Carlo Carretto
Little Brother
(1910-1988)
"The desert is always the same, the sky is always beautiful,
the road deserted. ... The only thing which is always new is
God."
Carlo Carretto was born on April 2,
1910, in northern Italy. He studied to become a teacher, but
political difficulties under the fascists curtailed his career.
Instead he immersed himself in the dynamic youth movement of
Catholic Action, which sought to mobilize the laity in advancing
the religious and social message of the church. Rising to a
position of leadership in the movement, he spent nearly twenty
years immersed in a blur of meetings, conferences, and public
organizing. All of this came to an abrupt halt in 1954 when he
surprised his friends by resigning from Catholic Action and
announcing his intention to join the Little Brothers of Jesus, the
community of desert contemplatives inspired by the spirituality of
`Charles de Foucauld. In explaining his decision, Carretto could
say only that he felt summoned by a call from God: "Leave
everything and come with me into the desert. It is not your acts
and deeds that I want: I want your prayer, your love."
In December 1954, at the age of
forty-four, Carretto arrived in El Abiodh, a remote oasis in the
Saharan desert of Algeria, to enter the novitiate of the Little
Brothers. He remained there for ten years. As it turned publication
of his Letters from the Desert established his reputation as one of
the most popular spiritual teachers in the world. Although he went
on to publish a dozen books, it was this first book that best
captured his message. It described the desert spirituality of
Foucauld, who had sought to emulate Jesus during his anonymous
years in Nazareth. The Son of God had lived out a presence of
divine love in the midst of his poor neighbors, and Foucauld had
envisioned in this model a new kind of contemplative life in the
world.
For Carretto the desert was a place of
encounter with God and testing of faith. But ultimately he believed
that the search for Gad in the desert must lead us back to the
midst of our fellow human beings. Accordingly, in 1964 Carretto
returned to Europe and settled the next year experimental community
in Spello, Italy. There lay people were invited to share in the
fraternity's life of prayer and reflection. In the next decades,
through his retreats and publications, Carretto's reputation spread
around the world. He earned a certain notoriety in Italy and the
displeasure of many ecclesiastical authorities because of his
criticisms of certain aspects of the church-especially the
temptations of triumphalism, juridicism, and clericalism. But for
all his criticisms, there was never ,any doubt about his loyalty to
and love for the church: "No, I shall not leave this church,
founded on so frail a rock, because I should be founding another
one on an even frailer rock: myself."
Carretto's message had much in common
with 'St. Francis of Assisi, whose spirit was reflected in the
Umbrian countryside around him. In his playfulness, his
appreciation for natural beauty, his commitment to poverty and
nonviolence, and his anarchistic suspicion of large structures and
institutions, he clearly identified with the Poverello. Indeed, one
of his most popular books was called "I, Francis," a personal
diagnosis of the church and the world delivered in the "voice" of
St. Francis. Despite Carretto's critique of nearly every feature of
modern life, the book is marked by an immense spirit of hope and an
ingenuous vitality, undiminished by age, illness, or even the
approach of death. Appropriately, Carretto passed from this life on
the feast of St. Francis, October 4, 1988.
It is not hard to understand the source
of Carretto's immense attraction. He represented an ascetic, yet
joy-filled spirituality available to lay people in the midst of
pressing obligations, the noise of the city, or even poverty and
suffering. (Carretto was no stranger to loss. An accident in the
desert during his novitiate had left him crippled for life.) He
showed that a life of prayer was consistent with a passion for
social justice. At the me time he reminded social activists of the
need to preserve a place of stillness, to listen to the word of God
and to find renewal. Essentially, he showed that it was possible to
live a contemplative life in the midst of the world, in the desert
that is ultimately everywhere. The challenge of the gospel,
according to Carretto, was to make an oasis of love in whatever
desert we might find ourselves.
See:
Carlo Carretto, Letters from the Desert (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Oros,
1972); Robert Ellsberg, Carlo Carretto: Selected Writings
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1994).
See:
Carlo Carretto
[Reprinted with permission from "All
Saints" by Robert Ellsberg (New York: Crossroad, 1998)]
