Today is the birthday of Carlo Carretto (1910-1988), who in middle age left his life as an activist to join the Little Brothers of Jesus, inspired by the example of Charles de Foucauld, the desert contemplative, who embraced the "hidden life" of Jesus in his years in Nazareth.
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One day during an arduous hike in the desert of Algeria, he accepted a companion's offer to inject him with medicine for a minor malady. But his friend picked the wrong vial and injected his leg with a paralyzing poison. Overnight his leg became useless.
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Like anyone he was stupefied by why God would allow such a thing to happen to one of his servants. But 30 yrs later he described it as a grace: "It was bad luck, yes. It was a misfortune, but God turned it into a grace. Life suddenly appeared to me as it was, an immense...
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personal exodus. Misfortune had thrust me upon new paths." Where was God in this story? In the part of a negligent bystander who watched an accident destroy a man's dreams? Or in the grace that led him from bitterness to a new state of acceptance? Carretto observed:
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"I know by experience, you can be happy with a crippled leg...The wounds of poverty and suffering produce a special honey, the honey of the Beatitudes. I have tasted this honey and have become convinced of the rationality of the gospel, the reasons for so many mysterious things."
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