New PDF release: Hidden in God: Discovering the Desert Vision of Charles de

"Spirituality & Practice 2016 Award Winner."

Blessed Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916) was once a fancy guy. Born into French aristocracy, he floundered as an army officer, yet rediscovered his Catholic historical past and at last lived voluntarily as an impoverished priest/hermit within the Sahara wilderness in Algeria. Foucauld desired to emulate the hidden lifetime of Jesus in Nazareth and in doing so, left a non secular legacy that attracted such figures as Dorothy Day and writer, poet, and non secular director Bonnie Thurston.

released in occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary of Charles de Foucauld’s demise on December 1, 1916, Hidden in God highlights the profound conversion that led Foucauld to include the lifetime of a hermit within the Sahara, the place he was once finally murdered via a band of marauders.

Foucauld’s legacy is an everlasting religious imaginative and prescient: think in God, you'll want to stay for God and make him your explanation for dwelling. Drawing from his letters and journals, Bonnie Thurston explores how the hidden lifetime of Nazareth brings the grace of serious closeness to Jesus; the present of the barren region is the grace of whole dependence on God; and the grace of public lifestyles is the perform of charity and self-giving. Thurston adeptly demonstrates how those 3 destinations are metaphors for states of religious existence and ministry and the way each brings either a problem and a possibility. phrases of knowledge from Foucauld, in addition to inquiries to reflect on and biblical texts to discover finish every one chapter.

Thurston stocks how she grew to become enamored with Foucauld for the passionate means he lived his beliefs with no regard for reputation or luck. “I’ve fallen in love with a useless Frenchman who was once a hermit,” she admitted to a chum. Dorothy Day, founding father of the Catholic employee stream, additionally was once drawn to Foucauld’s barren region spirituality and wrote to Thomas Merton and others approximately Foucauld’s non secular influence.