Brennan Manning

A two-year leave of absence from the Franciscans took Brennan to Spain in the late sixties. He joined the Little Brothers of Jesus of Charles de Foucauld, an Order committed to an uncloistered, contemplative life among the poor — a lifestyle of days spent in manual labor and nights wrapped in silence and prayer. Among his many and varied assignments, Brennan became an aguador (water carrier), transporting water to rural villages via donkey and buckboard; a mason’s assistant, shoveling mud and straw in the blazing Spanish heat; a dishwasher in France; a voluntary prisoner in a Swiss jail, his identity as a priest known only to the warden; a solitary contemplative secluded in a remote cave for six months in the Zaragoza desert.

During his retreat in the isolated cave, Brennan was once again powerfully convicted by the revelation of God’s love in the crucified Christ. On a midwinter’s night, he received this word from the Lord: “For love of you I left my Father’s side.  I came to you who ran from me, who fled me, who did not want to hear my name. For love of you I was covered with spit, punched and beaten, and fixed to the wood of the cross.” Brennan would later reflect, “Those words are burned into my life. That night, I learned what a wise old Franciscan told me the day I joined the Order — ‘Once you come to know the love of Jesus Christ, nothing else in the world will seem as beautiful or desirable.’ “

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