This
essay by Christopher Bamford, who is here making his first
contribution to our MID Bulletin, includes extensive material
on the spiritual journeys of two persons who were deeply
involved in one or another type of Muslim-Christian encounter:
Charles de Foucauld and Louis Massignon.
Sacred
Hospitality
Badaliya:
The Way of Mystic Substitution
God
does not dwell in bodies that are whole.—Hildegard
of Bingen
Part
I
Asked
for his impressions after visiting the hermit monks in the
Nitrian desert, St. Basil the Great, after praising the
fierceness of their spiritual practice, asked innocently,
“Whose feet will they wash?”
The theory of karma suggests that I suffer as the consequence
of my actions. It proposes that through my suffering, as
long as I refrain from further harmful deeds, I can gradually
purify my life and suffer less. It assumes that redemption
or enlightenment is an individual matter, that “my”
suffering is “mine” and “your” suffering is “yours.”
This argument, which makes me responsible for my life and
you responsible for yours, seems lacking in generosity.
It contradicts my sense of identity with all human beings,
not to mention the earth, and the cosmos. I suspect it is
only partially true.
If we are all connected, if there truly is a “coinherence”
and worlds and beings interpenetrate and reflect each other
infinitely as in Indra’s necklace, there must be another
way to draw the boundaries. The notion of “mystic substitution”
or “substitutive suffering” suggests such a way. The
theory is not new; it never is. What it does is translate
the to-our-ears exotic, even disturbing—yet traditional—idea
of “victim souls” into the language of “Sacred Hospitality.”
Hospitality, welcoming the stranger, and by extension, the
other (any other) and the unknown, lies at the heart of
the Abrahamic traditions. Hospitality always awaits and
expects the stranger—every stranger—with open
heart. It extends home, hearth, gifts, and ultimately even
life itself to the other, whether invited or not. A true
host is ready to give his life for the guest and conversely,
for host and guest are interchangeable.
“Sacred” hospitality may be defined as “the experiential
discovery of the sacred in others and, in response, of holiness
in oneself.” It puts hospitality at the center of our
spiritual lives. Louis Massignon, whose phrase it is, writes:
“This experiential knowledge is not a ready-made science;
it is an understanding, an interiorization, which cannot
be communicated by external means, but by acceptance through
the transfer to ourselves of the sufferings of others.”
Sacred hospitality is a call to go out of ourselves toward
others, to love outside our own milieu and relationships.
The rediscovery of this path is a little-known twentieth-century
tale, enacted in turbulent souls in the darkness of religious
conflict. It is a tale told in human actions. The protagonists
are four Zaddik or Righteous Ones. These “hidden
pillars” are Father Charles de Foucauld, founder of
The Little Brothers and Sisters of Jesus; J.K. Huysmans,
the symbolist novelist who converted to Catholicism; Louis
Massignon, the scholar, mystic, and Islamicist; and Mary
Kalil, an Egyptian Christian woman. Above and before these,
as patrons, exemplars, and inspirations, stand St. Francis
and Mary, the mother of Jesus, to whom it was said, “A sword
will pierce your soul too.”
The story opens with Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), a
French aristocrat, orphaned at an early age and brought
up by grandparents. Overweight, lazy, self-absorbed, given
to debauchery, he wished only to live as he chose. Called
to military service in North Africa, he took his mistress.
Forbidden to do so, he abandoned the army, returned home,
and set up house with her. A year later, hearing his regiment
was at war in North Africa, he rejoined it. In Africa, he
fought bravely. The first flickering of faith returned,
discovered “in the wound of a divine compassion between
fighters who had become brothers.” Above all, he saw
the desert and heard its call.
He sought permission to travel east—unsuccessfully.
He resigned his commission. He began to study Arabic, and
set out to explore the unmapped areas of Morocco. Since
he could not do so as a Frenchman, he disguised himself
as Jew, wearing a red skullcap and a black silk turban.
He called himself Rabbi Aleman, exiled from Russia by recent
pogroms. The report he wrote and published was a masterpiece
of geography and philology (he would meet Louis Massignon
through it), but his true discovery was the Abrahamic world.
He learned the meaning of hospitality (Jews saved his life
on several occasions; Moroccans, too), and met people whose
faith in God was absolute.
Back in Paris, the process of conversion continued. He began
to frequent churches, praying: “Lord, if you exist, make
yourself known.” He sought out the famous spiritual
director, the Abbé Huvelin who, with the directness of true
discernment, simply told him to kneel, make his confession,
and go to communion. From then on, Foucauld aimed only to
fulfill the great commandments: to love God all with all
his heart, and to love his neighbor as himself. He determined
to imitate Jesus, to love him beyond measure. Three events
set his course. He heard a sermon in which the phrase occurred:
“You took the last place and no one wanted to take it from
you.” He visited a Trappist monastery, where he met
a brother, whose tattered dress shocked and fascinated him.
Finally, he visited the Holy Land. After Christmas in Bethlehem,
he meditated the places Christ had walked. From that moment
on, he knew that he would seek poverty—the simple life
of Nazareth.
He joined the Trappists at their most austere house, Our
Lady of the Snows, the highest monastery in France. Winters
lasted six months. But it was not yet the life for which
he yearned. Transferred to a still more primitive monastery
in Syria, he formed the idea of a different kind of community.
The vision would shape his life: a community of manual laborers,
supporting themselves, living the hidden life of Jesus in
the simplest way among the poorest, most ordinary people.
“All of our efforts will be dedicated to show to others
charity, compassion, tenderness, and the infinite goodness
of our Master.” The authorities’ response was two years
in Rome. He obeyed. Again and again he obeyed, dying to
himself. At last, his wish was granted. Not yet his order,
it was a start. He would go to the Holy Land, work as a
servant, hidden and solitary. He would lead the secret life
of Nazareth at Nazareth itself.
He became the servant of the Poor Clares. Living in the
tool shed, he served Mass and did whatever was asked. He
read the Gospels constantly. One day, after reading the
passage where Mary visits Elizabeth, he imagined Jesus saying:
“Work to sanctify the world, work for it as my mother did—without
words and in silence. Go live among those who do not know
me. Bring me to them, establish an altar, a tabernacle.
Bring the Gospel to them, preach from example, not telling
the Gospel but living it.”
Ordained in June 1901, Foucauld determined to live his vision—and
form his community—among the Moroccans, who had first
taught him about God. He would create a center of hospitality,
a place where God and bread were equally present and he
could pray for and welcome strangers as brothers. He went
to Béni Abbès and built a chapel consisting of four palm
trunks supporting a roof of woven twigs and branches. A
board served as an altar. He slept on the floor, ate dates
and barley cakes. His only icon was a large drawing of the
Sacred Heart “holding out its arms to embrace, hold, and
call humans and giving itself to them by offering its Heart.”
His neighbors called his place the khaoua, or brotherhood.
He became “Brother Charles.” “I want to accustom everyone—Christian,
Muslim, Jew, or pagan—to look on me as a brother, a
universal brother.”
Massignon wrote:
Foucauld was not constituted to evangelize vocally
by propagandistic sermons.… He came to share the humble
life of the most humble, earning his daily bread with them
by the “holy work of his hands,” before revealing to
them, by his silent example, the real spiritual bread of
hospitality that these humble people themselves had offered
him: the Word of Truth, the bread of angels, in the sacrament
of the present moment. Beneath the tissue of empirical facts
he would have them divine the transcendent act. Already
his contemplation saw the temporal torn aside by the invasion
of the eternal.
He
stayed on in Beni Abbés for several years, serving the poor.
He turned no guest away. War broke out around him. He felt
called to go south, to the Tuaregs, where there were no
priests. He wished to serve them, learn their language,
and translate the Gospels. He set out, living the life of
Nazareth, treating the sick in each village he passed though.
Finally, he came to Tamanrasset, “twenty poor huts scattered
over two miles,” “the heart of the strongest nomadic
tribe in the country.” There he stayed, alone, working
and serving, forever hoping that others would join him in
establishing a little order to take this poorest of lives
into the poorest of places.
He died on December 1, 1916, consecrated to his Moslem brothers
and sisters, without a struggle, an innocent victim of routine
violence in a meaningless conflict between local tribes.
Before he had died, he had founded an association, a Union,
of those who believed as he did. He had met and corresponded
with Louis Massignon and hoped Massignon would continue
his work. Massignon wrote: “Foucauld was given to me like
an older brother . . . He helped me find my brothers in
all other human beings, starting with the most abandoned.
. . .”
Bamford
continued.
