Christmas. Tonight no mass, for the first time in twenty-one years: let it be the will of the Beloved. Until the very last moment, I hoped that someone would come, but no one came, neither a Christian traveler, nor a soldier, nor permission to celebrate mass alone. For three months now, more than three months, I have received no letter...
The question you ask me – whether it is better to stay in Hoggar without the possibility of celebrating mass, or to be able to celebrate it but not be here – I have often asked myself as well. Once, I leaned towards sacrificing everything for the celebration of mass: but such thinking must be sinful in some way, because after the apostles, even the greatest saints sacrificed, in certain situations, the opportunity to celebrate mass for acts of spiritual mercy... To dwell alone in a certain land is good; one has something to do there, even if it is not much, because one becomes local; it is so accessible and so "completely small".
(Charles de Foucauld /1858–1916/,
correspondence from a remote desert settlement in the Hoggar mountains,
where Charles was the only priest and the only Christian for miles around
and according to the liturgical rules of the time could not celebrate the Eucharist alone…;
1. the excerpt is from a letter to Mrs. de Bondy, December 25, 1907;
2. the excerpt is taken from a letter to Bishop Mons. Guérin)
