This book invites readers into a week's self-guided spiritual retreat with the nineteenth-century priest Charles de Foucauld, who was beatified in 2005. The book's invitation arises from the author's own deep love for and extensive journey with his spiritual vision. Though the work is intended neither as biography nor as scholarly analysis, the introductory material provides sufficient contextualization and assessment of Foucauld's life and vision to convince readers unfamiliar with him, as I was, that this journey, with Thurston's trustworthy guidance, is a profoundly worthwhile undertaking.
While Thurston's scholarly expertise provides depth and grounding for this journey (for example, through explanations of Greek vocabulary and references to Thomas Merton), the author's extensive experience as a spiritual director and leader of retreats structures the text. Each chapter concludes with two “maxims,” one biblical and one from Foucauld; a few questions to prompt reflection; and a suggested Scripture passage to read. Endnotes are kept minimal; a timeline of Foucauld's life and resources for further reading on his life and thought are offered as concluding matter.
After a brief biographical sketch of Foucauld, Thurston lays out three symbolic locations that Foucauld found in Jesus’ life: Nazareth, the desert, and public life, each of which “has its calling, its dangers, and its graces” (47). In subsequent chapters, each is addressed in this order, as Thurston guides readers into deeper awareness of these spiritual locations in their own lives.
Nazareth is the place of formation, of prayer and work, of ordinariness and humility, yet also of hidden depths of identity known to God alone. In Foucauld's life, Nazareth is seen in the formation of his calling and the apparent failure of a missionary who converted only two people, but whose influence in Muslim-Christian dialogue, Thurston explains, has been overlooked. His spirituality also bore fruit in the emergence of the orders of the Little Brothers of Jesus and the Little Sisters of Jesus.
Thurston's experience and sensitivity are evident in her discussion of the second location, where she writes, “Only those who have lived in the desert and eaten sand are qualified to assist and guide others in the arduous journey through it” (79). The desert takes its time. Though perilous, the desert empties, makes room, and offers the thirst for God known through felt absence of the divine. Sojourn in the desert is not failure but a severe grace. Turning to the third spiritual location, that of active, public life, Thurston finds two key themes: radical openness to others and apparent failure, each apparent in the lives of Jesus and Foucauld. This location thus returns to the themes of hiddenness and of the importance of not being attached to results.
This retreat ends with a meditation on cross bearing as the active choice to accept a cross that is not self-selected but proffered by Jesus. Taking up a cross “is to choose actively for Jesus’ sake”; it is not a matter of passive, even if noble, endurance (111). Thurston says that “we don't get to choose our own crosses” (110), yet we can choose to accept them, not intellectually, but as a way of faith. The final questions of the retreat ask readers to consider what cross Jesus has chosen and is offering to them in this moment, as well as what crosses readers have made for themselves and need to put down. Those painful and liberating questions are a fitting conclusion to a retreat interested readers will want to make more than once.
