Letter of Eric to the brothers around the world, October 15th 2020

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FRATERNITY OF PRIESTS JESUS CARITAS

LETTER OF ERIC TO THE BROTHERS AROUND THE WORLD

October 15th 2020, Dumaguete City, Philippines

Beloved brothers,

Peace and fraternal love to you all at this time of pandemic!

Like Mary of Magdala announcing the resurrection of Jesus to the eleven, I am humbled yet filled with great joy about the things I am about to tell you. The Risen Christ, in preparing the brothers for the good news, instructed Mary to “go and tell my brothers that they must leave for Galilee. There they will see me.” (Mt. 28: 10) Galilee is Jesus’ chosen place to be seen in his serene but glorious appearance after his painful crossing. It also is a place of encounter, transformation and renewed commitment to follow him beyond the passion event. While they narrated to one another their anxiety about the future, confusion and guilt about all the things that have happened, Jesus came in their midst. He patiently led them to see with new eyes their small stories of disillusionment and pain in the light of the bigger story of the Kingdom of God. Only after experiencing the forgiveness and peace of God in the Resurrected Christ that the brothers were marked permanently by a renewed joy and dauntless courage to cry the Gospel with their own lives until their own martyrdom.

In the same way, Jesus is inviting us to go to the Galilee of our fraternal communion – local, national, regional and international – and see again Christ’s event in our world and history. With the same spirit, allow me to share with you some proposals, calls for reflection and action vis-à-vis our preparation, celebration and post celebration activities in relation to the canonization of Bro Charles. These proposals are coming from our on line meetings with the international team. It is our hope that we all go collectively and individually to a space of gratitude, joy and awe for this gift. May the same gift also engender renewal, grounding and recommitment for us who have been inspired by the life and witness of Bro. Charles. It is important to note that we are celebrating this gift with the other members of the spiritual family.

So, how shall we celebrate the canonization of Bro Charles? Though the date has not been fixed yet but we feel that it is important to plan and organize our gratitude and joy. Before anything else, allow me to pose this question with you: How important is the canonization of Bro Charles to you who follow his spirituality? How do you understand it? May I invite you to hold this question for some time and listen very well to your inspired valuation of the event. Your personal and the other’s personal discernment when shared and listened to would serve as a wellspring from which our creative planning and celebration of the event could take their inspiration.

It is our firm conviction that this canonization is not about glorifying Bro Charles. This is very much counter to what he lived for. Rather, it is about affecting and effecting renewal in the Church, in our world, in the clergy building on the charism, intuition, message, legacy of Bro Charles. Our Church today, through the courageous leadership of Pope Francis is moving towards mission to the peripheries, renewed evangelization, care for our common home, forging human fraternities for global peace. The pandemic has exposed a more complex virus that is infecting a greater divide between the rich and the poor, increasing tensions among political leaders of our globe, market economics that edges out human and ecological accountability, culture that has become fast and loose with high-speed digitalized information. The diocesan clergy is in need of an icon that inspires greater radicality in living out the Gospel and a spirituality that grounds our ministry in the non-conventional ways of Jesus in Nazareth. Bro Charles has always been and will always be a witness pointing to Jesus. After he lived what he passionately believed, we are invited to take on the path he trod with the same love and intensity until our last breath.

So, here are our humble proposals:

That the canonization be not merely a one-day event but a prolonged process distinguished by three different phases: PREPARATION; CELEBRATION; PERIOD AFTER CANONIZATION;

That we invite every lay person, religious, deacon, priest, bishop to participate in our local, national, regional and international processes of reflection, prayer and action, if possible, together with the other members of the spiritual family;

That in our Preparation Phase, we are guided by the following themes for personal and communal discernment: The Situation of the Poor in our World Today (by Fernando Tapia); The Biography of Bro Charles and Its Validity Today (Honore Savadogo); Essential Elements of the Spirituality Inspired by Bro Charles and its Actuality Today (Tony Lanes); Our Way of Evangelizing Inspired in Bro Charles’ Witness (Fernando Tapia); Interreligious Dialogue In the Life and Intuitions of Bro Charles (Jean Francois Berjonneau).

They will be available weekly at our website – www.iesuscaritas.org. We read, reflect, pray and be moved into action by these jewels of Bro Charles. May I make a humble appeal to the continental responsibles to motivate the national and local responsibles to check on our website for these documents so that we could all be drinking from the same well together;

That our reflections may give birth to creative liturgies, missionary and solidarity actions to the peripheries in the local, national, regional or continental levels, if possible, in collaboration with the other members of the Spiritual Family;

That the Association of the Spiritual Family of Bro Charles shall organize a vigil on the eve of the canonization in Rome and on the day after the canonization at St Peter’s, there will be a thanksgiving mass presided over by the Most Reverend John MacWilliam, Bishop of the Sahara. More details shall be announced as soon as the date is fixed.

That in the period after canonization, we zealously announce Bro Charles and his spirituality by organizing weeks of Nazareth for young people and for priests who are interested and by facilitating international Month of Nazareth by language.

Thank you very much. May the Universal Brother, St. Charles de Foucauld intercede for us that we may be renewed as missionary diocesan priests and courageous disciples of Jesus of Nazareth today.

Sending to you the brotherly affection of the members of the International Team.

Your servant-brother,

Eric LOZADA

PDF: Letter of Eric to the brothers around the world, 15 October 2020 eng

Inspire the dream, Fratelli Tutti. Niall AHERN

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The International Fraternity of Jesus Caritas rejoices in the theme and scope of the recent encyclical of Pope Francis – FRATELLI TUTTI – and by the renewed appeal for universal brotherhood amongst all men and women. And it is encouraging to observe that towards its conclusion the person of Charles de Foucauld stands with Saint Francis of Assisi from whose Admonitions this document draws its inspiration. Blessed Charles, due to be numbered among the saints this month, embodied in every way the aspiration and concrete expression of what universal brotherhood signifies.

Pope Francis concludes this timely exhortation:

286. In these pages of reflection on universal fraternity, I felt inspired particularly by Saint Francis of Assisi. Yet I would like to conclude by mentioning another person of deep faith who, drawing upon his intense experience of God, made a journey of transformation towards feeling a brother to all. I am speaking of Blessed Charles de Foucauld.

287. Blessed Charles directed his ideal of total surrender to God towards an identification with the poor, abandoned in the depths of the African desert. In that setting, he expressed his desire to feel himself a brother to every human being and asked a friend to ‘pray to God that I truly be the brother of all’. He wanted to be, in the end, ‘the universal brother’. Yet only by identifying with the least did he come at last to be the brother of all. May God inspire the dream in all of us. Amen.

Charles de Foucauld’s dream followed the same route as that of Francis of Assisi. Like Francis he underwent radical conversion. He was poor and, like Francis, he wanted neither works nor buildings but witness. Like Francis, he lived in an age replete with problems for the church and for the world. One can often wonder about the reason for this natural similarity between the Saharan mystic and the saint of Assisi. This encyclical sharpens focus: both of them lived in an age which suffered from the same social and religious contradictions but also the same pressure for an authentic return to the gospel: both of them recognised that in frenetic activity there was an inevitable fragmentation that affects all. They condensed the complexities of their search and the contradictions of their wounded world into two incisive ideals – the notion of poverty and that of universal brotherhood. They were both committed to the culture of encounter – listening to the other at a new depth so that one’s own way of living may be challenged and made new. They promoted dialogue and solidarity as the effective way to respect the common good.

We note that this encyclical is subtitled ‘ On Fraternity and Social Friendship’ and has been written by Pope Francis with a stated purpose:

It does not claim to offer a complete teaching on fraternal love, but rather to consider its universal scope, its openness to every man and woman. I offer this social encyclical as a modest contribution to continued reflection, in the hope that in the face of present day attempts to eliminate or ignore others, we may prove capable of responding with a new vision of fraternity and social friendship that will not remain at the level of words. Although I have written it from the Christian convictions that inspire and sustain me, I have sought to make this reflection an invitation to dialogue among all people of good will (FT, 6).

This encyclical will be globally appreciated because the Pope recognises that the human conscience is in crisis and distanced from transcendent values and we are all experiencing the numbness that the void of interconnectedness exposes. When the last Israeli president Shimon Peres visited Pope Francis six years ago to promote the idea of a Parliament of World Religions, the Pope took time to reflect and discern since there is a risk that we ‘secularize’ transcendence and treat it as a political tool. Pope Francis wishes to make the idea of fraternity a fundamental notion and leans on the witness of Saint Francis and Brother Charles as exemplars of this ideal. They are the mentors of his dream for all of humankind.

As we travel with Brother Charles through his eventful life we see the continuum of this fraternal ideal take root and develop: as a wayward and questioning youth, as Moroccan explorer, as a novice at Notre Dame des Neiges, as a Trappist at Akbes, as a servant at the Poor Clare’s in Nazareth, at Jerusalem, as a hermit at Beni-Abbes and in the Hoggar. In the life and writings of this universal brother we discover one of the great spiritual figures of the twentieth century. Born in 1859 into an aristocratic family, after a radical conversion experience in the prime of his life, de Foucauld retreated from France to the Sahara, where he lived among the local Muslim Tuaregs. He was assassinated in 1916. This conversion moment is crucial in the central call of FRATELLI TUTTI. The encyclical is written in an invitational style. The invitation is, however, unremitting and is focused on nothing less than a personal conversion of heart; a direct and individual call by Pope Francis to universal metanoia in the light of his astute assessment of the fragility and polarization of today’s world. The choice of Charles de Foucauld as the one who exemplifies a unique response to this invitation to universal fraternity, marks him as a person of significance to our modern world and his witness deserves further study to shape the realization of the dream that FRATELLI TUTTI proposes. The Jesus Caritas Fraternity is a unique meeting place for us all to engage in the study and implementation of this challenging but encouraging encyclical. The dream can be the reality.

Niall Ahern is an Irish diocesan priest and National Responsable of the Jesus Caritas.

PDF: Universal brother