The initial conversion in the life of Charles de Foucauld had both a long preparation and a critical hour of denouement. After completely losing his Catholic faith in adolescence and living an immoral life as a young French officer in late-nineteenth-century North Africa, then returning to explore at serious personal risk these same desert lands as a cartographer, he went back to France all too aware of his inner emptiness as an unbeliever. The uncertainty and irresolution lasted for some time. In his own description, “there was a restlessness, an anguish in my soul, a desire for truth, and I used to pray over and over again, ‘My God, if you exist, make me know You.’” Finally, with doubts and turmoil tormenting his soul, he was encouraged by his cousin to seek out a well-known confessor at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris—the Abbé Henri Huvelin. On this decisive morning of his life, he approached the priest’s confessional, where, in European style, the confessor sat open to view. Charles had already prepared what he was going to say, hoping for the priest’s understanding. He said that he had not come to make a confession and that he did not believe, that he wished only to talk. The priest’s reply was immediate: “Make your confession, and you will believe.” We do not know if Charles de Foucauld hesitated or felt any chill in his heart or a strong urge to walk away. What we do know is that a moment later he was on his knees pouring out his many sins to a priest. At the conclusion of that confession, Abbé Huvelin asked him if he had eaten anything yet in the day. When Charles said no, he was instructed to receive Holy Communion at the next Mass in the cathedral. And that single hour in the Cathedral of Notre Dame transformed everything in his life, placing him from that hour forward on the path of an extraordinary passion for Our Lord, ending with his martyrdom in Algeria in 1916.
Prodigal Catholic 