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<\/a>Pascal once said that most of our problems as human beings stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room by ourselves. Never was this more true than now. It certainly has been for me. As I thought about this, it led me to pull off the shelf one of my all time spiritual favorites, Carlo Carretto\u2019s 1964 classic Letters from the Desert<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\nIn 1954, at age 44, Carretto, a highly respected Catholic lay activist, left a busy life in Italy for the North African desert. There he joined the Little Brothers of Jesus, a small religious community based on the life and teaching of Blessed Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), a soldier-explorer turned hermit. The book consists, literally, of Carretto\u2019s letters from the desert to his friends back home.<\/p>\n
Carlo said he had felt a call from God, urging him: \u201cLeave everything and come with me into the desert. It is not your acts and your deeds that I want: I want your prayer, your love.\u201d Letters from the Desert <\/i>is the story of how he followed God\u2019s \u201cmysterious\u201d call, which \u201ccomes in the darkness of faith.\u201d That call, he writes, is \u201cso fine, so subtle, that it is only with the deepest silence within us that we can hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He makes it clear, however, that he wasn\u2019t hiding from the world. In fact, he insists, through prayer he feels more closely connected than ever to those he loves. He writes: \u201c[O]ne never wastes one\u2019s time by praying; there is no more helpful way of helping those we love.\u201d\u00a0One of the continued major appeals of this book, as author-publisher Robert Ellsberg points out, is Carretto\u2019s own ascetic yet joy-filled spirituality. Carretto writes of his desert experience: \u201c\u2018You will be judged according to your ability to love,\u2019 this place reminds me insistently.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was in the silence of the desert that Carretto most fully encountered the God Who is Love. But it wasn\u2019t easy for him, just as it isn\u2019t easy for us today. Silence doesn\u2019t come naturally. Carretto uses the example of Eucharistic Adoration: \u201cNo prayer is so difficult\u2026 One\u2019s whole natural strength rebels against it.\u201d For many of us, especially in the age of social media, it\u2019s hard to sit still! At times it seems impossible, but as Carretto writes, \u201cJesus is God of the impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n
So how does all this apply to us today? Speaking for myself, friends, like many of you, I too am \u201cfeeling\u201d the quarantine. In other words, I\u2019m antsy. My den feels more like a cell than a \u201cman-cave.\u201d Sometimes I feel the need to get out of the house and go for a walk, but that\u2019s not exactly the best idea these days living in New York City.<\/p>\n
Once again, Ellsberg sums up Carretto\u2019s appeal nicely:<\/p>\n
Essentially, Carretto showed that it is possible to live a contemplative life in the midst of the world\u2013 the desert, after all, is really everywhere. The heart of the Gospel, he believed, is to make of ourselves an oasis of love in whatever desert we might find ourselves.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There, perhaps, we can directly encounter what Carretto calls the \u201cperpetual newness of the love of Jesus.\u201d Let\u2019s pray to the God of the impossible, in these difficult times, that we can find yet Him in that \u201cstill small voice\u201d (Ezekiel 19:12).<\/p>\n
Blessed Charles de Foucauld, pray for us!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
(The above drawing of Blessed Charles de Foucauld is by Pat McNamara.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pascal once said that most of our problems as human beings stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room by ourselves. Never was this more true than now. It certainly has been for me. As I thought about this, it led me to pull off the shelf one of my all time spiritual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3963,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22016,22019],"tags":[22021],"class_list":["post-4534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-carlo-carretto","category-charles-de-foucauld","tag-carlo-carretto"],"yoast_head":"\n
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