There are two main texts of Charles de Foucauld on the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Mt 25:31–46), also called the Scene of the Judgment of the Nations. Both passages are central to interpreting the saint. Both passages are relevant to the contemplative notion of finding Jesus in others.

The earliest of the pair, written from Nazareth, goes like this:

“I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was a stranger, I was naked, sick, in prison, and you never helped, welcomed, visited me. Whatever you did not do to the least of these, you did not do it to me.” (Mt 25:42–45)

What a weighty saying. It is not there for us to make up commentaries about but to believe. We must see clearly that what we could have done for someone and did not do, it is Our Lord we have neglected to do it for.

He did not say all the good we refused to do, no, all the good we did not do, all we could have done and neglected to do. The passerby who is poor, naked, a stranger, in trouble, asks nothing from us, but that person is a member of Jesus, a part of Jesus, a portion of Jesus. We let the person go by us and give him none of what he needs: it is Jesus we have let go by.

This emphatically means we owe ourselves to our neighbours, body and soul. We owe our neighbours our hearts and our minds. This is what the example of Our Lord should say to us when he sums up his life in a single sentence: “The Son of Man came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”[1]

Brother Charles of Jesus says it’s not our place to invent commentaries for this segment of the Gospel. I’ve spoken repeatedly about how the wording is basically taken up in an apostolic exhortation by Pope Francis:

Given these uncompromising demands of Jesus [in Mt 25:31–46], it is my duty to ask Christians to acknowledge and accept them in a spirit of genuine openness, sine glossa. In other words, without any ‘ifs or buts’ that could lessen their force. (Gaudete et Exsultate 97)

No commentaries, no glosses—it’s hard to deny the thematic echoes. But that’s nothing new. I’ve pointed to that before.

The second Foucauldian text on the Last Judgment is, in contast, one that I’ve said rather little about. A letter of Charles from Tamanrasset, written exactly four months before his death, includes these lines:

I think there is no saying in the Gospel that made a deeper impression on me and more transformed my life than this one: “Whatever you did to one of the least of these you did it to me.”

If we remember that these are the words of Uncreated Truth and come from the same lips that said, “This is my Body, this is my Blood,” how compellingly we are moved to seek out Jesus and love him in the “least ones,” the sinners, the poor.[2]

The reason I haven’t said much about this text is not its lack of interest. This passage is arguably more memorable than the Bergoglio-cribbed one. No, the real reason is that I didn’t have a good anchor for my thoughts. Now, though, thanks to a reader—one who has greatly enriched this blog over the years—I do. Here, it’s not that Someone Big echoes Charles de Focuauld. It’s the opposite. Charles de Foucauld echoes Someone Big—the great son of Thagaste and Bishop of Hippo Regius, Augustine.

Augustinian friar Thomas F. Martin remarks that, while John’s was “the only gospel that merited a full commentary by Augustine,”[3] it was “Matthew 25:31–46 [which] was never far from Augustine’s heart or discourse.”[4] And one of the discourses that is most interesting for present purposes is a sermon:

Brothers and sisters, from time to time I have spoken to you about the Scripture passage that has made the deepest impression on me (plurimum movet) and I will continue to remind you often of it. [He goes on to explore Matthew 25 and then comments] I see that you too are moved by this text and that you are surprised (video etiam vos moveri et mirari). And it is indeed something that should make us wonder (vere mira res). (s. 389.5)[5]

Immediately after quoting this passage, Martin points out—I think quite correctly—both its implicit universality and its inherent directionality. He says: “The wonder is that the Christ of one’s heart is also the Christ of every human relationship, and no human relationship was more privileged than the one that called forth our responsibility towards the poor.”[6] He adds that, in these words and related ones, Christ “asserted his solidarity and identification with the poor, and suffering, in fact, gives them a privileged status.”[7] The Christian journey, he reminds us a bit later, is one in which we “recognise Christ in [our] brothers and sisters, with a particular openness of heart for the poor.”[8] We may in some sense be called to find Christ in each and every human being. But the Judgment of the Nations speaks of position and direction. Christ is especially in the poor. He’s especially in the suffering. Augustine saw it that way.[9]

Still, he didn’t just see it that way. He used certain words. Augustine says that the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats was “the Scripture passage that has made the deepest impression on me.” This is nearly identical to Brother Charles of Jesus, who identifies the “saying in the Gospel that [has] made [the] deep[est] impression on me.” We have very clear reverberations across the centuries. Did the saint who went from Europe to North Africa know how closely he was following in the footsteps of the North African saint who went to Europe? Or is it just the sheer force of the Gospel that does its work independently? What’s the explanation here?

I don’t know. That’s research that’s above my pay grade (it doesn’t take much). One thing I do know, though, is this. Whether Charles intended to echo Augustine or not, he certainly knows now that he did. He, present to the whole Christ in heaven, can, like you and me here below, appreciate not just the place of Pope Francis in the Charles de Foucauld spiritual family, but even more, the core Augustinianism of St. Charles de Foucauld.

[1] Charles de Foucauld, Aux plus petits de mes frères. Méditations de 1897-98 sur les passages des Évangiles relatifs à 15 vertus axées sur la Charité (Paris; Nouvelle Cité, 1974), 92–93, in Little Sister Annie of Jesus, Charles de Foucauld: In the Footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth, trans. Little Sisters of Jesus (London: New City, 2004), 85.

[2] Letter to Louis Massignon (1 August 1916), in Little Sister Annie of Jesus, Charles de Foucauld, 87.

[3] Thomas F. Martin, Our Restless Heart: The Augustinian Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003), 30. Cf. ibid., 41: “prominent in this biblical spirituality will be John’s gospel, Paul’s letters, and the Book of Psalms.” The Johannine Gospel is, however, the least cited of the four in the Rule of St. Augustine (ibid., 163n12).

[4] Ibid., 14.

[5] Ibid., 33.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., 34.

[8] Ibid., 43.

[9] It should come as no surprise, then, that our Augustinian Pope was, while still Robert Prevost, retweeting the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. That’s something I noticed on the very day of the election of the new pontiff.