In the Season of Creation and at other points throughout the year, I’ve undertaken projects to show how contemplation of God’s creation is manifest in the testimony of different saints and holy persons. Aside from some general collections of quotes, there have been more detailed projects on St. Thérèse of Lisieux and Marcel Văn. This year, I’d like to start off with St. Charles de Foucauld.

In particular, I’m thinking of a period of time following Br. Charles’ move deeper into the Sahara, to the Hoggar. This isn’t to say that elsewhere in the saint’s life we won’t find material for reflection in the Season of Creation. Indeed we might. But what has drawn my attention to this time and place is the focus that it received in a posthumous work of Antoine Chatelard.[1] While Charles’ meticulous biographer does not say so, it seems that some of his last, updated interpretations of Br. Charles’ life, written some twenty years after his previous book-length publications, bear the imprint of their times. Some of Chatelard’s most interesting pages give a partial view, a refocused image, a selected window on St. Charles in the age of Laudato Si’.

An inclination towards the beauty of the natural world

I wish it were not necessary to “prove” the inclination of so many holy figures towards God’s good creation. But it is. We live in such times.

In the case of Charles de Foucauld, the inclination towards the natural world is no sentimental throwback to his youthful adventures in North Africa, nor is it intoxication with the beauty of the natural world tout court. There is clear evidence that, for Charles, the attraction works through these good things to their Creator. They—and he—move in gratitude and praise to their Origin and End.

First, though, let it be said that Charles is rapt by what he experiences. This is not a put-on or passing feeling. It runs deep. He tells his cousin that he is filled with the emotion of awe:

Every time I open the window or the door, I am in awe of the peaks that surround me and overlook me; it is a marvellous view and a truly beautiful solitude. How good it is in this great calm and this beautiful nature, so tormented and so strange, to lift up one’s heart to the Creator and Saviour Jesus![2]

He also remarks that he is as if absorbed:

I can hardly take my eyes off this admirable view, whose beauty and sense of infinity bring us so close to the Creator, while at the same time its solitude and wild aspect show how alone we are with Him and how we are but a drop of water in the ocean.[3]

Both times that he speaks thus, he specifically talks about beauty. He also mentions solitude, a theme which he repeats in a letter to a friend:

Devote some time to be alone with the Creator who is our eternal destiny. Here, my hermitage is on a peak that overlooks almost the entire Hoggar, between wild mountains beyond which the horizon, which seems limitless, brings to mind the infinity of God. It is a beautiful place to worship, meditate, and ask for mercy… Only a distant sound of what is happening comes from outside.[4]

Beauty, solitude, emotional absorption before the infinity of God himself—these form a trio. What unites them is a word that Charles inserts into a letter designed to entice a young Louis Massignon to join him in the desert: contemplation. Says Charles, “I have just established a hermitage at an altitude of over 2600 meters, a beautiful solitude for worshipping God while contemplating His Creation from these peaks.”[5] This, I think, is no surprise. Pope Francis spoke of “our God-given aesthetic and contemplative sense” in the singular. His suggestion was that what we contemplate is beauty. That Charles, one of the late pontiff’s main influences, should join aesthetic and contemplative experience, then, marks another continuity between the holy pair.

All this Charles says about the Hoggar, where he built a hermitage only to stay there a short while. It is not, however, only the peaks of the mountainous regions of the Sahara that enrapture his spirit. Slightly earlier and from the low-lying parts of the desert, he also writes:

I am the only soul in these deserts to recite the hymn Benedicite omnia opera Domini Domino, while facing these beautiful mountains. May God grant grace to these Tuareg, so gifted, so that they may love and serve God; may their souls praise the Lord as does the inanimate Creation.[6]

Again, there is the reference to beauty and solitude (“the only soul”). Yet there is also the propulsion towards the Creator. The exact reference here is to “praise.” The very rocks—or the sand—cry out to the Lord. Charles does, too. Of course, he also remarks in a roundabout way that he is not strictly speaking alone. He mentions the Tuareg. We’ll have to come back to that. Let’s just say that solitude in the strictest sense does not seem, per Charles, to be necessary. Grateful and praise-filled contemplation of the Creator’s good works is compatible with a wider range of Christian vocational experience.

Relationship with the tabernacle

One of the curious things about Charles’ correspondence from the Assekrem or Hoggar period is that he links two themes. He talks as if prayer might happily alternate between the created locus of the natural world and the created locus of Jesus’ body:

I eagerly await the autumn that will bring me your kind visit. I hope it will be long. I will then be at Assekrem, the center of the Atakor massif. You will be there in perfect conditions to explore, and between visits to the scattered camps, you will spend restful hours surrounded by the most beautiful nature in the world and at the feet of its Master present on the Holy Altar. I know nothing sweeter than hours spent before the tabernacle in the profound solitude outside. To feel God so close to you and to feel so alone with Him in the immensity and beauty of His Creation, which reflects His beauty; the more you drink in this sweetness, the more you thirst for it.[7]

However, this is truly odd. During this period, Charles, as Antoine Chatelard notes,[8] was able to celebrate the Eucharist but not permitted to reserve unconsumed Hosts. In other words, Jesus wasn’t in the tabernacle. Charles’ vision was just imaginary.

In fact, an earlier letter of Charles to his cousin reveals that the available locus of Jesus in the tabernacle kept him from contemplating the Creator through his beautiful creation:

What is wonderful here are the sunsets—the evenings and the nights. I remember, seeing these beautiful sunsets, that you love them, because they recall the great peace that will follow the storm of our days… The evenings are so calm, the nights so serene, this great sky and these vast horizons half-lit by the stars: all are so peaceful and silently sing in such a penetrating manner of the Eternal, the Infinite, the Beyond. It is such that one could spend entire nights in this contemplation. Yet I cut short these contemplations and return after a few moments before the tabernacle, for there is more in the humble tabernacle. Nothing compares to the Beloved.[9]

Antoine Chatelard remarks astutely: “If he had had the Blessed Sacrament in his tabernacle while at Assekrem, would he have written the sentences that tell us something of his prayer before ‘the beauty of Creation’?”[10] It’s a reasonable question. In fact, it appears that the lack of availability of Jesus in the tabernacle opened up Charles to new areas of prayer. It uncovered “a new dimension of his personality: he delighted in contemplating beauty to elevate his soul to the Creator.”[11] It brought him closer to, not just his Redeemer, but his Creator. They are of course the same in the final analysis. But the expressions denote different meanings and aspects for us. Charles learned through his loss of the Eucharistic presence to find the Lord elsewhere, too.

Relationship with the people

For Charles, contemplation of the beauty of God’s creation has a certain relationship with the Eucharistic Lord—both in an imaginative parallel and in a real change of focus in prayer—but it also has a certain relationship with people. Indeed, we might even say the people, the people to whom Charles senses himself sent. He writes:

My hermitage at Assekrem is not only started but finished: it has two rooms, a small one [i.e., the chapel] and a large one [i.e., the bedroom]. In the large one, two can easily live, and if necessary, three. In the future, I intend to divide my time between Assekrem [the highland] and Tamanrasset [the lowland]. I will perhaps be more at Assekrem because the region is much more inhabited. There are always numerous tents nearby. I will have the advantage of being able to see many souls and of being very solitary on my summit. From up there, there is a marvellous, even fantastic view, overlooking a tangle of wild and strange peaks, with nothing to obstruct the view to the north and south: it is a beautiful place to worship the Creator. May His reign be established there.[12]

Indeed, Charles speaks as if the high mountains drew him because they enabled his contact with the people:

For two and a half months, I have been in the mountains, in the heart of the country, in a hermitage built to better connect with the nomads; I am very happy with this place, both solitary and close to those I have seen the least so far.[13]

I am in my mountain castle, as you say, enchanted in every way by this residence: the most beautiful view in the world, which, by its beauty and immensity, elevates the soul to the Creator, marvellous sunsets that evoke the decline of life and eternal peace, solitude and at the same time great advantages for relations with the Tuareg.[14]

It surprises us that the higher elevation could ever be seen to put Charles in closer contact with the people, especially given the cold nights of the desert. The reason Charles gives, though, derives from climatic patterns:

These high mountains, superb pastures after the rains, are desolate when the drought lasts too long. It hasn’t rained here for a year and a half. I hope the rain wont be long in coming. As soon as it comes, all the tents will be pitched around Assekrem.[15]

At any rate, Charles was there. His intention was not just solitary contemplation of creation and Creator. It was also a desire to be adjacent to the people. In the end, Charles found that his Assekrem location didn’t actually facilitate immersion in the lives of the people. So he moved out, back to Tamanrasset. This sparked a certain nostalgia for silent contemplation of God the Creator. But the saint also kept his focus first on the people, the poor ones, the last heard:

My life is simple and calm; yet I miss the solitude of the Assekrem where no human noise reaches me. Here I am the confidant and often the advisor of my neighbours; I know distressing things. We suffer to see souls lost; we suffer to see good not done.[16]

A complex personality, a complicated journey

I have always resisted the presentation of Charles de Foucauld as a solitary, a recluse, a desert hermit. He didn’t, as far as his correspondence reveals to us, abandon his ideas of Nazareth—being small, being everyday, living with the people, a ministry of presence as we’d say today—that had germinated in him in the Holy Land and developed at Beni-Abbès. In fact, his conceptions only deepen with time. At Tamanrasset, he comes to accept help from the people he feels himself sent to. His relationships with them become more equal. He becomes more and more one of them and less of a provider, less of an outsider.

Yet this journey also has a little detour. He does go up to the mountain peaks. He does speak of solitary prayer with the Creator. He does become enveloped in more silence. This happens in a period in which he is deprived of the Eucharistic presence in the tabernacle, and Charles’ prayer reorients towards an imaginative reminder of the created humanity of Jesus that sits alongside a very immediate contemplation of the natural beauty created by the Creator. This isn’t planned as an escape from the human hubbub. Rather, Charles thinks he can have his cake and eat it, too. He thinks that the Hoggar promises both better contact with the Tuareg and exquisite natural beauty. It turns out he’s wrong. But that doesn’t take away from his motivation in trying his experiment in the first place.

In the end, the experience is educative. Charles learns to better connect with beauty. He links aesthetic and contemplative experience. He also turns to the Creator as such. None of this was ever completely absent from his prayer, we can be sure. But he finds a renewed appreciation for these human and Christian dimensions. His mission stays the same. He is still sent to live “in Nazareth” with the people. But he knows the value of what he sometimes misses out on when he is among them and not in the generous beauty of God’s creation.

As always, Charles de Foucauld is a complex personality, and the path he takes is complicated, with its stops and starts. But certainly one thing that is true of him, now in the Season of Creation and always, is that he—even he, with all his mystifying takes and diversions—was sensitive to the goodness that lies in contemplation of the beauty of creation, in gratitude and praise of the Creator.

Image: mountains in or near the Hoggar, taken on a flight over Africa

[1] Antoine Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset. Un nouveau regard (Paris: Salvator, 2022).

[2] Letter to Marie de Bondy (24 July 1911), in Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 47.

[3] Letter to Marie de Bondy (9 July 1911), in Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 47.

[4] Letter to Henry de Castries (10 December 1911), in Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 48.

[5] Letter to Louis Massignon (15 May 1910), in Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 52.

[6] Letter to Henry de Castries (16 May 1911), in Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 48.

[7] Letter to Captain Charlet (16 May 1911), in Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 46.

[8] Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 46–47.

[9] Letter to Marie de Bondy (12 September 1902), in Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 47n1.

[10] Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 47.

[11] Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 52.

[12] Letter to Raymond de Blic (16 June 1910), in Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 32.

[13] Letter to Fr. Alexandre Guérin (16 September 1911), in Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 51.

[14] Letter to Madame Nieger (24 November 1911), in Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 51.

[15] Letter to Raymond de Blic (8 May 1911), in Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 37.

[16] Letter to Henry de Castries (8 January 8 1913), in Chatelard, Charles de Foucauld à Tamanrasset, 95.