Walking with the Saints Podcast | Feast of St. Benedict Joseph Labre, Patron Saint of the Forty Hours l April 16
“Our comfort is not in this world,” words spoken by St. Benedict Joseph Labre, our saint for today, who due to his detachment from the comfort and pleasure of this world lived the life of a mendicant. St. Benedict Joseph Labre was born in 1748 in Arras, north of France to a middle class family. As a boy, Benedict Joseph was very amiable but with remarkable seriousness. He practiced self-restraint, which is ascetically called “mortification.” He also had a great horror for what was positively wrong or whatever could lead to something wrong. At the age of sixteen, he told his uncle, a parish priest, that he wanted to be a Trappist monk but his parents were against it. Any way, he tried to apply for admission, but the monks found him to be too delicate in health. He later attempted to join the Carthusians and the Cistercians, but each rejected him saying he was not suited for community life. He was therefore inspired to live a pilgrim’s life, following the examples of Alexius of Rome and of St. Roch: to abandon his parents, his country, and live a painful, penitential, poor and prayerful life in the midst of the world. He joined instead the Third Order of St. Francis, which was designed for lay people. He made pilgrimages to holy places and lived on the streets, eating what he could beg from the people. Benedict Joseph travelled to Rome on foot, then visited the major shrines of Europe: Loreto, Assisi, Naples, Bari in Italy; Einsieden in Switzerland; Paray-le-Monial in France; Santiago de Compostela in Spain. During such trips he would always travel on foot. He often
slept in the open, wore muddy and ragged cloths. Often, he would visit a shrine several times. Despite being a poor beggar, he was very much concerned of the other poor around him and shared whatever little he had received. He was always absorbed in prayer and rarely talked. When visiting a church, he would spend many hours in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. His contemplation of the crowning of Jesus with thorns would cause him to levitate or bilocate. He was also said to have cured some of the other beggars he met and multiplied bread for them. Benedict Joseph’s behavior was considered madness by the standards of this world, but his contemporaries considered it holiness. A few years before his death. Benedict Joseph lived for a time in the ruins of the Colosseum in Rome and would only go out to make a yearly pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Loreto in Marches, Italy. He became a familiar figure in Rome and became known as the “Saint of the Forty Hours” referring to his great devotion to the Eucharistic adoration. As
a mendicant, he was called the “beggar of Rome.” The day before he died he collapsed on the steps of the church of Santa Maria ai Monti, a few blocks away
from the Colosseum. He was taken to a house behind the church and died on April 16, 1783, during Holy Week. He was buried in the church of Santa Maria ai
Monti. Very soon a cult grew since people considered him a saint even when he was still alive. Benedict Joseph’s Confessor, Fr. Marconi, attributed 136 cures three months after Benedict Joseph Labre’s death. These miracles were instrumental in the conversion of Rev. Fr. John Thayer, the first American
Protestant clergyman to Catholicism, who was residing in Rome at the time of Benedict Joseph’s death. Benedict Joseph was proclaimed Venerable by Pope Pius IX in 1859. He was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1881. His liturgical feast is celebrated on April 16.
His outstanding Virtues are: piety, humility, integrity, temperance, fortitude, charity, honesty, patience and contentment
“Lord, through the prayer of St. Benedict Joseph Labre, help us to seek heavenly things and reject the comforts and pleasures of this world.”
