Dilexit Nos §179

¹⁷⁹ Saint Charles de Foucauld sought to imitate Jesus by living and acting as he did, in a constant effort to do what Jesus would have done in his place. Only by being conformed to the sentiments of the heart of Christ could he fully achieve this goal. Here too we find the idea of “love for love”. In his words, “I desire sufferings in order to return love for love, to imitate him… to enter into his work, to offer myself with him, the nothingness that I am, as a sacrifice, as a victim, for the sanctification of men”. The desire to bring the love of Jesus to others, his missionary outreach to the poorest and most forgotten of our world, led him to take as his emblem the words, “Iesus-Caritas”, with the symbol of the heart of Christ surmounted by a cross. Nor was this a light decision: “With all my strength I try to show and prove to these poor lost brethren that our religion is all charity, all fraternity, and that its emblem is a heart”. He wanted to settle with other brothers “in Morocco, in the name of the heart of Jesus”. In this way, their evangelizing work could radiate outwards: “Charity has to radiate from our fraternities, as it radiates from the heart of Jesus”. This desire gradually made him a “universal brother”. Allowing himself to be shaped by the heart of Christ, he sought to shelter the whole of suffering humanity in his fraternal heart: “Our heart, like that of Jesus, must embrace all men and women”. “The love of the heart of Jesus for men and women, the love that he demonstrated in his passion, this is what we need to have for all human beings”.