Day 2 - Carlo Carretto

April 2 - Carlo Carretto, 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 spent the early part of his life as a very active lay member in the Catholic church, before, at age 44, he joined the Little Brothers of Jesus, a community of desert contemplatives inspired by the spirituality of Charles de Foucauld.  He spent ten years at El Abiodh, a remote oasis in the Saharan desert.  At the end of his time there, he felt called to return to Europe because he believed that searching for God in the desert must ultimately lead us back into the center of communal life.

He represents a balance between a life of prayer and a passion for social justice.  He emphasized the need for us to find a place of stillness in our busy lives, a place where we can listen to God and renew ourselves.  From All Saints - "The challenge of the gospel, according to Carretto, was to make an oasis of love in whatever desert we might find ourselves."

There are so many different deserts in our lives.  Literal deserts, emotional deserts, deserts created by circumstance, deserts of our own making.  I think most peoples (and certainly my own) initial response to a desert is to complain about it.  Complain about how hard it is and how taxing this challenge or that challenge is.  But instead we're called to "make an oasis of love in whatever desert we might find ourselves."

What exactly does that mean?

It is up to us to create the oases in the deserts of our own life and the lives of those around us.  What I glean from this is that it's important for us to make space for God and others.  We don't know where we might find the comfort we might need or when the comfort we alone can offer might be just what someone else needs.

I will admit, the idea of finding nourishment and renewal in a desert is somewhat difficult for me.  When I think of deserts, the first image that comes to mind is that of a barren wasteland that sucks away all nourishment.  But it seems that in the midst of so much emptiness, all that's left is God.  I know that I don't do a very good job of creating spaces of stillness and quiet in my life.  Perhaps that is part of the challenge of listening to and following God.

God isn't exclusively in the desert, nor is he exclusively amidst the hustle and bustle of the world.  We need to strive to find a balance between the two in order to fully experience the love of God.