"My vocation is Nazareth", that is how Brother Charles sums up his vocation: his personal vocation, and that of all those he believes will be called to follow the same path.

Forgotten Nazareth! Even by the time the written Gospels were published, the Nazareth life of Jesus is largely passed over in silence, or, if mentioned by the way, depreciated: "Can any good come from Nazareth?" John 1,46; cf Mark 6,3). For the followers of the Risen Jesus, Nazareth, it seems, was no longer "newsworthy": nothing, apparently, happened.

In fact, this very "non-newsworthiness" of Nazareth is, I feel, the key to its meaning: God, in the Incarnation, assumed our ordinary everyday life, the life and work of a village family. And such a life is uneventful. It"s made up of the simple, daily routine: prayer, work, meeting neighbors, prayer, eating, sleep, with the equally regular sabbath worship and rest. The only event would be the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem (cf Luke 2,4~). It was precisely this hard, monotonous life, the ordinary life of the ordinary person, that Jesus chose. And this ordinary, working life has changed little, in essentials, throughout the ages. It was, and is, the daily life of the large majority of people.

In the 3rd century Origen, himself a great scholar, struck by the wisdom of Jesus' teaching, doubted that Jesus was really a workman. He was the "son of a carpenter" (as Matthew records), but he wasn"t himself a carpenter (as Mark seems to say - Mark 6,3). Origen"s hesitation was partly linked to a disputed manuscript reading in the Greek text; but, probably, Origen"s feeling that being a simple "workman" was unfitting for the Son of God, tipped the scales. In any case, this same "feeling" seems to have continued in the Church for many centuries. The 19th century, in the midst of which Charles was born (1858), saw a certain rediscovery of Nazareth. But it was limited to the need for acquiring the basic virtues of domestic and civic life: "obedience", for example (Cf Luke 2,51).

Charles" discovery of Nazareth is, then, something new: new at that time, and, apart from a few traces in the early period, new in the whole history of the Church. How did Charles come to know of Nazareth? He first went there, without much initial enthusiasm, on the recommendation of the Abbe Huvelin, who had suggested to him a visit to the Holy Land, as part of his search for his vocation. Once there, an "attraction" for the place immediately took hold of Charles. What exactly did this attraction consist in? Not in the meager physical remains, but, as he later put it, in the discovery of"God the workman of Nazareth". It was like a seed, once implanted, that grew and developed, and came to dominate his whole life.

This seed-attraction grew, at times imperceptibly, at times suddenly. The Trappist life called him, at first, as being that of "Nazareth": prayer, manual labor, community, poverty - "as the Holy Family". Prayer will remain a key part of Nazareth for Charles, in line with Jesus" reply to his parents, "I must be in my Father"s house" or ... "about my Father"s business" (Luke 2,49). But experience, and a small but striking event, showed Charles that Trappist life was not, at least for him,Jesus"Nazareth. He visited the nearby home of a poor Armenian farm laborer, living with his wife and children, and Charles realized that their life was much closer to his ideal. Social poverty was different from the austerity (and they were austere) of the Trappists.

So Charles felt impelled to ask to leave the Trappists, to follow his "true vocation": to live Nazareth. For himself alone? No! Already he felt called to found a community of both brothers and sisters. And already he wrote, in detail, a "rule" for each of them, the same rule. Given that he had so far achieved nothing of his personal vocation, there is, surely, a"sign" here of his founding charism".

His first step is to go to Nazareth itself - Charles" spirituality is always down-to-earth. There he is offered work with the community of the Poor Clares, as a handyman. As it turns out, he is not so handy! Asked to repair a wall, it"s crooked and uneven. Asked, then, to repair a table, it"s lop-sided. After this, he"s only asked to act as sacristan, and to do some shopping in the village (to the amusement and mockery of the local children), though he does show a talent for drawing (drawings of the convent, pious cards, sketches - some of which survive). What, then, does Charles do? In the main, he spends long moments of prayer: prayer before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, meditation on the life of Jesus in the gospels, communion with Jesus both in the Mass and in all his simple daily occupations (occupations which he likens to those of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in Nazareth). Charles, we should note, is living in a garden shed, eating little and sleeping little, and with few contacts with people

What is his motivation? It"s the desire to "go down", to be "like Jesus at Nazareth: For Charles sees the Incarnation as a mystery of "descent", of which Nazareth is the concrete expression, but which covers the whole of Jesus" life, from conception to death (cf the hymn in Philippians, chapter 2). There is a reaction (probably unconscious) against the popular image of Jesus as a human King enlarged: one who "dominates" ("Be not like that", says Jesus - Mark 10, 42-43). No: Jesus, for Charles, as he"d learnt from the Abbe Huvelin, is the one "who took the last place", and who was "jealous" of this "privilege". We have here a spiritual revolution, which is, hopefully, slowly growing in the Church.

While living in Nazareth, Charles comes to grasp something of the inner life of the Holy Family. But it"s only after his return to Algeria, now ordained a priest, that the concrete expression of this Nazareth life begins to appear. Nazareth becomes "for people". As we"ve seen, it"s in Beni-Abbes that Charles, while continuing to devote long hours to prayer when free to do so (early morning and late evening), gives himself unstintingly to each and every person who comes to visit him (up to a hundred persons a

And later, in Tamanrasset, he becomes, quite simply "one of them". A Christian, of course; a monk living for God alone, certainly; but now identified fully with the Touareg people. For Charles is always open to the Spirit: that Spirit who is "the one thing necessary", who is "our daily bread", the one whom Charles continually invokes, four times a day, morning, noon, evening and midnight, for himself, for all the members of the Church, for everyone without exception.

What does this development indicate? It's, basically, a growing sense that Jesus, God incarnate, shared our life, our ordinary life in all its ordinariness, especially the ordinary life of the socially poor. Nazareth, for Charles, is not just the preparation for the striking acts of the "public ministry", but is the life of love of God and neighbor, which the public ministry will express in words and miraculous acts. Jesus then teaches what He had first learnt and lived, as the public herald of that Kingdom which he had embodied in Nazareth. And finally, he offers on the Cross what he had lived and shared as "one of us" (cf Hebrews, chapters 2 and 5).