11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
excellent group study book!!!, February 27, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: 15 Days of Prayer With Charles de Foucauld (Paperback)
We used this book last year for a six week discussion group. The group consisted of singles, married, young and middle-aged, men and women. It enabled very good discussion on a fairly deep personal level. We found it a good introduction to the thought of Brother Charles and very inspirational. It raised our level of concern for the poor and marginalized. Many of us read the book or at least sections of it several times. I have given copies as gifts and recommended it to many. I would definitely consider it one of my best book finds for the year.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Warning! this book may change your life!, July 7, 2008
This review is from: 15 Days of Prayer With Charles de Foucauld (Paperback)
I recommend reading a biography of Blessed Charles before spending 15 days with him. Each day (chapter) has a "focus point" and integrates this with Charles writings and scripture, and insight by M. Lafon, followed by "reflection questions", which helps in finding ways to apply Charles life experience to our own lives. Excellent for lectio.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
IN TIMES OF ECONOMIC DOWNTURN, OR ANYTIME, TURN TO BROTHER CHARLES, THE POOR MAN IN THE DESERT, FOR JOY, FOR LOVE, FOR HOPE, February 15, 2009
This review is from: 15 Days of Prayer With Charles de Foucauld (Paperback)
Originally published by Liguori Press, this book is welcome now as ever.
Other books in the extensive Fifteen Days of Prayer series include
15 Days of Prayer with Saint Benedict,
15 Days of Prayer With Thomas Merton,
15 Days of Prayer With Saint Thomas Aquinas (15 Days of Prayer),
15 Days of Prayer with Saint Francis of Assisi,
15 Days of Prayer With Saint Katharine Drexel,
15 Days of Prayer with Saint Therese of Lisieux (15 Days of Prayer), etc. This list cannot begin to cover all of the great Roman Catholic saints included.
Fortunately, we have here remembered the easily forgotten (as he wished) Father Charles De Foucauld, who lived in peace neighbor to the Bedouin and the Muslim in the deepest Saharan desert of the Algiers, until a nervous youngster with a rifle took him to be a French spy and startled shot him.
This series of two weeks of prayer is gathered by Father Michel Lafon, a student of a student of Charles of the Desert, Albert Peyriguere, author of
Laissez-vous saisir par le Christ and
Voice From the Desert. Originally this book was published by Nouvelle Cite in 1995 as
Prier 15 jours avec Charles de Foucauld. Four years later we received this welcome prayer book from Liguori.
After a few pages of "How to Use this Book" and a very skeletal yet useful chronology of the life of Father Charles de Foucauld, Father Lafon provides an excellent introduction to the spirituality of this great modern Desert Father who has so much now to show us, ending this introduction in this typically humble manner: "Finally, as well as asking you to attentively read this modest book, may I ask you, dear readers, to include prayers for my own conversion with your own prayers? Thank you (p. xxii)."
As Father Lafon himself indicates to excuse the necessarily abbreviated nature of the daily citations, he recommends further reading, and supplies an excellent bibliographical listing with the original French publishers. I was extremely fortunate while living in a French novitiate 35 years ago to have access not only to the wonderful collections by Prior Regnault (for example in English, the then unpublished
The Day-to-Day Life of the Desert Fathers: In Fourth-Century Egypt.) but also the Cahiers inedits of Father de Foucauld. I especially found guiding, edifying and strengthening his meditations in the garden in Nazareth, and regret not finding fully them now in French.
Yet here we may welcomely read and contemplate his meditations, in English, as translated effectively for Liguori by Victoria Hebert and Denis Sabourin.
Father Charles de Foucauld, briefly a novice of Solesmes but desiring a more true monasticism than he found there, for a long time a Trappist, but disdaining even their frugal diet, provides for us, simple, direct, thoughtful and true meditations we do very well to follow. Much is made of his youth, much is exaggerated and misunderstood eagerly, much is invented to create an interesting story, much is gossip and lies and calumny and slander. Here let us dwell solely on his prayers, his contemplations, as written in his prayer-journals, which we so gratefully and miraculously find preserved to reach and to direct us still now today.
An excellent book for everyone with the time to read, in peace and in deepest silence, in chapel, in the desert wherever you are.
Recommended for every age and every stage of spiritual progress.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
