8th December 2008

Prayer of Abandonment

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures -
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father. Amen.

'...As soon as I believed there was a God, I understood I could do nothing else but live for him, my religious vocation dates from the same moment as my faith: God is so great. There is such a difference between God and everything that is not...'

The prayer above and the quote are both by Charles de Foucauld. He was born in 1858 and led a dissipated life as a young officer in the cavalry. In 1883, he went on an expedition to Morocco where he developed a passion for north Africa and its ways. Four years later, he returned to the Catholic faith of his infancy and, after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, became a Trappist monk in 1890. Desiring an even more austere life, he left in 1897 and became a servant to the Poor Clares in Jerusalem and Nazareth. He was eventually ordained priest in 1901 and went to live as a hermit in Algeria, ending up at Tamanrasset. He became fluent in the local language and his care and concern for the local tribes-people made him accepted and then much loved, though he never sought converts. He composed Rules for brothers and for sisters, though none ever actually joined him. He was assassinated on this day in 1916, a victim of local religious wars. The Little Sisters of the Sacred Heart were founded in 1933, others decided to adopt a life based on his rule, eventually becoming The Little Brothers of Jesus in 1945. He was beatified by The Pope in 2005.

I mention Charles here because someone introduced me to the prayer above (thanks Brian) recently. He spent a significant part of his life living as a solitary hermit in Palestine.

About half a million people will spend Christmas on their own this year. Some will do it out of choice, others though will spend the season of goodwill lonely, isolated, forgotten, abandoned. We live in a very crowded and technologically interconnected world, and yet contemporary Britain can feel like the loneliest place on earth - we know the names of the characters in Eastenders, but not those of our next door neighbours.

Charles did not withdraw to escape people, to a lonely existence. Rather he withdrew to be able to block out the things in modern living that make us supposedly more connected, more available, and to spend time discovering a reliance on a relationship with God. Away from contact with others, Charles became acutely aware of God's love and provision for him.

This holy season let's take some time to step outside our comfort zones, befriend our neighbours and allow something of God's love to be seen and shared and felt in and through us, by those who need it most.