senussi were a Muslim political-religious segment of Sufi Islam. Under the Algerian Muhammad ibn Ali as-Sanusi, they were a powerful (and murderous) force, especially against Italian and British forces in North Africa. The outbreak of World War I intensified their anti-European hostilities in Algeria and de Foucauld’s request to return home and serve as a military chaplain was rejected by the local bishop. The Ottoman Empire, fighting alongside Prussia, call for an expulsion of all infidels from the lands of Islam and a full restoration of an Islamic caliphate.)
De Foucauld once wrote that he wanted to live in such a way that those he served would ask ““If such is the servant, what must the Master be like?”
Far removed from the protection of French forces, Tamanrasset was assaulted by Senussi militants on December 1, 1916. Before they were killed, two members of the French camel cavalry were initially able to stop an attack on the hermitage
An eyewitness reported that, as de Foucauld was dragged from his hermitage, he maintained silence and did not resist, demonstrating a profound sense of peace. He was forced to kneel with his hands tied behind his back as his captors demanded that he renounce his faith and proclaim the Shahada – the Islamic declaration of faith. He refused. A fifteen-year-old, shot him in the head. While his body was left in the sand, his murderers ransacked his hermitage and chapel and got drunk on altar wine. The following day, the Tuaregs he had befriended for so long and who considered him a friend buried the future saint.
A French army report noted:
“Father de Foucauld, since his conversion, never for one day stopped thinking of that hour after which there are no others, and which is the supreme opportunity offered for our repentance and acquisition of merit. He died on the first Friday of December, the day consecrated to the Sacred Heart, and in the manner that he wished, having always desired a violent death dealt in hatred of the Christian name, accepted with love for the salvation of the infidels of his land of election—Africa.”
(Charles de Foucauld: Hermit and Explorer. Rene Bazin. Benzinger Brothers, 1923)
Statue of Saint Charles de Foucauld in front of the Catholic Church of Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune in Strasbourg, France
At this writing, December 1 is just around the corner. Perhaps Secretary of Hegseth, who has gained notoriety for his – in the Pentagon - christian nationalist prayer services and statements, will use the opportunity to study and speak about the heroism of a descendant of French aristocrats who lived his faith until “that hour after which there are no others.”
He might even begin with
“Brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.”
Letter of the Apostle Paul to the Philippians 4:8
Actually, that’s a great place to start – if he says absolutely nothing more and immediately closes his taxpayers-funded in-the-Pentagon “prayer service.”