Pope Francis, please! I can barely keep up. It’s almost like you were just waiting for me to restart this blog, and now, all of a sudden, you are mercilessly flooding the news cycle with stuff about contemplation. But I’m not a news blogger! And let me tell you, it is not my second call to be dragged where I didn’t plan to go, no-siree. And anyway, I thought you wanted me to be the more hidden, the more divine, huh? Well, that didn’t last long, did it? Have pity on your little child, Holy Father. Jesus, make him have pity.

God did not hear my prayer.

Pope Francis is at it again, focusing his catechesis at the weekly General Audience on Saint Charles de Foucauld. And really, I can pretend to be upset, but I’m nothing of the sort.

The English summary of the catechesis, spoken by a speaker at the General Audience itself, is a good introduction to the life of Brother Charles. There have certainly been worse. Check this out:

Today we consider the life of Saint Charles de Foucauld, whose passionate love of Christ led him to settle in the Sahara desert and to become a brother and friend to the poor. Following his conversion, Charles visited the Holy Land and was moved to devote his life to bringing Christ to others as Mary did at the Visitation: in silence and by example. Dwelling as a hermit among the Tuareg people, he bore witness to the Lord above all by a life of poverty and humility centred on quiet prayer before the Eucharist, with utter confidence in its power to draw hearts to Jesus. By identifying completely with the poor, he sought to become a “universal brother” and in this way to share with them the joy of the Gospel.

This little passage has all the main dimensions of the life and witness of Charles de Foucauld: lost in the love of God, Visitation, Eucharist, ministry of presence, friendship, and prayer. While the key word of “Nazareth” may be missing from the speaker’s summary (but is present in the Holy Father’s main text), the idea is there nonetheless. This summary even continues Pope Francis’ self-assigned job of clearing up previous magisterial teaching that implies Charles was called the universal brother by others, rather than aspired to this state himself. It is an introduction. Yet it is also doing the work of clarification for those already (not so accurately) introduced to the subject. This clarification is, as I say, of course, a continuation of the now-somewhat-famous closing of Fratelli Tutti, which the Holy Father quotes in his complete catechesis.

The catechesis itself draws on a lot of the same themes as Pope Francis’ address to the Little Sisters of Jesus a couple of weeks ago. There, he highlighted what he considers the most important aspect of the Sisters’ spirituality as well as Brother Charles’: mad love, love lost in God, lost in the pursuit of God. Here, he says the following:

Brother Charles thus reminds us that the first step in evangelizing is to have Jesus inside one’s heart; it is to “fall head over heels” for him. If this does not happen, we can hardly show it with our lives.

As with the talk given to the Little Sisters, the General Audience catechesis talks about immersion in the lives of others, ministry of presence, and proximity:

Let us not forget that God’s style is summarized in three words: proximity, compassion and tenderness. God is always near, he is always compassionate, he is always tender. And Christian witness must take this road: of proximity, compassion and tenderness.

As with the previous address, in yesterday’s Audience the Pope speaks about hiddenness and silence:

Charles lets Jesus act silently, convinced that the “Eucharistic life” evangelizes. Indeed, he believes that Christ is the first evangelizer. And so he remains in prayer at Jesus’ feet, before the Tabernacle, for a dozen hours a day, sure that the evangelizing force resides there and feeling that it is Jesus who will bring him close to so many distant brothers. And do we, I ask myself, believe in the power of the Eucharist? Does our going out to others, our service, find its beginning and its fulfilment there, in adoration? 

If there’s one thing Charles de Foucauld must convince us of, it’s certainly that love of Jesus in the Eucharistic species goes hand in hand with love of the presence of Christ in others, especially those we’d think are farthest from him. Adoration and love of others are not separate things to choose as our preference. They are rather two poles of the same Love alive in us. The message is simple: Don’t tear it apart. Live both together.

The way I’ve framed things, a lot of this might sound like repetition. That’s not entirely wrong. Indeed, not only are the themes similar in this month’s two papal addresses on Charles de Foucauld, so are the general means that Pope Francis chooses to talk about Brother Charles. Here, as there, he summarizes the general trajectory of the saint’s life. Here, as there, he quotes from the saint’s writings extensively. This doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading the second address, though. There are nuances. There are differences. Not even the quotations are identical. Pope Francis finds new ones to makes his similar points. Only one of the quotations overlaps between the two addresses; the other five are different. So I sure wouldn’t skip this Wednesday catechesis; it’s worth your time!

The entirety of the catechesis has been published in English on the Vatican website, and I would encourage you to read it and savour it… that is, of course, if your reading list is not already immensely long, thanks to the seemingly endless contemplative antics of the Holy Father.