Meditations on the Gospels
Méditations sur les saints Évangiles
This is the largest body of devotional writing Foucauld produced, composed mostly during his years at the Trappist monastery in Akbès, Syria (1890–1896) and later at Nazareth (1897–1900), where he lived in extreme poverty as a servant to the Poor Clares.
The format is distinctive: rather than writing commentary about Jesus, Foucauld frequently writes in the voice of Jesus speaking directly to him, working verse by verse through Gospel passages. He treats each episode — the flight into Egypt, the hidden years at Nazareth, the calling of the apostles, the Passion — as an occasion for Jesus to address him personally about how to live.
The recurring center of gravity is what he calls the “hidden life” (vie cachée): the thirty hidden years Jesus spent as a manual laborer in Nazareth, unknown and unremarkable, which Foucauld came to see as more spiritually significant than the three years of public ministry.
He argued that most Christians are called to imitate this hiddenness rather than public preaching — a conviction that shaped his own decision to live as an anonymous laborer and later hermit rather than found a conventional missionary order.
The meditations also develop his idea of “shouting the Gospel with one’s life” rather than words — presence and example over verbal evangelization.
Because the manuscripts were never edited for publication in his lifetime, they read as raw, repetitive, personal notes rather than polished theology — which is part of their appeal to readers today.
The Rule / Directoire for a Religious Fraternity
A Rule of Life for the Fraternity He Hoped to Found
Between 1896 and his death in 1916, Foucauld drafted and redrafted several versions of a rule of life for a religious community he hoped to found but never saw realized in his lifetime. It was only later, in the 1930s-50s, that the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of Jesus actually formed, inspired by his notes.
The Rule is organized around a small number of structural commitments: daily adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as the center of the day, radical poverty – with no possessions beyond the bare minimum – manual labor for one’s own subsistence rather than being supported by an institution, silence and simplicity.
Crucially, it also emphasizes physical proximity to the poorest and most abandoned people, including non-Christians, without an agenda of active proselytizing. Foucauld insisted that the community should be small, local, and embedded rather than centralized, and that members should live among Muslims in North Africa as neighbors and friends rather than as missionaries seeking conversions.
The document is largely legislative and practical in tone – addressing schedules, vows, and the order of daily life – rather than lyrical. Yet it expresses the same spirituality found throughout his meditations: littleness, hiddenness, and presence rather than words or grand action.
Spiritual Journal & Retreat Notes
Personal Reflections, Resolutions and the Nazareth Retreat of 1897
Foucauld kept personal notebooks in which he recorded his retreats, examinations of conscience, reflections, and spiritual resolutions. Never intended for publication, these writings offer an unusually direct glimpse into his interior life and his continual desire to conform himself more closely to Jesus.
Among the best known are the notes associated with his time at Nazareth, where he formulated detailed personal resolutions concerning prayer, silence, humility, self-denial, and the ordering of his daily life. They reveal both the intensity of his spiritual aspirations and the demanding standards he set for himself.
These notebooks also preserve shorter reflections that express some of the convictions that would remain at the heart of his spirituality. His contemplation of the Gospel, particularly Jesus’ identification with “the least of these”, deepened his desire to seek Christ in those who were poor, forgotten, or abandoned.
Unlike his more extended Gospel meditations, these writings are intensely practical and personal. They contain daily resolutions, examinations of his own failures and renewed commitments, as well as reflections on struggles such as pride, discouragement, and the desire for recognition. Together, they reveal a spiritual life understood not as a finished achievement, but as a continual process of conversion and recommitment.