Content area
Full Text
Charles de Foucauld: Writings Selected with an Introduction. By Robert Ellsberg. Modern Spiritual Masters Series. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999. 125 pp. $13.00 (paper).
The Viscount Charles-Eugene de Foucauld, born in Strasbourg in 1858, died in sub-Saharan Morocco in 1916 as Brother Charles of Jesus, a bullet through his head. Robert Ellsberg, Editor-in-Chief of Orbis Books and general editor of the Modern Spiritual Masters Series to which this volume belongs, has here garnered a slim but impressive selection of de Foucauld's letters, essays and meditations. Arranged topically, the selections divulge the rare spiritual insights of de Foucauld. Ellsberg's practiced eye moves the reader through de Foucauld's conversion, from a lively and overweight French military officer to a simple hermit of the desert, following its various stages along the way.
The book's sections move from its Prologue, "Myself and my Past Life: The Mercy of God" to three chapters: "Hidden Life," "Cry the Gospel with your Life," and "Abandonment to the Will of God," and, finally, to an...