When I mention the name Blessed Charles de Foucauld, most people would respond with one question: “Blessed . . . who?” He is not one of the better known holy people and martyrs of the Church, but he happens to be one of my favorite inspirational figures. One of the biggest reasons why I find him inspirational is due to his approach on death.
Foucauld was a spoiled child from a wealthy French family, who was more interested in money and women than he was with anything God-related. You can read more about his conversion story, but, to keep it short, he eventually realized the emptiness of the lifestyle he was living and joined the Cistercian Trappist Order. As I was reading a short biography on his life, there was one anecdote in it that I will never forget. On one of his assignments at a monastery, many of the brothers there were becoming sick with the flu and dying. Though common intuition would suggest the best course of action would be to get away from the sick people to avoid contracting the sickness, Foucauld stayed and tended to his brothers. Many of his companions did the same and ended up catching the flu and dying from it as well, but Foucauld was spared. As he was reflecting on this miracle in his journal, he soon came to the conclusion that “survival was a sign of unworthiness.”
While I was reading this story, my eyes stopped on those six words.
Now one reaction might be: “What? Does he want to die? How can someone deemed so holy by the Church, be so seemingly suicidal in his thoughts?” The author writing Foucauld’s biography even acknowledged that his extreme approach on death is hard to come by even in devout leaders and scholars of the Church. So, what was Foucauld really thinking when he called survival “a sign of unworthiness?”
Now, before we answer that question, let’s take a step back. How do we view death today in our modern society? One of my favorite places to look is pop culture. Go watch any action movie today and you will find a basic trend: death is associated with ‘losing’ and life is associated with ‘winning.’ What I mean by that is, when we watch a movie like Indiana Jones, the person who comes out victorious lives to fight another day while the defeated antagonist ends up on his death bed. (Of course, there are exceptions to this trend in movies but the sentiments on life and death are still relatively consistent) If we look in the Bible and see how people responded to Jesus’s death, they were disappointed. They believed they had found the Messiah who would overthrow the Romans and reestablish Israel as a world power, but when he died, many thought that all was lost or that he was not the Messiah after all. Someone as great as the Messiah could not lose, and die, in their minds. And what about the common saying: “you only live once.” Do we really live just one life here on Earth?
All these things in our modern culture tell us one thing: life here on Earth is all that we have and, because of that, death is an evil thing because it takes away everything. Death is something everyone wants to avoid because who knows what’s really out there after death? Will we still have our houses, our families, our BMWs, or our friends? This life is all we really know, so we have to cling to it with all our strength. And if you end up dying (and everyone eventually does) you’ve lost everything and everyone you’ve known. This is what our culture tells us.
Now let’s go back to Foucauld’s words: “survival was a sign of unworthiness.” What do these words mean in the context of our culture today?
First of all, they establish that the life we live here on Earth is temporal. We do not spend all eternity here on Earth; we spend eternity (hopefully) in heaven. Now, this is not a foreign idea to any Catholic, or to the average person, for that matter. We all know about heaven and hell and how we only have a limited time here on Earth before we pass away. We know this, but most people do not believe this. If we truly believed this teaching, I think there would be millions of Catholics living their lives in a much different manner than they are right now, myself included. What does it really mean to say that all the things of this world—houses, cars, education, facebook, clothing, money—are all things of this temporal world? If some people claim to believe in life after death, why do they cling to money as if their life depended on it? If we claim to believe in life after death, why do some of us stress over grades as if our entire livelihood depended upon them? If we actually believed in life after death, would we be as afraid to give our life for another or for God’s Church? Even Jesus agonized in the garden of Gethsemane over his pending crucifixion, but He was not afraid to die. The belief in life after death is an immensely powerful one that many take for granted until they come face-to-face with death itself.
Second, notice how Foucauld almost seems to refer to death as a reward and survival as the work required to achieve that reward. With this in mind, his words remind us that death is not only natural but also the only way in which we are able to come face-to-face with God Himself in heaven and bask in His glory. Essentially, he is saying: “Death is not that bad! In fact, it’s only through death that you can come into full communion with God Himself in heaven!” And for this, we need only look at Jesus Himself. When He carried his cross up to Calvary, was crucified, and finally took his last breath, I believe that last breath was heavy with pain, but not with sorrow, for He was going back to the Father in heaven. Jesus leads the way for us in facing death. Yes, death is scary because we don’t have anything concrete to hold onto when we go through it. We don’t know what will happen to us ‘on the other side,’ but we need only to look at Jesus, who looked at death in the face, and overcame it, redeeming all of us. He went through everything we will go through; we need only follow in His footsteps.
The last message Foucauld conveys with his words is that we cannot take our existence here on Earth for granted. By living and breathing, we each have a calling in this world to fulfill certain roles, take up different leadership positions, and do God’s will in the unique way God calls each of us to do it. In saying “survival was a sign of unworthiness,” Foucauld was stating that he needed to do more before God would decide that he had fulfilled his calling. He had more to do before God would allow death to come upon him. The interesting thing is that Foucauld was not afraid of death interrupting the events of life on this world because he knew he was living the life God was calling him to live. He knew he was where God wanted him to be, which allowed him to be acutely aware of when God would eventually tell him “you’ve done enough” and allow him to go to heaven. But, comparing that attitude to the average person, how many of us know, deep down in our hearts, that we are in the place that God has called us to be? God only gives us a certain amount of time on this Earth to do what He calls us to do, so why would we waste our time dwelling on things that do not further our calling? Many people go through life called to greatness by God, but fail to recognize or completely ignore God’s pleas to listen and follow. We have to make the most of the limited time God gives us on Earth.
After reading about Foucauld’s perspective on death, one of the first thoughts that popped into my mind was how many times we, as Catholics, pray out loud a prayer along the lines of: “Dear Lord, please protect those who are not here and keep them safe.” Now, at face value, this prayer is genuine and good. There is nothing wrong with praying these words because they convey compassion and love for our family and friends. However, I think the danger to praying these words is that we fail to acknowledge the ultimate reality of death that Foucauld discussed. Yes, we want our loved ones to be safe and be kept out of harms’ way BUT, if death comes upon them, does that mean that God does not answer our prayers or that those loved ones did something wrong? Foucauld and other saints would respond with a resounding NO. Death is not punishment. Death is not inherently bad. Death is not the end. What death actually is, is God’s way of calling us back to Himself. On his last breaths, Jesus said,
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke 23:46)
In the same way, we are called to offer up ourselves when we die, for God loves us and wants us to be with Him forever.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (John 3:16)