The life and example of Charles de Foucauld, Brother Charles of Jesus, is like an icon pointing to Jesus, our way, truth and life. The heart of our vocation is to open up the treasures of the mystery of Bethlehem and Nazareth. Jesus, the image of the Father, comes to us as a tiny child in a feeding trough for animals and spends his life ‘going down’ to Nazareth, and finally dying on a cross as the Nazarene. We want to spend our life seeking to contemplate God in the small events and decisions of everyday life in the footsteps of this Jesus of Nazareth who made ordinary life a meeting place with God. It is a secret of hope and of Joy!
We live as a small family at the heart of the local community in Hackney where we have a three bedroom council flat on the 13th floor of a tower block, a privileged place to meet with people of every race and background. We take ordinary jobs to pay the rent and to share the questions and hopes of those whose life we share. Friday night Gospel sharing, open to all, is a special moment each week!
We are part of the Hoxton parish with a very strong African presence. Daily Mass at the parish, community prayer and Eucharistic adoration are pivotal moments in the structure of each day as well as meditation on the Gospels. But we would like our whole life, in all the events of each day, to be a prayer and to be handed over in union with Jesus’s gift of himself on the cross, in intercession for the peace and reconciliation of all our brothers and sisters throughout the world.
Little sister Magdeleine of Jesus started our community 75 years ago. She felt called to live among the poorest of the nomadic Arabs of the Sahara to be a presence of God’s love. The Little sisters are from over 65 nationalities, with communities in 50 countries, over a quarter of which are among Muslims… We would choose to be especially in places of conflict and division or where the human person is not respected.
Email:lsj.hackney@virgin.net
