Jesus Caritas

Paul VI visits Tre fontane

Last Friday when we came to visit you, we tasted the joyous pleasure of meeting you at Tre Fontane in the eloquent simplicity of your dwellings and in a moving atmosphere of Gospel serenity and happiness. Your attendance at this audience is like renewing the festivities, for you and likewise for us.

The most ardent desire of our heart, we confide to you, is this: we want you to carry to the four corners of the world the conviction that a Religious Profession is a commitment so deep that changes have only a relative importance to it, even should they make you suffer. The essential is to keep well alive the knowledge that Christ has called you.

Brother Charles of Jesus is surely an example of this depth of faithfulness through any and all vicissitudes and setbacks in his situation, is he not?

And yet it is crystal clear that his mysterious itinerary finds coherence and unity in his passionate imitation of Jesus Christ, the Sole Model. Brother Charles seems one of the most accomplished examples of the inward fidelity of someone's human freedom to God's freedom and fidelity, as God led him far beyond what he might have foreseen or hoped.